In my campaigns, we use a variant rule that allows “overflow” damage to cleave through adjacent enemies when using heavy melee weapons. For example, say you hit a kobold with your greatsword and do 11 damage. The kobold only has something like 5 hit points, so you can make an extra attack against an enemy adjacent to the kobold (in your reach, of course). If this attack hits, you apply the remainder of your damage. This continues until either you miss an attack roll or run out of damage from your initial attack.
Last week I needed to work in PowerShell on a set of remote machines.
No problem; the machines had ssh installed!
First problem: SSH dumps you into a command prompt, not PowerShell, so you need to run powershell on login every time.
Thankfully, ~/.ssh/config (since version 7.6) has an option to do this:
I am reading portions of Makers of Modern Strategy: from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age and the first truly striking observation I have is that modern American society’s conception of a “professional soldier” differs greatly from the historical definition.
From personal experience, I would guess that the average American thinks of “professional soldier” as synonymous with “mercenary”.
The truth is exactly the opposite.
The military revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries was a movement away from mercenaries, who were considered ill-disciplined because of their propensity to “mutiny, desert, or defect, paralyzing operations.”
In place of mercenaries, governments began to focus on first militias and then standing armies of their own citizens.
The pivotal ideas behind this shift were “the need for discipline and the notion that society had a military obligation.”
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I present to you clear and convincing evidence that Randall Munroe is wrong on the Internet.
As Exhibit A, I present to you the comic above, wherein he labels it both “Lawful” and “Good” to shepherd ones’ as-yet unused eggs into the middle of the carton.
He further asserts that splitting eggs as evenly as possible between each end of the carton is “Neutral” but “Good”, and that somewhat evenly distributing the eggs throughout the carton is also “Good”, if “Chaotic”.
Gemini is a lightweight internet protocol for something simpler than the web.
Drew DeVault has been chattering about it quite a bit lately; I decided to put up a server.
From his blog:
Some people argue that what we should have is “the web, but less of it”, i.e.
a “sane” subset of web standards.
I don’t agree (for one, I don’t think there is a “sane” subset of those standards), but I’ll save that for another blog post.
Gemini is a new medium, and it’s different from the web.
Anyone who checking it out should be prepared for that and open to working within its constraints.
Limitations breed creativity!
So yeah, I had this drafted weeks and weeks ago and I kept thinking I would rewrite it to not be just bullet points.
I decided the bullet points work fine.
See the title for my conclusion (after working really hard to like AsciiDoc…).
asciidoc is in the Arch repositories, so I installed it.
However, hugo hard-codes the options it passes to external generators, and the options it uses for asciidoc don’t work on my system.
Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came up to him with her sons, and kneeling before him she asked him for something.
And he said to her, “What do you want?”
She said to him, “Say that these two sons of mine are to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom.”
Jesus answered, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink?”
They said to him, “We are able.”
He said to them, “You will drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.”
And when the ten heard it, they were indignant at the two brothers.
But Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them.
It shall not be so among you.
But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
So, we’re the ones who, with an incredible sense of timing, scheduled a major kitchen renovation right before the coronavirus pandemic hit.
Here we are, first-time homeowners for a couple of years, ready to replace the cabinets which are falling off the walls.
And now we’re trapped here with the kids and no kitchen.
I’m washing the dishes after dinner tonight in a comically tiny bathroom sink.
All I can think of is how thankful I am to have running water.
And electricity.
And heat, when it’s been chilly lately.
Missional, evangelical Western churches use the word “unreached” to denote an ethnic people group among whom fewer than two percent of the people profess to follow Christ.
The idea is that these are the ἔθνεσιν (ethnesin) of Matthew 24:14.
“And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”
May the LORD answer you in the day of trouble!
May he send you help from the sanctuary and give you support from Zion!
…
May he grant you your heart’s desire and fulfill all your plans!
May we shout for joy over your salvation, and in the name of our God set up our banners!
…
O LORD, save the king! May he answer us when we call.
