Thought I Felt a Bump

I’m having a fun day.

I had an accident in the church parking lot after the revival. It was after eleven, and I was dying to get home. I saw a car parked next to my truck, and I looked at it as I passed, and then I got in the truck, turned the wheel, and ran my tire into the car’s left front corner. I was exhausted, I guess. I can’t explain it any other way.

My truck had a flat tire, a scratch, and a gouged-up rim. The car…ouch. No bumper. Two headlights gone. One fender mashed beyond hope.

While I was in the parking lot, at the edge of the ghetto, struggling to change a tire in the dark, two of my friends came out and helped. One of them refused to let me tighten the lug nuts, which was a real job. Very nice of him to do it for me. I was about to drop.

I was so tired, I forgot I was carrying, and I took off my flannel shirt. I guess I looked pretty weird out there, wallowing around on the pavement with a Glock on my hip.

It turned out the car belonged to another security guy. Being a big Christian, he was all worried about me and my problems. He didn’t want me to get a ticket or have insurance aggravation. We decided to handle it ourselves. Today I had to go to a body shop in Opa-Locka to hand over a 50% deposit on the work.

It wasn’t all that much. I was surprised.

I felt really bad for him. I told him to make sure he went to a place that would do a good job. He went to three places, trying to get a good price, but I told him not to worry about that, because I wanted it done right.

It turned out there were a couple of things I could do for him. He’s having midterm exams, and he said he had had “bad luck” all month. Someone borrowed his scooter and didn’t bring it back. So I’m putting in time, praying for him. And I found something else I could do for him. I had something lying around which he can use.

When the accident happened, I told him not to worry, because it was going to turn out to be a blessing for both of us. I was sure of it. God was not going to let us leave a 3-day revival, where we worked long hours without pay, only to be punished for it. Something good will come of it. I’m not worried at all.

I got a tour of Opa-Locka today. What a weird area. There are a lot of big lots up there. It’s surprising. There are homes that should be very nice, but because of the area, they’re not exactly in demand.

The body guy is named Conroy. I found the shop where he works, and I gave him the check and got a receipt. He tried to help me with my wheel. He got in the truck, and he took me to a few places, but nobody had the right wheel. Says he’s from Jamaica. I invited him to come to church this Sunday, and he may show up.

He gave me an estimate on fixing the bad paint and the new scratch on my truck. If he does a good job on the car, I may let him do it. I also need some Moto Guzzi side covers painted, and he says he can do that.

I ended up driving to Hub Cap Heaven, near the county line. The road was under repair, so I had to wait in a long line of cars. No wheel, naturally. But they’ll call me if they find one.

Came home and tried to get my new chuck working so I could put it on my new rotary table. The gears were balking. I emailed the seller, and he said it was probably dried oil. I knew that wasn’t true, but I opened it up one more time to make sure there was nothing I could fix, and while I was opening the jaws, the chuck balked, and it twisted out of my hand and tore up my left thumb. It is surprising how well a 90° edge can cut, when it hasn’t been deburred.

Pouring hydrogen peroxide under the big loose bloody flap of skin was most enjoyable. I hope I get to do that more often in the future. I got it bandaged up and went back to work. When I tightened up the bolts holding the pinions in place, the chuck started working. Thank God.

I put the chuck on the rotab and tried to dial it in on the mill table, but the silly thing doesn’t want to move on the rotab. I don’t know if it sits in a recess or what. I don’t feel like taking it apart to see. My 8″ chuck moved around fine when I hit it with a deadblow hammer, but this one doesn’t want to go anywhere. I abandoned it. Now I’m thinking about ice cream.

I wish I had some super glue so I could try to glue my thumb back together. Sometimes that works.

This is the hidden price for a Chinese bargain.

On the religious front, things are going great. This morning, as usual, I woke up and started praying in the Spirit, but now there is a melody to it. This happened to me a couple of weeks ago, and now it’s back. So I was actually singing in the Spirit, although I was praying silently. This is much better than plain old prayer. It adds a dimension of musical worship.

Robert Morris suggests people sing to God when they spend time in private prayer. It’s a good idea, but it’s not that engaging. It’s very different when the song is part of prayer.

Naturally, I am all freaked out. Again.

It’s like I said. The revival took existing believers to a new level. It’s no joke.

The garlic rolls came out great, although I was too lazy to get real garlic. I used powder, which was still very good. I melted provolone over two rolls. Really sick. Here are photos:

I think this is a fantastic idea. If I added another cheese with more flavor, these would kill. They could be an optional dish at church, with little side containers of pizza sauce and pesto.

Here’s hoping I make it to bedtime with no more lacerations.

After Three Days, I Failed to Rise Again

I’m sorry I haven’t written more lately. My church just had a three-day “Rendezvous” conference, which was actually a revival. I worked all three days, leaving early in the morning and returning late. Today I’m convalescing. I got up at 10:30.

Our speakers were Judah Smith, John Gray, Carl Lentz, and Harrison Conley. We also had our homegrown talent, headed up by Rich Wilkerson, Jr.

I have not recovered to the point where I have the energy to write about it.

John Gray nearly melted the church on the first day. People filled the aisles, trying to get to the front for the altar call. After that, I wondered how things could get any better. But they did. Each speaker built on the foundations laid by the ones who preceded him, without knowing their material in advance.

Judah Smith finished us off last night. His message was this: God sees all of time, from one end to the other, at every instant. When he saves you, he knows you’re going to stumble and sin. He saves you anyway, and he loves you all the time, and he is not angry with you.

I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say God doesn’t get angry with us, but I would say there is never a time when he will refuse to hear you when you come to him for help and admit your sins. And I don’t believe you can become unsaved, barring some extraordinary act of defiance.

Here is what Psalm 32 says:

Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile.

When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long.

For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. Selah.

I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. Selah.

For this shall every one that is godly pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest be found: surely in the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh unto him.

To me, this says we suffer internal condemnation, through the Holy Spirit, when we cherish and cling to and deny our chronic sins (iniquities). We block God’s earthly blessings during those times. The Holy Spirit continues warning us, taking away our rest. When we turn back to God and admit wrong, the blessings return. One such blessing is that the “flood” of curses released by the enemy will be turned back.

Robert Morris says “flood” often refers to slander. I would broaden that and say it applies to hostile words in general. After all, don’t curses begin when they are spoken? Aren’t they founded in words, somewhere back at the supernatural source?

I would also say that Jesus is utterly crazy about us. I know that because he came into my room and touched me twice, and his love could be felt physically, like the heat of a spotlight. It will sound silly, but when his presence touched my leg or my shoulder, those parts of my body felt loved and at peace, independently of the rest of me. I know that makes no sense, but it is completely true. And it’s not just mature, sober love. It’s not just God wanting what’s best for us. It’s also affection. Jesus LIKES us. Go figure.

John Gray talked about lightning. He talked about “leader” strikes, which begin the process. He compared God’s power to lightning hitting the earth, and he compared us to leader strikes, which connect lightning to its targets. I thought that was wonderful, because on one of the occasions when Jesus manifested himself to me, I felt lightning entering into my upraised palms. I don’t know what it meant.

I guess you could say God’s blessings are like lightning, and our chronic sins are like insulation.

Psalm 37 says:

The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord,
and he delighteth in his way.
Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down,
for the Lord upholdeth him with his hand.

We are like sculpted figures, slowly chiseled free from marble by God’s hand. Chronic sins are like the overlying marble between the hidden figure and the point of the chisel. I believe prayer in the Spirit is the chisel. Maybe that’s why God refers to his word as “sharper than any two-edge sword.” Prayer in the Spirit is a completely pure form of God’s word. The phrase “God’s word” doesn’t always mean “the Bible.” It means anything spoken by God. If you have lunch with Jesus, and he orders a cheeseburger, his order is God’s word. If the Holy Spirit speaks through you, it also has to be God’s word.

