Professional Sports

The world of professional sports boggles me. Maybe it is the state of our society that bothers me more, but because professional sports is the perfect example of what is wrong with society, they are the perfect thing to lash out at. Professional athletes get paid an outrageous amount of money to play a sport. I understand that at times it can be difficult, you can even get seriously injured doing your job. Many professional athletes are A-holes who cant manage their money and usually screw their lives up with it. I work in a field that is extremely underpaid, all the while meeting people who work in different agencies that are trying to shape and change our future. These organizations are usually understaffed and underpaid. Society makes shelters for abused and neglected children to feel better about themselves and yet dont pay attention when these shelters close because of lack of funding or the people who work there are not committed to it in the first place and are only working there to get a pay check. The people who have the experience and patience to work with this population are out trying to find the higher paying jobs so these CPS workers, shelter workers, Case management positions are being filled by inexperienced workers (mostly) just trying to get the next paycheck. If our society cared as much about its future as it did about its entertainment, then the people who are trying to save the future should be valued more that the people who just entertain us. I cannot sit in front of a TV and watch these bafoons tramp around in an arena or on a field the same way anymore. By supporting it I feel like I am saying it is ok. It is not ok for children to fall through the cracks of a system that no one is paying attention to. These shelters never have enough beds. Workers have to fight to get referals from the money-source to get kids out of abusive home and into shelters because they dont want to pay the prices of puting this kid up in a shelter. Most atheletes will make more than I could even dream about this year and I work in a system that has to fight for funding to get a child into a safe place. Because these places pay so pathetically, these places arent even really safe anymore. Take a kid out of an abusive home so they can go to an abusive shelter? What is wrong????

Wary of Worship

I have been chewing over worship and worship styles for probably the last six months. I know what kinds of worship services I enjoy and what types I dont enjoy. But it bothers me that I can go to a place and be involved in worship and then walk away and know that I was not lead to really worship, or there was something going on that really hindered true worship. What is it? What is worship? What is "needed" in order to worship? It is wrong if I am unable to come to a place of true worship in all kinds of worshipping environments, if there are not doing something unbiblical or heretical? What if the music distracts me, or the musicians distract me, or the music is not congregational friendly? Am I being caught up in something that is really not important and it is my fault that I find some of these things a hinderance? For the last few months, I thought I was worshipping. It was a different place and a different experience, I was trying to adjust but felt I could fall before God no matter what the music sounded like or how loud things were. But after a few months I realized I was thirsty for worship? I didnt understand how that could be, I was currently involved in worship, yet I was hungry for worship. I went as a guest to a new place and found that I was able to fully let go and worship God again. At that point I realized I had not been worshipping in my other environment. Something is off, something is hindering me. So thats why I wonder, what really makes up worship, what elements are needed? Is is possible for something to be wrong or missing and it is a hinderance? Or is it me?