It is sad but true.  There are places like China where Christians have to register with the government to legally gather for the purpose of studying the Bible.  And if they don’t they can be cited by the officials.  Thankfully we don’t live in such a country.  Or do we?  According to this article this is happening in San Diego, CA.

The article explains that when an attendee accidentally hit the car of a neighbor’s guest, the guest informed the county.  An official came out to the home of San Diego Pastor David Jones and informed him that he did not have a permit to hold a home Bible study and if he did not cease and desist he could be fined $1K.

There is one problem with the county’s order.  It’s called the First Amendment which reads as follows:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

We are plunging head long into something we all were fighting against in the mid to late 20th century – an Atheistic Socialist Government.  Its just now we have to fight it in our own country instead of the Soviet Union and China.

I just installed the beta of Laridian’s  PocketBible for the iPod Touch or iPhone.  It is amazing how mature a 1.0 beta program can be when the developers are talented and careful.  This thing is going to be a great program and is already the best Bible app on the platform.  There is a little work to do and like most betas.  But it will be great.  For now, follow the link above for how you can use their web interface while you wait.  The picture is from the Laridian Blog.

If you have a Windows Mobile or Palm device, they have a great program available for those platforms as well.  The cool thing is that you buy a book for one platform and you can download the same book for all the other platforms as well.  I love this.  Also, you can sync your notes, bookmarks, etc. between the device and the Windows version of Pocket Bible.

Marthas Park-4, originally uploaded by kerussojc.

This is our little “cousin” Kaleb on the swings at Martha’s Park. You can see Michael’s hand and foot in the side. I thought about coning them out to remove the distraction. But chose not too. I like it.

The song is called “God of This City!”  Found it thanks to a college friend posting it on Facebook!

Liberals hate it when people burn books, unless it is the Bible.  Michael Medved shares this astonishing and troubling blog post about how the military destroyed some Bibles in Afghanistan recently.  How amazing that the Bible, which is only the foundation for most of our legal code in this country is not acceptable to the US military when Al Jezeera complains.  Yet if I complain, someone who is a citizen of this country and has the best interests of the US at heart instead of trying to destroy it, would go unnoticed or unheeded.  We are sliding into the abyss and the path is adorned with pretty flowers for us to look at on the way down.  I can see the scene now as we all plunge to our moral and society destruction, we just smile and smell the pretty flowers provided us by our wonderful government daddies and mommies.

Engrish.com is hilarious.  Look at this mistranslated menu.  What do you like with your God?

There is a blog entry by preacher Chuck Warnock that gets me pondering the effectiveness of my church.  Take a loot at it and tell me what you think?  Would God close your church based on Chuck’s notions?

We are not a business based on the bottom line, as Warnock states.  But that doesn’t mean God  is not in the evaluation business.  If a person is called to pray, “Search me O God!” then isn’t a church, a family, or even a business owned by a believers supposed to pray the same prayer?

Just read this on one of my favorite blogs.  He says three things can kill any preacher, not literally but spiritually.

What are they?  Go read the post!

Here are two more sermons.  I will get  these up to date soon.

This first one is from Palm Sunday and deals with the difference between the way people treated Jesus on Sunday and Friday.

This the Easter sermon taking us through the story of Redemption from the Garden of Eden, to the Garden of Gethsemane, to the Garden Tomb.

On April 27th the White House got the above shot while scaring the wits out of NYC residents.  Was this shot worth $328,835 and the job of Louis Caldera, the WH director of the Military Office who quit over the snafu?  A little amazing when you figure most 10th graders with Google Image Search and Photoshop could have done it for free.

UPDATE: And here’s a photography expert who gives reasons why it is not even a good snap shot, let alone a professionally produced photo.