Kirk Cameron, John Wayne, and Strawberry Pie

I just finished reading the autobiography of Kirk Cameron. I never saw Growing Pains, the show that made him famous, but did see the Left Behind movies a few years back that he starred in. He has always impressed me for some reason, and I came away from reading the book even more so.

He is very picky about the movies he appears in, and will not kiss any woman other than his wife in a movie. His newest coming out this year called for a kiss between he and the character playing his wife in the movie, so they used his real wife for the kiss. He seems so totally different from the other so-called Christians in Hollywood. Yet, you look up his page on the Internet movie database (imdb), and on the message boards, they crucify him constantly. Makes me think Mr Cameron may actually have the goods. If the world is cheering us on and idolizing us, we cannot be living the Christian life that God wants us to live. Christianity isn't popular, and getting even less so as the days go by.

If we live as Christ commands us to, we aren't going to be popular with the world, and even with a lot of Christians. Anymore, you can find churches that allow anything - homosexuality, racism, and more. Yet, we who stand against these things are put down and condemned for it.

There is a song that Phillips, Craig, and Dean recorded a few years ago, and more recently has been recorded by the Booth Brothers (who do tremendously better!) - Crucified With Christ. That song has been on my mind almost daily since the Booth Brothers' concert. No one wants to talk about it anymore, and it isn't something even we Christians want to talk about. What does it mean? Its kind of a scary thought - a crucified person has no control anymore - he is in total control of whoever put him on that cross. And once death comes from the crucifixion, he has no desires, plans, nothing at all. To be crucified with Christ means that for us: we have to turn over our desires, plans, all we are and have to Christ.

Another song has been on my mind lately: Jesus and John Wayne. It is on the new Gaither Vocal Band CD, and in my opinion, the song is stupid, and un-Biblical. The gist of the song is that the singer is most days somewhere between Jesus and John Wayne. That's a long way from being crucified with Christ.

Most days, I feel like I am still a little child spiritually. I struggle trusting God, and Satan knows my weaknesses so much - the things that will "light my fuse", the things he brings up from the past: things I did, things people did to me. But I have to aim to be alot closer to God than to John Wayne if I want to make it.

I am going to do something I never did before: make a strawberry pie. :-) I did cheat a bit and bought a frozen pie crust - I didn't feel up to making it from scratch, though I did it all the time when I worked in the bakery, but what would I do with the hundreds of pie shells that would be the result?!

The hardest part was finding the corn starch. I looked and looked in the flour aisle, with no luck. It took 2 employees to find it for me, so I didn't feel so badly about my finding skills :-).

I had today off from work. I went and got my check and finished up my birthday shopping: Allie, Katie, and Benjy, who I was surprised to find out has his birthday on June 9, not the 3rd or 5th as I thought.

Well, I am off to make my pie. Til next time!