February 25 – “In the Real Real Real World”

It is possible that this requires somewhat of a spoiler alert, so … read on at your own risk.

I don’t know how many people are into watching the TV show Marvel: Agents of SHIELD, but for the show’s sake, I really hope the creators of the movie The Matrix are not among them.  We watched an episode last night that rang more and more familiar the deeper into the story we got.  It took me a while to make the actual connection, but suddenly, there it was.  People are hooked into a machine that creates for them an imaginary world that feels completely real.  Meanwhile, in the “real” real world, people are fighting to overthrow the evil overlords who control the simulation.  Now the SHIELD version tries to explain the “science” involved more than Matrix did, but that just clouds the actual story line thievery.  If I was on the jury of a lawsuit about this one, I’d have to vote in favor of The Matrix. 

Speaking of monetary gain and loss in the real “real” real world, I finished putting together our income tax documents.  Good news and bad news, I guess.  Glad to be done with it, but dreading the news regarding how much we will owe.  I haven’t yet gotten brave enough to do the Turbo Tax thing.  All the rules about pastor salaries and self-employment requirements are just way over my pay grade.  I send our info off to the company that has been doing our taxes since the 1980’s (with a brief hiatus when we lived in Colorado).  We would love to find someone here in town in whom we trust (No, I don’t usually say “in whom” but auto-correct was rabidly insistent, and in this case perfectly correct.  Thank you, Mrs. Marchand, and Jr. High English teacher and Mrs. Roberts, her high school counterpart, for infecting me with a sense of the correct in word usage) and who is comfortable with and experienced in all the nuances of pastoral taxation, but so far we have come up empty-handed.  Recommendations will be accepted …

1 Thessalonians 5:14-15 says, “And we urge you, brothers, warn those who are idle, encourage the timid, help the weak, be patient with everyone.  Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always try to be kind to each other and to everyone else.”

Father, thank you for my old teachers who obviously had some long-term effect on me.  See?  There it is again – “effect’ rather than “affect” – I can’t get away from it.  Amen.