UPDATE: And just that fast, it seems to be back up again. Early reports on Twitter indicate that it only went down for Comcast users.
I know this is crazy sounding, but Google has actually gone down. (Twitter users confirm.) I have no idea how long it will stay down. It may actually even be up by the time I publish this post, but I haven’t been able to get to Gmail or google.com. Blogspot seems to be running very slowly, and worst of all, my sites that implement Adsense are loading very slowly. If others are having this problem as well, it could mean there are millions of websites on the Internet that are nearly inaccessible.
I was walking home from an early meeting this morning when I thought to myself, “Well, it’s a balance.” I was thinking about my responsibility to serve and care for those around me. In other words, I was saying to myself, “Yes, you need to serve people, but it’s a balance. You can take that too far.”
Then I realized, Jesus wasn’t balanced. Jesus was on a radical mission, living as a wandering teacher and prophet who was crucified because he upset the religious establishment.
When we think about serving God and serving others, we like to look at the times that Jesus stepped back from serving to pray or to spend time with his closest friends. He did this in spite of the fact that there were unmet needs among people around Him.
But there are two things that make this different than our situations.
First, Jesus stopped serving to pray and to fellowship with and teach the people closest to him. NOT TO WATCH TV!
Second, Jesus practiced balance in a radical context. As I said before, He was on a radical mission. He was out to redeem the world and restore the broken relationship between God and creation. He consistently lived that out. He had no permanent home and spent his life serving others.
We want to practice balance in a life of incredible comfort and ease. We want to go to work and come home to our comfortable and luxurious surroundings and not be bothered. (Yes, my small, old apartment is luxurious by most of the world’s standards.) We want to spend our weekends lounging around and caring for our own “needs.” And then we’ll throw in a little service. If we’re asked to do more we’ll say, I’m already serving, and…
It’s a balance.
I recently started a political humor website at http://politiclolz.com, and I could use your help.
To be successful, I need visitors. To get visitors, I need to tell people about the site, but more importantly, I need those people to tell people. If you’d be willing to help, I would be most appreciative. You can do any or all of the following, and they should only take a few minutes.
- Share the site with your friends by posting it on Facebook and/or Twitter.
- Become a fan of PoliticLOLz on Facebook.
- If you know a reporter/blogger/social media personality that might be interested in the site, either let them know about it or pass their information on to me.
- Post a link to and/or review http://politiclolz.com on your blog/website. It would be even better if you use either of these titles for the link: “Funny Pictures of Obama” or “Funny Pictures, Political Cartoons.
- “Sign up for a StumbleUpon account and do a review of the site there. I’m hoping to get the site featured on their home page.
- Finally, visit the site! And if you want, flex your funny muscle by captioning some pictures. Bookmarking the site and subscribing to the RSS feed are much appreciated as well.
Thanks so much for taking the time to lend a hand!
