February 11, 2006

A Stringer Fish

A breath of chilly air blew against me. As I pulled my coat tighter against me, I surveyed the lake. “I can’t believe that the trout can survive in this muddy water,” I thought.

This pond had been stocked with trout a week before. I could hardly contain my joy when my friend had called and asked if I would like to go fishing at this pond. Before I got off the phone, I was already dreaming of a sizzling dinner of rainbow trout.

When the day arrived to go fishing, I packed up my tackle box and went to join my friend. Once I arrived, I was shocked at the size of the pond. It was not even an acre! Yet all these doubts of the quality of the pond dispersed when I saw people catch one trout after another. Across the pond, one gentleman hauled in six trout in half an hour.

As I rigged up a Thunder Bug, I happened to glance at the water. To my complete surprise, I saw a trout within an arms lenghth away from me. To further this phenomenon of this wary fish coming so close, it had a stringer coming through its gill! I decided that he was not going to escape the dinner table. Cautiously, I stretched my hand out into the water. I cringed at the icy cold temperature of the muddy water. Suddenly, the trout began to swim away. With despair in my mind, I made one last attempt to catch this fish. Leaning as far out as I dared, I was able to grasp the stringer and haul the fish out of the water. Relief flooded over me as I looked at my catch with victory.

After a victory picture, I put the trout in the ice chest, which doubled as a live well. Despite the fact that my I did not catch another trout that day, and my friend beating me two to one, I had a lot of fun. As the sun set, my friend and I packed up our belongings and headed home.

I thought to myself that I was willing to spend any amount of time out on the water to catch a single fish after this hard fishing winter. Then, it hit me that I still had the job of cleaning the fish, and this was to be my first time.

February 02, 2006

President vs. Emperor

If you ask the average person if they would rather be the president of a democracy or the emperor of an empire, many people would say they would like total power for themselves and so would choose to be emperor.

If you pressed them for reasons, they would say that they would like to make the world a better place. Sadly, they think that they have the ability to make the world perfect. Yet, as you contemplate human nature, you would realize that nobody is perfect nor has the ability to make the world perfect. Without a doubt, they would begin their jobs with good intentions, but most of the times power will corrupt them and their own ego blind them to the sinfulness of their actions. Paul says in Romans that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” Jesus constantly points out that no one is perfect and will not do anything good without God’s help. An example of the sinfulness of man is the invention of the plane. In their minds, the Wright brothers both thought that their invention would put an end to war. Looking back to other wars, we can see that the plane only broadened the destructive scale of them. The atomic bomb was only made possible with the use of the plane. As you can see, human motives and power are corrupted by sin.

A good thing about a democracy and a republic is that power is not placed in the hands of a single human being. This balance of power prevents anybody from having his own way. Without a doubt, his intentions might be good, but the foolishness of the idea might be clouded by his own views of his own self-worth.

So if you are asked the question if you were to be an emperor or a president, and which would you choose, think of the sinfulness of man and choose to be a president.
Here is one of my poems I wrote for school. I was extremely happy with it when I read it aloud to myself. I decided to share it online. Here it is.

Tales of the Sea

Winding down the green valley,
Flowed a brook that ran to sea,
Sang it did a merry song,
While I sat there all day long.

Tales of wonder it told me,
Of the glories of the sea.
Tales of mermaids and mermen,
Playing in their watery den.

Sadly ended that fair day,
When I quickly walked away,
Thoughts passed through my sunburned head,
Of the day that lay ahead.

- J. Hunter Quinn
-Copyright Pending-

February 01, 2006

The Obsession


I turned over and glanced at the clock. It read 3:30. I sighed and thought, “One more hour to go.” I lay in the dark attempting to sleep till the long expected moment- 4:30 a.m. In the bed beside me, I could hear my grandfather stirring restlessly, awaiting the same thing. The minutes seemed to tick slowly by; one minute seeming like a life time. Then, when I was just about to pass into dream land, I heard the long expecting noise- RING, RING, RING! Finally, the wake-up call. I leapt out of bed and hurriedly got dressed. My grandfather, with the same excited actions, got up and began to shave. Once we were all ready, we loaded up the car and drove to the nearest Love’s. What would possibly make us get up so early? That would require one simple explanation- the turkey hunting obsession.

