Report from the Caribbean: Jack Sparrow nowhere to be found, but the rum is DEFINITELY not gone

What you're seeing is a shot of the view from my hotel room. I'm not sure if Facebook will import pictures with blog posts, so if you're reading on Facebook and can't see it, hit the "view original post" link above.

Well, it's the last full day of the Cozumel vacation. Tomorrow we'll head to the airport around noon for our 1:45 flight back to Dallas. I'll be home as briefly as possible; Team55 training actually starts tomorrow, although I told them I couldn't make it, but I'll still need to be there on Tuesday, so I'm driving out to Abilene as quickly as I can finish packing and eat a quick dinner.

As for Cozumel, the exciting stuff definitely happened in the second half of the week. We shelled out for a snorkeling tour on a catamaran yesterday, but found it somewhat disappointing. We went to two different reef areas, but the water was deep enough that we couldn't get a good look at the few really exotic looking fish that were there. Nonetheless, we dutifully burned up all the film on the two underwater cameras we brought. Oops.

On the way back, most of the people on board managed to get very, very drunk (although to be fully accurate, it was on beer and margaritas, not rum). I think my family and the crew may have been the only ones still sober. And I have my doubts about some of the crew...some of their dance moves were very, umm, interesting.

The catamaran let us off on a dock between our hotel and the one next to it, and as we were walking down the dock, we happened to look into the water on the side of the other hotel. It was shallow, crystal clear, and full of colorful fish. Of course we would discover this after using up our cameras. Still, my dad and I went down this afternoon and got some free snorkels from our hotel which we used to look at the fish in the area, even if we didn't have any film. We may buy a (horrendously overpriced) disposable underwater camera from the hotel tomorrow morning so I can take some pictures while my parents make one last shopping trip. The really baffling thing about the whole thing is that on our hotel's side of the dock, there are no fish. Plenty of seaweed, but no fish.

Aside from that, there hasn't been much going on. I've gotten my money's worth out of my DS after burning through three of the four books I brought in about as many days. I've hardly touched the last one for fear that I'll have nothing to do on the flight home. I've also been doing a lot of web surfing and IMing on the laptop. Yeah, yeah, I know it seems criminal to waste time on the computer while I'm in Cozumel, but hey, I'm a nerd. Which probably explains how I ended up downloading a program called Game Maker and spending a decent sized part of the last half of my vacation creating a skiing game for my computer.

I only have one pic to show at this point since I didn't bring my own digital camera, figuring my parents would take plenty, and the pictures from the snorkel trip won't be developed until after I'm back in Abilene, so the only picture is the one up top. Anyway, even though I'm sure to think of more stories and such later, that's all that comes to mind for the moment, so I'll close for now.

Hola de Cozumel

Today marks the first full day in Cozumel, and it's definitely making for a nice vacation. The water is clear up close and blue from a distance, the food and drink are free and plentiful (more on that in a minute), and I'm free to be as lazy as I choose - which, unsurprisingly, is very, very lazy.

I've spent most of today reading Ringworld, which turned out to be a fairly good book, although I'm glad there are more set in that universe, since there's a lot more exploration to be done with it. Went swimming in the Caribbean for a while, and I have to say, it's much more pleasant than my pool - the Caribbean feels almost like bath water. It's also nearly as devoid of life as my pool, a result of Hurricane Wilma from what I hear.

Like I said, the food and drink are free (or at least, are included in the hotel package), which leaves me surprised that I haven't seen anyone obviously drunk. The waiters do a good job of keeping the drink glasses filled, whether they contain Coke or a margarita.

Not much else to speak of so far, so I'll close for now.

A New Look at Darfur

Google and the United States Holocaust Museum have teamed up to offer a new look at the humanitarian crisis in Darfur using Google's free Google Earth satellite mapping program. Google Earth now highlights the locations of damaged or destroyed villages and refugee camps on its maps and allows you to zoom in to see an overhead view of the devastation the conflict has wrought. It also has icons linking to photos, videos, and testimonies in the location from which they were taken.