Once upon a time I was an air assault helicopter pilot.
The patch I most liked on my helmet looked liked the words above.
“Fear Not”.
Those words appear all throughout the Bible when God speaks to His people.
People He’s chosen.
People who love Him.
People who are receiving the great gift of salvation.
I am constantly wondering about churches, plural.
What does that mean?
Galatia is pretty big, so I suppose I can cling to the idea that Paul is
writing to all of the different gatherings of the church in many different
cities of the region.
But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his
grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him
among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with anyone…
I don’t think Paul has gone mad.
Even now, in America.
There is no worldly reason to honor the emperor, but there are godly ones.
We honor him in the understanding that we, too, are sinners.
This honors God.
We honor him as practice of righteous humility.
This honors God.
We honor him as a method of understanding our relationship to authority.
This honors God.
We honor him, solely and only, as a member of fallen humanity, made in God’s
divine image.
This honors God.
And Moses said to Aaron, “What did this people do to you that you have
brought such a great sin upon them?”
Exodus 32:21
I have wondered the same thing.
What is the difference in how Moses is looking at things and how Aaron is?
A few verses earlier, God says to Moses (paraphrasing), “Get out of my way so
I may destroy them. Then I’ll make a nation out of you!”
Moses declines.
He argues for the people, standing in the gap (Ezekiel 22:30) before the LORD.
He thinks nothing of the fact that God might replace all of Israel with just
the descendants of Moses, which would have elevated his own position
considerably.
(Weirdly, we have to assume this is God’s plan from the beginning — for
Moses to prove his loyalty in this moment; for Moses to dissuade God from
changing the whole course of history.)
[A]nd they saw God of Israel.
There was under his feet as it were a pavement of sapphire stones, like
the very heaven for clearness.
Exodus 24:10
Somehow in all times I’ve read the book of Exodus, I never noticed this before.
The elders of Israel see God.
The best they can come up with to describe the experience is a paving of
perfectly clear sapphires under His feet.
And they don’t die (in fact it says they dine (sorry, I couldn’t resist)).
This was a really interesting juxtaposition which I didn’t even catch until I
sat down to write tonight.
The Ten Commandments and beginnings of the Law, and the Sermon on the Mount.
Wish I had something interesting to say about it but I don’t, other than bravo
to the people who generated this reading plan!
We often celebrate the Sabbath as a day of rest.
I celebrated it this weekend by blowing leaves (and playing video games).
I read this passage Saturday and I wondered what the Israelites thought of the
Sabbath requirements.
I think it must have seemed onerous to them because they needed to get things
done.
They needed to feed themselves (and their households, and their animals); they
needed to keep the fires burning, they needed to draw water.
So it is not merely a day of relaxation.
It is a day set aside to honor God, specifically by trusting Him rather than
worrying about what isn’t getting done.
In time, Jewish tradition evolved (following the example of the manna) of
getting everything prepared the day before so that as little as possible went
undone.
But still, there is the worry that I could be using this time to get ahead for
the next day.
Or, I could be doing that one project, or I could be investing this time for
my own good elsewhere.
The Sabbath is about honoring God.
Lift up your staff, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it,
that the people of Israel may go through the sea on dry ground.
Exodus 14:16
On dry ground.
Not “on the seabed” or “through the mud”, but dry ground.
God does not work miracles halfway.
When we think of Moses parting the Red Sea, we think of water standing up,
colossal towers of sea piling up on either side of the path.
Maybe we don’t think enough about the LORD removing just enough of the water
from the mud of the sea floor, about Him getting every last drop on every last
rock so that not one Israelite got their feet wet (or at least so they didn’t
need to).
God thought not just about the spectacle, but about the details, the needs of
His people.
And he cared for them mightily.
The locusts came up over all the land of Egypt and settled on the whole
country of Egypt, such a dense swarm of locusts as had never been seen
before, no ever will be again.
Exodus 10:14
Even when God works using earthly means, He shows his supernatural power.