The people speaking at the church and running things didn’t have much time to talk to us. I wish I could have buttonholed a couple of them to tell them all the stuff the rest of us were seeing. God was working all over the place, among people lower on the food chain. I had some wonderful conversations with my friends, and we strengthened each other and helped each other with our needs. And the speakers said things that were like laser-guided bombs aimed at my personal issues, about which they could not have known anything.

I think you need to tell your authorities when God works through them, so they will be encouraged in what they do. And they need to make time to hear you, for their own good. It’s great to be so strong you’ll serve God without reward, but a little honor and encouragement can be very helpful.

When we were planning Rendezvous 2010, I didn’t realize it would be a revival. At first, I didn’t plan to go, because our regular Tuesday night Rendezvous is aimed at younger people. I used to think it was a singles thing for the young, which ruled me out.

After I had been at the event for a while, working security and helping the VIPs and witnessing the things that were happening to me and around me, I realized a revival was underway. And I came to realize what a revival does. We all know a revival attracts the lost and brings them into the fold. What I did not realize is that a revival touches those who are already on the path. I figured we would serve and have a good time and hear some great things, and that would be it. But we found ourselves promoted to higher levels of faith, knowledge, and power.

I prayed so much during Rendezvous 2010, I feel like my “faither” got sore. I really mean that. The part of my mind that exerts faith literally felt worn out at times. But I thought it was extremely important for people at the church to be praying for the speakers and authorities at all times. They don’t have the time to do it all themselves. Over and over, I found myself with convenient down time when I could be alone and pray.

During John Gray’s second talk, I got stuck in a hallway outside an empty conference room adjoining our green room. There was no reason to put me there. They could have just locked the door. It looked like a bad assignment. But I was old enough to know better. I knew God speaks through apparent adversity, and I also knew he expects us to serve at the bottom if we expect to be promoted. I knew that God was telling those above me what to do with me. I refused to be disappointed, because I knew I was getting a blessing. I used the time to listen and pray.

I found that by moving a bench, I could command a view of the entire backstage hallway I had to protect, while seated behind a curtain next to the stage. John Gray was maybe forty feet behind me. I didn’t miss a thing, and I wasn’t distracted by people who needed to be herded and managed. It was wonderful. When my relief came, I went to the sanctuary, but I made a quick trip back to the bench to let him know that he didn’t have a bad assignment, and that God would make something out of it.

Later that day, the guy who relieved me sat at my table at lunch, and I got to hear about his life. I learned about the attacks he’s facing, and I found out how driven he is to serve God and bring in the lost. He has lived on the streets, and he knows the people, and he goes to them and preaches and brings them in. He rebukes spirits during services to help people make it to altar calls. I told him what little I knew about being built up and fighting attacks, and we had a great time. I hope what I said was right and useful. Maybe it was his blessing for sitting on that bench.

Last night, I heard beautiful worship music in my mind as I tried to fall asleep. I wanted to get up and try to write it down, but it was just too late. Today I woke up full of the urge to praise God. It just poured inside me.

More than ever, I feel that I am walking by faith. I have become a very hard person to hurt. When you walk by faith, whatever is intended as evil toward you turns out to be a blessing. I don’t know where things are going, but I feel almost manic when I consider the changes in my life.

I think God is going to start speaking to us more directly than he used to. We’ve all been at emotional sermons where speakers talked sincerely and zealously about the power of God, without making it clear how we could put that power into action. We’ve been inspired and encouraged, but practical information about getting the required tools has been lacking. I think that time may be over. Some say the heavens are polarizing and heating up with conflict, just like the earth. If that is true, we need to be serious, and we have to become effective. Vague instructions like “pray a lot” and “quit sinning” aren’t going to get the job done. Those aren’t the tools the Apostles used. They healed the sick, cast out demons, and raised the dead. You can’t get the power to do those things by going to church a lot and trying to be good.

The age of real supernatural warfare is beginning. That’s what I think. We are going to come to a realization that prayer and fasting and worship are more important than anything we do with our physical or mental abilities. When we understand that, we will automatically start walking by faith. When that happens, God will be beside us all the time, so how will anyone stop us? We’ll be protected from all sorts of harm, and even when harm touches us, it will turn into blessings. It’s kind of unfair to the enemy, if you think about it. But I can live with that.

I was Right About Cheesecake, Wasn’t I? Same Deal Here

If, like me, you “collect” anointed teachers, you need John Gray. He spoke at Trinity Church again tonight. God said so much to me through him, I can’t even try to capture it here. If you get a chance to see him in person, don’t miss it. I know what it looks like when the Holy Spirit will not leave a person alone, and that is this guy’s situation.

Join his mailing list. He won’t try to sell you anything.

I’m pretty sure he won’t.

Join anyway.

Prop me Up if I Pass Out

Went to prayer group at 8 a.m. yesterday morning. Went to a gun show with one of the guys. Went to church at 6 p.m. This morning, I started making pizza and garlic rolls at 8 a.m. I left at noon and came home to clean up. At four, I’ll be back at church to serve as an armorbearer for our Rendezvous conference. I’ll be serving until Tuesday night, on and off, and I have also been asked to cook.

I’m thrilled to be asked to do stuff, but the laws of physics will prevent me from being in two places at once, so cooking is out. Two and a half days with no pizza or rolls! Unless someone takes my place for a while.

I have to take Marv and Maynard out, pound them silly, shower, dress, fill up the truck, and head back to Miami Gardens. Full day!

The rolls were incredible today. I’m really getting the hang of it.

Ultimately, Imitation is Praise

I feel like I’m going though life on God’s horizontal escalator. You know those moving walkways at airports? That’s what it’s like. I get on and wait, and stuff happens while I do very little.

Last night the leader of my prayer group texted me to ask if I could lead the group today. That was just perfect, because I had a lot to tell everyone. Last week, I went to DC for the National Day of Prayer, a tour of the Holocaust Memorial, and a meeting with the Israeli ambassador, and the whole time, God pretty much buried me in favor. It took me quite a while to download the information to my group today, but I covered the essentials.

God always tells you more than you can tell everyone else. Frustrating. He isn’t kidding when he says your cup will run over. It happens over and over, in different areas of life.

I had a new insight today, while I was talking about the Holocaust Memorial. You may recall what I wrote about the pile of desecrated Torah scrolls I saw there. You can read about it at this link. The Holy Spirit rose up in me and made me feel his outrage and disgust, or at least that’s how it seemed.

Today I was talking about it to my friends, and I said it seemed to me that the sheepskin construction of the Torah was intended by God to show us that the Mosaic law, though priceless and vital, was external to human beings. Skin is an outer covering, and sheep represent people. The letters of the Torah are written on the outsides of sheep, and the Mosaic law was a system of commandments originating outside the person. The Holy Spirit, on the other hand, bubbles up within us and motivates and guides us so we come to share God’s nature. It is God’s law, written on our hearts, as predicted in the Old Testament. “I delight to do thy will, O my God. Yea, thy law is within my heart.”

One of my friends mentioned the lampshades and other articles the Nazis made from the skins of Jews. I remembered seeing photos of these things. Some pieces of skin were used as parchment for propaganda and crude cartoons.

I know that Satan has no new ideas. God is the creator; Satan is the imitator. I started to see how the Holocaust was a weak, clumsy, profane mimicry of things precious to God.

God wrote his law on the hides of sheep, to show that the law was to be upon his people. His use of sheep in this fashion is similar to his use of sheep and other animals at the Temple. Only a human sacrifice could take away the sins of the world, but sheep were put in their place until the real sacrifice was prepared two thousand years ago.

