You thought you were busy

I know that I said I wouldn't blog again this year but I couldn't resist showing everyone this:Santa According to An Engineer

There are approximately 378 million Christian children in the world according to the Population Reference Bureau. At an average census rate of 3.5 children per household that comes to 108 million homes, presuming that there is at least one good child in each.

Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west. This works out to 967.7 visits per second. This is to say that for each household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh; hop out; jump down the chimney; fill the stockings; distribute the remaining presents under the tree; eat whatever snacks have been left for him; get back up the chimney; jump into the sleigh; and get on to the next house.

Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations, we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household--a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks. This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second--3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run at best 15 miles per hour.

The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set weighing two pounds, the sleigh is carrying over 500,000 tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the flying reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount, the job can't be done with nine of them--Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth, the ship not the monarch.

Six hundred thousand tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance--this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip.

Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of acceleration from a dead stop to 650 miles per second in one-thousandth of a second, would be subjected to centrifugal forces of 17,500 g's. A 250 pound Santa which seems ludicrously slim would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4.3 millions pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo.

Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.

Merry Christmas!

I know Dan Sawyer would enjoy this!

PJ

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Well today is the last day I will Blog until 2007. It has been an amazing year at Life Church. When I look at what God has done in only one year around here, I'm humbled by His goodness. I'm not just talking about having a new building although that's great. But I'm talking about all the new people that God has brought into the life of our church. It says in The Bible that God will build His church and He has truly done that this year. I love the fact that I look forward to seeing everyone every week, it really feels like family at Life Church.
To all those who have served so faithfully this past year, I say thank you, because without your help and vision this could not have happened.

I want to tell you one story that will highlite the goodness of God in our church. On Monday I received a phone call form Colette Myers who works at Tribute communities. The folks at Tribute had a Gift exchange They were supposed to buy each other toys, and then donate the toys to charity. Well after they were done exchanging gifts the person in charge of the gift exchange asked if anyone knew of a charity that they could donate the toys to. Colette suggested Life Church. To make along story short we had hundreds of dollars worth of toys dropped off at the church on Monday (see pic).
Last night Christa and I had the privledge of dropping off some those toys to families that could use the help. It was awesome. We also got to donate a lot of the toys to Roy and Jen Hyde. They are going to deliver those toys to the children that go to Glen St. School. (the poorest school in Durham). What an awesome Christmas opportunity this has turned into. All because the folks at Life Church are willing to partner together to see great things happen.

This Christmas I want to wish all of our Blog-nation a very Merry Christmas. Make sure you show the love of Christ to those you meet this year.

Merry Christmas

PJ

Pic's with Santa

Well, we are down to the crunch time of Christmas, and I know that we are all really busy probably too busy to be reading blogs. So today for your enjoyment I have put our kids picture with Santa up for display. This one turned out OK! If you have any pictures with Santa, feel free to post them on our Flickr photopage!

Merry Christmas from Abbi, Andrew, and Aiden

PJ

Getting the point!

I had this story given to me the other day I think it's makes the point of Christmas very clear.

A woman was out Christmas shopping with her two children. After two
hours of looking at row after row of toys and hearing them ask for everything
they saw on those many shelves, she was feeling the overwhelming pressure
that so many of us feel during this holiday season, and was relieved when she
finally made it to the elevator.

When the elevator doors opened, there was already a crowd of people in
it.But determined to get this day over with, she pushed her way into the
elevator dragging her kids and packages.

When the doors closed she couldn't take it anymore and stated, "Whoever
started this whole Christmas thing should be found, strung up, and
shot."

From the back of the elevator everyone heard a quiet calm voice
respond, "Don't worry, we already crucified him." For the rest of the trip down,
the elevator was so quiet you could have heard a pin drop.

Don't forget this year to keep the One who started this whole Christmas
thing in your every thought, deed, purchase, and word. If we all did
it, just think of how different this whole world would be.

Don't lose the purpose of Christmas in the preparation for Christmas!!

PJ

Christmas Spam!

I hate spam! I get at least one hundred spam emails a day! Now I must admit that most of those emails go to my bulk box and I never see them, but once and a while they get through. I think my least favorite type of spam is the bate and switch spam. The ones that when you first open them they look like an email, but then they switch to an advertisement about stock. Honestly why would someone do this as a form of advertising? Who in their right mind would want to invest their money into a stock option that was advertised through spam? Even if the product was legitimate, the advertising would make it seem fake.

Sometimes in the church we have been guilty of spam marketing. We have been masters of the Bait and Switch method. We put on an event and advertise it as a fun event with free food and lots of fun. So people come expecting that, but then once we get people in the doors, we tell them about how they need God or else they are going to hell.

Now the gospel is the greatest truth that could ever be shared, but sometimes we cheapen it and even cause mistrust towards Christianity by our spam!

Make sure that you share the truth in love this Christmas. The best way to share the gospel with people is through relationships. So have someone to your house this year, not to convert them, but simply to love them. Someday you will have the opportunity to share your faith, but don't force it, let the Holy Spirit do His work.

Don't send out spam this Christmas!

PJ

High Definition Faith

Last week Shannon and I bought our Christmas gift for each other. We decided to purchase a new High Definition Television. Now this TV is extremely cool, because the picture is so clear you can see every detail on the screen. When your watching football you can see the blades of grass, hockey, the scares in the ice from skates. It's really cool.

It's funny but I never knew how unclear my picture on my old TV was until I saw a High Definition TV.

I think my faith journey is similar to shopping for TV's. You think that you have it all figured out. You think that you finally have a clear picture of who God is and then something will happen, and you realize that your knowledge is still so limited and there is so much more to know. Even David knew that God was so big he could never grasp all of him.

I look behind me and you're there,
then up ahead and you're there,
your reassuring presence, coming and going.
This is too much, too wonderful
I can't take it all in! Psalms 139:5-6

So Maybe the point isn't to have the whole picture but just to allow the picture to get better all the time.

I want to know God in High Definition!

PJ