The Bible quote is from the first of the five books of Moses. The King James translation renders the promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:3 as:

“And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.”

In my recent American speaking tour I discovered that the folks who once believed that George W. was either demonic or stupid now have perfect faith in Obama as a glowing Messianic figure.

I thought I’d do a cartoon about President Obama’s surprising string of failures, but these days any criticism of the politician from Chicago is a violation of Political Correctness …and an invitation to being called a racist!!?!

So I did this cartoon about “playing it safe”.

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00409.0000 DRY BONES

Ezechiel cried, “Dry Bones!”
Ezechiel cried, “Dry Bones!”
Ezechiel cried, “Dry Bones!”
Now hear the word of the Lord!

Ezechiel connected them Dry Bones.
Ezechiel connected them Dry Bones.
Ezechiel connected them Dry Bones;
Now hear the word of the Lord.

Now the toe bone connected to the foot bone,
The foot bone connected to the heel bone,
The heel bone connected to the ankle bone,
The ankle bone connected to the leg bone,
The leg bone connected to the knee bone,
The knee bone connected to the thigh bone,
The thigh bone connected to the hip bone,
The hip bone connected to the back bone,
The back bone connected to the shoulder bone,
The shoulder bone connected to the neck bone,
The neck bone connected to the head bone,
Now hear the word of the Lord.

Them bones, them bones gonna walk around,
Them bones, them bones gonna walk around,
Them bones, them bones gonna walk around,
Now hear the word of the Lord.

Disconnect them bones, them Dry Bones, etc.
Now the head bone connected from the neck bone, etc.

Obama’s plan for Peace on the West Bank is not new.

The Nazis invented two words for it.
“Judenfrei” refers to “freeing” an area of all of its Jewish citizens. “Judenrein” (literally “clean of Jews”) was also used. This had the stronger connotation that the area had been cleansed of Jewish blood. -more

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Figured I’d give an update on the progress of these.  One of the beauties of raw denim is the fact that it’s so dramatically different from the jeans on the next guy.  It’s a piece that is truly yours, something that you can claim as your own.  We can do so for few things these days.  8th month update will hopefully will come soon, pending how busy I get.

The posted video was shot by someone  from Dry Bones Denver – a ministry serving homeless youth in Denver, CO. I’m a fan.

Check it out:

Starting at 4:15 in … speaking of the homeless:

“You know, cuz we’re just people too … you know, and most people are on the street cuz they feel unloved, unwanted, and rejected. And just be aware that even when you pull up to an intersection and there’s that guy with the sign that’s drunk off his butt with the the flat, broke-in [fbi?] sign – ‘raaah, give me a quarter’ – You know that your reaction to him … you know, you’re not obligated to give him that quarter. You’re not obligated to do a darn thing. But you don’t have to look with your eyes or you body movements in a way that uses profanity to that person.

“What I notice is a lot of Christians will not say the F-bomb with their mouth, but they’ll say it with their eyes and their spirit and their heart. They’ll F-bomb you all day long because you are not what they see as a child of God. So, you know … I don’t know, you’re not obligated to give me a buck or a cigarette or a meal if I ask, but don’t drop the F-bomb. You know?”

He’s right, isn’t he?

The world’s largest reverse osmosis desalination plant (and a target of Gazan missiles) is in the Ashkelon area. The desalination plant provides fresh water to Israel and supplies Gaza with its drinking water. The Israeli government plans to build four more plants which will make the country water independent.

The Ashkelon plant has been targeted by Gazan missiles. A Gazan missile hit would hurt Israel but would also stop all the fresh water flow to Gaza. Which, of course, gave me the idea for today’s cartoon.

The story of Israel’s technological advances in converting sea water to fresh drinking water probably didn’t make it to your local newspaper (or the International Media for that matter) but here’s a recent piece from Popular Mechanics:

“The Ashkelon Desalination Plant, which opened in 2005, converts more than 26 billion gallons of Mediterranean Sea water into fresh water for the State of Israel each year—5 to 6 percent of total demand. Ashkelon is not only the largest reverse-osmosis desalination plant in the world, it’s also one of the few public plants to recover waste heat to improve efficiency and reduce costs.”

Read More Dry Bones by Yaakov Kirschen

I’ve been considering when a strugglng church becomes too small to effectively turn around. Not that God can’t do miracles when only “two or three” are gathered, but there should be a general rule of thumb for when a church comes into being and when it should be laid to rest.