The enormous clouds of locusts we see in BBC documentaries are scary, but they
are nothing compared to the swarm God brought against Egypt.
Our God is an awesome God.
We often talk about the Exodus as a metaphor for deliverance from sin.
Something I think we don’t explore as often is the metaphor of the Israelites'
bondage in Egypt as sin.
The people of Israel go into Egypt willingly, for their own good —
God prepares the way.
They prosper.
History is forgotten, and the Egyptians hold the people of Israel and force
them to act against their will.
The people of Israel could not have simply left.
Despite their numbers being so great that the Egyptians feared them, they could
not have taken over.
They were human, and the great loss of life, the destruction, and the fear that
would go with it were too great a challenge for the people to overcome.
They did not want to be in the situation any longer, no matter how good it had
been for them at the first.
They could not save themselves.
For am I now seeking the approval of man, or God?
Or am I trying to please man?
If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.
Galatians 1:10
Passages like this always feel like a particular challenge to me.
I want, oh so desperately, to be liked.
To be admired.
Even when I am acting seemingly contrary to the opinion of those around me, I
feel in my heart I am doing it because it will result in someone’s opinion of
me increasing.
I cannot imagine a way to not want people to like me.
I know that all things are possible with God; I also know that God works as He
wills and not always in a way that makes sense to us in the moment.
“All things are lawful”, but not all things are helpful.
“All things are lawful”, but not all things build up.
Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor.
I Corinthians 10:23-24
Acts 7
Jacob steals his brother’s birthright and blessing.
The Israelite patriarchs sold their brother into slavery.
Reuben defiles his father’s marriage bed; Judah neglects his daughter-in-law and consorts with prostitutes.
Moses commits murder, and argues with God against his own calling.
The Israelites of the Exodus forget God and go after idols.
Aaron gives way to peer pressure and makes those idols.
Solomon is seduced away from God by his many concubines.
The Pharisees of Jesus’ day preferred their earthly prestige to Christ’s salvation.
The crowds stone Stephen and Saul holds coats.
What are we choosing instead of God today?
And Israel said to Joseph, “I never expected to see your face; and behold, God has let me see your offspring also.”
Genesis 48:11
Jacob (Israel) puts his hands on the “wrong” grandsons when blessing Ephraim and Manasseh.
Joseph tries to correct him.
I don’t know whether to be surprised by the great impacts that small change had many generations later, or to simply chalk that up to cultural truths in ancient Mesopotamia.
I just heard a pastor preach on these passages last week.
He said that Joseph plays games with his brothers to hide his own emotional pain.
I can see that pain.
Joseph was ripped from family by his brothers’ disdain and anger (which was not undeserved).
His brothers were hurt by their father Jacob’s obvious preference for Joseph (and Benjamin).
In my own life, I am one part of a family that has been ripped apart, and often I am the only connection between two (or three) warring factions.
I daydream of happy reunions and forgiveness….
And Judah replied, “Let her keep the things as her own, or we shall be laughed at.
You see, I sent this young goat, and you did not find her.”
Genesis 38:23 (Emphasis added)
What a picture of the human (my own) response to sin!
What a caricature of human-centered “repentance”.
Judah does not even recognize his own sin in the matter of Tamar and his sons.
Then he compounds it by going whoring.
Then he tries to hide it, not because he is afraid of God’s justice (though hiding it would be futile then anyway).
He hides it because he’s afraid for his own reputation, and he follows that up by blaming his servant for not finding “the woman”, and “the woman” for disappearing with his things.
Reading Genesis forces you to understand humanity’s sin nature.
Jacob coerces his brother Esau to gain the birthright.
Rebekah deceives her husband to steal Esau’s blessing for Jacob.
Laban deceives Jacob and withholds Rachel from him.
And this is all just within the family.
I am so blessed to have the family that I do, even with all our struggles.
Abraham said to him, “See to it that you do not take my son back there.”
Genesis 24:6
LORD, see to it that I do not take my sons back into sin.
