Yet another reason NOT to have an affair...

...or rather the same old reason - it always comes out at exactly the WRONG time. Like, for example, when the mine you're working in collapses, and both your wife and your mistress come out to hold vigil. And meet.

Britain's Sun newspaper reports the wife of Yonni Barrios, Marta Salinas, was stunned and upset to find his girlfriend Susana Valenzuela also conducting a vigil for him.

Salinas told the newspaper: "Barrios is my husband. He loves me and I am his devoted wife. This woman has no legitimacy."

But The Sun reported Valenzuela as saying the 50-year-old miner was going to leave his wife for her.

"We are in love. I'll wait for him," she told the paper.

So, perhaps there is one Chilean miner who is NOT sorry to hear they won't be able to get him out of there for a while.

Human Nature is perplexing, disgusting

Some days, I truly do not understand my fellow man. Consider this story. A woman - either crazy or criminal - drives up to a Burlington Coat Factory in a (fraudulently) rented limousine and announces she has won the lottery and will pay for the purchases of anyone in the store up to $500. People go wild, buying everything in sight. After several thousands of dollars worth of merchandise has been rung up, the people figure out the woman has been lying. She has no money. So what do they do?

By the time employees realized Brown didn't have any cash to pay, police said, she already had taken off in the limo.
That's when angry customers, realizing they weren't getting free coats, began throwing merchandise on the floor and grabbing clothes without paying for them, Nace said.
"Everybody was like, 'I still want my free stuff,' and that started the riot," he said. "It looks like (Hurricane) Katrina went through the store."
Police said they have no way of tracking down the customers who stole items and fled, but they're reviewing surveillance video.

So, person A wrong me, and I feel this gives me the right to take vengeance upon person B. Is it any mystery why this world is so messed up?!

This should also be a cautionary tale for legislators looking to reform Health Care. Remember, people may not thank you for your efforts. In fact, it is likely no matter what you do, they will feel cheated out of the "free stuff" they feel they were promised.

Church Threatens to Make Sins Public

A Floridian is claiming that the church that she used to attend is threatening to talk publicly in their church about her "sins" as she is currently in a sexual relationship with her boy friend. She was recently divorced and her husband and children still attend the church, but she now attends a different church. The Church doesn't want to comment on the issue, but recently sent her a letter laying out that they are moving to the final step in church discipline of bringing an unrepentant sinners sins in front of the congregation. They base this on their reading of Matthew chapter 18.

How should churches handle sex offenders?

Every good church preaches that God welcomes anyone and that we are all sinners and that only Christ can truly heal and regenerate a repentant sinner. All good churches want to be houses of worship for all people who are seeking Christ, and want to have their doors open as much as possible. But, what do you do, when opening your doors to everyone, means opening yourselves up to proven dangerous men, especially those convicted of molesting children? It is something that had not occurred to me before, and apparently I am not alone.

It's the same question facing a group of Protestants in Carlsbad, Calif., right now, members of the Pilgrim United Church of Christ who learned in late January that 53-year-old Mark Pliska, a convicted sex offender, wanted to worship with them. The normally progressive, welcoming congregation balked at the notion, and the resulting firestorm forced pastor Madison Shockley to tearfully ask Pliska not to come to services until the church could sort things out. (Shockley says he will announce the church's decision in mid-May.) "Nothing in my almost 30 years of ministry has prepared me to turn somebody away," Shockley told the local paper. But Shockely's biggest surprise wasn't that a sex offender wanted to worship, but that so many members of his congregation had been sexually abused as children; he estimated one in four of female congregants and one in 10 men. Having an offender in the pews with them on Sunday - even one who had served his time, registered with the authorities and voluntarily identified himself to the pastor - was too big a hurdle for these former victims, Christians or not.

The simple answer is obvious: the church should let in even convicted murders and sex offenders, as God is the god of all people. But we are told to be "innocent as doves, but wily as snakes" in scripture, and thus need to find ways of allowing them in without exposing the church to danger. How do we do that? I am not sure. I am interested to hear the opinions of other Mod-Bloggers on this, especially those who have served as pastors.

A New Version of an Old Skit

There are many variations on the skit where the person is walking with God, sin comes in, and then God rescues them. Probably the oldest one that I've heard of was entitled "Bondages". When someone sent me a link to the following video, I thought two things.

1. Godtube.com... although I don't believe I've watched any videos there, I just figured that there really wasn't a reason for it since YouTube existed... would this be a cheesy Christian movie?

2. Great... it looks just like a variation of "Bondages", a skit that, while powerful, I had already seen and so I didn't think it would live up to the "pretty powerful video to watch" line that was part of the e-mail.

I was surprised. As the person who sent me the link said, "It takes a bit to build and tell the story." The part that hit me is how convincing the actress was in her struggle to get back. So many skits show the story as we walk away and then come back easily. When enslaved to sin, we have to constantly keep fighting against the sin and then, only by the power of Christ, are we free.




To see a larger version, click here.