Similarly, when the Nazis wrote and drew on the skins of Jews, they were creating Satan’s Torah. His insult. Through these revolting articles, Satan was lampooning the sacred scrolls. I firmly believe that. It was just like the pig sacrifice Antiochus performed in the Temple. It was an extremely pure revelation of the barren and putrified state of Satan’s heart.

I believe the crematoria were mockeries of the Temple itself. The Temple was a place where animals were burned all day, to please God. In the camps, people were burned in obedience to his enemy, and their ashes rained down like manna. And how did the Nazis get people to enter the gas chambers? They convinced them they were going to be given showers. They were going to be bathed and purified. Perhaps this was Satan’s attempt to ridicule ritual immersion, which the Jewish high priests had to undergo before and after entering the Holy of Holies.

Nazi killed the Jews with gas, which is inhaled. What does “spirit” mean? It means “breath.” Look it up. God breathed into Adam to give him life. Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit onto the disciples. God gives charismatic Christians new life, from inside, by breathing the Holy Spirit into them. Hitler, on the other hand, caused Jews and other death camp victims to breathe in death.

The Temple priests ate of the sacrifices, and they lived on the gold and other things offered by the people. The Nazis mined Jewish bodies for gold and hair. Even the Sonderkommando, who were like temple officials, were unwilling participants in the twisted harvest. They lived in special rooms stocked with food and other goods taken from those murdered in the gas chambers. Improbably and inexplicably (as with so many things that have a supernatural cause), the Nazis shared the goods with them, as though mocking the commandment to refrain from muzzling the ox that treads out the grain.

Finally, the forced stripping seems to be a Satanic allusion to the requirement that priests cover themselves with appropriate attire, including linen shorts that came between their nakedness and the Temple structures beneath them. God covered the priests. Satan stripped people naked when he sent them into his version of the Temple.

Satan loves cruel sacrifices. In the days of idolatry, it was easy to get people to perform the rites willingly. They even provided their children as fodder. During the Holocaust, Satan had to deal with people who either believed in God or had no beliefs at all, so no one was willing. He still got his way.

These things seem obvious today, but a month ago, they were not apparent to me.

I could go on. The prophets talk of baldness (even baldness of the body), sackcloth, and ashes. The Nazis shaved their victims from head to toe, dressed them in coarse cloth uniforms (I saw them at the Memorial), and turned them into ashes. The prophets talk of bodies littering the ground, and this is one of the horrors that recur regularly in the photographic record of the Holocaust. I just don’t have enough time to write everything that comes to mind.

Anyway, the prayer group meeting was wonderful. And afterward, a couple of us went to a gun show. I was disturbed to see an object that appeared to be a swastika belt buckle, on a table of items for sale. I guess the murderous nuts–the embarrassing few–are trying to blend in with the sheep. Very sad. I should have complained to the show’s promoters.

My church is having a conference that starts tomorrow, and I have to help out. I may blow off pizza in the morning. People will survive without it.

That’s how it’s going today. I have to wonder what the coming week will bring.

Floss? Never Heard of It

A day or two ago, I caught a few minutes of a VH1 show about things that make men undateable. One of the things listed was a strong interest in guns. I guess this hobby will protect me from neurotic, controlling women. Hard to complain about that.

If I were a woman, I think I would put “being gross” at the top of the list. If you make disgusting noises when you eat, don’t close the door or wash your hands when you use the bathroom, bless others freely with your flatulence, don’t floss, pick your nose while driving, and drink straight from the milk carton, you should be confined in a pen for the rest of your life for the good of humanity.

Is that a little extreme? If so, I can live with myself.

The other day I was at an event where people were speaking, and there was a man sitting near the podium, picking his nose over and over. I kept thinking, “What if I have to shake that guy’s hand later?” There was just no way. I would fake a seizure if I had to. And it was very distracting. I tried to watch the speakers, but up his hand went, to his nose, over and over. I could not look away.

How do people end up like that? How can you sit in a room in front of dozens of people, picking your nose? It’s like the guys who pick their nose while driving. Hello? Glass is not opaque, gentlemen. Women can see through it.

I envy gross people, because it’s impossible to offend them. If I picked my nose in front of the nose-picking guy and then offered to shake his hand, he wouldn’t mind at all. But I would have gone out a fire exit to avoid touching him.

People who are disgusting force physical intimacy on the rest of us. We have to touch and eat and drink their secretions. We have to breathe their gases. We sit in their waste. We share their diseases because they leave traces of mucus, saliva, fermenting sebum, and feces everywhere.

It’s an asymmetrical battle, because the rest of us have no way of getting even without becoming like the aggressors. We are bombarded by their filth, but they never come into contact with ours. Maybe the answer is to raise filthy children, so they will not go into this battle unarmed.

Oh, well. At least we have Purell now.

My prayer group has resolved to read the entire Bible this year. I’m working on Isaiah. It’s good to get the long books out of the way.

I’m shocked at the many prophetic references to the baptism with the Spirit and prayer in tongues and the spiritual fruit and gifts. They’re obvious to a charismatic. On the other hand, they’re invisible to other people, which sort of proves the spiritual gifts are real. Charismatics believe God tells us what scripture means, so to us, it makes sense that other people would reject our interpretations.

It’s funny how many metaphorical references to blindness and deafness are in there. They deal with rejection of the baptism with the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is what gives you eyes to see and ears to hear…about the Spirit. So how do you know you’re blind or deaf, if you’re blind or deaf to the one who is telling you? Talk about having a beam in your eye. Not even Anne Sullivan could get past this barrier.

I’m not even sure why God put this stuff in there, since the people to whom it refers are unable to receive it. I guess he is just confirming things to those who can understand. Sometimes I think he does that partly to humiliate Satan. He lays his truths out in ways Satan can’t understand, and by the time Satan figures it out, it’s too late for him to do anything but cry. I guess God is capable of doing that. The Bible says he laughs at his enemies and derides them. Look at Psalm 2.

From my reading, I got the impression that tongues will eventually be unnecessary. After all, they conceal things from the enemy and from people who don’t have the baptism. It won’t always be necessary to do that. Sooner or later, the information, like all sensitive data, will be declassified. I suppose, then, that this is what Paul referred to when he said tongues would cease. One day the Spirit will speak through us openly, about the things of God. Perhaps this refers to the Messianic Age.

I have some other ideas about the way to render Isaiah understandable, and I think they apply to scripture, generally, but I don’t know if it’s appropriate to write about it publicly. I’m not sure the ideas came from God, anyway.

Sooner or later I have to tackle the lost books of the Bible. I refer to Judges, Kings, and Chronicles. They’re not really lost, but I see them that way because we tend to ignore them. We give them less attention because it’s hard to see how they can be useful. Perry Stone has found all sorts of prophetic stuff in these books, so I know they’re worth mining. But other books are easier to deal with. The gospels, for example, are stuffed with good things, and they’re fairly straightforward, by Biblical standards.

My church is having a conference next week, and I’ll be there for most of it. I should rest up today. Tomorrow I meet with my prayer group at 8 a.m., and then I go to church later on, and then I have to cook on Sunday, and the conference starts Sunday night. Yow.

Funny “coincidence”: the conference–which is a very big deal to us–ends as Shavuot begins. This is the real Hebrew-calendar Pentecost. The day when the Holy Spirit fell on the first believers in the Upper Room. The pastor’s son is running the show, and he has a great record of praying for groups of people to receive the Spirit. Hope something happens.

