Saturday Morning Project

We took the children to Home Depot this morning for a free clinic on how to build a car display shelf. They had a great time!

Quote of the Day:

Nathan: "You hold the nail Papa, and I'll hammer it."
David: "Okay. Now remember...I'm a concert pianist!"

Bankruptcy - Book Review

Bankruptcy of our Nation
by Jerry Robinson
ISBN: 13:978-0-89221-693-2

Our nation is in deep, economic trouble. The United States is trillions of dollars in debt, and the number continues to climb. The government's response is to spend more in hopes of staving off a catastrophic collapse of our economy. Let me be clear. I am not pointing a finger at any particular party. This problem has been building over decades, and both parties have had a hand in it.

Money (I'm referring to the U.S. dollar system) is an integral part of your life. You use it every day to buy goods and pay bills, but how much do you really understand it? Are you aware that it is not backed by gold or any other commodity, meaning the dollar in your pocket has no intrinsic value whatsoever? The reality is, the dollar in your pocket is simply a piece of paper. We hear on the news that the current national debt is sitting in the neighborhood of 12 trillion dollars, but did you know that that number only represents what the federal government owes on money that is already borrowed? If you include the future promises made by the federal government to Americans for programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, the number skyrockets in excess of 59 trillion dollars. To say this is sobering news would be an understatement.

If you are interested in a clear, easy to read lesson in the history of our nation's currency, and learn some basics in what money is, how it works, and how it directly affects you, I strongly encourage you to read this book. You do not need a degree in economics to understand this book. It is written for the "Average Joe," and I honestly found it to to be a page-turner. That may seem strange and unbelievable, but it's true. I truly feel that it is important for every American to really understand the gravity of the economic situation we currently face. Please, pick up a copy and invest the time to read it. You won't regret it.

A New Global Perspective

A bit of background:
About six weeks ago I did a project with my daughter during homeschool as part of her science lesson. I took pictures, but they were accidentally overwritten, and I didn't have time to recreate part of the project until this afternoon. We were studying the planets, and put together a scale model of the solar system. While the size of the sun and planets in the pictures below are to scale, the distance between them on the wall is not.

This is a picture of my daughter standing in the middle of the "sun." It is slightly less than 12 feet in diameter, to give you perspective.

Here are the planets on the wall in our kitchen. The pink strip hanging from the ceiling to the floor represents the sun. Mercury and Venus are so small, they are hard to see. Then you see the Earth in blue, Mars in red, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

Reflections
The "planets" have been on our wall since mid-December. I left them up because I was so struck by the size and perspective that you get when you view the solar system to scale, and how the Earth appears within it. We can't escape phrases these days like "global politics," "global economics," or "global warming." It all sounds so huge and epic in size until you stop and consider what is represented in these photos. It would be very difficult to find a way to represent man "to scale" on the Earth. Even a pinprick would be too big! Remember, this is just one solar system out of who knows how many in the heavens. When I stop and consider the magnitude of what Christ did for me on the cross from this perspective, it simply staggers my mind.

"When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have ordained, what is man that You take thought of him, and the son of man that You care for him? Yet You have made him a little lower than God, and You crown him with glory and majesty!" (Psalm 8:3-5)