America vs. Czech

I've been in the States for one week.

Here are the most significant things I've noticed/discovered being back:

_right turns on red are great...if you don't do it people will honk
_laundry is much quicker with a dryer!
_sports are much more fun to watch on TV rather than tracking the scores on the internet
_do not, i repeat, do not remove anything from the scales when going through the self checkout at the grocery store
_do not, i repeat, do not use the self check out by yourself if you've never done it before...thanks Jenni and Christian!
_fruits and vegitables are huge, perfect, and shiny here...i never noticed the difference when i moved to czech...i think its because i never bought fruit and vegitables before i moved there
_i will come back to czech 10-15 pounds heavier
_bowling is much easier for me in America...good lanes and pins without strings led to two games over 200...in czech i never crack 100
_driving an automatic transmission is odd...what should I do with my left foot?

When I am in czech I eat two types of food...czech or italian. Here is what I've eaten since I've been here:

_Cajun
_Chinese
_Mexican
_American
_Seafood
_Pizza
_Italian
_Breakfast Restaurant...nothing like it in Cesky Tesin
_BBQ

I'm sure this is just the beginning of what I'll notice while I'm here...

yams

Immigration and Burritos

I love burritos. I miss not being able to eat them. Every once and a while someone finds a new Mexican restaurant here in the Czech. Everybody is excited, we go, it sucks. Really. I have yet to have good Mexican food here. It's sad.

But, I'm not writing about burritos. I was listening to a Rob Bell sermon a while back and he said something that really shed some great light on the whole immigration issue. As far as I know, the US news is onto some new big story and no one cares anymore, but I still felt compelled to share.

Rob (yeah, we're on a first name basis) was talking about how we are completely unworthy of anything that we have and how only the Lion of Judah is worthy (Rev 5). He shared about how in our human nature we naturally feel like life should be fair and that we feel like we are owed something. He then started talking about how God called the nation of Israel to care for those who couldn't care for themselves; those with whom life hadn't been fair. Those who had suffered a tough life (the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner). He focused specifically on Deuteronomy 24:17-22.

In this passage God commands the nation of Israel to "not pervert the justice" due to the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner. God says that when harvesting their field that they are to leave anything that they forget to take. That when beating their olive tree, they are only to go over it once and leave the remainder. And finally, when they gather grapes that they are to go once and leave what they don't gather the first time. In all of these instances the remainder was for the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner. All of this was because they were to "remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you from there". God had redeemed his people. He had showed immesurable grace on His people and He was calling them to do the same to those who couldn't care for themselves.

As a Jew, I'm thinking, "What the heck? I work my butt off all year so that I can harvest my field/beat my olive tree/harvest my grapes. I'm not going to leave some for people who aren't doing anything; who aren't earning it. They need to work for themselves. They can't just come into my land and take what I have worked hard for. They aren't even Jews..."

Get the point.

It seems like the default argument for kicking the Mexicans out (notice they never talk about building a wall on the Canadian border) is that they are stealing from us. We work hard to make a living and they come in and "take from our fields". I can understand this from someone who hasn't receieved God's immesurable grace poured out on them. But as Christians, as men and women who have received an inheritence in God's Kingdom for free, for no reason other than that God poured out His grace upon us, shouldn't we be more gracious? Shouldn't we be caring for those that cannot care for themselves? As Americans we are born into amazing wealth...shouldn't we be more willing to leave our "fields" open for the widows, the orphans, and the Mexicans...burritos or no?

Camel, Ostrich, and Crocodile

I am reading through the Bible in a year and this morning I was reading Leviticus 11 (I'm a little behind!) and I was surprised by what I read.

Two weeks ago I was in Kenya visiting Marisa. One night we went to a restaurant called Carnivore. It is the epitome of tourist dining. In a country of all blacks, 95% of the restaurant was white. Everyone who I know that has been to Kenya has been to this restaurant. It really is a novelty. They serve all sorts of exotic meats including, camel, ostrich, crocodile, etc. I love to try new things, so I never hesitated to partake in this exquisite cuisine. Camel was my favorite, but ostrich was a close second. Crocodile wasn't as fishy as you might thing and was also quite good.

Then this morning I came across these verses:

Lev 11:4 - "Nevertheless, you are not to eat of these, among those which chew the cud, or among those which divide the hoof; the camel, for though it chews cud, it does not divide the hoof, it is unclean to you."

Lev 11:13,16 - "These, moreover, you shall detest among the birds; they are abhorrent, not to be eaten: the eagle and the vulture and the buzzard...and the ostrich and the owl and the sea gull and the hawk in its kind."

Lev 11:29-30 - "Now these are to you the unclean things among the swarming things which swarm on the earth: the mole, and the mouse, and the great lizard in its kinds, and the gecko, and the crocodile, and the lizard, and the sand reptile, and the chameleon."

I couldn't believe it! All three of the exotic animals that I had eaten were included in the list of unclean animals. For a brief moment I felt conviction. But then I began to rejoice because,

"...and he saw the sky opened up, and an object like a great sheet coming down, lowered by four corners to the ground, and there were in it all kinds of four-footed animals (camels, maybe) and crawling creatures of the earth (crocodiles, maybe) and birds of the air (not ostriches, cause they don't fly, but...). A voice came to him, 'Get up, Peter, kill and eat!' But Peter said, 'By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything unholy and unclean.' Again a voice came to him a second time, 'What God has cleaned, no longer consider unholy.'"

Thank you, God, that you have made these animals clean and that we are no longer bound to your Law!