A Christian???

I am a follower of Christ.

I got into a discussion about Christianity today with a man who thinks he is agnostic. He asked me if I thought that, if Christ returned today, He'd be angry about what he saw taking place in the church? I replied that Christ would be upset.

In reality, God knows everything that is going on. I am sure He is already upset and disappointed in us.

When people we know do stupid things, we usually want to dissociate ourselves from them. But when our fellow Christians (past and present) have done stupid stuff, we can't exactly quit calling ourselves Christians, can we?

I have made my share of screwups. I've made mistakes that people would see as unChristian behavior for sure. I know I have upset and disappointed Christ many time. If anyone knew the deepest and darkest of my thoughts, they would certainly think I belong in a prison (or at best, a nuthouse). If I acted out on these thoughts, I would be guilty of crimes with the harshest punishments as consequences. I would deserve to die. I do deserve to die.

That is what makes me a Christian. I know I deserve to die. I know it should have been me up on that cross. I know that the Son of God did nothing to deserve the death penalty, but he recieved that capital punishment so that we could be pardoned and so that our sins could be forgiven (not just the sins I have already committed, but all the sins I will ever commit in my time on earth). It is my desire to follow Christs example, not in the way He died (I don't think anyone wants to dies on a cross) but in the way He lived while on earth.

Follow up posts on this topic to come...
-RM2

Symphony, 1000mi, the week to come

Today is Tuesday. It is my day off.
I had Sunday off because I played with the Symphony and my parents and some other relatives came to town for it.
Last week was a long week. On friday, we put over 1,000 miles on 99-15, one of our ambulances. It was a 20-hour day. We went from North Platte- McCook- Lincoln- North Platte- Ogallala- Aurora, CO- North Platte. For those of you savvy in Nebraska and Colorado geography, you know that we travelled across a broad area that day.
The rest of this week will probably be spent in the ambulance or in the office.
We have boxes and boxes of company records to digitize still. I would much rather spend a long day in the ambulance than even a short amount of time scanning old documents.

Raise

Raise is a funny looking word.
I got a raise today in a matter of speaking ( or blogging, I guess).
I was called into the office at work. My boss asked me how much I made an hour. Then he informed me that since I became a full-time employee, I was suppoesed to have been making a dollar more per hour. So the company will be cutting me a check for the back-pay and I will be getting a dollar per hour raise. Also my review is coming up later in the month at which time I am expecting another raise. So praise God for that news.

A test attested about abit

Last night I took a very difficult test with four of my classmates in our EMT-Intermediate class. It covered OB-GYN, Pediatric, and Geriatric Emergencies. We went into it knowing that it would be difficult. Some of us had studied, some of us hadn't. I had. Some of us did the worksheets, so of us didn't. I did.
I am making an effort to pass the class and do well in it. I plan on taking another year of training and becoming a Paramedic. I know that it means knowing the stuff. I'll be honest, I don't have a lot of time to study and do classwork, but I know that it is important so I make time to do it.
Others in the class have me frustrated, though. They don't take it as seriously. They are more concerned about their social lives, or lacks thereof, and they talk through class all about it. They don't retain the information from lectures. They don't do the worksheets on time.
All this to say that I think I am the only one who passed the test last night. I still missed more of the question than I would have liked. But after all the others had left, I sat down with the instructor and went over what I had missed. We even found some mistakes on the answer key. So I did better than thought originally. It pays to take time and take things a little seriously.
I don't know what will happen to the other students in the class. Failing the big tests is a bad thing. I have done fairly well on all of them so far, but I cannot say that for everyone.