I wish Christians would give up their silly dating system for Jewish holidays. I have no idea when we celebrate Pentecost this year, but we’re not even close to right. Okay, I checked. It’s Sunday, May 23. Five days off. We can say Pentecost is any day we want, but to God, there is only one correct date.

It’s not like the Saturday/Sunday worship question, which involves law not applicable to Christians. We don’t worship on the real Sabbath, and because we are not under the law, we don’t have to, so it isn’t all that important if we mislabel Sunday. Shavuot, on the other hand, is fixed by Jewish law, given to Moses by God. You can’t move it around.

I better sit down and plan out the next few days. At the very least, I should consider putting a cooler in the truck so I don’t starve during the conference.

What are YOU Doing Today?

Sometimes I have a fleeting realization of how weird I am. I am having one today.

I got up and wrote a long blog entry about how the Holy Spirit tells me stuff when I’m visiting museums. Then I realized I had to install an EZ-Ject kit on my Hornady Lock-N-Load ammunition press and see if I could machine the shell plates to make them work with it. I got started in the garage, and then I remembered I also had to freeze a gallon of pizza sauce and try a dough experiment. The dough was especially important. I have an idea for easy croissant-like rolls, and I have to test the recipe.

I got on Youtube, found a video of someone explaining the press upgrade (the way Hornady should have in its instructions). Then I made a big pile of dough, turned it into rolls, and put them on a pan to rise. Now I have to go to the garage and do my repairs and machining while the dough rises.

Who else has a life like this? I had to check four WordPress categories for this one post.

I’m considering writing a cookbook for my church. Not for publication. Just to help people who work in the kitchen. If these rolls work, they’ll be in the book.

I forgot to put chocolate inside them. I better fix that before they get too warm to handle.

Raiders of the Found Ark

I am going to try to cover more of my DC trip. I had too much to do yesterday. I had to go to church to test Grande 50/50 Italian Blend cheese (unsuccessfully), and then I had to drive a VIP to church from his hotel on the beach. After that, I served as an armorbearer at the Tuesday night service, and then we had a meeting, putting volunteers together for next week’s conference.

You could say I was busy.

Here is the verdict on Grande 50/50. It has too much of the funk of provolone, without enough of the sourness of good mozzarella. I can’t use it. Distressing.

It helped me understand how unlikely and remarkable my recipe is. The combination of cheeses I use seems to be impossible to imitate. Wonder who put the idea in my head.

Where did I leave you last time? It looks like Mike and I had attended the National Day of Prayer, and we were on our way out of the Cannon office building.

The nature of the event surprised me. It was very clear that the room was full of Bible-believing Christians. My best guess is that a big portion were charismatics. From what I hear of non-charismatic churches, I have deduced that any person who waves a hand or raises both hands during prayer or a religious speech is probably charismatic. I saw some of that at the National Day of Prayer, so my best guess is that charismatics were represented to a disproportionate degree.

The speakers did not come across as charismatic. They had a Catholic priest and a Southern Baptist congressman (Lincoln Davis, from Tennessee), and of course, Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein spoke. Franklin Graham was the main speaker, and his message seemed pretty dry and works-based, leading me to figure him for a non-charismatic. Still, in the crowd, I saw hands.

If I recall correctly, speakers were allowed to pray in Jesus’s name.

I felt that many of the people in the crowd were sincere believers with personal relationships with God, and I suspected that God had drawn them to the Cannon building on this special day for a very important purpose. I suppose this may be why I ended up there. My prayer life has been going great guns.

Prayer is not a joke; it is infinitely more powerful than direct action. Elijah’s prayer prevented rain from falling in Israel for three years. Abraham’s prayer preserved two entire cities until the righteous could leave. Moses’s prayer saved the Jewish people from instant mass execution. If God drew powerful prayer warriors to Washington last week, even if there were only a few dozen of them–even if only one had shown up–it would be a very big deal for our nation.

We affirmed God’s place in America’s affairs, and we prayed that God would cause our leaders to rule in righteousness and faith. We were reminded that every Christian has an obligation to pray for his secular leaders. We prayed for God to guide America. Who knows what results the prayers will bring? I know this: God didn’t drag all of us up there to pray so he could ignore us.

After the event, Mike and I found a Five Guys, and then we made our way to the National Holocaust Memorial, to rejoin the group. I was disgusted to see Jimmy Carter’s name under an inscription by the door. All I can say is, “Remember Haman.” I’ll bet the people at the Memorial wish they could get some patching compound and fill in the letters and paint over that whole section of the wall.

Inside the building, we were taken to a special classroom. Each of us was given an “ID” booklet, with the photo of a Holocaust victim inside it, along with some information about that person’s life. My victim was a survivor. I don’t know about the others.

Archivist Stephen Mize came out and gave us a wonderful illustrated lecture about James G. McDonald, an academic and League of Nations official who tried to avert the Holocaust in the decade before World War Two. I wish I could recall all the details of the intricate “coincidence”-filled story that led to the recovery of McDonald’s voluminous diary; it’s one of those tales that has God’s fingerprints all over it.

McDonald was an American of partial German extraction. He was six feet seven inches tall, blond-haired, and blue-eyed. He spoke fluent aristocratic German, which he learned from his German mother. He looked like the very goal of Hitler’s perverted eugenics program. Oddly, he was chosen by God to meet with political and religious dignitaries all over the globe, to try to motivate them to provide the chosen with a way out of Europe.

McDonald met with the future Pope. He met with Hitler himself. Hitler sent him on a tour of Dachau, thinking McDonald would be impressed by the “medical research” the Nazis were conducting to “improve” mankind. McDonald became ill as he witnessed the atrocities. Hitler told him he would gladly release the Jews to other countries, including the United States.

That surprised me. I knew we turned Jews away, but I did not know Hitler had offered to give the entire Jewish population its freedom. If that is true, who is really to blame for the Holocaust? It’s as though Hitler were Pontius Pilate, and we refused his offer to let the innocent go free.

In negligence law, there is a doctrine called “last clear chance.” If you lie down drunk in the street, you are negligent. If I see you and somehow manage to back over you anyway, I am liable in spite of your negligence, because I had the last clear chance to prevent the harm. Similarly, it seems to me that the nations who refused to admit Jews had the last clear chance to help, and they are very nearly as guilty as Germany and Austria.

Mize said the Dominican Republic was the only nation that accepted Hitler’s offer. They admitted a hundred thousand Jews, for political reasons. The government wanted to “whiten up” the population.

As most Christians know, God has made numerous promises to bless those who are good to the Jews. Here is another familiar fact: the Dominican Republic occupies the green and relatively prosperous side of the island of Hispaniola. Haiti, where voodoo (demon worship and necromancy) is the national religion, occupies the other side. If you go to Google Earth and look at Hispaniola as seen from space, you will see that the DR looks pretty good, while Haiti is a brown and lifeless mess. The division is clear enough to permit you to identify the border fairly well just from the color change. The Dominicans may have had a bad motive when they invited the Jews, but they still did a good thing, and it appears that God noticed.

The Memorial’s staff has worked up some books on McDonald. I don’t know if they’re available yet. I think Mize said one would be coming out in a month or two. Well worth buying.

It was distressing to hear that McDonald had gotten nowhere with the Catholic Church. He went to the Vatican’s Cardinal Secretary of State–the Rahm Emanuel of the Vatican, you might say–and asked for Vatican visas to get Jews from the Saar region to safety. That was all he asked for. No money, no land, no trains, no ships. Just visas. The cardinal said he would take it up with the Pope. Nothing happened. Mize showed us a photo of him, as a cardinal, signing a 1933 agreement with the Nazis, intended to preserve Catholicism within Germany. It makes you wonder what was on his mind when he chose not to help the Saar Jews.

