Revelation 18

Hey everyone!

I am not going to go into detail about how I am so incredibly sorry for not having blogged in so long because I just know I will have to make the same speech again...

and again...

and again.

So for the last 6 months you have been receiving posts from me.  Daily posts.  Hourly posts.  Is that to hard to imagine?

I have just gotten involved in a Bible Study and it is very good.  Last night as I was doing my S.O.A.P (the form this particular study uses to break the passage up, etc.) I was getting really confused.  It was Revelation 18, and I just wasn't getting anything!  I asked my sister what she had gotten from it, and she replied that she had only skimmed the passage, and had done her S.O.A.P on another verse they assigned.

If that worked for her, that was fine, but I wanted to know about Revelation!  It is so confusing, and yet very interesting.  Fascinating.  I wanted to know what it meant!!!!!!

So I decided to bring out trusty homiletics.  When I started doing it, I understood it so much more!

Here is my paper:

Revelation 18:

V. 1-2 Powerful Angel from Heaven proclaimed:  Babylon has fallen, it's a place for demons, foul spirits and unclean birds.

3-5 All nations have sinned and become rich with her, but stay away, so you don't sin, because God knows and will punish.

6- 7  Do twice what she did to you.  For all she party's and brags, she will have that much in sorrow.

8.  Her plagues will come strong in one day.

9-18  All earth will mourn when she is destroyed, but only for her stuff!

20  people of God: "Rejoice!  Revenge is sweet :)"

21  Angel throws rock in the same way Babylon will be thrown.

22-24 Nothing can be heard.  Merchants and sorcerers deceived everyone.  Prophets and saints died.

I don't know what Bible Scholars get out of this.  I'm not one.  I am just a 13 year old girl who is trying to get something out of the Bible that will apply to her!

And I got something :)  Please read this:

V.   ^{9And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning,}

 ¹⁰Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come.

 ¹¹And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more:

 ¹²The merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all thyine wood, and all manner vessels of ivory, and all manner vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble,

 ¹³And cinnamon, and odours, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men.

 ¹⁴And the fruits that thy soul lusted after are departed from thee, and all things which were dainty and goodly are departed from thee, and thou shalt find them no more at all.

 ¹⁵The merchants of these things, which were made rich by her, shall stand afar off for the fear of her torment, weeping and wailing,

 ¹⁶And saying, Alas, alas that great city, that was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and decked with gold, and precious stones, and pearls!

 ¹⁷For in one hour so great riches is come to nought. And every shipmaster, and all the company in ships, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea, stood afar off,

Sorry this is in the King James version.  I didn't want to type all of this, so I got this portion from an online Bible site.  Really handy!

Read over this.  Babylon's "friends" are mourning for her, right?  Sounds like a nice thing to do, right?  Look closely.  What exactly are they mourning for?  

The loss of her GREATNESS and her STUFF!  Merchants and sailors can't get rich off of her anymore.  No one can buy from them.  That is what they are sad about!!!!

I put it in a parable to explain it to my sister.  It really helped her get it!

                                              The Rich Business Man and his Sorry Doom.

Once upon a time there was a rich business man with lots of friends.  He was very charismatic and won the hearts, souls and body's of everyone he met.  He had so much of everything, lots of gold and silver, precious jewelry, fancy clothes, A huge house made of fantastic and expensive woods and metals, so much cologne,  the best food in the land, and only the finest cars.  He had everything he could ever want, he was the life of a party, and everyone loved him.

Well, not everyone.  Mr. Businessman cheated and murdered people.  He partied to much, and certain people hated him.  

God warned him "Your sins are piling up in Heaven.  You will lose everything in a day, and will have as much sorrow as you have parties to brag about!"

Some people took heed to God, and stayed away from the man.  But most people, including the business man himself, ignored God, and continued to live their lives in sin.

One day, the stock market crashed.  Mr.  Businessman went home to find his house had been robbed, his fancy cars were gone, and there was a foreclosure sign on the door.  In his sorrow, he went to all the homes he had partied in, but they couldn't even recognize him and they shut the door in his face.

He was so distraught he didn't even realize what he was doing, and that night he died.

