What a Sad Night in Bethlehem

I just saw The Nativity Story with my family. Now, before I say anything, I do realize that sometimes things get sacrificed for the sake of story; things like accuracy get set aside in the name of creativity and expectations. I thought the story was great. It explored the relationships between Joseph and Mary and their smalltown home; the relationship between Mary and Elizabeth. I thought the Magi sub-plot was good as well, except for the part where they arrive at the stable. I read an interview with the screenplay writer (who is quite aware of the potential backlash from that) who mentioned that the public expectation would be to have a scene like the pop-up nativity scenes on our coffee tables this time of year.

No, my beef is not with those things (although it could be). My beef is this: in a culture rife with celebrations, there was only one smile in the whole movie. One. Everyone is so sad. There is no joy in this event at all, not even when the angel announces the birth to the shepherds. Now I realize that those were hard times, but even in Fiddler on the Roof there are celebrations and moments of joy in the midst of the struggles. This, though, was a sad, lonely, heavy movie that left me feeling like someone died.

If you plan to see the movie with your family, anyone under 10 will probably get bored after 15 minutes.

Moving On

I can't believe it's been so long since I've added anything here. What a bad blogger am I. Anyway, we've moved. An opportunity came up to to lead worship in a church in St. Albert so we packed up and left Three Hills and moved up to Oiler Country. And we had snow by Halloween and it won't be gone until April. And I have an hour commute to my day job at the south end of Edmonton where I get to talk on the phone to people all day long. And our van died. And Lorie started having seizures again after being 14 months seizure-free. And everything is not like I thought it would be.

Sometimes I want to pack it in and say "I must not have heard right." Sometimes I think I'm spreading myself too thin and am not able to devote myself to any one thing the way I would like to. Sometimes I'm frustrated by the feeling the place I want to be is such a long way away from where I am and wonder if I'll ever get there. Sometimes I feel like I'm fighting this battle all by myself. But then I realize that it those who are doing what God wants are the ones who find themselves under attack and I know that this is where I should be. So I'll stay here. My God is bigger than all this and I know we'll come through alright.

As Bob the Tomato put it:
"God is bigger than the boogyman
He's bigger than Godilla and the monsters on TV
God is bigger than the boogyman
And He's watching out fo you and me."

Telephone Surveys

The phone rings. I answer. On the other end is a well-meaning lady with a thick accent asking if I would like to participate in a survey. Since I have nothing better to do, I say "sure". She procedes to ask me a bunch of questions about international relief organizations. About half way through , after making numerous coin-toss choices about "Which organization do you think is better at this?" I begin to wonder if all scientific polls are done this way. If they are, then a lot of polls and statistics out there are based on what people don't know.

Example, lest's say I call up 1000 random people and ask them who they think will win the Stanley Cup this year. Let's say 30% of them don't even know what the Stanley Cup is but I procede to ask them questions like "Which team do you think is better, the Calgary Flames or the New Jersey Devils?" anyway. I'm going to get some pretty skewed results but I could publish those results and call it scientific.

A good friend of mine once said, "Statistics are like a woman's bikini; what they show is interesting but what they don't show is vital." I'll pick 5, "completely agree".

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