Mandi!

Lots has changed since my last post... I got married. On February 25, 2006, Mandi and I got married in Negaunee, MI. The wedding was a blast. All kinds of emotions all week long. It was amazing to see the love and support of all of our friends and family. We are so blessed to have everyone in our lives.

In early March, we went on a cruise for our honeymoon to the Western Caribbean. That was a ton of fun... some nice beaches after a little snow in the UP!



I thank God every day for putting Mandi in my life. I just really really love her a lot :)

It's a Jeep Thing

So Mandi got a Jeep a little over a week ago. Her car was going to need quite some repairs so we decided to pass it along to the next loving owner and upgrade to a Jeep. Since the upgrade, I've been doing quite a bit of the Jeep driving... I put on less miles than she... so out of concern for our great earth, I've been traveling around in the Jeep lately. It is fun! It's an entirely different ride than the VW Passat. Don't get me wrong... I LOVE the Passat... but beep beep... giddy up with the Jeep. 4 wheel all time drive, V8 engine, 4.7L of power! Can't wait to take it up North to the UP and give it a whirl around the woods. If you have the means... I highly recommend picking one up :)

C.S. Lewis

Ever since I was a kid, I can remember being captivated by the pen of CS Lewis. When I entered the land of Narnia, I was hooked. I loved reading the books as a kid and thoroughly enjoyed seeing the full feature film this past Christmas season. In preparation for the movie, I reread the first half of the Narnia series. This got me excited about all of the other Lewis literature out there. I dug out my copy of Mere Christianity and gave it another skim. However, what has gotten me captivated this time around is the spoken Lewis. I picked up an audio book of Mere Christianity and have been listening in my car. I have gotten many more things out of the text by relaxing and having it read to me. It amazes me how many fundametals he covers in such a small book.


Today, I intermittently learned about forgiveness, sin, and marriage while riding in my car. My biggest lesson of the day? Pride. It's at the heart of sin. Nearly all of it. Pride, the love of oneself, drives a tremendous wedge between us and God. Pride causes us to think of our own good over the good of others. Pride leads to every other kind of immorality. How do we know if we are prideful? Lewis puts forth a test. "How much do I dislike it when other people snub me, or refuse to take any notice of me, or shove their oar in, or patronize me, or show off?" My pride is relative to the pride of those I interact with. It is competitive. Pride drives me to want to acquire and experience all that I can... so that I may have the upper hand in the battle of status. As Lewis puts it, we don't want to be rich, clever, or good looking. We are proud of being richer, cleverer, and better looking. It is all relative to those that we compare ourselves to. We take pleasure in being above the rest. Our society has an almost natural inclination toward pride.

The Christian opposite of pride? Humility. In order to truly give ourselves to God, we must be humble. We must not allow our pride to continue to control us and make us restless and unhappy, but rather turn toward God in humble submission to His will in our lives.

I must continue to humble myself and curb my pride out of my love for Him.

Interfaith?

So I caught myself up too late this evening watching a special on PBS (Channel 10) called "Three Faiths, One God: Judaism, Christianity, Islam".

First, I must put forth, that I am a Christian. I put full faith in Christ Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I hold that the Scriptures, both Old and New Testament, are the inerrant Word of God and are the final divine authority for Christian faith and life.

Ok... back to the special. I was drawn in as I switched through channels to catch a couple minutes before falling asleep. This program portrayed to me the concept that the 3 religious communities, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity should be more understanding and respecting of one another. At the outset, that sounds great. But the way the message was portrayed throughout the examples threw up many red flags. We as Christians are called to know, understand, respect and love the people of this World. However, we cannot deny the absolute truths that God has given us. We must hold firmly to the Word of God whenever we enter into dialogue with people of other faiths. We must know that our God is the one true God. We must know that Jesus Christ is the only way that we as sinners can receive reconciliation and salvation.

It is tempting to want to open up outside of the truths which seem restricting and offensive to an atmosphere of inclusion and unity amongst faiths. Any time we hold there to be a truth, there is inherently a contradiction to that truth. Truth excludes that which is contrary.

I pray that we as Christians might fervently love the people of this world and be able to show them the love of Christ. We need to be beacons of the Truth that he has given us. Let us follow Christ, living our lives full of grace AND truth.

In the beginning - the WJW Blog

So it seems that everyone has gotten into the blogoshpere... it was only a matter of time until I jumped in the ring. I have maintained a website at williamwelbes.com since 1999, but this marks my first real entry into the world of blogging. It's a bit different than maintaining a personal site... a bit less control over the back end. I thought about being creative and developing my own blogging system in Cold Fusion or something, but that would be a deviation from the experience that most bloggers are getting these days. It amazes me how many people have opened up to publishing on the web with this new venue. I remember the feeling of putting together my first personal page in HTML, and publishing it out there for the world to see... it's great that so many more people now have the tools to do the same :)