Better than Breakfast

"What goes together with Sunday morning church better than a pancake the size of North Dakota? Nothing, that's what."

-Dan Marotta

OK, I have a few thoughts to share about the above quoted question by my co-worker Dan.

I actually can think of something that goes better with Sunday morning church than a state-sized pancake (if your gonna pick a state, at least pick Louisiana. It looks like an "L," like my name!). Only one thing, in fact, is much much more awesome than an enormous pancake. I'm sure you know what it is. It's so obvious. That's right folks: Fighter Jets!!



I realize I am a boy and am writing from a boy's point of view, but I am confident that after reading this, anyone will be convinced that Fighter Jets are the coolest things in the world. Nothing fulfills the manly desires for speed, power, and stealthy maneuverability better than the F-22 Raptor.

Cooking a pancake is pretty fast. Let's say an average pancake takes 3 minutes to cook. Now, let's compare that to the F-22 Raptor. The F-22 can fly at 1,500 mph. At that speed, it could fly over the entire state of North Dakota in slightly over 13 minutes, about the time it takes to cook 4 pancakes. So as far as speed goes, Fighter Jets clearly dominate pancakes.

Let's move to power. F-22, with 2 jet engines punching out 35,000 pounds of thrust each, can lift around 40,000 lbs of weight in addition to it's own weight. The tensile strength of the average pancake is probably around 2 lbs. That means, if you attached 2 pounds of weight to a pancake and held up the other end, it would stay together. Not much of a comparison, is it? Incidentally, it would only take around 2,500 F-22s to lift every resident of North Dakota off the ground.

I think I've proved my point. It doesn't seem necessary to go into how much more stealthy and maneuverable Fighter Jets are than pancakes the size of any of the great States of this country. I am confident that with the proper training, laser-eye surgery, and a presidential endorsement, I might one day become a fighter pilot. Until that day, I'll be down stairs on Sunday mornings gaping in awe as Dan Marotta flips enormous pancakes up in the air, and onto the plates of smiling children.

Top 10 Things I Don't Know

1. How to spell Dan "Marotta's" name. In my head I now say, Mare-Otta.

2. What actually happened with the Dinosaurs. Were they real? If so, what happened to them? Why doesn't the Bible mention them?

3. Why some people have back hair and others do not (I totally don't... cough cough).

4. The secret recipe to the Coca-Cola formula.

5. How Michael Phelps is able to completely dominate with such ease.

6. If I prefer crunchy or creamy peanut butter. It really seems like a game-time decision to me

7. What super-power I would choose if I could pick. I tend towards flying... let's be real, that would be incredible, but I think teleporting would actually be more useful... Did you see X-Men 2... Night Crawler was out of control.

8. If I will ever have an afro again - Greg Thompson says yes, but my wife is not too sure about it.

9. What actor would play me in a movie about my life... if Brad Pitt was unable to do it.

10. OK, if you know Ben or Kyle Hammill, they do this noise with their fingers that is unbelievable. I know what you're thinking, and it's not the finger snap thing, this is something totally new. How the heck do they do that.

FEAR

One of the things adults think about the kids is that although they seem to be cool and confident, they are actually insecure about basically everything. Insecure about what they wear, what their bodies look like, how smart they are, how athletic they are, who their friends are, what kind of music they like... basically everything. Most adults are convinced they most of the things kids do is motivated by these insecurities.

One of the reasons adults know this, is that once, long ago when ice covered vast parts of North America, they were a teenager themselves. I'm 23 years old and married with a steady job. By all definitions, I'm practically as adult as they come (break while I vomit). Guess what motivated me when I was in middle school and high school... Surprise surprise, it was my own armada of steadily attacking insecurities. I cared a lot about how my arms looked in my football jersey on Fridays. I cared a lot that Jessica Zulick flirted with me in math class. I was too afraid to dance to anything but a slow song at middle-school dances, and then when a slow song came on, I was terrified to actually ask a girl to dance. In fact, I would have rather dived into a swimming pool filled with shards of broke glass than risk being rejected by one of the 3 girls I thought might really say yes to me. Until I hit a growth spurt in 7th grade, I was a chubby kid, and I HATED that. I thought about the fact that I was heavy every single day. Here's my question: When are you supposed to grow out of that? Is that what being a "grown-up" means? I don't think so.

Kids also think a lot of different things about "grown-ups." They mostly have these thoughts in reference to their parents. They may think their parents are stupid and uncool and clueless and embarrassing, but they generally believe that their parents are pretty capable at living life, and that they pretty much know what to do about stuff.

I'm going to make a confession on behalf of the "grown-ups." If we're honest, we are still living in light of our insecurities. We just don't call them that anymore. We call it fear. So I just took over as a Middle School Ministry Director. I'm afraid. I'm afraid that the ideas I have won't work. I'm afraid that students won't care what I have to say and won't want to hang out with me. I'm afraid of the opinions other people have about how good of a job I'm doing. I know that if I let myself, everything I did in my job would be motivated by these fears.

I think one of my problems is that I think about things in terms of myself, as opposed to the Truth: I am living in the Kingdom of God, and the king, Jesus Christ is for me.

I read Romans 8 this morning. It is a powerful and rich chapter. One line stood out to me as I thought about how to deal with the fears I have. "If God is for us, who can be against?" (Rom 8 :31). I wonder what my life would look like if I believed that all the time. It means that the one person who's opinion matters is completely behind me. It means that my acceptance is NOT BASED ON HOW GOOD I AM, or how good of a job I do. It is based on the Truth that The Lord Almighty, the one who breathes the stars into existence, has adopted me as a son, and loves me because I am his (also from Romans 8. check out verses 14-17). That is crazy to me. It makes no sense. It is the wonderful news that frees me from my fears. I really believe this: Nothing else but Jesus can accomplish this.

Life is Crazy

So, Life is pretty crazy. I've been married for about a month to a beautiful woman named Maggie, I just started a new job as the Middle School Director at Trinity Pres Church in C'ville, and I have a crazy-itchy mosquito bite behind my left knee. I had a friend named Andre who called them "moquitos." I think that's hilarious, but sometimes people think I'm a little childish...

Today, we had a Salsa party in my office at church. It was a little confusing, because some people brought salsa and chips, and others came in to salsa dance. The truth is, the party was intentionally a double-salsa themed party. I recruited my friend Ellen to make Guacamole, and had my Afro-Cuban Allstars CD playing when people arrived. Katie P generously used my white board to make a "welcome to the salsa party" sign. Mark Hutton did not come to the Salsa Party, so it will be my goal to get him in hear next week... yes, it is a new weekly tradition. Bring your friends.

One final note. Many of you who read this may also read Dan Moratta's Blog. Let's just all be honest about where the real party is. That's all I'm saying...