His friends cried mourned, saying "We will never go into that huge house again, or have a big party that none of us could afford, or ride in his limo, or ferrari or any of his cars!  We can never get rich off his business deals, or eat his food, or be popular with all his friends again!  Woe, fine businessman in your designer clothes and diamonds and pearls!  For in only an hour you have nothing!"

But the people he killed and cheated rejoiced, because God had justly punished her.

My application:  Babylon (Mr. Businessman)  was evil.  She had everything you could want, threw big parties and people became rich off of her.  It seemed like everyone loved her, but when she died, all they did was cry over her stuff!

What so people think of me?  How will they remember me?  Does God genuinely shine through me, or do people only pretend to like me for what I have?

These are all rhetorical questions by the way :-)

I encourage you (yes, YOU) to study this passage on your own, and tell me what you got out of it.  But you will have to comment on my Facebook page, because I cannot get my comments to work!

Thank you for reading this ridiculously long post!

Luckily, my burn from all that sun turned into a tan...I told Chrissy it would!

Hi everyone!

Do y'all know that I have moved??? Across the country??? Yeppers, my new home is several hundred miles away from the original Hundred-Acre-Wood.

I use that for my I'm-sorry-I-have not-blogged-in-forever excuse. Does it work for you?

Now for the news:

We moved March 15 into the home of our friends, the Chrissy-Robbinsons. We live in a 5 bedroom house with one uncle, 5 children, my set of parents and Chrissy's mom, 2 cats and 3 dogs that hate each other. It has been very interesting...luckily we left the 23 surviving fish back home to be taken care of by a fish rescue center. Otherwise known as our local pet store.

However, the excitment is never ending. How many of you live with your best friend????? I am sure that if I could see you, my faithful readers, that I would not see very many hands up!

Chrissy, Piglet and I went camping with our club over the weekend!!! It was AWESOMENESS!!!!!!!!!!! I am a teen this year, so I got to go to the Teen Zone and do the Teen Challenge! MWAHAHA!!!

There was a giant zipline, a drama ministry and the evening and morning worship. Bible bowl and parades, good food and FOOD FAIR! was all so much fun!

I will save details and pictures for a later post... and I WILL get back to blogging! I just got a Facebook, and that's where I've been spending all my time!

Now I have some strawberries to pick!

Excuses, Excuses...

Hi peoples!

I know, I know. I have been really bad about blogging! But you see, I have a huge line of excuses, such as:

I am not even in the same state (then again, I brought my laptop and have Wi Fi)
My time is split in between bunches of people wanting to see me, not to sound braggy (but, I have had plenty of my Facebook and e-mail, time)

Let me think...

And Lissa is icing a birthday cake!

(I threw that one in because my "huge line of excuses" is running out...)

I'll be back, don't worry. I have a lot of things on my mind right now. But I will be back.

Just to throw in another obscure fact, I have stayed up past mid-night every night since Friday of last. Mostly around the 2:30/3:30 central time.

"I can't believe I'm saving you after you tried to kill me!"

Do any of you recongnize this quote?

Yes, it is one from Ella Enchanted, the movie. You really should read the book, though. The movie may be funny, but the book is just plain awesome!

Nighty night night!

Marina

Did y'all ever notice how cute Puss-in Boots is? His voice does not suit him, though. He needs a cute little kitty voice, don't you agree?

Here we are, practicing for the "Iron Man" race. You started outside, swam back-stroke to the black line, breast-stroke to the inside line, free-style to the black line, breast-stroke to the outside line, choose-what-you want to the black line, then you went

under and held your breath to the finish-line.

Our pre Iron-Man picture.

As you can see, Eeyore is holding up bunny ears behind Roo.

The black wall thing-y that you swam under to get outside. SO COOL!

Here is the indoor part of the pool. To get to the outdoor half you swim under that black-wall thingy (or you could just use the door, but who wants to do that?)!

Sorry 'bout the kind of confusing way the pictures are set up. I am still working on learning how to put pictures on the blog.

I am watchin' Shrek the Third. Whatcha doin?

Why I may have a future as a waitress, after all!

Hey y'all!

We had a lot of fun at our trivia night Saturday night. Two triva nights. My church's youth group, G3, or God's Glory Group, had a trivia night, but my Pathfinder club had a trivia night the same evening. So my family split up and my brothers and Daddy went to G3 and my Mama and sister and I went to Pathfinders because we had jobs to do there.