You can see that photograph here, on Wikipedia’s Reichskonkordat page. “Reichskonkordat” is the name of the agreement.

The Vatican eventually provided assistance, but only after McDonald promised that prominent American Jews would apply pressure to get Washington to work to protect church property in Mexico.

The lesson I took away from the lecture is that guilt for the Shoah is much more widespread than I realized.

The Memorial was moving, naturally. You can’t look at piles of decaying razors and shoes and eyeglasses or watch films of naked, emaciated corpses sliding into ditches without marveling at the permissible magnitude of the depth of human suffering. The shoes came near the end of the exibits, which are structured so you have to see them in a certain order. There were two areas filled with them, to either side of the walkway. The smell of the old leather was unavoidable. There was even a photograph of an enormous pile of human hair taken from murdered prisoners. Originally, the Memorial’s creators intended to have the actual hair on display, but survivors and their families objected. They did not want to wonder, as they looked at the pile, whether they were looking at hair taken from their own relatives.

Every time I saw a shoe or a pair of glasses or a kitchen utensil or a limp, naked body in a pile of corpses, I understood that God had an intimate knowledge of what I was seeing. He knew each body’s name, and that person’s thoughts, and their relatives and accomplishments. He knew their suffering. He knew who every item belonged to, and he knew where they were that day, whether on earth or in the afterlife. None of these people have ceased to exist. They still live, somewhere.

I remember looking at a kitchen strainer a Jew had left behind, and I knew God remembered every meal it was used to prepare. He knew who sat around the table every time, and he knew their fates. To the human eye, a pile of eyeglasses is just a pile, but to God, there is no such thing as a pile. He does not have to use that kind of cognitive shorthand. He knows every item in a pile for what it is, what it has been, and what it will be, at every instant of its existence.

I had a couple of odd experiences at the Memorial. On the way in, we were all in reasonably good spirits. We were enjoying meeting new people and talking about our time in Washington. As we entered the building and moved toward the elevators that would take us to the exhibits, however, I felt waves of grief pouring over me. I don’t think the grief originated inside me. It seemed to arise independently, with no obvious trigger. My suspicion is that what I felt was not my grief, but the grief of the Holy Spirit.

Later, I saw what proved to be the most disturbing item in the Memorial. It was a glass case full of desecrated and separated Torah scrolls. I could not believe Jews would permit it to be put on display. There are rules about the disposition of damaged scrolls. As I leaned over the edge of the case and looked at the Hebrew letters, I felt outrage rise up inside me, over the sheer profanity of the desecration and the unspeakable human pride that drove it. I felt I was looking at the very essence of sin. A symbolic depiction of the error Lucifer committed before the creation of the world, and the error Adam and Eve committed in the garden. The error of the first couple is the primary reason for war and suffering, so it makes sense to put these scrolls on display at a Holocaust memorial, which reminds humanity of the direst repercussions of rebellion, and that the repercussions may not even spare those who are most precious to God.

Here was God’s word–his undeserved, redeeming gift, which Jews traditionally revere and protect for the good of the human race–torn and scattered by the smelly paws of unlettered humans who were barely better than apes. In this parchment, I saw the Flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the Tribulation, and perhaps even the Shoah itself. I saw provocation in its most extreme and vile and culpable form. I wondered how God restrains himself.

I stared at the letters and wondered which scriptures I was looking at. I understood nothing. I did not know which books I was looking at. That was fitting. The people who destroyed these books were blind to their meaning, too. Blinder than I.

I couldn’t stay by the exhibit and look at it for very long. I felt an intense, oppressive sensation when I looked. I had to walk away and come back.

Again, I don’t think the emotion or the thoughts came from me. In my own right, I am sure I would have been more upset by the concentration camp footage.

Near the parchment, there was a desecrated ark. This is a cabinet in which a Torah scroll is stored. Only the outer frame–like a doorway–was there. There was Hebrew lettering across the top, obscured by axe marks. This was the part of the cabinet on which the Jew-hater’s rage had been focused. It is extremely unlikely that he understood the letters.

The meaning of the Hebrew was “Know before whom you stand.” It is hard to think of a greater irony.

What have the Jews been, throughout history, if not God’s ark? They are the shelter in which the Torah has been preserved, and when you oppose them in hatred, whom do you really oppose? Before whom do you stand?

To Christians, the Jewish Messiah was the living ark, and through him, by the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the sanctification of tongues, each of us becomes an ark, with God’s law written on our hearts, just as the Commandments are stored on tablets in the original Ark of the Covenant. This is part of the symbolic significance of the Ark and its contents.

It occurred to me that it was ironic that the Torah was written on the skins of sheep. Maybe that’s because observance of the law, under the old covenant, is somehow external, like letters on one’s skin, compared to the indwelling of the Spirit experienced by new-covenant believers. What animal did Jesus compare us to, over and over?

I know now that the Torah is generally written on the skins of cattle, but that makes sense to me, too. When the Word is external to you, your relationship with God can be a little like the relationship a beast of burden has with its owner. The willingness to serve is there, but the understanding and the heartfelt sense of unity may not be. I have been told that, to Jews, obedience is more important than the state of mind in which you obey. Christianity is somewhat different, to put it mildly.

That’s all I have for now.

More

I guess I have a little more. After writing that, I wondered if ancient Torah scrolls were written on cowhide or sheepskin, since sheep were much more common in the ancient world. I Googled a little. It looks like sheepskin and goatskin used to be the standard materials, so maybe I really was hearing from God when I thought about the symbolic significance of sheepskin.

More

According to the Orthodox Union, “Torah scrolls and mezuzot are generally written on sheepskin parchment.”

And they also have some lamb recipes!

The Unlikeliest Pilgrim Speaks

I just got back from church. I was invited to the Monday morning staff chapel at ten a.m. On the way out, I checked the kitchen to see what kind of shape I would be in the next time I wanted to make pizza. While I was there, I got drafted to cook. I produced four pizzas and three dozen garlic rolls, and I ended up leaving at 2:30!

That place has a gravity well. You have to be careful about getting close to it.

I don’t know what to do about recording all the experiences I had when I was in Washington last week. They started weeks before I made the trip, which makes the problem even worse. I have too much material to deal with. God has been driving me crazy.

For weeks, I’ve been asking God to be bold and obvious in my life. It looks like he was listening. I am overwhelmed by the constant flow of remarkable events.

Let’s see.

In 2007 (I think), I got involved with the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, an organization which funnels money to needy Jews and which provides aid in Israel. Virtually all of the money comes from Christians. Last year, the local field rep–Linda–called me and asked me to meet with her, and I went. Reluctantly.

It turned out she was a committed Christian who shared many of my beliefs and interests. We became friends. Last year she invited me to visit a Messianic synagogue in Boca, and I went. Since then, I have been trying to get my church involved with the IFCJ, and I have been trying to get people from my church–starting with my prayer group–to visit the synagogue.

We tried to set dates, but people kept cancelling. Finally, we managed to work it out. The leader of my prayer group–John–is the volunteer leader for my church (over 700 volunteers), and all of the guys who went to the synagogue are volunteers.

At the service, the congregation was singing about the jubilee. This is a special year observed by the ancient Jews. After seven weeks of years, on the fiftieth year, they cancelled debts and so on. Here is a passage from Leviticus 25:

And you shall number seven sabbaths of years to you, seven times seven years; and the space of the seven sabbaths of years shall be to you forty and nine years. Then shall you cause the trumpet of the jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement shall you make the trumpet sound throughout all your land. And you shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee to you; and you shall return every man to his possession, and you shall return every man to his family. A jubilee shall that fiftieth year be to you: you shall not sow, neither reap that which grows of itself in it, nor gather the grapes in it of your vine undressed. For it is the jubilee; it shall be holy to you: you shall eat the increase thereof out of the field.

