Poor Harry…… part deux.

Poor Harry…… part deux.  Alas, it wasn’t enough to have to write about Harry last week after it was reported that he was cavorting with members of the opposite sex by the pool. Then he goes and loses all of his clothes in  a strip billiard game and his friends post the pictures they took.  Harry, what are we going to do with you?  Of course, some of the news reports on that same day were “Celine Dion poses topless”, “Kidman shows backside in pic” and “Lady Gaga bares breasts in video clip” and nobody really seemed to care about that, but maybe that’s what is expected.  Well maybe not from Celine but from the rest of them. 

It appears the Royal Family is not amused. But Harry is not the first Royal to act badly, Mummy and Daddy weren’t saints, nor will he be the last. 

If you follow the stories there are all kinds of opinions about what the Prince needs to do. Some people think he needs to grow up, others suggest that he needs to act more responsible and remember who he is, while others think he’s doing a fine job. 

But what Harry needs more than anything is Jesus, then maybe billiard lessons and better friends.  Have a great week and remember: To see what is really possible, you will have to attempt the impossible.

Remember who you are

Poor Harry.  The headline said it all “British royal Prince Harry has put his grandfather's ill health to one side to go on a wild holiday.”  But did it really say it all?  Granted Harry’s grandfather, Prince Phillip, was in the hospital and Harry was in Las Vegas, but so what?  Phillip wasn’t dying, he was being treated for a bladder infection.  And Harry was on leave before returning to his military duties in Afghanistan.  The article went on to accuse the young Prince of being seen in a pair of Bermuda shorts, shades and a hat…. gasp!  And was also seen, and I quote,  “laughing and playing with a beach ball, before chatting to a bevy of beautiful, bikini-clad girls.”  Sounds like normal behaviour for a healthy 28-year-old heterosexual male. 

The problem is this, the world and the media expect more from the man who is third in line for the throne, fairly or not.  That’s the price of being royalty. 

In the same way the world and the media will always hold Christ followers to a higher standard than others.  And that’s ok, because God does as well.  A perk of following Jesus is that you are a child of the King, the price is that you are expected to act like it.  

 Have a great week and remember: To see what is really possible, you will have to attempt the impossible.

Cheaters never win. . . well maybe sometimes

He cheated! So What?  At least that seems to be the consensus.   During the Olympics, South African swimmer Cameron van der Burgh, broke the world record on his way to winning Gold in the 100M breaststroke last week.  However, video footage shows that van der Burgh took three “dolphin kicks” at the beginning of the race instead of the permitted one “dolphin kick”.  The swimmer didn’t deny what he did, instead, he justified and rationalized it.  In one interview the South African is quoted as saying: “If you're not doing it, you're falling behind. It's not obviously — shall we say — the moral thing to do, but I'm not willing to sacrifice my personal performance and four years of hard work for someone that is willing to do it and get away with it,”  
If it’s not the “shall we say ---moral thing to do” then it must be the “shall we say---immoral thing to do.” 
The hope of the world is that more people will chose to do what is right than what is easy. And so, our responsibility as Christ Followers will always be to live to a higher standard as an example of what can be instead of what is. Have a great week and remember: To see what is really possible, you will have to attempt the impossible.

De-evolving

Sometimes I suspect that if Darwin was alive today he would amend his theory to state that human beings are actually de-evolving. I read an article a while ago about the pitcher on a high school baseball team who was hit in the head by a line drive. Which actually might explain the rest of the story, Daniel Hannant has filed a lawsuit against the makers of Louisville Sluggers, claiming that the company's aluminium bats are "unreasonably dangerous" to pitchers because they are designed to hit baseballs very, very hard. Hello, earth to Daniel. Give your head a shake and see what that ball rattled loose. The point of baseball is to hit the baseball very, very hard. While baseball shouldn’t be as dangerous as, say bungee jumping, there are some dangers involved, like getting hit in the head with the ball.

 We want to live a life that is consequence free, but that is impossible. Everything we do has consequences, a consequence of being human is that we sin, and a consequence of sin is hell. However the great news is that God was willing to take the consequences of our actions on Himself and forgive our sins; however it only works if you ask Him.

  Have a great week and remember: To see what is really possible, you will have to attempt the impossible.

Vindicated

The dingo did eat the baby!  Have you ever been vindicated?  You know, after someone lied about you &  in the end, it came out that you had been right all along.

A month ago, an Australian Coroner ruled that at least one dingo was responsible for the death of baby Azaria Chamberlain in 1980.  If you aren’t familiar with the story, it happened during a camping trip in the Australian outback when 9 week old Azaria went missing from her parent’s tent.  The parent’s claim that a dingo had taken Azaria was accepted at the first inquest but rejected by the prosecution and police.  Subsequently Azaria’s mother Lindy, was convicted of the murder and sentenced to life in prison.  Only after a piece of Azria’s clothing was found in a dingo lair in 1985 was Lindy released from prison.  However, it took another 27 years for the official ruling to be made that is was indeed the work of one or more dingoes.

In Jesus case, His vindication happened much quicker &  for Him it only took three days, from the time He died on the cross until He rose from the dead, to prove that he was indeed the Son of God.  Have a great week and remember: To see what is really possible, you will have to attempt the impossible.

It's All In A Name

Last week a gentlemen asked me if I knew Denny Guptill. Well before I was Denn Guptill, I was Denny Guptill but I wasn’t the Denny Guptill he was asking about.  Instead he was talking about D.P.(Denny) Guptill, who was the chief of Police in Saint John, New Brunswick during the prohibition years.  When I acknowledged that Denny Guptill was my father’s uncle, the man simply said “He was a good man.”  Later I asked him how he knew my uncle and he replied “I didn’t really know him, I was a citizen when he was the chief, he was a good man.”

A “Good Man”, that’s quite the testimony considering that D.P. Guptill has not been chief of Police in Saint John for over 70 years and has been dead for over fifty years.  Denny Guptill’s legacy was that he was an honest cop in an era when that was an anomaly and that he left Saint John a better place then he found it, and a generation later people still talk about it.   I wonder how people will talk about this Denny Guptill in 70 years?  How people remember me tomorrow will be determined by the choices I make and the things I do today.  Have a great week and remember: To see what is really possible, you will have to attempt the impossible.

It's all about "U"

It is just a “U”, but it is the difference between something being right and something being wrong. Perhaps you know what I’m talking about; It’s the “U” that our neighbours to the south neglect to include in words like harbour, colour and saviour. Which is fine if you live south of the 49th, but on this side of the border it means you have spelled the word wrong.

People object and maintain that, because it’s the proper spelling in the States, it should be okay in Canada. And because polygamy is acceptable in Saudi Arabia, should it also be okay in Canada?

That is just Denn venting, and in the big scheme of things the fact that people are too lazy to spell a word correctly probably won’t matter much, it just makes me cranky. However, when Christians begin to justify sinful behaviour simply because society accepts it, that will have eternal consequences. 

It doesn’t matter if television says it’s fine, and it doesn’t matter if everyone at work and school are doing it; if the Bible says the behaviour is wrong, the behaviour is wrong. The fact that others call it right doesn’t make it any less wrong.

Have a great week and remember: To see what is really possible, you will have to attempt the impossible.