Stopping at Love’s, we bought a few doughnuts, batteries, ice, and some tape. Happy with our purchases, (especially the doughnuts) we headed out to the hunting lease. Arriving at the gate, we got out and just stood there for a moment, soaking in the delicious coolness of the winter night and gazing at the stars. When we decided that that was enough site-seeing, we undid the gate and drove on through. Driving down the gravel road, I strained my eyes to see of there was any wildlife. Beside the cows and a single mouse, we did not see anything. We parked the truck and my grandfather handed me the shotguns, to which I held on for dear life. We quietly walked until we found the hunting blind. The dead stillness of the woods made everything a bit creepy. Crawling into the blind, we sat and waited.

In a tree beside us, an owl began to hoot. I listened and wandered to myself what the owl could possibly be hooting for. Then I sat up stiff, for I had heard the long, mournful howl of a coyote. I chuckled to myself, wandering why in the world the noise frightened me. As the minutes to dawn approached, I strained my ears to hear the desired call, the turkey tree yelp. Finally, after forty-five minutes of waiting, I heard it, the soft call of a hen echoing through the forest. Ten minutes later, as the horizon began to grow light, the roost, which we had staked out the day before, exploded with the calls of wild turkeys. Slowly, one by one, the turkeys began to fly down from their roost, landing in the field in front of us. I knew that any moment now the turkeys would begin to walk towards the feeder (in Texas it is legal to shoot a turkey at the feeder). My teeth chattering with excitement, I watched as the turkeys began to approach the feeder. I scanned the flock to see if there were any good sized toms within the group. To my disappointment, there were none to be seen, just hens and jakes. The flock of about thirty warily approached the feeder. Looking about them and seeing nothing, they rushed all at once to the feeder. I slowly raised my gun up to my shoulder and picked out a nice sized hen. I took aim and waited for her to raise her head. I waited and waited, and not once did she raise her head. Suddenly, I heard my grandfather fire three shots. The quiet scene before me exploded in wings, feathers, and yelps. When the scene cleared, I saw three hens struggling on the ground. My grandfather and I jumped up and collected the turkeys. After tagging them, we crawled into the blind and waited awhile longer.

At 8:30 a.m., I began to grow discouraged, thinking we wouldn’t see any more. Then, across the field, I saw four turkeys warily walking across the field towards the feeder. They stopped frequently, stretching their necks looking for any signs of danger. My grandfather had gotten his limit, so I had these birds all to myself. As the birds drew nearer, I saw that all of them were toms, BIG toms. I shifted by gun up to my shoulder and waited. When the toms reached thirty-four yards, they stopped and eyed the feeder and the blind suspiciously. I could tell that they saw me and were just about to run for it. So, with my adrenaline pumping through my body and my blood as hot as a red fire poker, I picked out the biggest one, looked down the barrel at his stretched out neck, and pulled the trigger. I was blinded for a moment by the smoke, which quickly cleared. I let down the gun, and to my complete excitement, saw the bird flopping where he dropped. I rushed out of the blind to look at him. He sported a six inch beard and half inch spurs. I was extremely excited, but that goes without saying.

My grandfather and I both decided to call it quits. So, after plenty of pictures and the messy process of cleaning the turkeys, we loaded up the truck and headed down to the local restraunt to eat lunch. We both had an excellent time and look forward to the next hunting trip, when the obsession calls.

Comfy Communism

During the last few weeks, I have been studying communism. I have noticed that during the Cold War, many of the government officials were relatively light on communism. For instance, during World War II, Stalin, the leader of the USSR, insisted that the U.S. and Britain should open up a Northwest front to take the pressure of the war off him. It is pretty easy to see why he would say this. Constantly thinking of his own power, he wanted all of Eastern Europe for Russia. He knew that communism would flourish in these poverty-stricken nations. Churchill, ever wary of Stalin, pleaded with Roosevelt to invade Greece, preventing Russia from having a monopoly. Sadly, Roosevelt, not wanting to disappoint a fellow socialist, decided to invade Northwestern Europe, dooming many people to a life of misery.