In the year of this jubilee you shall return every man to his possession. And if you sell ought to your neighbor, or buy ought of your neighbor’s hand, you shall not oppress one another: According to the number of years after the jubilee you shall buy of your neighbor, and according to the number of years of the fruits he shall sell to you: According to the multitude of years you shall increase the price thereof, and according to the fewness of years you shall diminish the price of it: for according to the number of the years of the fruits does he sell to you. You shall not therefore oppress one another; but you shall fear your God: for I am the LORD your God.

After the singing, the rabbi referred to Jesus (“Yeshua”) as “our jubilee.” And when the teaching began–the subject was the baptism with the Holy Spirit–guess what part of the Bible we heard? Look:

“The Spirit of Adonai is upon me;
therefore he has anointed me
to announce Good News to the poor;
he has sent me to proclaim freedom for the imprisoned
and renewed sight for the blind,
to release those who have been crushed,
to proclaim a year of the favor of Adonai.”
Luke 4:18-19; CJB

Jesus is the speaker. He is reading from Isaiah, in the synagogue at Nazareth. I don’t recall which translation the rabbi used, but the phrase I recall hearing is “the year of God’s favor.”

I knew, without knowing, that “the year of God’s favor” was yet another reference to the jubilee.

As I listened, I took out my driver’s license and showed it to John and to Jo-el, another friend who was sitting to my right. Why would I do that? Because I wanted them to know it was my birthday. My 49th birthday. The first day of my fiftieth year. The year of jubilee.

Coincidence, right?

Remember this: “And you shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee to you; and you shall return every man to his possession, and you shall return every man to his family.” I feel that I am experiencing a time of intense restoration. Things that were taken from me and my family are being returned. Telling this story disrupts the chronology of this blog entry, but I don’t see any way to avoid it.

A week or two before the service, fellow blogger Richard from It Baffles Science sent me a startling email, recounting his testimony. I wrote about it here. God is repairing his marriage and leading him out of his destructive habits. He is doing shocking things as he works to bring Richard and his family into the safety of obedience and faith. I was so amazed, I forwarded the email to three Christians. One was Linda. In her response, she asked if I was free to go to DC in May.

I called her, and she told me the IFCJ had some seats at the National Day of Prayer, and they were inviting some donors. There was also going to be a tour of the Holocaust Memorial, a dinner with Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein (founder of the IFCJ), and an invitation to the Ninth Annual Solidarity Event at the Israeli Embassy, where we would hear the ambassador speak to a small group!

I had no idea what the Naitonal Day of Prayer was, and I didn’t really want to spend money and go to Washington, but the invitation sounded like God’s favor to me, so I agreed. I figured there had to be a purpose.

I was not happy about spending money for airline tickets, but I got online and started looking. Fares were really cheap. And when I mentioned the trip to my dad, he suggested giving me the tickets for my birthday. Crazy.

Guess who happens to live in DC? Mike. I gave him a call, and he said he would be available during the week I would be in DC. He offered free lodging (that part didn’t pan out), and of course, he would run me around and find stuff for us to do. I let Linda know, and she got him invitations to the events! He has never had anything to do with the IFCJ. If you don’t think God does weird, obvious things to people, this should prove you’re wrong.

I’ve been trying to get Mike to try an Assemblies of God church near his home. I don’t know much about churches up there, but I found one with a nice website. Trinity Assembly of God, in Lanham, Maryland. Just happens to have the same name as my church. Mike and I made plans to visit Trinity on Sunday. The events took place on Thursday and Friday.

The night before the trip, I decided to dust off my MP3 player and put some more music in it for the flight. I added several albums and some Christian teaching (Perry Stone), but when I tried to add the last recordings, a Ricky Skaggs two-CD set, I found that the disks were missing. I had no idea where they were. I gave up and went to bed.

It was a little odd that I was trying to add Ricky Skaggs. I rarely listen to him, but on that night, I felt like it was time to rip his CDs.

I dreaded the flight. I hate the screening process, and I don’t like airline seats much, because they’re built for pear-shaped people with all their weight in their rear ends. But at the airport, there was no line when I checked in, the screening process was quick and painless, and I had the odd sensation that I was floating as I walked to the gate. Everything around me seemed clean and bright. When I took my seat, I found I had a whole row to myself. The trip was a breeze. The airport in Baltimore was another great surprise. It was quiet and clean, and it seemed almost empty. I had no delays at all.

Mike and I fiddled around all afternoon. We went to a Salvation Army thrift store to check out their cast iron cookware inventory, we visited his son’s school, and we tried Rita’s Italian Ice. This is a chain that sells gourmet ice and soft-serve ice cream. I couldn’t believe how good it was. I had a gelati made with strawberry custard ice cream and wild black cherry ice. At Rita’s, “gelati” means ice cream on the top and bottom, with ice in the middle. I fell in love immediately. I think we had Rita’s four times before I went home.

The next morning, at nine a.m., I was inside the Cannon Office Building on Capitol Hill. This is where they held the DC event for the National Day of Prayer. I would say the room held three hundred people. It was about fifty feet by a hundred, by my guess. The cable networks were there. Michele Bachmann was seated about ten feet away, in the row in front of me. I didn’t recognize all the Senators and Congressmen who were there, but I know there were at least two. And here I was. The nearly nonexistent guy with the tool blog.

I wish I could recall everyone who spoke. James Dobson and his wife were running the show. Gary Bauer was there. We heard from a Navy admiral and an army chaplain. The Cactus Cuties sang the national anthem and God Bless America. The main speaker was Franklin Graham, the son of Billy Graham.

They also had male musical performers. Early on, I had noticed an old hippie up front. He had long silver hair. At first, I had no idea who he was. I had him figured for an official from a liberal church. But I eventually realized I was wrong, because one of the speakers introduced RICKY SKAGGS, and the hippie got up on stage with his Martin guitar. Ricky’s curly red hair and his famous moustache are long gone!

I felt like grabbing him and telling him the story of the MP3 player and the missing disks, but I didn’t want to be tased and waterboarded so early in the day.

I’m pooped. More later.

Warming up the Old Commodore 64

I am in DC (or near it), using my creaky laptop. I am not able to check email, because there is something going on with my hosting company.

DC turned out to be much nicer than I remembered. Maybe it’s because most of the time I’ve spent there on this visit was during the daytime. Anyway, it has been about as scary as Disney World.

No, not that scary. Disney World is almost as scary as clowns.

I have been running around constantly since I got here. This afternoon I finally got some time to lie on my hotel bed, pray, read the Bible, and rest. Mike and I will probably be having dinner with friends of his a little later on.

I wish there was a camera crew filming me. The favor God has shown me has been beyond belief.

Aaron, if you’re reading this, I tried to text you from the Israeli embassy today.

DC Looms Before Me

Tomorrow I fly to DC. On Thursday and Friday, I’ll attend the National Day of Prayer and a dinner with Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, founder of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. On Friday, I’ll be at a breakfast at the Israeli Embassy, and then I’ll tour the Holocaust Museum.

It’s an honor to be invited. Still, I wish they could hold these events somewhere else. Washington, DC is a hotbed of violent crime, and the Second Amendment does not exist there, and I won’t be able to carry a gun. The hotel where I’ll be staying sounds borderline dangerous. The events should be wonderful, but the city takes a lot of the shine off the trip.

Maybe they should meet in the IFCJ’s hometown instead. But wait. That’s CHICAGO. Arghh. Suddenly DC doesn’t look all that bad.

