a Jesus chick's Weblog

Letter to the President

7citychickens — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 00:56:43 +0000

Below is a letter that has been circulating with a great idea. The message began in silent prayer from a faithful follower who was spending quiet time with God.

Dear Friends and Intercessors:

Red Envelope Project Image

This afternoon I was praying about a number of things, and my mind began to wander. I was deeply distressed at the symbolic actions that President Obama took as he began his presidency. Namely, that he signed executive orders releasing funds to pay for abortions, permission to fund human stem cell research, and federal funding for contraception. I have been involved in the pro-life movement for nearly 20 years, and it pained my heart to see a man and a political party committed to the shedding of innocent blood. This man, and this party lead our country, but they do not represent me or the 54% of Americans who believe that abortion is wrong and should no longer be legal.

As I was praying, I believe that God gave me an interesting idea. Out in the garage I have a box of red envelopes. Like the powerful image of the red LIFE tape, an empty red envelope will send a message to Barack Obama that there is moral outrage in this country over this issue. It will be quiet, but clear.
Here is what I would like you to do:

Get a red envelope.

On the front, address it to:

President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W.
Washington , D.C. 20500

On the back, write the following message.

This envelope represents one child who died in abortion. It is empty because that life was unable to offer anything to the world. Responsibility begins with conception.

Put it in the mail, and send it. Then send this website to every one of your friends who you think would send one too. I wish we could send 50 million red envelopes, one for every child who died before having a a chance to live. Maybe it will change the heart of the president.

Warmly, Christ Otto

A message to the President from John Piper

7citychickens — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 00:59:08 +0000

Validity of Thought

7citychickens — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 23:48:28 +0000

The statement below is posted on my refrigerator.

If life is ultimately the result of random chance, then so would be thought. Your thoughts (including what you are thinking right now) would, be a consequence of a long series of accidents, of randomness. So, your thoughts would have no validity, INCLUDING the thought that life is a result of chance. By destroying the validity of ideas, evolution undercuts even the idea of evolution.

Grace and Peace

Lisa

“All things came into being through Him, and without Him not even one thing came into being that has come into being.”
(John 1:3)

The Spread of the Gospel in the Cause of the Unborn

7citychickens — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 18:31:27 +0000

The article below was written by a friend. It’s intention is for our church bulletin. I believe the audience should be greater. Grace and Peace. Lisa

“The Spread of the Gospel in the Cause of the Unborn”

Sanctity of Human Life week is in January. This affords us an opportunity to focus our attention on the world’s most vulnerable and needy people. This group includes those people who are impoverished, oppressed and exploited. It also includes people we don’t think about very often or even see. These are the unborn people who are aborted in the womb. Nearly 4,000 every single day. In 2005 (the most recent year for which there is reliable data), approximately 1.21 million abortions took place in the U.S. From 1973 through 2005, more than 45 million legal abortions have occurred in the U.S. (AGI) (see Abort73.com, Facts about Abortion).

This issue demands our attention. As Christians, we can no more be silent about abortion just as Christians two centuries ago could remain silent about slavery. However, many Christians did remain silent about slavery just as many in the church today turn a blind eye in the face of the slaughter of innocent children. This is easy to do because of the controversial nature of this issue. However, we cannot allow fear of controversy to muzzle our voices. A helpful illustration of this point may be the case of Christians in Nazi Germany. Martin Niemoller, a German pastor and resister of Hitler’s regime said, “In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. They came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me and by that time no one was left to speak up.”

If we are to speak up, the question remains, how and for what end? This is an important consideration for us as Christians. The recent elections of a pro-abortion president and congress crystallize the answer to this question. From the Christian perspective, the pro-life movement cannot be only about preventing abortions through law, as important as that is. Speaking the truth about abortion to people must also be a vehicle for sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ. We know that God places rulers in authority as part of His perfect plan. Perhaps, these recent elections will prompt Christians who care about the unborn to re-direct their attention from merely political action but also to be willing, like William Wilberforce, to pour out their lives for the spread of the gospel in the cause of the unborn.

Not only can we save children from the abortionist, we can show people the loving kindness of Christ for all peoples, no matter their age or social standing. Randy Alcorn spells out many ways we can do this in his book “Why Pro-life?” which is available for free at the Adult ministries information booth. Please take a copy of this book, read it, and pass it on. R.C. Sproul says, “ If you care about the slaughter of the innocent, then for God’s sake speak up. Speak to your family. Speak to your neighbor. Speak to your friend. Speak to your doctor. Speak to your minister. Speak to your congressman. Let your voice be heard in a chorus of protest. Yours is only one voice, but it is a voice. Use it.”