Other Thoughts
In John 11:39, Martha tells Jesus that Lazarus has been dead four days.
Where is he during that time?
We often make the assumption that Lazarus was saved; how could he not be?
If he was in heaven while in the tomb, why does Jesus weep?
Of course He weeps in sympathy with Martha and Mary, but would He not have said something?
I don’t think I understand this passage.
Thankfully I think I understand enough: the end of time will not be pleasant, and I can only be saved by God’s choice.
I pray, God, that you shorten the time of deception (verses 20-21), and that you add my name with my children and my wife and all those I love and many, many more to your book of life.
“But those tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’”
Mark 12:7
We know who Jesus is.
That is why we despise Him.
Not because we don’t understand that He is the Son, the creator of the universe, but because we do, and because we think we can overthrow Him.
Jesus has ordained the colt to be ready at the necessary time.
He has ordained that the bystanders will question unknown men walking off with said colt.
And He has ordained that the disciples obey his words to the letter in their answer.
It never ceases to amaze me that God ordained us and our actions into His plan.
What happens if the disciples dither, or answer in arrogance, or strike the rock instead of speaking to it (Numbers 20:11)?
What happens if we don’t open our mouths, or we don’t bridle our tongues (James 1:26), or we don’t season our speech with salt (Colossians 4:6)?
God’s will is not contingent on our obedience (water still comes from the rock), but our place in His work is (Numbers 20:12).
Figuring things out is the glory of kings (verse 1).
Don’t reveal other people’s secrets (verse 9).
It is not good to eat too much honey,
nor is it glorious to seek one’s own glory.
A man without self-control
is like a city broken into and left without walls.
If you are setting your mind on the things of man (life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness), you may not be setting them on the things of God (which included death, imprisonment, and suffering for Jesus and many of his disciples) (verse 33).
Mark 9:1-13
I never noticed that right before the transfiguration, we find out that people thought Jesus was Elijah or one of the prophets (Mark 8:28).
Then — at the transfiguration — we see Jesus with Elijah and Moses.
The implication is that Jesus is not Elijah or Moses, and that He is greater than they are.
Jesus is far more than we imagine.
All that the people of Judah had to do was follow the LORD’s commands.
And they didn’t do it.
They refused to believe that God had something better for them than what they could see for themselves.
They blew it.
If you faint in the day of adversity,
your strength is small.
Proverbs 24:10
THS (Tiny Heart Syndrome), right there in Proverbs.
Christ did not faint in the day of adversity.
He did not come down off the cross and save Himself.
He did not walk away from the love He shows toward us.
While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
This proves God’s love for us.
Jesus orders the disciples away to a desolate place because they don’t have time to eat (verse 31).
Take time to eat.
But an amazing thing happens.
They never make it away from the crowds, and eventually Jesus feeds not just the disciples but the crowds as well!
Do you trust Christ to give you your food at the appointed hours?
Do you not need to, because you are not laboring that much?
I don’t think I would do very well being rejected by my friends and family (verse 4).
How painful that is, that no one listened and everyone thought You strange and arrogant.
Jesus tells his disciples to find a house to stay in, and not keep moving around within the same town/area/“there” (verse 10).
Is this an indication that we’re meant to build a single congregation in any physical/geographic location?
It might be a stretch to claim that the disciples were “starting churches”, but wouldn’t our churches be stronger if they were united?
There’s a legion of demons in this man.
They are controlling him, and no one can subdue him.
They ask Jesus’ permission to go into some pigs instead.
That is weird.
They are in control of an uncontrollable man, and yet they cannot overstep Christ’s authority enough to take over some pigs.
Christ’s authority is absolute.
Complete.
Even over the demons.
Not, “the sower looks for good soil,” or “the sower carries a bag of seeds around in case he sees a perfectly tilled empty farm plot.”
The sower sows the word.
How have I sowed recently?
Good soil hears, accepts, and bears fruit.
What parts of God’s word am I not accepting?