I was a waitress.

Many of you are probably gasping and shaking your heads.

Because most of you have probably heard my Mama's stories about her brief and humiliating stint, as a waitress.

And let me tell you something.

I inherit my Mama's waitress skills... Or, more accurately, lack of.

We were assigned table numbers. I was number 3 and had no one at my table yet. I thought it would all be easy, until people started showing up.

Well, there were only two people at my table. But that was plenty for me, let me tell you.

Me: "Hello, my name is Marina and I will be your server today. Can I get you anything to drink?"

Lady: "Yes I would like something with caffination, carbination, and lots of sugar!"

Man: "Water, please."

Me:"I will be right back with that, then..."

Trip as I go up to the counter. I was very clumsy yesterday. I get up there and look around.

Me: "Excuse me, but we don't seem to have anything with caffeine. Perhaps we have some in the 'fridge?"

Cook (looking at me like I am crazy): "Do you think we want a bunch of hyper teens? Of course we don't have anything with caffeine!"

I walk back to my table.

Me: "I am sorry, but we don't have anything with caffeine. Can I get you something else?"

Lady (with a "your crazy" look) "I will take some Dr. Pop, then."

Man: "Where's my water?"

Me: "Oh! I will be right back with Dr. Pop and some water!!"

Go back to the counter. After grabbing a water, looking around for some Dr. Pop and finding none, I ask Cook if she could get me some from the refridgerator.

Cook: "We don't have anymore."

Me (after I get back to my table): "I'm sorry, but we don't have any more Dr. Pop. Here's your water, sir."

Lady (giving me another "your-crazy" look): "No more Dr. Pop! Well, get me something brown and with lots of sugar."

Me: "Umm, okay!"

Now anybody who knows me knows that I wandered around the pop for what seemed like hours before my pineapple brain realized that sugar + brown makes Root Beer. Thankfully when I brought it back to her, she was pleased.

Pathfinders got to play trivia and serve tables in-between rounds. The first round talked about TV shows and movies and stuff like that. Again, everyone who personally knows me knows I live under a rock and that I won't know any of these particular answers. I was sitting next to a TLT (Teen Leader in Traning) who clearly has cable and watches this type of movie. He answeres a question, looks at me and says:

TLT: "Have you seen that movie?"

Me: "What movie?"

TLT gives me an "are-you-serious?" look.

Me: "Oh THAT movie! Uhh, no."

TLT gives me another "are-you-serious?" look. Through out the night I get several more "are-you-serious?" "and are-you-crazy?" looks, in addition to the four I had already gotten. I forgot to give a water bottle to a customer for three rounds and I re-told the lady we had Dr. Pop, forgeting that we didn't have anymore.

But I did get some compliments, too. From the same TLT I got ten "points" and a high-five for guessing (corectly ;o)) the word laryngitis (he guessed strep throat) and a compliment (of sorts) from him and another girl saying that I was very mature for twelve. And, as I was apologizing for forgeting the man's water for the second (or was it third?) time, he simply smiled and said

"That's OK, you're a lot of fun."

So, I may be a crazy pineapple who deserves all those "are-you-serious" and "you-need-to-think-these-through-more" and "your-excited-your-able-to-open-a-can?" and "you-run-really-funny-and-can't-kick-a-kickball-straight" looks.

But I know the word laryngitis.*

And I (can be) very mature.**

And I'm fun.***

Unique, one-of-a-kind, slightly dorky, very pineapple-y fun.*****



-**-*** I did not write this post to be braggy. No, you can see that from the first part of this post. I wrote it only to try and explain my craziness and the blank looks people give me all the time.



**** And, in case your wondering, I am fresh pineapple-y fun; not canned pineapple-y fun. Huge difference.

Amazing what I can get into...

Guess what?!!!

An ICE CREAM TRUCK JUST WENT DOWN OUR STREET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ahh, I finally live on a street with an ice cream truck!

That was all.

Lamberts, Dead Fish, Overnight Trip. You Are Now Caught Up!

Hello snowed-upon-Maconites and non-snowed-upon-Missourianites!

I would love to blame my lack of blogging on being on a trip, but that trip was only one night, two days.

