The Living Water

"Stand in shock, heavens, at what you see! Throw up your hands in disbelief—this can't be!" God's Decree."My people have committed a compound sin: they've walked out on me, the fountain Of fresh flowing waters, and then dug cisterns— cisterns that leak, cisterns that are no better than sieves. "



I heard this scripture at Revive on Friday night at Common Ground. It made me think about how we may turn our back on God to find the easy way, even though his way is better. It reminded of the Tanda Village where we drilled water wells and gave them a modern pump. These wells gave fresh refreshing water to the village. You could use the pump and fill your container. The wells were located in well thought out locations. One in the village square the other in an area near the clinic. The hand dug wells were still available, they even produced good water during certain times of the year. They were convenient as well since they were not far from the homes. The problem was they got contaminated and people would get sick, babies would die from the nasty water. It was amazing to think that with the clean fresh water available not more than 100 yards from most homes they would gamble with the easier water. It made me think we do the same. There are things we fall back on, out of habit or maybe out of convenience. Our cisterns contain water but it is stagnant and nasty. It will fill your stomach but not sustain us. It does not always make you sick but there is that chance. Jesus says he is the Living Water and he will quench our thirst.

New Well with clean water.

Old Well

Payback is a....

OK, someone up above has a sense of humor. I am always complaining about people who do not use their turn signals. It is one of my pet peeves. Well, today I think all the time spent behind someone not using a turn signal has evened out. I tried to drive to the other side of INDY today and I got behind three (3) different people who left their turn signals on. I mean, block after block of not knowing when this person was going to turn. FINALLY I got past him, and my blood pressure starts to decline when someone turns onto MY road and the signal does not go off. I am talking about 5 minutes after I got around the first one. Not again. So I follow this old lady about 3 miles when she finally does turn the way she had been signaling. And finally on my way back home a dump truck gets in front of me with his signal flashing. That does not happen for very long, because I can not stand a dump truck being in front of me so I just pass him through a double yellow line, I do not want and can not afford a broken window from following behind a dump truck.

TUESDAY

This morning before going, just after the kids left for school, I walked through the house and turned off 14 of the 17 lights you could have on in our house. I do not know how they all got turned on. This morning when I woke up, no lights were on. I think Noah or Josiah just goes around and turns lights on just to see how I react. You see, before I was laid off I would just turn them off and not say anything, but now, since the money is TIGHT, I have to mention to everyone that I am turning off a light. I know a lot of them are mine. Like right now, I am typing this in the living room with a light on. My house is so bright that I can not even tell the light is on. (just jumped up and turned it off). What else.....Oh yea, Josiah does not know how to shut a door. He is 12! Refrigerator, Garage door, front door, it does not matter. If he gets the milk out for cereal he leaves the door open the whole time he is making his breakfast, unless Susie or I mention it to him.

we have started recycling plastics. I decided to start slow and just do plastics. Well, it is amazing how much plastic we go through in a week. Then I go to throw it out at the recycling dumpster and it is so full that I can not get another thing in. I am tempted to just toss the junk, but I drive to another recycling dumpster and toss it in. OK, I saved the EARTH but I drove 10 extra miles to do so. Is it a push? Does the junk I put in the air by driving extra = the amount of landfill space? who cares? At least I got those lights turned off!

The Job Search

This is not fun!! Just thought I would let you all (2 of you) know that from the start. I have no degree, not yet at least, so I can not even get in the door to interview. I have no experience in supervising people, so I can not get in the door to interview. It does not matter that I get my degree in april and I have a 3.92 gpa. It does not matter that I have not learned anything new in my college studies since I have been living this stuff for the past 20+ years. I applied for a manufacturing supervisors postition. I could not even get an interview because I had not supervised people before. I guess my time as a sergeant in the Army taking care of troops does not count as supervision even though I had these kids for 24 hours a day and we were training for war not producing a product. I guess that was awhile ago but they did not even take into consideration that I have worked in high speed manufacturing for the past 19 years. I was a team leader the last year and I carried my supervisor for the past 3 years. I was in charge of quality and NCM in my department. All of this can not get you in the door, but the same guys who cannot make it at one place can go to another and get a job just because they have "experience". People may say that UNIONS have ruined American manufacturing, I say that is a factor but not the factor. HR people who have abandoned common sense for "paperwork" are as much to blame. When I got to Navistar the best supervisors I had were from the floor. The ones that drifted from place to place on "experience" were usually terrible.



OK my rant is done.......have a great day!