Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz?

My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends.

So yesterday's service took us to the church with the start time of 10:03. Surely this is a passage from the bible? What does this signify? Any help?

Aside from the ranting from EK below, there is something that I MUST tear apart. The woman leading the sermon (we'll call her Scarlet) brought a Sudanese refugee named Alloueta to the service with her. This is going to get complicated.... Pay attention. So Scarlet gets sent over to Africa every summer to help out with the Sudanese refugees. Last summer they requested to live with families. So Scarlet got placed with Alloueta and her family. Scarlet was talking with some other missionaries/volunteers about how she wished that God would find a way for them to talk to Alloueta about Jesus because, of course, they are Muslim. One day, Alloueta asked Scarlet about Christianity. Scarlet was so excited that God had found a way and Alloueta was HUNGRY for knowledge about Jesus. So, over the course of her visit, they converted her. Like good missionaries. So now, her family doesn't know she's Christian until she requests to marry a Christian man. Now her family wants to kill her because she's no longer Muslim. So she escapes, goes to a shelter, and a miracle happens because she manages to get selected to get a plane ticket to America. It was all God's plan.

Are you kidding me? This is one woman who is insanely lucky. And now she is in America. Now what? Where will she end up? Where will her child be born and raised by this (now) single mother? I don't believe that life in Africa would necessarily be better simply because she would have family, knowledge of the culture, etc., but surely it can't be easier, per se, in America. Missonary work can be great. Don't get me wrong. I volunteered with street boys in Nairobi a few years ago and had the fortune to work with a good hearted brother of the White Fathers. He never talked to the boys about God. He was simply doing God's work, not spreading Capitalism... I mean, Jesus's good word. Missionaries like Scarlet believe that all people deserve to know Jesus, where humanity is the first priority and Jesus is the second. Maybe that's fine, but we haven't even fulfilled number one yet.

Another man who spoke at the church led a prayer for some vandals in Iraq (I believe) who looted a Christian bookstore and graffitied that the bookstore is part of the CIA and is acting on behalf of America. This man, after our discussion of "Let he without sin cast the first stone" and judging, prayed that the looters recieve their justice in court and that they find the righteous path. Well, until he figures out that the vandals are simply acting on their worldview, and that the real villian is Capitalism (Protestantism), we're not going to get anywhere. Bigger picture, people!!!!

I love throwing stones. Take that, sinners!