This is a concern because the average size for a church in North America is 75 attending. It is less in some other countries – or even this country – where the house church is the model; you are limited to how many people can fit in your living room or garage.

But in general, have the churches are less than 20 families, and many are a lot smaller: 35, 25, 15.

Which brings me to my question. How small can a church get before it’s not economically viable to keep it open?

With a congregational style church, part of the answer depends on whether the pastor and staff are full-time, part-time or unpaid. If your congregation is 5 families, making about $35k a year each, a tithe of the gross only nets the church $18 grand. What pastor can support a family on that?

If the church is in a denomination where the diocese or synod pays the salary, the congregation can get smaller, because someone else is frontloading the expenses to maintain a presence in that neighborhood. But that also means the local congregation is at the whim of someone else on whether to keep the building open or not. (I remember the furror when a local Catholic diocese tried to close an underperforming facility. Ten times the number that ever attended protested the closure of “their” church, the one they wanted standing when they needed to be married or buried!)

What I’ve been considering is the concept of a minyan. In Jewish practice, the minimum for a synagogue is 10 men. Similarly, in Islam, it takes 10 men at prayers to sustain the mosque. Jesus had his 12, but “one was a devil” and another a betrayer.

With 10 men, that’s probably 30 people: the men, their wives, one or two children for half of them, plus a few widows. Perhaps you can get as small as 10 family units, counting the Singles / single parents and widows, meaning about 15 adults.

In my opinion, if the church gets below 15 and stays below 15 for several weeks, it’s time to consider closing the church. God can still raise up dry bones, but only if the leadership is committed to nurturing the new growth.

Today’s Dry Bones cartoon is called Future Shock. Future Shock was a concept and a book published back in 1970 by Alvin Toffler.

The term refers to the confusion and disorientation which, he claimed, we would all suffer in the future. It would occur when technological advances would come faster than we, as individuals or as societies, could handle. Back then. Toffler was called a “futurist” (as opposed to a sociologist). His simplest definition of future shock was “too much change in too short a period of time”.

So welcome to the future.
Are you paying attention?
or are you off some place twittering? Hello? Hello? Are you there?
Yikes?!

Oh, and there’s now a website called “Oh Crap. My Parents Joined Facebook”

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The focus of today’s cartoon is the Western “Non Believer”.

These folks are committed to not believing what is happening before their eyes. Their ability to maintain their non-belief in the Islamist war that is being waged against them is astounding!

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It is time for America and the Obama administration to open their eyes and face up to the significance of the successful Fort Hood Islamist suicide attack. Here’s an interesting analysis of the current situation by Robert Spencer:

“Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a U.S. Army psychiatrist, murdered twelve people and wounded twenty-one inside Fort Hood in Texas yesterday, while, according to eyewitnesses, “shouting something in Arabic while he was shooting.” Investigators are scratching their heads and expressing puzzlement about why he did it. According to NPR, “the motive behind the shootings was not immediately clear, officials said.” The Washington Post agreed: “The motive remains unclear, although some sources reported the suspect is opposed to U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq and upset about an imminent deployment.” The Huffington Post spun faster, asserting that “there is no concrete reporting as to whether Nidal Malik Hasan was in fact a Muslim or an Arab.”Yet there was, and what’s more, Major Hasan’s motive was perfectly clear — but it was one that the forces of political correctness and the Islamic advocacy groups in the United States have been working for years to obscure. So it is that now that another major jihad terror attack has taken place on American soil, authorities and the mainstream media are at a loss to explain why it happened – and the abundant evidence that it was a jihad attack is ignored.”-more

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Sometimes I long for the “good old days”, when I was a kid. (In the long-ago time). Back then we thought that Medical Doctors were scientists and mini-gods. We trusted them.

Slang for something that was good for you was “just what the doctor ordered”.

These days, American TV ads for the latest drug carry a fast-talking list of the unfortunate but possible side-effects of the stuff that they want you to get from your doctor. So the ad sells us the benefits and also warns us about the side-effects.

If it’s up to us to decide what we want, and we don’t know enough to make a rational decision, then it’s no wonder that there’s fear in every option.

Including the taking or shunning of the Swine Flu vaccine.

The last story I heard on the TV news in America was that the U.S. government was going to give the vaccine to the “detainees” at Guantanamo Bay. I’m sure that if I were one of those Gitmo prisoners I’d choose shunning rather than taking.

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It amazes me how much of the services I use daily on the internet are connected to each other.