Proverbs 24:11-12 says, “Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter. If you say, ‘Behold, we did not know this,’ does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it, and will he not repay man according to his work?” May God’s mercy on you be enough to prompt you to have mercy on the most vulnerable among us.

I strongly encourage you to visit Abort73.com and watch the video titled “The Case Against Abortion.” You have now read this article. The complacency of ignorance has given way to the responsibility of knowledge. What are you going to do with it?

Resolutions? No! from Desiringgod.org

7citychickens — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 01:55:42 +0000

No need for a resolution. The message below is from the blog of Desiring God. As always it’s excellent.

Grace and Peace in 2009

Resolutions? No!

January 1, 2009 | By: David Mathis
Category: Commentary

Reading Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ classic Spiritual Depression would be a strong way to start the new year.

The title can be a tad deceiving. It’s not merely a book for those with a pronounced sense of spiritual depression. It’s a book for all Christians—for the daily spiritual depressions we all face this side of heaven.

Lloyd-Jones ends his second chapter with these challenging and refreshing words:

Would you like to be rid of this spiritual depression? The first thing you have to do is to say farewell now once and forever to your past. Realize that it has been covered and blotted out in Christ. Never look back at your sins again. Say: ‘It is finished, it is covered by the Blood of Christ’. That is your first step. Take that and finish with yourself and all this talk about goodness, and look to the Lord Jesus Christ. It is only then that true happiness and joy are possible for you. What you need is not to make resolutions to live a better life, to start fasting and sweating and praying. No! You just begin to say:

I rest my faith on Him alone
Who died for my transgressions to atone. (35)

Seeds of CHANGE – uh-huh!

7citychickens — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 18:38:06 +0000

……and they thought I was crazy talkin’ about the “Seed Police”

Seed Savers Exchange is a group dedicated to conserving and promoting heirloom seeds. find out more at www.seedsavers.org

Why should we be concerned?

Here’s another “change” appointees of Obama’s Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack …………. read articles linked below for more info

http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_16156.cfm

http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_15573.cfm

Though I have issue with her evolution beliefs, read Barbara Kingsolver - Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Kingsolver addresses issues on Monsanto, GMOs, etc.

Is that someone at your/my door?

Obama is just pretending to be evil so that he can get into power, but then the Hope and Change, etc. will flow." uh-huh!?

“I have given you every plant with seeds on the face of the earth and every tree that has fruit with seeds. This will be your food.” Genesis 1:29

Our Hungry Planet -an article on the egg industry

7citychickens — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 22:41:11 +0000

thankful to be backyard chickens

The following article is from today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune. It is an informative read.

Our Hungry Planet: Golden eggs

By Richard Meryhew and Chris Serres , Star Tribune

December 7, 2008

Jack Romine picked up the grocery receipt lying on his kitchen table and began studying the numbers.

Milk, bread, a head of lettuce. Prices were up but not out of line. Then came the shocker — $2.29 for a carton of eggs.

He called the store to double-check. No, the clerk told him, $2.29 was the going rate for a dozen large Grade A’s.

“I couldn’t believe it,” said Romine, 77, a retired advertising director from Brooklyn Center.

In a year of soaring food costs, nothing in American grocery carts has spiked like eggs — up nearly 60 percent in two years.

What’s to blame? A lot, it turns out.

Global pressures, such as increased demand from changing diets in developing countries, and rising feed costs from spikes in commodity prices this year are partly responsible.

So are long-term trends in the egg industry. Rapid consolidation and a move to industrialized production have left fewer players producing the bulk of the nation’s eggs. And newer environmental regulations make expanding, or getting into the business, more difficult.

But the most significant influence on pricing may well have been the industry’s own doing. Over the past two years, after a several-year slump, egg farmers have cut back on the size of their hen flocks at a pace not seen in more than 20 years. The result: Fewer hens means fewer eggs, which in turn means higher prices. That has generated a profit bonanza for the egg industry, but has also caught the attention of the U.S. Department of Justice, which is investigating whether some of the nation’s largest egg producers conspired to fix prices.

