Pyrex does not mean invincible

So this week I am going to use a demonstration in Sunday small groups that involves fire and a glass bowl. You see, I am going to attempt to describe the differences between having your light at the core of who you are and having the light "fire-up" during events (like the Fall Retreat) and fading quickly afterwards. To do this, I was going to have a candle and a bowl of what looked to be water but actually contained rubbing alcohol, and then light the candle and the bowl and the bowl would die-out much more quickly than the candle. So I was testing to see how much alcohol I would need in the bowl.

So I barrow a glass, PYREX bowl from my mom, and place it on the kitchen table while my dad sat at the table watching TV. I called MAP into the kitchen with Allison to "see something cool." I put a little water into the bowl and then placed some alcohol into the bowl (which should float to the top) and then strike a match and have this cool flame come from the bowl. Every attempt at adding any water and lighting the bowl on fire failed, so I tried it without any water at all and put pure alcohol into the bowl.

This worked, and it worked well. The fire looked really cool. I let it sit there and burn for a long time to see how long the fire would last. MAP and Allison were in a daze staring at the dancing flames spewing from the glass bowl. After about 5 or 10 minutes, I realized that the fire was actually making the nice, clear bowl turn brown. All was going well, until I did something stupid. While the fire was still blazing, and the bowl was extraordinarily hot, I preceded to pour cold water directly into the bowl. For those of you who don't know, NEVER let glass go from one extreme temperature to the next. After a few short seconds of hissing sounds of the extremely cold water hitting the extremely hot glass bowl, and loud BANG sounded out and the bowl exploded into a billion pieces.

Fall Retreat 2004 was great! Agent Smith (played by John Carr) was plastered all over the place from banners hung from ceilings, slides on the big-screen and of course the official Fall Retreat DVD which was the "E! True Hollywood Story of Agent Smith." I might send that into E! and see if I can't get a job doing that. Just kidding. I hope to post some of the video stuff here on the website once I get it exported and everything.