Elephant Parade

I went to the zoo on monday with my family and some friends that were in town. What a great place! I haven't seen so many different types of antelope, cattle and pigs before in my life. When we arrived at the zoo, all 7 of us (me, paige, cali and our friends who have an 18 month old) we piled in to the double decker bus and proceeded on our tour of the zoo. First, we went by the flamingos. Very nice, although why are there so many other birds in there with the flamingos? And is that "cage" really clean? Then we moved on to some other things, stuff you couldn't really make out b/c they were hiding, I guess. Then we moved on to the cattle and antelopes. Unfortunately, they all looked the same. It seemed that we just kept circling the those cages, they all had a dry landscape with fake trees and man-made contraptions that resembled nothing I have ever seen on the Discovery Channel. And they also had a bit of water. Then we moved on to the Polar Bear, he seemed to be enjoying himself. Just sitting there, pondering why we had paid all this money to see him sit around. Then again, probably not. Animals don't have reasoning capabilities. Then we moved on to the elephants! My what a treat. They had a large area, obviously, and it had the most improbable of all african flora in it - the carwash bristle plant-thingy that was hanging from a series of man-made trees with no branches. That was amazing to see it in its unnatural habitat (out of the carwash). I had never seen a dry one before, it's breathtaking. Each one of it's bristles was lined with dirt scraped off the elephant's skin. It's normally bright red bristles now but a mere shade of its former beauty. Alas, if only you had been with us to have seen it in the flesh, you would've been as equally amazed as we. Oh yea and the elephants were cool too...

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Turn the tides.

We know that the enemy is always trying to come in like a flood. He wants to overwhelm us and drown out our voice, our witness and our victory in Christ. We cannot allow this to happen. I was just reading that California, just yesterday, approved of a bill to allow same-sex marriage rights. This is wrong. But what can we do about it. We can stand up for the Bible and tell people that Jesus Christ is the only way to fulfillment and to Heaven. We cannot "tolerate" sin. God doesn't and as Christians we shouldn't either. That means sin of any kind, whether it be homosexuality or lying or even being disobedient to our parents. Sin is sin. And God hates sin. In 2 cor. 6:17, Paul quotes a verse out of Isaiah saying "come out from among them and be SEPARATE, says the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean and I will receive you".

If we are going to be great, we must come out from among the World and show them the way to live. We must separate ourselves through sanctified living and be perfected in holiness in the fear of God. Being great is a matter of each of us stepping out of our comfort zones, to reach the lost at any cost. We MUST reach our generation and not let them be swallowed in the tide of wickedness. Rather than standing by and watching them helplessly struggle through the flood of unrighteousness, let us be like the men and women who are selflessly giving of themselves in the aftermath of the hurricane Katrina.

We, as Christians, need to have this same mentality and urgency in everything we do. We must shine brighter, we must pray more, we must read the Bible more, we must be GREAT! Behold, now is the time and today is the day of salvation. Let us go on to perfection...

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