The Land of Ozz

May

A good friend recommended this schedule. It was published back in 1983 by Fullgrowth Ministries of Tulsa, OK. Here is how that publication recommends you use their schedule:

If you follow this plan devised by Fullgrowth Ministries of Tulsa, Oklahoma, you’ll read the New Testament through twice and the Old Testament once during the next 12 months.

The plan recommends that you do your reading at a specific quiet time each day. If you miss a day, continue with the current day’s reading and catch up when you have extra time. After you finish your day’s reading, mark off that day.

The Old Testament portions are presented as nearly as possible in chronological order. Passages from prophets are included in the historical narrative where they were given, they are often given in a single day’s reading.

You’ll encounter Psalms throughout the year. Frequently, a Psalm that fits a particular passage has been placed with that passage.

As you enter the New Testament, you’ll read Luke and Acts first, then the letters - with periodic passages from other Gospels - and, finally, Revelation. Thus, the story of the life of Christ is constantly related to your Christian life.

I want to add how very important it is that you follow the guidelines given to read the passages for the date given and catch up when you have time. I have tried reading catch up stuff before the current day’s reading after a family crisis took me away from reading for a couple of days and it just didn’t work.

I have provided here the reading for the month of May. The photocopy that I have says that this schedule is copyrighted by Fullgrowth Ministries, but it also says, “feel free to re-print this chart for use in your church, Sunday school, or just to give to friends.” You are my friend if you got this far into this post. I hope this blesses you as much as it has my wife and me. I do plan to post each month’s schedule from the chart before each month begins in the future.

You can listen to some of my readings from the Bible on The Living Bible page of this blog. Thanks for visiting.

I found a short and very nice review of my blog on a new site called PostScripts:A Lowcountry Blogshere Hotspot. I was sifting through my traffic statistics late last night and found several referrals from http://www.postscripts.typepad.com/lowcountryblogs/ . It appears that this blog is associated with the The Post and Courier Online also known as Charleston.net. Here is what they had to say about The Land of Ozz:

The Land of Ozz. A Christian conservative father from Goose Creek who works as a network security engineer. Nicely constructed, with clean About page, Bible verse of the Day, clear statements of purpose.

I greatly appreciate the kind words about my blog. I am adding a link to my blogroll for these folks. You should check this site out if you are looking for local blogs from the Charleston, SC area. Another local blogger is helping spread the word of a Charleston area blogger gathering. Here are the details as written by Joan Perry of Walk This Way:

WHAT: Local blogger get-together/party/dinner
WHEN: 6 p.m., Tuesday, May 16
WHERE: Toucan Reef restaurant at Aquarium Wharf (on the water behind the IMAX)
WHY: This is Charleston. Since when does anybody need a reason to socialize?

Heather over at Moncks Corner Moments found out about the Postscripts site the same way I did by sifting through visitor logs. I saw that she dropped me a comment in my last post to give me a heads up about the PostScripts site.

It is a beautiful day in the Creek and I hear my little one waking from his nap. We have to get back outside to the awesome 70 degree weather. I have the whole day with my boys while Mrs. Ozz takes a well deserved day off to go to an all day crop to catch up on some scrap booking.

I finally found a big issue that La Shawn Barber and I disagree on. That is no big surprise since there is not a single person on this planet who I agree with on everything. That includes myself. That said, my opinion on this subject is subject to change, but not likely.

There has got to be a middle ground on this immigration issue. Too many of these people have come to this country searching for a better life. That is the same thing many of our ancestors did a few hundred years ago. Our ancestors busted in on the natives of this land and now treat them like second class citizens at best. Why do so many hard line conservatives want to just pass over this tidbit of history? I guess it was okay back then.

The legalist in me would say, “They broke the law so ship their tails back to where they came from.” The Word of God in me says to lean on the “Golden Rule” and treat them how I would want to be treated if I found myself in a similar circumstance. Many of these illegals were just trying to survive by coming here to the United States. It is entirely possible that many illegals may have not even been aware of the laws they were breaking before coming here, but somehow found their way in because some guy said, give me so much money and then get on this truck if you want a better life. Our country’s failed security system then allowed them in. Does that make it right? No but it does not make the solution any less complicated. It is easy to sit behind a keyboard and come up with blanket solutions to problems that you have no real idea of the human impact.

Let’s consider a mother who has three children ages 5 years, 3 years, and 6 months old? She entered this country illegally as a child and has been working as a migrant worker for several years of her adult life. She met an American-born man and even though they never marry they do have these children together. One day she gets a knock at the door because her neighbor reports her as a possible illegal. The authorities then take the woman away and deport her to her country of origin. The rest of her family who came to the USA with her when she was a child are still in the USA. She now finds herself in a foreign country, relative to where she has lived most of her life, without her children or their father.

Now put yourself in that woman’s shoes and think again about how we should deal with illegals. This is just one small but very real example of what will happen if we just start shipping out all the illegals. It is just wrong to have a hard line attitude against illegal aliens. Yes, it is wrong (ILLEGAL) for them to be here, but does two wrongs make it right?

Many of the illegals in this area of the country are Hispanic. I know people who employ some of these “illegals”. I have even know at least one illegal alien myself who admitted that he was illegal to me. I would have never known if he had not told me. Hispanics are more loyal and they work harder. Those who hire illegal Hispanics and have hired legal white, black, or other US citizens have echoed the same story. Would these Hispanics be as hard of workers and as loyal if they became legal? Who knows if being illegal really has a bearing on their work ethic, but the fact remains that they do work harder and they are more loyal to the employers I have talked to.