Here’s the main reason I decided to go: I want to walk by faith. This is one of those improbable opportunities God drops on people, and I want to stay in the flow of God’s will, so I accepted the invitation. I know there is a reason for it, and good things will result from my obedience. I hope that doesn’t sound ungracious. I’m extremely enthusiastic about the events. But how can anyone get excited about DC? It’s like visiting Fallujah. They should call it East Detroit.

Boy, that gun control works wonders, doesn’t it? Look how safe DC and Chicago are. I almost wish I were a gun-grabbing Congressman, so I would have heavily armed police, federal agents, and military personnel to take care of me.

I hope people will pray for my safety, and that I’ll accomplish whatever it is that God wants done.

I will not be afraid, though ten thousands of people set themselves against me, round about. Though an host should encamp about me, my heart shall not fear. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. No evil shall befall me, neither shall any plague come nigh my dwelling, for God shall give his angels charge over me, to keep me in all my ways. They shall bear me up in their hands, lest I dash my foot against a stone.

All the same, I wish I could take my Glock.

I am not a great fan of Miami, but the prospect of visiting DC helps me see the positive aspects of this place. I can carry a gun everywhere I go, including church. I am not very likely to need it. And I don’t have to spend much time in the decrepit heart of the city. This is not Tennessee or Texas, but it’s a huge step up from DC, New York, Chicago, LA, or any of the big eastern seaboard cities. Those places are like twenty years away from Soylent Green conditions. Detroit is already there. I think it’s where they filmed the outdoor shots for Battlefield Earth.

Safety is the only thing about the hotel that concerns me. I am not picky about accommodations. I’ll take ear plugs and decongestant spray, and those things should cover the most likely problems. I just want clean sheets and a temperature between 70 and 75 degrees, and I’ll be fine.

The food up there should be good. Miami is not a great restaurant town, and I cook better than any restaurant I know of, so I have no motivation to go out. DC has Indian and Ethiopian food, so I’m hoping to try a couple of places. I would love to have a big plate of beef or lamb bhuna and some terrifying appetizers. No one in Miami will use enough peppers; they’re abject cowards. Maybe the Indians in DC will take me seriously.

Plus Gun Stuff

Yesterday was pretty weird. It was a blast, but the usual speed bumps popped up.

I made pizza and rolls at church, and we also served apple pie and brownies I had brought to an event the night before. So it was pretty much like going to a restaurant in which I was the chef.

We didn’t sell much pizza. Why? No can opener, and not enough helpers. We keep buying cheap can openers, and they don’t like #10 cans much. One broke last week, and someone was supposed to replace it with a commercial can opener, but that did not happen, and I didn’t know until it was time to make sauce. That cost me the whole first service.

I had to attend the third service, so I couldn’t make pizza, and there was no one else available except for my eleven-year-old assistant. I can’t turn him loose without supervision, so I closed up shop. We sold six pies and six dozen rolls.

I have a problem with the people out front selling the rolls too cheap. I had to go out and remind them that the flour costs money. You can’t sell four rolls for a dollar and survive. The price is fifty cents each or $2.50 for half a dozen. I don’t mind making rolls if it will generate a hundred bucks for the church, but I’m not going to fool with them if the net is five dollars.

The apple pies were wonderful. The cream cheese crust I came up with is a dream come true. It’s flaky, it tastes and smells great, and it’s fairly tough, so it won’t fall apart when you’re making or serving the pie. It’s not tough in the sense that it’s not tender. It just doesn’t break up at the wrong times.

It gave me a fantastic idea for rolls. I make chocolate and strawberry/cheesecake croissants, but they’re a pain to prepare. The pie crust is somewhat similar to a croissant, and it has an even better flavor. I decided to add yeast and turn it into rolls. They were incredible. Better than croissants. They aren’t quite as flaky, but the flavor is magnificent. And they’re easy to make. Make dough in a food processor, roll it out, make rolls, let them rise, bake.

As dinner rolls, these things have no equal of which I am aware. Add a little sugar, and you have the perfect substrate for something similar to a strawberry or chocolate croissant.

I believe God drops these ideas on me out of nowhere. The Sicilian pizza still freaks me out, and so do the garlic rolls. I am not going to take credit for this stuff. That is a sure way to cause problems.

It’s wonderful having trained chefs to talk to. I’m not used to that. We exchange ideas about food, and we’re all pretty excited about cooking.

One of the chefs–Ruthie–told me men made the best cooks. That was surprising, but I think she’s right. The best cooks I’ve known have been men. I think it’s because we’re more aggressive with the food. We’ll try absolutely anything. After all, I’m the guy who made a casserole filled with doughnuts. And how many women will design a smoke box for a smoker, cut out the parts with a grinder, and weld them together?

These days, a lot of women disdain any type of work associated with housekeeping, so I suppose many women would feel silly bragging about their cookies and brownies. Hillary Clinton sneered at women who make cookies; we all remember that. This self-destructive and perverse snobbery is probably one of the reasons most modern women don’t cook well.

It’s very sad that we have so little respect for good housekeepers and child-rearers, because their work is more important than breadwinning. Think about it: in fifty years, will anyone care about your raise or the great Powerpoint presentation you did? Of course not. Those things chiefly affect strangers who don’t care whether you live or die. But the things a wife and mother does have direct and lasting impact within the family. Her job is to prepare the next generation and to create an environment in which the other members of the family can thrive. And besides, the preparation of good food is an altruistic expression of love.

Even a salmon understands the importance of putting the next generation first. Come to think of it, my pastor talked about that yesterday. Shoveling money at your kids is fine, but it’s no substitute for hands-on, traditional parenting.

One of the women at church started telling me I should open a restaurant. I waved my hands at the food, and I said, “I HAVE a restaurant.” But I appreciated the compliment. I have considered opening a pizza joint, but it has occurred to me that a gun shop might be more practical, not to mention much less expensive.

There are very few gun shops around here, and most of them are no good. The prices are generally bad, and most shops have poor service. When a good shop opens up, people go. And it’s a much easier business to run than a restaurant. You don’t have to come in at 6 a.m. and put yeast in the guns so they can rise. You don’t have to wash the guns or carry out bags of smelly gun scraps at 11 p.m. There are no gun inspectors counting your cockroaches or forcing you to remodel in order to conform to unrealistic codes. You show up, sell stuff, do the paperwork, and go home. It’s a nine-to-five job. You buy for x dollars and sell for x plus a profit. It is not rocket science. And you don’t need two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of commercial cooking equipment that breaks down when you need it most. Nor do you need a big staff of skilled people. Any honest person with a fair knowledge of guns can work for you.

On top of that, we have Barack Obama. The greatest gun salesman in history. This man has literally made gun sellers rich. While he’s in office, you can’t lose!

Sign a lease, get a license, put thirty grand into inventory and renovations, and you’re a gun shop owner. That’s how it seems, anyway. If things go sour, sell the inventory and go home. You won’t be like the failed restaurateurs on Craigslist, begging people to buy their dreams for twenty cents on the dollar.

South Florida needs someone who sells reloading stuff. If you buy powders and primer over the Internet, you get royally dinged on the hazmat fees. A local place that made a respectable effort should do well. I use Accurate No.7 for my .38 Super, and trying to buy this well-known product in Miami is like trying to score plutonium.

This week, I’m going to DC to participate in the National Day of Prayer and some events sponsored by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. I’ll be visiting Mike. I am distressed that I’ll be in a crime-plagued city without a sidearm. I’ve gotten so used to the security of concealed carry that it bothers me to think I’ll be unarmed up there. I decided to stay at a hotel, and while I was looking for good ones, I kept reading reviews referring to bulletproof glass and scary parking lots. What a failure that city must be, as a place to live. The Detroit of the East Coast. I want to get in and out, fast. I would appreciate prayers for my safety.