Do I truly believe that serving God is better than my job (and the money I make from it)?
Is it better than my family?
Is it better than my church?
How does serving God lead me into being a part of the church?
Should I change the name of these posts from “Quiet Time” to “Question Time”?
“But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man.
Then indeed he may plunder the house."
Mark 3:27
The parable speaks of the devil.
Christ has bound him, and plunders his house, stealing us.
Some horrifying implications here: without Christ, we are the devil’s.
Some joyful implications here: the devil is bound, and now we are Christ’s.
Drunkards and gluttons have the same end (verses 20-21).
I feel like verses 27 and 28 perfectly describe pornography and the modern smartphone.
Proverbs 24:1-7
Twice (Proverbs 23:17 and verse 1) in this reading, we are warned not to envy sinners.
In what ways am I guilty of that?
Sometimes I look at my bank account and daydream about how much higher the numbers would be if I had not tithed for the last n years.
I wonder what it would be like to not have a sexual conscience.
I think about how much worldly good I could achieve if I had more focused time.
None of those things are worth it.
The less I envy those who lack Christ, the better off I will be — and the more likely I am to share the good news of His love with them.
I find this passage relatively straightforward, and yet somehow I don’t understand it.
What is the new wine?
What is the old garment?
Why was it OK for David and his men to violate God’s law, but not Uzzah (II Samuel 6:6-7)?
Mark 3:1-19
Jesus is grieved at our hardness of heart (verse 5).
Jesus does not heal the paralytic because the man needs to be healed.
He forgives the man’s sins, because the man needs forgiveness.
Then, Jesus heals him.
To make a point.
What we need is not worldly healing (though that’s awesome).
What we need is forgiveness; the blood of Christ, covering us and washing us clean.
What we need is to be right with God the Father, at peace with the creator of the universe.
Jesus is pointing us to that truth.
Paul writes this letter to Philemon, Apphia, Archippus, and the church in their house (verses 1-2).
I wonder what their relationship is, that the three of them share a house?
In any case, Philemon gets all the credit — I’ve never noticed the other names here before.
I also find it interesting that here again is a church “in [their] house,” again meaning a congregation that meets in their house.
How does the early church decide who will meet where?
Is it geographic?
Is it based on relational networks?
Is it professional?
Some mix of the three?
Am I a member of “older men” (sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness, verse 2)?
Or younger men (self-controlled, verse 6)?
Probably both.
Certainly there appears to be some sort of process of sanctification at work here given the large disparity in expectations.
If we are not moving forward in our love for God and for our neighbors, we are probably missing something.
God’s grace is training us (verse 12) to become the people God expects us to be.
Do you see a man skillful in his work?
He will stand before kings; he will not stand before obscure men.
Proverbs 22:29
Want to impact the world from the very top?
Do excellent work.
Proverbs 23:1-16
Do not withhold discipline from a child;
if you strike him with a rod, he will not die.
If you strike him with the rod,
you will save his soul from Sheol.
Paul instructs Titus to appoint elders in every town (verse 5); the set of qualifications (verses 6-9) he gives is pretty comparable to the set given in his letter to Timothy.
I am particularly interested to know how the local churches were separated geographically; this seems to imply that each town had its own church with its own leadership.
In America, each town has several “churches”, each with leadership — even the smallest town is likely to have at least two churches, because in America we just don’t get along with our neighbors.
We think we have to have perfect theology coming from the pulpit (even when we don’t understand it).
We think we need the best combination of musical style, cultural appeal, and childcare availability (even when we don’t volunteer to do any of those things).
We want to be with “our people”, whatever that means.
I feel this way sometimes.
Lover of self.
Lover of money.
Proud, arrogant, and abusive.
Ungrateful, unholy, heartless, and unappeasable.
Slanderous, without self-control, brutal.
Reckless.
Swollen with conceit.
Loving pleasure rather than loving God.
LORD, please forgive me for I am an unclean man.
