A three pronged blog attack!!

Well ladies and gentlemen, this week I bring not one, not two, but three topics of discussion in my blog. (gasps of horror from the audienece and someone screams, "Can he do that?") The answer of course is yes, I can, its my blog and I'll do whatever I please. MUHAHAHAHHAH

So to start off, I am now a part of some awesome teams. What kind of teams you ask? Sports teams? No, these teams are far too cool to be tied down by sports. They are teams of awesomeness and coolness and nonsuckyness!!!! GLORY BE TO THOSE THAT RULE...or something. Anyways I will begin with Team 7.

Team 7 members can be easily identified by the number 7. Speciffically when that number, in sticker form, is placed on their attire. What kind of attire you might ask, why work attire of course. Before I tell you anymore about Team 7, I will give you a brief history of Team 7 and its charter members.

One fine day at Starbucks at Ellsworth and Baseline, two young men were working the drive-thru. Their names were Josh and JJ. They are hilarious young men bent on brightening their customer's day through cheesy jokes and public humiliation of themselves. After one particularly funny line, JJ went and grabbed two stickers that had the number 7 on them. He slapped one on himself and the other on Josh and shouted, "GO TEAM 7!!" And thus Team 7 was born.

So the whole point of Team 7 is to be hilarious, which Josh and I do very well. We are beginning to form bylaws and rules of conduct, because people wanna join us, but we gotta have a standard. So far this is what we have come up with: 1. All Team 7 member must have a wackiness rating of at least 7(in keeping with the number deal). Wackiness rating is determined by Josh and JJ through undisclosed, yet scientific methods. 2. All Team 7 members must be willing to sacrifice their dignity and suffer from humiliation at the expense of a joke. 3. They must hold joking, kidding around, or goofing off in the highest of places. So far, that's it. But let me tell you, its an awesome team. I know you want to be a part of it, don't lie to yourself you know you do.

The other awesome team I am now a part of is Team Aardvark. Why would you name your team after an Aardvark? They aren't cool animals, or have special powers or anything. The reason is simple. Aardvark is the first word in the dictionary. Yeahp, its true. Team Aardvark is devoted to awesomeness of all types. Our charter is a secret and new members can only be admitted, well, never. There are four positions in Team Aardvark: Team Leader, Team Scapegoat, Team Comedian, and Team Conversationalist. The identities of these people will remain a secret to protect the innocent. Anyways, its an awesome team devoted to awesome things. So yeah...basically that's it.

The second prong in my three prong blog attack is...is.........well, now that I have talking about how awesome the first prong was, I can't remember the second prong. As a substitue prong, the second prong will be, that I am awesome and cool and not a nerd.(period)

Ok time for prong three, time to get serious,

So I have been really encouraged by a prostitue recently. Or atleast the story of a prostitute. You can find the story of this particular prostitute in Hosea. Her name is Gomer.

Hosea is an awesome book of the Bible and if you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend it. Some really cool application in that book. I want to focus on one thing that God really taught me about his faithfulness.

The story of Hosea and Gomer is as follows. Hosea, a prophet of God, recieves a message from God that he is to take the prostitue Gomer as his wife. Hosea does this and marries Gomer. This is actually kinda strange, why would God want to have his messenger Hosea marry a woman of ill repute, well let me finish. Hosea and Gomer are married for a while and Gomer, being a the whore that she is, does what she knows, and sleeps around. Hosea, on the other hand, remains faithful to Gomer even though she is not faithful. Gomer comes back to Hosea and he forgives her and welcomes her back into his house. Rinse and repeat a few times and you ahve the story. Basically, Gomer keeps being unfaithful to Hosea, but everytime Hosea not only remains faithful, but forgives and welcomes Gomer back into his house. And to add insult to injury, Hosea and Gomer have a son. So not only is Gomer cheating on her husband, but she had a kid with him and still cheats on him. Not exactly June Cleaver.

The whole point of this passage of scripture is to draw a parralell. In this story God is Hosea, the faithful and forgiving husband who welcomes his whore of a wife with open arms, every time she comes back. Gomer, the whore, is Israel, the children of the Lord most high, God's chosen people. The Israelites were "whoreing" themselves out to various things of this world. Be it money, or sex, or their job, or whatever. And everytime when the Israelites realized the error of their ways, they came running back to God and he recieved them with open arms, ready to forgive.

This is applicable today just as much as it was in Hosea's day. We, the children of the Most High, are like whores. We sell ourselves for temporary pleasures. We abandon our first love for a fling. God, when we come in repentance, forgets that our sin even happened. We are washed with the blood of Jesus Christ. We are made whole again.

I guess the most encouraging thing about the story of Hosea, is the picture that it paints of Israel, as a whore. I really don't think about my little "gods" as whoring myself out. But in reality, that's exactly what it is. We whore ourselves out to every little thing we can think of. Strong language, makes me want to take the battle for my time a little more seriously.

Words for the wise, read Hosea, and listen to the song by Third Day - Gomer's Theme. It was that song, which happens to be my favorite song of all time, that sparked my interest in the book of Hosea.

So until next time, The Aquabats used to be cool, but I still am. And that missing prong in my blog attack will turn up somewhere, maybe in a later blog.

TTFN and HAPPY EASTER(Not to be confused with Ishtar, the pagan ritual that involved lots of gross things)

-JJ