But the trip was a lot of fun. We woke up at five-thirty to leave, and then drove in the car doing schoolwork and watching movies in turn until around three-o'clock.

Then the fun started. We went swimming in the most wonderful pool! Which was half-indoor half-outdoor! It was so much fun! And it had an awesome hot tub! That, when you flipped a switchy-thingy, bubbles came on! Full force!

We dragged ourselves out of the water at dinner time. Actually, we were sorta glad to get out. Because we got to go to Lamberts!!!!!!!!!!

So after we stuffed our faces full of yummy dumplings and meatloaf and chicken and hamburgers and, of course, fried okra and fried potatos, we went home happy with lots of leftovers. But what's a fancy dinner without ice cream?!

So we stopped at a ice cream parlor. Which of course, was delicious. And we went home and watched Little House on the Prairie re-runs. By then we were exhausted, and drifted happily off to sleep...

The next morning we ate a big breakfast, did some school, got in a final hou of swimming and headed out the door. It was so sad to get into the car, so we went to a honey-tea room and ate some candy.

Oh, and Daddy texted me! Can't you just imagine my excitement?

We went to a Chinease buffet for dinner. And we went home and went to bed.

The end...

Not really.

When I walked in the door, I greeted the kitties, and went to check on our new fish.

I regret to say, not one, but two fish layed on the bottom of our tank.

One of them was Baby Kraken, which was the smaller version of Kraken, the biggest fish in the tank.

And you know who the other one was.

Yes, Zoe Blue the II was flushed away last night. Single teardrop.

Not that I want to leave you with that sad note, but my time is up. I will get some pictures up of the awesome pool and Lamberts.

So long farewell, a...Oh!

Forgot to mention, if you look at the time my posts are, well, posted, they are two hours ahead. I really don't post at six-thirty, am.

Someday, I will have another Dwarf Gourami, and I will name her Zoe Blue the III

Guess what?! Eeyore got a late-birthday present!! And it really was quite wonderful!


He got a tank of twenty-six fish! I tried to get some picture up here, but Blogger is acting up.



My favorite fish is Zoe. We need to get her a friend; she just hangs out by herself next to the heater.



Then there is Molly the Malli. Our Guppies, Two Fin, Puffer, and Goldie, love her! They won't hang out with any Malli but her!

Wait, big news, just in...

Molly the Malli is'nt a Malli. She's a female Guppie!!! The other three are male!!!

That explains a lot. ;O)


More big news in, this one is tear-wrenching. Zoe will probably die. She seems so sad, and her friend died less than a month ago. She stopped eating, and the lady we got her from says that they stop eating and generally a week later they die.

She is my favorite.

He still says "tray" like "tway" though

Ya'll'll just die of shock when you here this. My little, baby brother just turned eight! That means he is officially a big kid!

Sniffle.

A schedule of our morning:

7:30 Wake up with Eeyore screaming into my ear that it's Roo's birthday and time to wake up. 8:00 After dragging ourselves out of bed, we eat doughnuts for breakfast. Very substantial. Roo opens his present from us. A Clone Walker. He is a major Star Wars Lego fan!


Went to Bible Study. We have some friends there who brought Roo a present and cupcakes. So sweet!


Roo says:

"Umm, Grandma Gee Gee and Grandma Debbie and Gramppa Val, thank you for my birthday money!"

"Thank you for the Hail fighter droid and Spider Droid, friends!"

"Thank you, Auntie Missa, Uncle Howard and Kathewin (Katherine)!"

I'd love to know what books y'all are reading! Or, at least, telling yourself you will sometime get around to reading, which you might do someday...

I've been tagged to do this thing. It seems like it would be fun.

Here are the rules:

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages)
2. Open the book to page 123
3. Find the fifth sentence
4. Post the next three sentences
5. Link back to the person who tagged you
6. Tag five people

Alrighty, let me find a book...Aahaa, here we are!

The book happens to be the Two Princesses of Bammarre by Gail Carson Levine. You really need to check out some of her books, if you hav'nt already.

Anyway, page 123, fifth sentence.

Addie is on her quest. Rhys has come to give her some vital information on dragons.

"He crouched next to me."

Hmm, the suspence builds.

"They're solitary. They dislike other dragons and hate all other creatures."