I do find it encouraging that Timothy was “from childhood … acquainted with the sacred writings,” (verse 15).
Sometimes I feel like less of a Christian because I don’t have a dramatic conversion story.
I grew up in the faith, and while it certainly becomes more real to me daily, there’s no “before” that I can remember.
But Timothy is the same way.
He grew up in the church.
He became a laborer and a pastor.
He served God well without some incredible origin story.
…for which I was appointed a preacher and apostle and teacher…
II Timothy 1:11
Paul claims three of the spiritual gifts listed in Ephesians 4:11.
I tend to disagree with the idea that these “APEST” spiritual gifts are the “only” or “main” gifts.
It seems to me that these are gifts for the leadership, “to equip the saints for the work of ministry,” (Ephesians 4:12), meaning that the saints doing the ministry are not (necessarily) expected to have these gifts.
I do think it is interesting that Paul calls himself an apostle here; I was wondering about this tonight because I could not think of any passage where anyone other than Paul and the Twelve are named apostles.
A cursory search of the ESV on BibleGateway brings up exactly one other apostle: Barnabas (Acts 14:14).
In fact, most of the times that the word “apostles” is used in Acts, it’s paired with another word for the other saints: “except the Apostles” (8:1) “and the brothers” (11:1), “and the elders” (15:2, 4, 6, 22, 23; 16:4).
In Romans 16:7, Paul notes that “the apostles … were in Christ before me.”
So there are 14 Apostles, possibly (the Twelve minus Judas, plus Matthias, Paul, and Barnabas).
Are there apostles today?
I think it’s probably a little pretentious for anyone living in 2019 to claim to have seen the Lord, which is the qualification for apostleship that the eleven set out when selecting Matthias (Acts 1:22), and which Paul uses as part of his claim (Acts 22:14, I Corinthians 9:1).
I wonder sometimes if I stray into the “unhealthy craving for controversy” or “quarrels about words” territory (verse 4).
What is the edge of wanting to be as particularly correct as possible, versus evil suspicions and constant friction (verse 5)?
But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content.
But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
I Timothy 5:8
I look ahead in my life and I wonder how I will handle my parents’ and in-laws’ needs as they advance in years.
When is it acceptable, pleasing, or wise to consider “managed care,” “retirement communities,” or “nursing homes”?
The specter of spending all day every day caring for them is exhausting, even only in imagination.
How do we, the church, handle this, especially with parents who are not believers?
…desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.
I Timothy 1:7
So, do not be too quick or too presumptuous that you may teach.
First, understand.
This is more or less impossible for me.
My pride opens my mouth, instead of my love opening my ears (and my mind).
…who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.
II Thessalonians 2:4
This is what Paul terms, “the rebellion” (verse 3).
Man proclaiming himself to be God.
Adam’s sin included trying to become like God; this final sin is proclaiming ourselves to be God.
Honestly, it seems like this is occurring constantly.
Even in my own life, I proclaim myself God every time I act in my own will.
Every time I justify a bad decision (or a bad attitude).
God is God, and we are not.
As individuals and as a species, we would do better to remember that.
Paul and his companions boast about the Thessalonians’ faith and works (verse 4).
We ought to follow their example and boast about those who are working faithfully, as a means to “spur one another on to love and greater deeds” (Hebrews 10:24).
We should boast for the martyrs, of the persecutions they are enduring for Christ, as we are supporting them in whatever way possible.
Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, for that is indeed what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia.
But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more, and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.
Haughty eyes and a proud heart, the lamp of the wicked, are sin.
Proverbs 21:4
Elsewhere the Bible tells us that God’s word is a lamp for our feet.
The proverb tells us that pride is a lamp for the wicked.
When I am led by my pride, it is no wonder I am led into wickedness.
Paul seems so …full of himself, to be honest, at least until the end of the chapter.
I wish that all men (myself included!) could be so blameless as Paul in speaking the word and giving instruction.
…but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts.
…remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.
