Last week, I received an email from Spotify saying that Ryan Adams new record “Ashes and Fire” was now available to stream.  It sat in my inbox waiting for the right time.  You can’t just put on a Ryan Adams album any time of day.  It has to be the right time.  For me, coffee must be present, and a general feeling of melancholy doesn’t hurt either.  Monday morning most weeks fits these two requirements, so today was the day.

I have loved Ryan Adams since the days of Demolition.  His songwriting captured me in a way that few songwriters have.  Simple, honest lyrics, with a bent towards self-pity.  I love it.

This album was a fixture in my musical diet in 2002.  Then, I went back and bought Gold, and have almost every one of his albums since then.  He is constantly writing.  And he never really repeats himself.  He is committed to this craft of making good music, and I love that about him.

So back to Spotify.  I made it through track 5, and went directly to iTunes and bought the whole album.  It’s good to support good music.

What’s your favorite album as of late?

So, about a month ago Vanessa and I found out that some friends of our were doing some crazy cleanse to kick off Marathon training season.  This cleanse was totally healthy, with no supplements or medication of any kind.  More of a body SHOCK, to get us off of our Carb/Sugar addiction.  I was sold immediately, as more and more frequently I have been feeling just kind of blah, after a carb heavy meal.  Yet we return time and again.  There is a reason it’s called “Comfort Food”.  Anyways, Vanessa felt the same, and both of us have seen this addiction in our children too.

So, we had a month and a half to prepare mentally, and yesterday was launch day.

The basic tenants are:

No processed food.

No alcohol. Period.

No legumes. (beans, things that grow in the ground)

No dairy.

No white potatoes.

No grains of any kind.

No added sugar.

Here is the website for this plan.  It’s for-real hardcore.  I am stoked about this “change your life” type of eating.  It’s time to get food to work for me, not against me.

Anyways, yesterday looked like this:

Breakfast was Sundried Tomatoes and Onion Egg Fritata, and strawberries.

Lunch was chicken salad (canned chicken, avocado, cherry tomatoes, bell pepper strips, garlic salt, and pepper) wrapped in lettuce leaves. Delicious!

Then, dinner was browned Pork Chops, steamed broccoli, mashed cauliflower (that we told the kids were potatoes).  So funny, the whole time Bailey was like “this tastes like squash”.  No response from Vanessa and I.

The tough thing, is that organic things are preferred.  Well, you and I both know that organic is code for crazy expensive.  In fact Vanessa bought organic Bell Peppers, 4 of them = $9.  Thus the end of our buying organic experiment!  But, they were some darn good looking peppers!

This is a guest post of a friend of mine named Ken Gross.  Ken has a heart for worship, and for responding to God’s call on his life.  In this post, Ken shares and interesting bit of logic tied to taking care of Orphans (i.e….James 1:27).

Thank you for sharing Ken!

Christian Orphan Policy

I was reading a book recently and I ran across a term called replacement birth rate.  This is the rate of live births a nation has to have to replace its population.  The number for the modern world is about 2.1, meaning that we need to have an average of 2.1 babies born per child bearing woman to keep a population where it currently is.  The US is about on target, but Europe runs at close to 1.5, meaning their population is doomed to decline unless they change it or have significant immigration from somewhere.

Obviously there are many implications to these kinds of demographics, and I started wondering how this applies to the Christian community.  What is our replacement rate, and even if we replace, are we “training up a child in the way he should go” (Pr 22:6), meaning will he or she end up as a Christ follower?  Even if we have the average replacement rate and all our children accept Christ, aren’t we just holding our own?  I know that this ignores any fruitful evangelism we might succeed in here in the US, but are we successful at that?  Based on the decline in church attendance here in the US, we are not succeeding at either moving our children toward Christ or helping our neighbors, “see the light”.

Now, let’s take a little leap here.  Consider this verse from James:

James 1:27 – Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.  NASU

It appears that God the Father is particularly sensitive about widows and orphans, which means we ought to be too!  I will leave the consideration of widows for another time, and focus on orphans; children without parents.

In looking at the need to improve our “Christian replacement rate”, there is one way the great commission (Mt 28:18-20), and the desire to obey God in taking care of orphans, can be tied together.  If Christian families adopted more orphans, there would be fewer left in the world, this would please God.  If we were somewhat successful at pointing these adopted children toward Christ, we would increase the size of the Christian community in the US.  This is a win-win situation in the context of scriptural obedience.

The only loser would be our pocketbooks, and this is where it gets interesting.  If Christian families that cannot or are not willing to adopt orphans would financially contribute, it would go a long way to helping the families that would be able to adopt.  If we adopted a simple personal “Christian Orphan Policy” at the family or individual level we could see some interesting results.

Each adopting family would have a policy of adoption and financially contributing whatever their resources would allow.  Each non-adopting unit (Family or individual) could have a policy of contributing a small sum of money over and above their monthly tithe, they would have to pray about this and eventually figure out what small sum was appropriate.  In this article I am going to use $10 per month.

Another consideration I would make is to restrict such giving to local situations, for example at individual churches or having a loose partnership of like minded churches within a community.  This would avoid the inevitable financial and operational drag that comes with excessive oversight and distant decision makers.  Mostly it would make the giving up close and personal.

Let’s take a medium size church of say 500 hundred giving units, it might be 400 families and 100 teens and singles, but it could be any combination.  500 giving units at $10 per month is $60,000 per year.  When we add in gifts and grants that are frequently available from other sources, we end up with a significant sum of money.  That would go a long way to helping the adopting families within that church.  This small gift system could facilitate adopting as many as 5 children a year from overseas or more than 10 a year locally.

A small sacrifice for each of us, but very effective in its outcome.  Just something to think about.