The satellite view doesn't offer much as far as seeing the damage as the images aren't of a high enough resolution. The photos and testimonies, however, are shocking, as is the sheer number of villages with flame-shaped icons indicating damage or total destruction. I took the time to click on one of the video icons and was shown a ten minute presentation by a former US marine, detailing the history and nature of the war while displaying photographs that told its story.

I once read someone commenting that Christianity's view that humanity is fallen and in need of a Savior is one of its worst contributions to world thought. After looking at images like this, as well as other tragedies such as the "invisible children" crisis of Uganda, the global trade in sex slaves which International Justice Mission wars against, and the countless others, and knowing how little the "good" people do about it, I find the Christian view to be perfectly believable.

Invisible Children

For those of you who haven't seen the documentary Invisible Children (Google Video link here), I highly recommend it. Brace yourself - this isn't a light, pleasant viewing. It's about the ordeals of children in Uganda forced to walk miles from their homes every night in order to sleep on crowded city grounds, where they hope to be safe from a para-military force called the Lord's Resistance Army, known for abducting children and often pressing them into military service, sometimes forcing them to kill strangers or even friends or family.

"Horrifying" doesn't even begin to describe it. The war has been raging for nearly two decades, has claimed thousands of lives, and displaced hundreds of thousands. Those forced into camps battle food shortages and disease. Some of them haven't been home in years. Although the body count isn't as high, we're looking at an atrocity on the level of the Holocaust in terms of moral outrage.

I'll let the documentary do the rest of the talking as far as the events are concerned, but I can't end a post like this without a call to action. Donate money if you can (via the Invisible Children web-site), write your Congressmen and ask that the US get involved however possible, etc. We cannot stand by and do nothing while so many lives face destruction.

What is this "church" thing anyway?

I originally wrote this for a Church of Christ discussion board, so when I talk about things like being silent where Scripture is silent, realize this may not apply to your particular church.

If you ask most Christians to describe church, you'll probably hear a lot about singing hymns, taking Communion, listening to sermons. Sure, these are all things that the church does, but it's a bit like answering the question, "What is a human?" by describing a hand.

Jesus spent a lot of time laying out his plans, yet interestingly, he left no instructions for Sunday worship aside from the commands regarding Communion, leaving such matters to those who came after him. It's interesting to me – for a fellowship that proclaims to be silent where Scripture is silent, we are often at our most vocal over something which received scant mention from Christ.

The Greek word we translate as “church” is ekklesia. It's the same word used in the Septuagint (Greek translation of the Old Testament) to refer to the body of Israel – in short, when used in a Christian context, it speaks of the community of God, not just a worship service.

So what else does a church do? Jesus said that the greatest command is to love God. So how do we do that? John explains: “In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands” (1 John 5:3a, TNIV). And what is the first command after loving God? To love our neighbors. James summed it up well, saying, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world” (James 1:27, TNIV).

Jesus was scorned far and wide for associating with tax collectors and sinners. So it should be with us – the church should be a place where prostitutes, alcoholics, homosexuals, and all others can come experience the transforming power of Christ. The “fix yourself first, then come talk to us” mentality of Christians has to go. We are all sinners, and will continue to sin until the day we die. If we were dependent on our own righteousness for our salvation, we would be every bit as doomed as the people we cast out. Our need for grace is as desperate as theirs, so let there be no self-righteousness.

We've thought of church as a Sunday/Wednesday thing for far too long. True church is a round-the-clock community effort to be Christ to the world – loving, ministering, teaching. When I speak to non-believers, it's clear they don't see us this way. To them, Christians are hateful, self-righteous people who believe it is their God-given purpose to persecute those who don't conform to our standards. How far we have fallen. In the early church, people converted to Christianity, often in spite of persecution, because they were so impressed with the great morality of Christians. What a different world it would be if we were like that today.

There are two billion people in this world who profess to follow Christ. How would it change things if these people devoted their resources to helping the needy? Granted, many of those two billion are the ones in need. But so many of them are not – consider the vast wealth available to the churches of America. If we spent less time bickering over minutiae and more time feeding the hungry, as we are supposed to, we could go a long way toward fixing this broken world.

To remind us of Jesus's priorities, I leave you with Matthew 25:31-46:

"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'

"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'

"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'

"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.'

"They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?'

"He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'

"Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."