Exciting, huh?

The person who tagged me does'nt actually know me. Her name is Mrs. Megan Fried Okra, and you can find her right over here at http://friedokra4me.blogspot.com/ Bonus: she's southern. And she lives now in the mid-west! Just thought that was a neat little trivia fact.

I will tag the people I know definitly read my blog. Grandma, Chrissy-Robin, and Bri. If you are happening to be in a nice mood today, and are reading my blog, go ahead and send me an email with this on it, okay? It takes like, five minutes, unless your not big on reading and spend a lot of time trying to find a book!

Puh-lease?!!

God-ly friends

Hi guys!

I just got done talking to one of my best friends on the phone. Chrissy-Robin and I talk a ton, email and visit each other for weeks at a time. We have known each other for five years, and we love each other like sisters. We are still the best of friends, even when I moved seven hours away and we only got to see each other three times that year.

But there are some things we just don't agree on. Like whether the word Applachian is pronounced Apple-a-chin or Apple-A-shin; or whether Primer is pronounced pri-mer or pry-mer. Sometimes, its on issues like if those pants go with that shirt, or whether purses and make-up are cool.

One of the issues we don't exactly agree on is religion. I don't believe that Jesus will come back in the same way she does, and she doesn't believe about the Sabbath the same way that I do. But either way, we are still best friends! We still both eat sandwiches, even if she likes ham and I like turkey. We still both like American Girls and Barbies. We both still like to lay in bed at night, talking tell we drift to sleep at sleep-overs.

The main thing is we both worship the same God, we both believe Jesus will come back, and that the only way to heaven is by accepting Him as your Savior, which we have both done! Thursday night we were talking on the phone. Somehow the subject turned to God and the end times. We both expressed our views on the subject, and then came to this conclusion: Jesus is coming back. Maybe one of us is right. Maybe one of us is wrong. Maybe we are both wrong on some points and both right on others. But we need to respect each others view points and know certain things about each other's beliefs on that subject. If we were missionaries in another country, that is exactly the skills we would need to survive! We would need to build friendships with the people we are witnessing to, then start to talk to them about our religion. But to do that we need to respect them!

That is what I got from our conversation. Maybe Chrissy-Robin got a different point. I would like to hear your view on the subject. I don't really know how to work the comments :o) but please send me an email with your belief about approaching other people, believers or non-believers, about the end-times, or any doctrinal thing. I am so glad I have friends I can talk with about God. Really, it is fun to debate on things like this!

Days in the Hundred-Acre-Wood

Today has been a pretty good day, though kind of gloomy outside. Everybodys school is done and we are just kind of relaxing.

Eeyore, Roo, and Piglet are playing cars on the floor. Its really wierd, even my dad gets into playing with toy cars! He went out and bought us a long plastic track to race on; we had this little board that was really hard to drive on before. We all sit on the floor for hours racing our cars and laughing like crazy!

I am the oldest kid. I live with my dad, "Rabbit", my mom, "Kanga", and my sister and brothers, "Piglet", "Eeyore", "Roo," (they named themselves, trust me!); and my darling (though kinda sick at the moment) pets, Bobby, Clifford, and Chippy. I am totally, definitly, "Pooh"! But the name Pooh is so...

Anyway, I wanted to start this blog to keep in touch with all of my friends, because we moved a year ago, and I have been really, really, really bad about writing. So maybe this will help me out a little.

It will also be a record for pictures and videos and such. This Autumn our computer crashed and with it went all of our pictures and videos from the last year!! So I will have to keep this blog updated with pictures. All of us in the Hundred-Acre-Wood and our friend, "Chrissy-Robin" (she's a girl, so we are going to have to change that slightly!) made movie remakes of Little Red Riding Hood and Repunzel, which were also on the computer. If we ever get them back, I will have to show them to you, they are hilarious!

So I hope you enjoyed this first post. I am still learning to write, so hopefully this will also be educational.

Oh, and you might be wondering about the blog name. A few months ago I decided that our family needed a business, and a hooligan care would be just the thing! My dad would be the CEO, my mom the COO, and we would be their first hooligans! The name I made up is kind of catchy, if I do say so myself. So I made it a blog! icanhazfriendz is just something I made up.