Now with all that said, what should we do? I would recommend that there will be a grace period when illegals can come to the table to get legal. While that is happening there should be some serious improvements in border control. At the end of the grace period the hammer should drop. At that point anyone who is apprehended and found to be illegal should be deported immediately.

I realize that there are methods of entering this country legally. My hat goes off and I sing praises to those who have endured that process. Are my suggestions fair to those who went by the book to become legal before this point?  No, but  unfortunately life is not always fair and those who have stood in line to get legal documentation to be in this country will just have to suck it up WHEN the current illegals get a shot at amnesty. How that will happen I do not know, but I believe it should and will happen.

Here a few links from La Shawn here and here and Michelle Malkin here that show where the big conservative bloggers stand on this subject. At least these are the ones I watch.

A homeschooler AnnaRose Wright of Bozeman, Montana won the State Spelling Bee in 41 rounds. That was 25 rounds head-to-head with Tim Best of Joliet after the other 63 contestants fell out the competition. Happynews.com has the complete story. Chalk another big win up for the home school gang. YEAH!!!

I could not resist this one. This post was made at 01:23AM on 4-5. It is a variation of the time and date combination that many others have been talking about today. Tonight the time and date can be displayed in a unique way that we only get to see every one hundred years. At two minutes and three seconds after 1AM it was 01:02:03 on 04/05/06.

I promise that I did not email Michelle Malkin about this today.

Some high school students from the local Charleston, SC area are one step closer to receiving settlements from several lawsuits that stemmed from a 2003 drug raid.

“There would be two classes under the proposed settlement. The first class would be comprised of students who sued or required medical or psychological treatment.

The second class would be other students who were in the hallway at the time of the raid. Jekel estimated that those in the first class would receive $11,370 while those in the second would receive $6,025…

…Fourteen officers and a dog took part in the sweep in Goose Creek, a bedroom community of about 29,000 about 20 miles northwest of Charleston.

The case drew national attention as a result of the videotapes. The Rev. Jesse Jackson led a protest march amid accusations blacks were unfairly targeted…(Source)

Stratford High School is one of two public high schools in Goose Creek, SC. The school principal resigned a few months after this raid.

Today a Charleston TV news WCBD 2 reported that approximately 140 students will actually receive compensation from this settlement. This count is much different from the initial reports that every one of over 2500 students on campus at the time of the raid could receive compensation.

Read my previous post on this story.

It appears that Dateline NBC is about to stage some kind of sting on NASCAR fans. Dateline is said to be “Looking for Muslim Males to participate in NBC Dateline Segment” to draw “discriminatory comments or actions while being filmed.” There are copies of a couple of emails that are said to be moving between Dateline producers and possible actors for the sting. The content contains a couple of hilarious comments. One says the “Nascar event (and other smaller events) in Virginia” are possible targets. LOL!!! These folks obviously have never been to a NASCAR race. The head count at a NASCAR race can reach far into the six figure range. The other funny item in these emails is the following statement:

“I have been talking with a producer of the NBC Dateline show and he is in the process of filming a piece on anti-Muslim and anti-Arab discrimination in the USA.”

I am no English major, but “anti-Muslim and anti-Arab discrimination” implies that they looking to build a story on people who take action (discriminate) against bigots (those who are anti-Muslim). LOL!!! They are having a hard enough time writing an email. Their sentence is a double negative. I believe they meant to say they want to do a piece on people who are anti-Muslim. They could have said they are filming a piece on discrimination against Muslims and Arabs. Oh yeah there’s one more. NASCAR is an acronym, not a proper noun. I know, I am not one who should be correcting anyone else’s English. I just couldn’t resist.

I got wind of this from Michelle Malkin’s blog here and here.

I have an idea as to what NBC might be up to. It is no secret that many long time NASCAR fans grew very unhappy with Sunday afternoon race coverage when NBC took over coverage of half the season in 2001. Here’s a little poll that I found of 439 people responding to how displeased they were with the NBC coverage of one particular race in 2003. You can do a Google search on “NBC NASCAR coverage ____” and fill in the blank with your own slang verb. It would be hard for NBC to admit that they just couldn’t cover NASCAR the way the other networks did it for years. Maybe NBC is trying to gather some dirt to use to justify distancing themselves from the NASCAR scene at the end of the 2006 season.

A December story said, “NBC has withdrawn from negotiations to continue as a NASCAR television partner beyond the 2006 season, opening a door through which ABC/ESPN may walk to return to the sport, The Charlotte Observer has learned.” (Source)

La Shawn Barber has posted an I am not who you think I am post. Let’s just pray that this really is a joke. Could something like this really happen? I know it could because I run another blog by another name. It is nothing bad and nothing I would be ashamed of if I got outted over there. I just started it as an experiment to see how other bloggers would react to different approaches when requests came in for trackbacks or link exchanges. La Shawn’s blog is way more popular and she has been published and interviewed in too many places to have got away with something like this. I am Hank Osborne. I promise.

For me April 1^st marks a sad day in my history. This is the day that I buried my dad in 1990. He died of suicide by way of a self inflicted gunshot wound. He was a Baptist preacher at the time. That is just a tiny bit of my true story. Many people find it a miracle that I will even step foot into a church. Now look at the faith I have in God.