Through it all, one thing is clear: Industrialized food production has not insulated consumers from price volatility. In fact, some agricultural experts argue it may have exacerbated the problem.

‘Dark clouds’

Amon Baer’s northwestern Minnesota egg farm is a far cry from the one his dad had in the 1960s. Back then, hens roamed freely and Amon and his brothers picked eggs by hand.

A generation later, Baer’s mechanized facility, which employs 25 people, cranks out 18,000 dozen eggs in a day.

Two henhouses with 150,000 birds each span the length of two football fields and flank a packaging center, where the eggs are inspected, cleaned and boxed.

Hens — from as few as three to as many as 10 — live in small, wire-battery cages that are stacked four rows high. Water drips from a nipple at the top of each cage. Feed is delivered by conveyor belt.

Eggs roll slowly across the bottom of the slightly sloped cage onto another conveyor belt, where they wind their way to the packaging center.

“Pricing is good right now,” Baer said. “But there are a lot of pretty dark clouds on the horizon that make me question whether it will be so in the future.”

Just 20 years ago, 2,500 egg producers handled most of the eggs sold and consumed in the United States. A large henhouse had perhaps 100,000 birds. Today, about 250 businesses produce 95 percent of the nation’s eggs from henhouses that are as long as football fields and capable of housing more than 500,000 hens.

“The barriers to entry are getting higher all the time, as are all the investment capital requirements to get into the business,” said Allan Rahn, a poultry specialist and former economics professor at Michigan State University. “It’s become a very sophisticated industry, and you gotta be big to compete.”

But industrialized farming, long viewed as the means to cheap food, couldn’t keep prices down this year. Shoppers are paying more for just about everything at the grocery store. White rice was up 55 percent this past year. Potatoes rose 41 percent, and bananas 24 percent.

Meanwhile the specter of deflation, or falling prices, haunts the economy. The consumer price index fell 1 percent in October, the biggest drop in more than 60 years. While prices for energy, cars and personal computers were all rapidly declining, grocery prices are still up 7.5 percent compared to a year ago, a pace not seen in 18 years.

And that generated huge windfalls for the U.S. egg industry, which last year produced 90.6 billion eggs. Cal-Maine Foods, the nation’s biggest producer, saw its profits more than quadruple in 2007 to $152 million from $37 million. At Land O’Lakes, an Arden Hills-based farmers’ cooperative that owns the nation’s third-largest egg producer, MoArk, profits surged 83 percent last year to $162 million.

Eggs have spiked before. But traditionally, when that has happened and producers see money, they race to expand and add more hens, flooding the market with eggs and bringing prices back down again.

“We always joke among ourselves, ‘We’re able to out-produce any good market overnight,’” said Bob Krouse, president of Midwest Poultry Services L.P. in Mentone, Ind., one of the top 15 egg producers in the nation.

No more. During the past two years, as prices were climbing and egg exports booming, the number of hens laying eggs for food fell by 8 million to 280.3 million through the third quarter of this year. When compared with the same month from the previous year, hen populations have declined for 21 consecutive months.

“I don’t know if we’ve ever seen a period with such an extended decline,” said David Harvey, a USDA poultry expert.

By this spring, supplies were so tight that the slightest disruption in the supply chain would send eggs bobbing higher. “We were at the point where if an 18-wheeler went into a ditch with a trailer full of eggs, you had a problem,” said Scott Beyer, a poultry specialist at Kansas State University. “It drives prices up.”

An uncertain future

In dozens of interviews, poultry experts point to the industry’s move in 2002 to give hens more room as an underlying cause of higher prices. The United Egg Producers (UEP), the industry’s leading trade group, adopted guidelines for hens to have at least 67 square inches of space. Many producers used cages of just 50 to 60 square inches.

The industry claims the new standards were a result of pressure from animal rights groups as well as scientific studies showing hens produce more if given slightly more room.

Though the UEP’s program was voluntary, by 2007 more than 80 percent of the United States egg supply was operating under the new guidelines. Many producers reduced the size of their flocks to comply.

The supply of hens declined so dramatically that the industry now faces allegations of price fixing. The Justice Department is investigating “the possibility of anti-competitive practices,” said Gina Talamona, a deputy director. She declined to comment further.

And during the past three months, more than a dozen federal lawsuits have been filed against top egg producers, including MoArk, Michael Foods of Minnetonka and Golden Oval Eggs of Renville, Minn., which declined to comment.