I Thessalonians 1:3
What was the labor of love, the work of faith, (the evidence of) the Thessalonians’ steadfastness of hope?
Paul tells us that they became imitators of the Lord (verse 6), receiving the Word in affliction and joy, to such an extent that they became an example to others (verse 7).
They “sounded forth” the word (verse 8), so that knowledge of their faith spread throughout the region.
For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.
Colossians 1:16
My Jehovah’s Witness friends never liked this verse much.
This whole passage might be one of the most direct evidences of Christ’s deity in the entire Bible, aside from John 1 and John 14-16 and a bunch of Psalms… pretty much just part of the whole thing.
that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
Philippians 3:11
That is pretty strong language from a man who once refused (violently) to even believe Christ’s resurrection happened.
Paul writes that he works to make Christ his own, because Christ made Paul His own (verse 12).
The change in Paul’s heart came from Jesus and not from Paul.
Paul achieves resurrection from the dead through Jesus, not his own works, yet he still strives so hard.
This is the model we have in Paul.
who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,
Philippians 2:6
I think this is one of the most profound statements about Christ.
He was in the form of God.
He was God, the same that was in the beginning with God (John 1:1-2).
Even though Christ is one and the same with God, He is still submissive to Himself the Father.
Contrast that with Adam (and with you and I).
We are created, in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), not the form.
We are not God, and yet Adam and Eve’s first recorded act is to decide they wanted to be God.
Or at least equal with Him.
This verse in Philippians is a summation of Christ’s righteousness that will be imputed to us: He did not try to grasp equality with God; He did not even regard it as a thing to be grasped.
We spend our whole lives attempting to find control, to create ourselves, to transcend creation.
Here is a man who was God and yet laid that aside.
What perfect righteousness is ours in Him!
Paul’s imprisonment (like everything else that happened to Paul) is for the advancement of the Gospel (verse 12).
Some of his detractors are preaching the Gospel under false pretenses, to somehow hurt Paul (verse 17), though I don’t understand what they hope to accomplish.
However, I do think it is powerful that God uses their preaching, in earnest or not, for his glory (verse 18).
I grew up in a church where (I have come to believe or understand) Christ was preached only in the context of a morality play.
But I thank God that I learned so much of scripture and so many hymns during my time there.
The LORD used that preaching to prepare me to worship Him more earnestly.
Why does Paul go on boasting when he writes, “there is nothing to be gained from it” (verse 1)?
I think he means that nothing is to be gained for him, because indeed Christ’s power rests on him in his weakness (verse 9).
It’s difficult to view oneself as strongest in the midst of “weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities” (verse 10), but that’s what Paul writes.
The Lord gives authority to apostles (and others, I believe) for building up and not for tearing down (verse 8).
And we should be careful not to compare ourselves (favorably) against others (verse 12).
I am guilty of this constantly.
It is more or less how I get through my day: “Oh, wow, such and such person is really good at X! But they probably don’t know anything about Y, or they probably never had to deal with Z.”
God forgive me for my persistent selfish pride.
Man, verse 8 rubs me the wrong way.
“These other people really love God so they gave a lot of money, and that means you should too.”
How do we deal with this?
I understand — and agree — with everything else Paul writes in the passage, but I cannot find the good in measuring myself against others.
Someone will always have given more charitably and freely than me, and from a position of greater poverty.
Perhaps that is the point; that I should not consider my own circumstances or how much I have already given when I make my offerings, but instead simply give whatever I can.
There is no point in making the comparisons; I will never have done enough.
Paul has a serious definition of endurance (verse 4-5).
How am I expressing my rights in a way that is an obstacle to others, instead of enduring as he did?
II Corinthians 7
As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting….
I think it’s very interesting that Paul feels the need to explicitly deny tampering with God’s word (verse 2).
What is it that people were accusing him of?
For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.
… But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.
The covenant of grace is so glorious that the covenant of the law, which made Moses’ face shine, has no glory at all (verse 10).
When humans read the law, they see the glory of God through a veil.