What is communism? Well, communism is a long-hoped-for Utopia where the state runs a perfect society. Because man is sinful, Christians know that this will never be possible until Christ returns. Communism is the eventual end of socialism. Webster’s dictionary defines socialism as “Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy.” Even more chilling, the second definition says “The stage in Marxist-Leninist theory intermediate between capitalism and communism, in which collective ownership of the economy under the dictatorship of the proletariat has not yet been successively achieved.” After reading the second definition, you might make the connection that the American government strangely matches up with the second definition. The American government is slowly gaining more control over people’s lives. Many laws interfere with the family responsibility of raising up and training their children. Christian’s who homeschool their children are constantly under government pressure. In California, a school was going to hold a seminar on intelligent design of the universe. Yet under legal pressure, was forced to cancel it.


If you do a little bit of studying and reading, you can see that many people are sacrificing their freedom for safety and comfort. When we get rid of our freedom, we give it to the government, which in turn has more control over our lives. As Christians, we need to make sure we do not give up our freedom to worship God in exchange for our own comfort.

The Monster of Yourself

Have you ever read the books The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Frankenstein? If you have, you will have found that there are some very interesting comparisons between them.

I will begin with the book Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. In this book, Shelley tells the tale of the Dr. Frankenstein who discovers how to create life out of non-life. He creates a monster out of dead body parts. After he creates him and the monster comes alive, Frankenstein flees in horror. He hears nothing of the monster’s whereabouts for two years, until the murder of his brother. In frantic horror, Frankenstein is convinced that the murder is the monster. Several months later, he meets the monster, who tells him his tale. The monster sadly explains how he was good and perfect until society corrupted him. He asks Frankenstein to create a female partner for him. Angrily, Frankenstein refuses. After several complicated events, Frankenstein’s whole family ends up getting murdered by the monster. At the end of the story, when the doctor’s death occurs, the monster blames his behavior on society, which treated him cruelly, breeding hatred for his creator.

In the book The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, Stevenson writes of a well-to-do doctor by the name of Henry Jekyll. Dr. Jekyll is obsessed with the idea of taking the wicked part of a person and the righteous part of a person and turning them into to separate beings. After some difficult research, Dr. Jekyll concocts a potion that can separate these two characters of man. Greedily, Jekyll drinks it, and instead of becoming a righteous being liked he hoped, he created the purely wicked Mr. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll is thrilled with the outcome and drinks the potion a second time and returns to the form of Dr. Jekyll. Realizing he could go freely between his to forms, Jekyll dons the form of Hyde to do wicked deeds. One night, Hyde murders a famous Member of Parliament. When Hyde returns to the form of Jekyll, he vows never again to become Hyde. Yet after a few months, he becomes Hyde without the potion and stays Hyde. Frantically, Dr. Jekyll realizes that he is not able to return to the form of Jekyll. When the law finds out Mr. Hyde is hiding in Jekyll’s room, they go in pursuit of him. Sadly, the tale ends with Dr. Jekyll committing suicide.

In the two books, you will find two worldviews being presented. The worldview of Frankenstein tells us that man is basically good, yet was corrupted by society. The worldview of Hyde proclaims that man is a sinful, fallen creature. As you study history and the Bible, you will see many examples of sinfulness. Pure logic tells us that man is wicked and in need of a savior. The good news is that we have been purchased by the blood of Christ. The Hyde worldview begins with the bad news that man is sinful, yet it ends with the good news that we are saved. The Frankenstein worldview says that man is good and is corrupted by society. If all is left to man, then we should have shivers to the marrow of our bones.

So, which monster lives within you, the basically good monster, corrupted by society, of Frankenstein, or the monster of Hyde, sinful, yet saved? Decide for yourself.