Attorneys who filed the suits contend the egg industry used animal welfare as a pretext to reduce flocks and keep egg prices artificially high. They cite as evidence the UEP’s own statements, in which the group repeatedly called on egg producers to keep production in check. For instance, in May of 2004, UEP president Gene Gregory urged members to adopt the new standards.

“If you stay true to the program and manage it to meet the market demand, it can provide the industry with prolonged profits,” Gregory wrote in the group’s newsletter.

Gregory did not return repeated calls.

But for animal rights groups — and California voters — the UEP standards don’t go far enough. On Nov. 4, California approved Proposition 2, requiring that birds be able to spread their wings without touching the sides of their cages. Some producers predict that will kill almost all caged egg production in California, which accounts for about 5 percent of the nation’s supply. The vote has triggered fears among producers that similar measures would surface in other parts of the country.

Supply and demand

With a future so uncertain, few egg producers are building, ensuring tight supplies.

If “you were going to have to spend $20 million on a new complex, would you have the confidence to make that investment?” asked Alan Andrews, a vice president at Litchfield, Minn.-based Sparboe Companies, the nation’s fifth largest egg producer.

Yet even with tight supplies and continued high prices, consumers aren’t likely to curtail egg purchases.

Janel McGreevy prefers organic, “cage-free” eggs. “I can’t stand the idea of hens cooped up in those tiny pens,” said McGreevy, 53, a fifth-grade teacher from Eagan. But they have become so expensive — $3.39 a dozen on a recent trip to Super Target in Richfield — that she now mixes them with cheaper store-brand eggs

But going without is not really an option. McGreevy’s family eats them for breakfast and she needs them for baking. “You can’t make pecan pie without good eggs.”

richm@startribune.com • 612-673-4425 cserres@startribune.com • 612-673-4308

The perfect gift -A Christmas program in photos

7citychickens — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 00:35:16 +0000

On a cold Minnesota Saturday, we trekked out to the Carlson’s farm to photograph the children of our church acting out the Nativity story. The photographs taken will be compiled for a presentation at the Children’s Christmas program. Here are some of the photographs from the day.

Christmas

7citychickens — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 18:23:48 +0000

Before you head out to shop, shop, shop……………………

The story of Christ’s birth is a subversive story of an upside-down kingdom. It’s a story of promise, hope, and a revolutionary love that is still changing the world to this day. So, what happened? What was once a time to celebrate the birth of a savior has somehow turned into a season of stress, traffic jams, and shopping lists. And when it’s all over, many of us are left with presents to return, looming debt that will take months to pay off, and this empty feeling that we somehow missed its purpose.

Is this what we really want out of Christmas?

What if Christmas became a world-changing event again by turning our focus back to the birth of Christ? What could happen to your family if this focus was celebrated in loud, bold and totally unexpected ways? What if you could actually trade your season of stress for a season celebration and unbelievable memories with your friends and family? What if all of this could save a life at the same time? It can.

Learn more at www.adventconspiracy.org

And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. Luke 2:7

Operation Christmas Child – Samaritan’s Purse

7citychickens — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 21:30:18 +0000

Editor’s note -We delivered a total of 181 shoe boxes to the Samaritan’s Purse drop off site.

November 17th marks the beginning of the 2008 National Collection Week for Operation Christmas Child, Samaritan’s Purse.

Operation Christmas Child is a project of Samaritan’s Purse. It is headed be Franklin Graham. Yes he is Billy Graham’s son. Go to www.samaritanspurse.org to check them out. You can also check their credibility by going to Charity Navigators.

Operation Christmas Child is a great way to bring joy and the Good News of Jesus Christ to children in need of hope. – Franklin Graham.

Last Sunday, we gave out 75 shoe boxes to be filled for Operation Christmas Child. We set up an information table at our church, showed a “micro” segment of what Operation Christmas Child is all about during services, and did a presentation for the AWANA Wednesday program.

display at church

Our family is filling three boxes. Here is one in the making, to give you an idea. We have opted to use the plastic boxes. Though I tend to stay away from plastic, my thought is the box could be used by the recipient’s family for bug/moisture proof storage.

To find a drop off site for shoeboxes or for more information on the project and the many other ministries of Samaritan’s Purse check out their website. www.samaritanspurse.org

Grace and Peace

1 Timothy 6:18 “Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share.”