Tucson Arrest Yourself

We were kicking around an idea for a unique fundraiser for the city of Tucson today at the station. We have been a media sponsor of many events like “Family Friendly Weekend” in downtown Tucson and recently “Tucson Meet Yourself”. These are great events that raise money for many worthy charities. So we were thinking about the city of Tucson’s financial woes and an idea hit; “Tucson Arrest Yourself”. We would like to sponsor a day where citizens of our great community could come to one of our fine parks and turn themselves in. Say you have parking tickets that are unpaid, bring them down and they will be reduced by 25% at Tucson Arrest Yourself. Speed cameras caught you without your mask on? Bring the annoying tickets with you and voila, they are cut in half! You could have a raffle for a “get out of jail free card” that would exonerate you from any minor infractions for a year. This would of course draw a lot of media attention, perhaps even national coverage. Certainly with our national obsession for attention someone, (maybe several) real criminals will come and to Tucson Arrest Yourself and turn themselves in. The cities cash flow will surge at this one day only event and we might even get some serious criminals off the street. If you would like to join us in the pursuit of justice, please contact your city council person and let them know that you want them to support Tucson Arrest Yourself.

The Gift of Giving

Do you have the gift of giving? We are currently in the deepest recession I have experienced in my adult life. I honestly believe it was overdue, what with our profligate consumer spending and folks using their homes as piggy banks. During the Roaring Twenties the stock market was rising in a head spinning way, people were borrowing money and wagering the borrowed funds on the ever rising market. Reminds me of the real estate rise and the “find and flip” phenomena. After the roaring twenties we entered the Great Depression. It is well documented in many books including Tom Brokaw’s “The Greatest Generation” that when times got tough, people gave out of their lack. Families fed their neighbors when they didn’t have enough for themselves. Children found homes with families whose houses seemingly could not contain one more soul. I believe we are starting to see that happen again as reality sinks in. So how should we give? Does it mean that if you have some money in your pocket and someone asks you for it you fork it over with a self congratulatory grin? Romans 12 6-10 talks about different gifts including the gift of giving. I believe there are three principles that define the gift of giving:

1.That you have something to give.
2.That you have wisdom concerning what to give.
3.That you have discernment as to who or what to give to.

Just because you have the resources does it mean that you should give it “liberally” to anyone that asks? I don’t believe so. Several years ago a friend of mine (Bill) was angry with our mutual friend (Harry). Bill couldn’t believe that Harry refused to give him money when he asked him. Now Bill had a history of poor investments. Even though he had the education, background and intelligence things just never seemed to work out for him in business. He was in the midst of another failing project and needed a bail out (something we are all familiar with now). There was no question that Harry had the resources to bail him out, but he also had wisdom and discernment and knew that by giving the money he would circumvent the lesson that my friend needed to learn. He ended up getting the money from someone else and the project failed anyways. I believe that if you don’t learn the principles of giving that God will not give you the resources to give. Because if you don’t have wisdom and discernment you will enable your family and friends in their folly. I knew a man that was going through drug addiction treatment. His counselor told him that if another person would have loved him they would have killed him. What he meant by this was every time he needed a fix he would plead with family members with some story about being kicked out of his home, or buying shoes for the kids. They would give him the money and he would buy drugs. We all should give out of what God has given us, but ask God that you would have wisdom and discernment so that you would be doing His will in your giving.

The Mahdi

I heard something very disturbing on the Dennis Miller Show on KVOI this week. He had a guest on that had written a book about Armageddon and the “three great religions”. Neither Dennis nor the guest seemed to understand the significance concerning the facts that he laid out in the book. They just thought it was strange and funny that Judaism, Christianity and Islam consider Jerusalem their most holy city. Dennis laughed when the author talked about the Jews waiting for their Messiah (not Jesus), Christians waiting for our Messiah (Jesus) to come back and Muslims waiting for the twelfth Imam (their Messiah or Mahdi) to come with Jesus as the prophet. They laughed and joked about how silly all this was including that all 3 religions predict an end time’s scenario.

It reminded me, as a Christian, that 2nd Thessalonians says that “God sends them a strong delusion so that they will believe a lie”. I think we are there. When I heard the author talk about Jerusalem, a Messiah coming and the predicted end times being common to all 3 religions it sent a chill up my spine. But, what really shocked me was the Muslim prediction of the Mahdi appearing with Jesus as his prophet! You may recall that the President of Iran believes that the Mahdi is waiting to appear when Iran is attacked or they attack Israel. Ezekiel 38-39 predicts that Iran, Russia and some other nations will attack Israel. Revelations 19 says that the “beast (anti-Christ) will be captured with the false prophet, who performed many miracles and signs in his name”. Could it be that the Mahdi will be the anti-Christ and that “jesus” will be the false prophet? Think about how that could play out? The anti-Christ unifies the world under 1 religion with his buddy “Jesus”? We are living in interesting times!