I don’t like Miami much, but I thank God I live in a place where I am permitted to take care of myself. When I get out of here and move to more rural setting, I think it will feel like paradise. Nicer people, less traffic, same gun rights, more room…that would be nice.

I look forward to getting some good food in DC. Indian and maybe Ethiopian. Mike is scanning the horizon for opportunities.

I didn’t want to go (still don’t), but it seemed like God’s hand was in it, and it’s wonderful to be invited to these events.

This might be a good day for some experimental cooking. I would really like to finalize that roll recipe.

Gallery of stuff I cooked:

Something From my Inbox

Prayer request from Heather:

Mom’s three month biopsy from last Friday has shown some growth in the cancer. We have to wait for the oncologist and the radiation oncologist to get together and come up with a plan of attack, they think it will be by next Thursday before we hear anything. I just keep begging the Lord to cleanse this cancer from her body. Paedric and I need her so much, as I know that this new baby girl will need her too.
I have to be at UK Hospital at 5:30 AM for delivery on Monday.
Please keep us in your prayers.

First Shalt Thou Pull Out the Holy Pin

Having an incredible day. My prayer group met at Denny’s this morning, and as usual, God told each of us to say pretty much what the others needed to hear. Lots of “coincidences” and useful info.

Now I’m making food for my church’s cafe. I just stuck two trays of brownies in the oven. I’m going to take them to church and put them in the walk-in cooler, and then I plan to make a couple of deep-dish pies. I wanted to do pie a la mode, but ice cream might be too hard for the cafe to handle.

I thought I was going to make chocolate chip cookies, but the pies are more exciting. May do some pizzas.

I’m also making some experimental faux croissant things from my weird cream cheese dough. I added sugar and yeast and increased the salt. The rolls are rising now. Or they’re not. We will find out soon enough.

I am wondering if my usual brownie-baking temperature of 400 is too high. Sometimes they’re a little brown around the edges. I’m trying 375, in a gross violation of one of my firmest rules: never change a recipe when you’re cooking for a group.

Hope my new chef helpers are there tonight. We will rock that joint to its foundation.

Get me Some Camo Jammies

Depending on the breaks, I may be able to take my new .308 rifle to the range tomorrow. Then I begin the unbelievable process of breaking in the barrel. The manufacturer recommends cleaning the barrel after every round for the first 25 shots. Then you have to clean it after every 10 rounds until you get to a hundred. That wouldn’t be so bad if they recommended a Boresnake, but they don’t. They recommend a cleaning rod, a jag, and patches.

Here is what one of their people says on their forum:

For “break in” cleaning – you will need to use several patches of copper solvent, not just oil, to properly remove the copper fouling. Then use your regular gun oil, fire, and repeat. I do single rounds for a while, then go to 3 round group, clean, 3 round group, clean…until I am happy.

I’m not even sure I own a rifle-length cleaning rod. I think I have one in the garage. And I didn’t know what a jag was until five minutes ago. Time to visit Bass Pro, I guess.

He doesn’t say anything about a brush. How can you remove copper without a brush? Is that even possible?

I didn’t do this with my Savage. I wonder if I was supposed to. I don’t know if a normal rod will fit in a .17-caliber barrel.

Patches don’t impress me much. I know they worked great for George Washington’s army, but this is 2010. They don’t provide much friction, they hold very little stuff, and they leave junk in the barrel unless you use a pile of them. I would think a well-aimed can of Breakfree or Bore Scrubber would be much better, since it would carry the crap out of the gun instead of just smearing it around. I would be inclined to use a Boresnake, follow it with spray, and then use patches just to see if the barrel was clean. But I am no expert.

For the guns I own now, I use the following stuff: Hornady One Shot, Powder Blast, a Sonicare toothbrush, Q-tips, paper towels, and a Boresnake. Sometimes I use brake part cleaner, taking care to keep it off plastic, wood, and paint. I think I’m getting good results. I never see anything in the barrels when I sight down them.

I really like the bipod I used yesterday. It’s a Rock Mount something or other, I think. I should look at the package. The legs are nice and long, so you don’t have to be a yoga instructor to get behind the scope. I can’t understand why anyone makes rests or bipods that don’t hold the gun up where you can sight through the scope. I’m sure there is a reason, but I am not familiar with it.

I’ll want a bipod for the .308, but I don’t know what kind to get. FAB makes one that collapses into a foregrip, but a foregrip on a 10-pound rifle unsuited for close-quarters work seems silly. The bipod I have is great, but it will not attach to a rail.

Hold it. I won’t have a rail on the bottom of my new gun. I just checked. It’s a swivel. That will work.

I have a Caldwell rest, but I don’t like it. It’s very low, and it weighs a ton, and it takes up half of my shooting box. It has occurred to me that I have the technology to make a new screw for it. The big screw that supports the bag. If it were longer, the rest would be useful. But I prefer bipods. I can’t get used to the idea of shooting from a ridiculous sled type of thing; it seems like it’s one step away from clamping the rifle in a vise and walking away and firing the gun with a remote.

A bipod requires some amount of skill, and unlike a rest, it’s something you would actually find useful in the field. I know people like heavy rests for zeroing rifles, but it appears that I should be able to get sub-MOA performance with a decent bipod, and that’s good enough for me. That’s all I ever wanted. Besides, wouldn’t a giant Frankenrest move the zero anyway? I’d have to re-zero it with the bipod later.

Yesterday I noticed that the guy next to me was also shooting .17 HMR, and he was using what appeared to be a Savage in a target stock, and he had a giant sled thing that must have weighed fifty pounds. I am surprised it didn’t have a built-in seat and an end table for his beer. He was shooting about 9 MOA. Again, I am no gun expert, but here is what common sense tells me: if you shoot that badly with a rest doing all the work, you need to dump the rest, learn to shoot without it, and then try again. He is clearly doing something wrong, and the rest is probably discouraging him from trying to learn what the problem is.

Maybe he has a medical problem that makes a sled necessary to reduce recoil. I wonder.

I hope I am not going to make sled fans angry by writing this. I know there are people who shoot from those things every time they go to the range. I know a guy who shoots a .45 ACP carbine from one, so the reason is not always related to sighting in the gun. I’m sure these guys like the results, and they are not anxious to admit the machinery is doing most of the work, or that they can’t shoot without them. But these things were never intended to be crutches. Were they? Surely not. Far as I know, you’re only supposed to use them to get your rifle and scope acquainted.

From the results I got yesterday, I think I should be able to do something like .75-MOA, shooting the Savage from a bipod. I believe I should be able to put most of a 50-shot box into a group that big at 100 yards. I have to get my scope moved forward, and I have to work on my grip and my trigger pull and my breath control, but I think this is where I’m going to end up. God willing, of course. If that’s true, a complicated rest seems pointless.

It’s very satisfying, seeing it come together. I don’t get much of a thrill out of shooting all over the target, unless I’m playing around with iron sights. I love having a gun that will do exactly what I tell it to do, when I do everything right. This takes the gun out of the equation and allows me to see my own problems more clearly, and that means I learn more and shoot better. This is why I wanted the .308. If a gun will put 50 rounds into a hole the size of a quarter, it will tell me every time I make a mistake. An inaccurate gun will always make me guess. In a situation like that, I may guess wrong and make “corrections” that actually make me shoot worse.

I have one other complaint about the Savage. The cheek weld is pretty much nonexistent. Hard to believe, from a $10 plastic stock. Maybe moving the scope will fix this. If not, I think I should look for a solution. Given the cheapness of the gun and the fantastic as-is accuracy, I am not highly motivated to get a new stock. Maybe there is a product I can screw onto it.