For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind — 2 Timothy 1:7 (KJV)

Why do so many Christians live in fear? Or better yet, why do Christians concentrate so hard on the evil around us, to the exclusion of God? If all you can see is the Devil and his works, I suppose you might live in fear. But that’s utterly contrary to the way a Christian is meant to live! Instead of Satan behind every bush, we should be seeing God in all His creation, rejoicing in His creation and its beauty. But no, too many Christians have forgotten 1 John 4:4: Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world. Remember Jesus walking on the water? Peter stepped out of the boat at Jesus’ command, putting his fears and doubts aside. And as long as his focus was on Christ, there wasn’t a problem. However, as soon as his gaze wandered aside, he began to sink. He stopped focusing and Christ and began looking at the storm around him and that was his undoing. As Christians today, we have the same problem, the minute we stop focusing on Christ, we’re toast, that’s when the enemy can come in and do damage. Satan has no power over us, for “greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world”. God is for us, who can be against us? It’s time to stop living in fear and to start focusing on Christ. If He’s the center of your life, you have nothing to worry about. There’s one important thing to remember about this world, in the end, it’s all gonna burn. It’s time to distinguish the temporal from the eternal and start living for the eternal.

“But Jim”, I can hear some of you saying, “isn’t that an awfully simplistic way of looking at things?” Well, yes, it is. I don’t believe God intended for salvation to be intellectually challenging. He intended it to be simple enough that anybody could understand it and be saved. It’s mankind that has complicated the message of Christ, not God. Now, I’ll be first to admit that living as a Christian can sometimes be complicated, but most of those complications we bring on ourselves. The actual plan of salvation is astoundingly simple: believe in your heart that Jesus Christ was the only son of the Living God and was sacrificed on the cross for our sins and confess the same with your mouth. Everything else follows from that, if you believe, you’ll want to do those things that please God. And if you’re doing the things that please God, frankly, you’ll be too busy to do the things that don’t please Him and certainly too busy to worry about the Devil!

My wife and I just returned from a weekend celebrating our first anniversary and I thought I’d mention the restaurant we had our anniversary dinner at. It’s called “Garlocks” and is on Transit Road near Main Street in Lockport, NY. The service and atmosphere were both pleasant, but that’s not the real reason I’m writing this. I do believe that they have the best steak I’ve ever eaten. I had a 16 oz NY strip, about 1.5 to 2 inches thick, cooked medium, that you could cut with a fork. It was absolutely delicious and practically melted in your mouth. It was accompanied by a twice baked potato, also very tasty. Not being a drinker, I can’t say anything for the wine list, but Kara’s prime rib (a 14 oz “Queen” cut, the normal cut is 28 oz!) was also delicious. Prices weren’t unreasonable, in the $20-$30 range for steaks and prime rib and the desserts were also good. All in all, highly recommended. Oh, and we can also recommend the “Lockport Inn” on Transit as a very nice place to stay.

It was about one year ago today that Kara and I decided to move our wedding up by two months, from September 4th to July 21st. The stress of the planning and potentially putting up all the wedding guests was getting to both us and Kara’s mom, whose health wasn’t good in the first place, so we decided to just go ahead and get married. The next Thursday looked like it would work for both of us, so we announced it in church on Sunday morning and told everybody that there might be a small reception if we had time to pull it together. Well, the ladies of the church would have none of that, they told us not to worry about the reception and that they would take care of it. After church, however, it ocurred to me that we might have a problem. I realized that all my divorce decree was still in Boston and I didn’t know if Kara knew where hers was. And we needed them both to get our marriage license. More importantly, we needed them both by Wednesday afternoon, as New York has a twenty four hour “cooling off” period after you get your license before you can actually get married. So I checked with Kara and she kind of gasped and said that her paperwork was in a storage shed in Nebraska and there was no way to get it from there before Wednesday. That was a bit of a problem. So I hopped online (Google is your friend) and discovered that all the Iowa (where her divorce was filed) court records were online, however, for documents as old as hers, only the abstracts were available over the net. I grabbed the case numbers and filing numbers, along with the phone number of the court clerk and as soon as the clerk’s office opened Monday, gave them a call. Because I was had the information on the case, they were able to look it up, but were unable to send me a certified copy of the decree without a written request. Thank goodness for Fedex! I wrote up the request and overnighted it to them along with a self addressed envelope and airbill and asked them to send it back as soon as possible on Tuesday. Pretty much immediately after dropping that off at Fedex, I hit the road back to Boston to get my paperwork and any thing else I was going to need for the wedding.
Tuesday morning I called the clerk’s office back and verified that they had received my package and that they would be able to get it sent out that day. They said it shouldn’t be a problem, so I spent the day getting my paperwork together and doing actual work for my job. About 4pm Iowa time, I called again and was told, to my horror, that while they had been able to pull the file, they hadn’t been able to get it shipped out! At this point I was a bit desperate, so I ask the clerk if she’d be able to drop the package in a Fedex box on her way home. She was agreeable to that, so I got onto the Fedex web site and found a drop box in her zip code, it just happened to be a the grocery store she was already planning to stop at on the way home! So I had my paperwork in hand, and Kara’s on the way, it was time to hit the road back to Cazenovia. When I arrived back in Caz, I checked the Fedex site again to make sure the package was on its way and was horrified to find out that, while yes, it was on its way and would arrive on Wednesday, it wouldn’t do so until after 4:30 pm, well after the town offices (where we needed to get the license) closed! This, despite having paid for delivery by 10:30 am. I called Fedex and got them to hold the package at the Syracuse office when it arrived there (early in the morning), rather than putting it on a truck for delivery to Caz, so the problem was solved.
Wednesday, both Kara and I had to work, but I ran into Syracuse to get her divorce paperwork from Fedex and all was fine until about 3:30pm, which is when Kara should have been getting off work. I was supposed to meet her at the Caz town offices at 4:00 to get the marriage license (remember, we have to have the license before 7:00pm on Wednesday or we can’t get married Thursday). 4:00 rolls by, then 4:15, then 4:30 and no Kara and the town office is closing! I finally get a hold of her and find she was stuck in a case (she’s a surgical technician) and got out late. While waiting for here, I checked around the other town offices and discovered that the Manlius town office was open until 5:30pm, so I told her to meet me there, rather than in Caz. She agreed and I hit the road, planning to meet her at the Dunkin’ Donuts in Manlius. I get there and she’s there, but she’s discovered that the Manlius town office isn’t in the Village of Manlius, it’s actually in Fayetteville, about 5 miles to the east. So we jumped in the car and found the offices at about 5:20 pm and got inside just as they were closing up. Thankfully, the ladies in the office were nice enough to stay late for us and issue us a license, so we could get legally married Thursday.
Thursday, the actual day of the wedding, was just a blur. Kara again had to work and wasn’t supposed to get off until after 3:00 pm, so I go the job of driving all over creation to pick things up, the tuxedoes, the rings, her wedding dress (another miracle, the seamstress was able to get it finished in time) and get back to Caz in time for the wedding. Kara’s job smiled on her and let her leave early (although there was a possibility that she would have to work Friday! Fortunately, that didn’t happen). We got the church decorated and the wedding went off without any other problems.