So if I write my blog in here, it will send a message to Twitter and Facebook. If I update my status on Twitter, it will also show in here.  If I put a new picture on Flickr, it will alert my Facebook friends and if I update my status on Facebook, it will also show on Windows Live.  If I write a new blog or upload photos on Windows Live, it will update Twitter, Facebook and all my friends on MSN Live Messenger.  And if I do anything at all on YouTube, like favour a video, subscribe to a channel or upload a video, it will send updates on Facebook and Twitter and wherever else I have no idea…

It all reminds me of the Dry Bones song, from the Munsters below.  It could easily say ”my…Twitter’s connected to my Facebook, my Facebook’s connected to my Flickr, my Flickr’s connected to my WP and that’s what connects us all….”

We are all connected.  Just in case I do something and you are not notified….

Stay connected… enjoy the video

This past Sunday was a packed day. Usually Sundays are kinda full around here, and yesterday was no exception. We had a baptism service at Crestmont in the morning.  Man, was it a celebration! We had 9 people, mostly new believers that got baptized.  There were many friends and family there for those new believers. It was awesome to look and see the diversity that was in that building yesterday.  God is working in the lives of people in Aliquippa, that is for sure.

After church, Gao Foua and I got some time to drive around and look at leaves.  The fall colors are at their peak right now, though not for long because the temps were in the 30s for much of last week.  It was awesome to see God’s creativity as we drove around. I thought to myself, how many of the kids that we work with have ever just driven around to look at the leaves in the fall. I would assume, not too many.

Last night we had our usual Sunday evening prayer gathering. There are many people who have relocated to Aliquippa, like we have, for the purpose of seeing God’s Kingdom come to this town. On Sunday nights we get together to pray for all sorts of things relating to this city and the people here. It has definitely become a highlight to our week. God just continues to show up and make his presence known to us. We know that He is active and is wanting to use us here. We feel as though we are on the cusp of something great, and that He is preparing us for the work that He wants to do here. We know that this prayer time is a primary work of utmost importance, because if any change comes about in this city, it will not be because of us, but because of God’s transforming power. We were drawn to the passage of the dry bones in Ezekiel. It is our prayer that God would make the dry bones of Aliquippa come to life once again, and we believe that He’s going to do it.

Read More Dry Bones by Yaakov Kirschen

Read More Dry Bones by Yaakov Kirschen

From the ZOA press release response to the shocking UN Report:

“The very title of the Report – ‘Human Rights in Palestine and Other Occupied Arab Territories: Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’ – contains a falsehood – namely, that Gaza is “occupied” by Israel when, under Article 6 of the Fourth Geneva Convention on the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, a foreign power is only considered an occupier “to the extent that such Power exercises the functions of government in such territory” – something Israel has not done since 2005.”

And also:

“the Report claims that “The data provided by non-governmental sources with regard to the percentage of civilians among those killed are generally consistent and raise very serious concerns with regard to the way Israel conducted the military operations in Gaza.’ Yet, as British journalist Melanie Philips points out, Israel provided a detailed breakdown of the Palestinians killed in Gaza and stated that the vast majority of these were Hamas or other terror operatives. Even the UN eventually acknowledged that some 75% of the dead in Gaza were Hamas terrorists.”

And:

“ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “The ZOA condemns this atrocious, new installment in the international effort to delegitimize Israel, using perverted and spurious norms of international law in order to invalidate Israel’s elementary, fundamental right and obligation to defend its territory and its citizens. It is nothing less than an anti-Semitic, Israel-bashing, immoral piece of trash. We are appalled that Justice Goldstone was willing to ruin his legal reputation by participating in this dishonestly-conceived and fraudulent investigation. Most serious, perhaps, is the fact that Richard Goldstone was willing to bend and pervert legal norms – such as the definition of occupation and of combatants – in order to pin non-existent legal responsibility on Israel for acts were both justified and indeed necessary in self-defense.”

To read the complete Press Release from ZOA (America’s oldest Zionist Organization) in response to this latest example of Jewish Defamation and UN anti-Israel bias, click on ZOA Press Release.

I’ve used these two angel characters for years and years. They, like me, have been watching the search for “Peace” for years and years.

This reminds me of the old joke about the drunk who dropped his house keys on his doorstep, but then looked for them under a nearby street light “because there was more light there.”

…we’re watching yet another President searching for Middle East peace through concessions from the tiny Jewish State (as easy as looking under a street light) instead of where it might actually be found …by getting the locals to accept the existence of the Jewish State (as difficult as searching in the dark).

Read More Dry Bones by Yaakov Kirschen