Damage Control

::One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest::

May 21, 2011

Well, Duh.  We're still here and Harold Camping is obviously as much of a lunatic as we knew he was.  The problem with this?  He called himself a Christian.  That's embarrassing.  So, let's just break this down.  I like simplicity.

What does the Bible say?

  

NO ONE KNOWS WHEN!  

Mark 13:32-33, 35-37  "But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Be on guard, keep awake.  For you do not know when the time will come. / Therefore stay awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or in the morning— lest he come suddenly and find you asleep. And what I say to you I say to all: Stay awake."

There will be False Prophets.  There are many places in Scripture that talk about false prophets.  Warnings.

Matthew 24:11 And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray.

II Peter 2:1  But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction.

What about Harold Camping?  If you refer to Scripture, you will quickly find that our buddy HC is making stuff up!  The Bible clearly states that we will NOT know.  It doesn't say that someday, someone will be smart enough to figure it out.

What about his followers?  Sadly, they were lured by a cult.  There's nothing new under the sun.  There's really no excuse either, because in the last 60 years we've dealt with David Koresh, Jim Jones and the Koolaid, HaleBop, Harold Camping v.1 (once wasn't enough?), and even Charles Manson.  

If they had done their homework and read their Bibles, they would have found out about these similar scenarios, instead of just listening to their leader.  Unfortunately, the fault lies with them.

What about Christians?  We were never threatened by this, because we could see through his lies.  If he did manage to coerce any Christians, we might speculate that they never had a real understanding of Jesus Christ and His saving work on the cross.  The Holy Spirit gives us discernment and we have the Word to show us the truth.

What about Non-believers?  Things like this cause much mockery of all Christians (because HC called himself one and ran a "Christian" radio station).  If they don't know the Bible, they can't separate truth from lies, so it all sounds like a big crock.  If you read through some of the commentary after the articles about HC online, mockery runs rampant.  Along with the mockery comes more disbelief and pushes them farther from the truth.  God can use anything, though.  Maybe some will choose to check into it a little more?

Ultimately, though, God is the creator, He created us to glorify Him and enjoy Him forever.  He gave us His own Son, who died on a cross, and rose 3 days later.  He IS coming again, at an unknown time, for a final judgement.

Romans 14:11-12 

As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.  So then each of us will give an account of himself to God.

Black Pawn

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Pink Trees: The Finale

We got the house.  They even agreed to pay sellers fees or something like that.  We moved forward with the process and the next few weeks were a whirlwind.  We had the inspection on the new house, and the inspector couldn't find anything wrong with it.  He said, "It's in creepy good condition."  Apparently the previous owner was very... uptight?  Even the garage was finished.


One of the things that Cydny always made note of on the houses we looked at was LP siding.  This house has LP siding, as does the whole neighborhood, but she determined that it has been properly sealed and looks good.  The inspector agreed on that.  As we stopped back at the house FOR the inspection, she touches the house and says, "Now we remember this has the LP siding."  I gave Mike a glance because it was kinda funny how that was such a trigger point to her.


Then we got a call from the Mortgage Broker, "Good News!  Your loan is approved!"  WTH?  You're telling me NOW that our loan is approved?  I thought it was approved LONG AGO.  Apparently, pre-approval isn't the final word.  Mini panic with relief to follow quickly.  About the MB, on principle, we planned to switch brokers after the mistake she made.  Very soon after her mistake, she offered to cut all her fees and commissions.  This was about a $7000 credit, if I recall properly.  Regardless, every bit helped and we appreciated her willingness to do this.  She felt awful.  We stayed with her and had an opportunity to make a point of forgiveness instead of retribution.


Now we were just waiting to make the move.  The sell/buy had to be back to back because the buy had to be funded by the sell.  We gathered up a group of guys from church to help move out.  Many thanks to them and to Paula for cleaning!  I think this was Tuesday.  We had a hotel room reserved for the night, and the truck was cleared through Thursday.

Smoochie in the car - didn't want to be left behind :)

Here's the cat in the hotel room, guarding all our earthly possessions in the truck outside. The dogs went to the farm.

Now we started getting calls from Cydny about a delay in the buyers' closing!  Something was going wrong.  Soooo stressful.  Sitting in a hotel room, totally displaced, and now we find out that the whole thing could fail?  We kept the kids going to school, and hoped and prayed that everything would go through.  We waited Wednesday (thought we'd be moving IN that day).  Then Thursday.  Making regular calls and texts to Cydny and Curtis from the Escrow company.  Extended the hotel room, called Uhaul to extend to Friday.  I was mentally going through what we would do if it failed.  I figured, we'd have to move back into our old house.  We had moved past that though, it would be really hard to go back.

Finally, everything came through.  We checked out of the hotel around 1pm on Friday, went to Escrow to sign papers, called the troops and met up at the house to UNLOAD!  :)

Optimus and Diesel enjoying their new yard.

During the next few weeks, we unpacked and settled in.  Thanks to Celeste for unpacking most of my kitchen.  It was feelings of overwhelm and relief all at once.  It was over and we had landed in a great house.  The neighbors are nice, the dogs have just enough room, the yard is easy to upkeep, the neighborhood is clean and well kept.


Probably one of the best things is that there are so many kids around here.  I mean, that is good and bad all together, but my kids are learning how to deal with kids who are from other backgrounds.  Especially for Julia, there is one girl on the street and they have become best buddies.  They even look alike :)  The kids have been able to have more freedom to just 'go outside and play'.  I'm getting used to having kids in and out of the house all the time.


It's just so obvious, hindsight being 20/20, that the whole thing was providential.  We need some stress in our lives from time to time so that God can remind us who is in control.  Even though it looked like our world was going to cave in for awhile, He knew the plan.  Although, mentally it's easy to say, "God has gone out ahead of us and knows the end of the story.", it's hard to put that into practice in the middle of a situation.  End result is that He gave us a nice house in a good 'hood, that is still affordable, with a better loan product, good neighbors, new friends, easy yard, closer to lots of school friends, a babysitter from church 2 minutes away, dog sitter in the house behind us, and on and on.  We are very grateful.


Now to do the floors... :)


Thanks for listening.

Black Pawn

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