If we give our lives to Christ, the veil is removed, and we see the glory of God.
Got into a pretty interesting discussion of Matthew 18:20 today with someone who doesn’t think “two or three gathered together” has anything to do with the church.
It is eating me up that someone could be so misinformed and so sure of themselves.
I’m sure that’s the way a lot of people see me.
A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion.
Suffering in Christ is our comfort (verse 6), because in our suffering we learn to rely wholly on Christ (verse 9).
This is so wrong by earthly standards.
There is nothing worse than human suffering, as far as humanity can tell.
This is certainly the hardest teaching I can think of.
Who can accept suffering as a good thing?
Who can accept the crying of children as a way to draw us to the LORD?
God, have mercy on us that our suffering not last.
God, have mercy on me that I can accept this, even though I can only see this world.
Paul expects that the church at Corinth (and in Galatia) will support the church at Jerusalem with an offering.
It isn’t clear to me whether Paul himself expects to receive part of that offering.
But he expects them to give it.
More than that, he includes them in the work he is doing — they are “to put something aside” every week (verse 2).
So it is with the resurrection of the dead.
What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable.
It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory.
It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power.
I Corinthians 15:42-43
Paul tells us that we have no idea what our life, our bodies, will be in resurrection, but it won’t be what we are now!
Our “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (verse 50).
It’s hard to take notes on this passage because I just feel like I should copy it all down.
Perhaps I should just memorize it?
Verses 3-8 sound like a pretty good defense (or at least retelling) of the passion and resurrection.
Then Paul continues to insist that the dead must be raised, because Christ is raised.
If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.
On the other hand, the one who prophesies speaks to people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation.
I Corinthians 14:3
Recently several people around me (some whom are very focused on the APEST spiritual gifts inventory idea) have remarked to me that I am a “prophet” (under the APEST framework).
I think that this verse reminds us of the reason to prophesy (note that I mean prophesy in the “bring the Word of God to bear on a situation”, not “predict the future and win money in the stock market” sense).
Prophecy is not about making ourselves feel better than others because we understand more scriptural truth than they do.
It’s about giving them the true consolation of the Gospel.
It’s about encouraging them in their relationship with the LORD.
It’s about building them up into the body of Christ, the church, His perfect bride, equipped for every good work.
In the crucible and the furnace (verse 3), silver and gold lose their form and become the pure element of what they were meant to be.
In the LORD, I lose my individual form and impurities, becoming the pure element of who I really am.
This is a hard passage to understand in light of American christianity (small “c”).
How can there be so many “bodies” in every small town, and yet we drive across town to get to the “right” one?
I know we place less emphasis on unity than is right, but I don’t know how to fix it.
Do we each simply go to the geographically closest house of (reasonably) Christian worship and join that congregation?
How Christian (how “correct” theologically) does a body of believers need to be before we submit humbly to join them, whether they make us happy or not?
In what ways is American or western individualism infecting my sense of which “body” I’m meant to be a part of?
No one can say, “Jesus is Lord!” except in the Holy Spirit.
I Corinthians 12:3
Is this verse meant as reassurance?
Paul reminds them that once they were led astray… does he mean that they must now be in the Holy Spirit because now they say “Jesus is Lord”?
II Chronicles 32
Hezekiah trusts in the LORD but still makes human preparations.
… For why should my liberty be determined by someone else’s conscience?
I Corinthians 10:29
This sounds like exactly the opposite of what Paul said before — that I should refrain from things that, while not sinful in and of themselves, could cause others to be confused and then sin.
But Paul is still talking about the same thing here.
I think he is saying don’t worry about what you eat, unless someone else points it out to you… maybe?
It is terrifying to think that the Israelites “drank from the spiritual Rock … Christ,” and yet God was not pleased with them (verses 4-5).
With what will I please God, if not Christ?
I have no merit of my own, and indeed great sin.
I must subsist only on the security that Christ “lost not one,” (John 17:12).
From that verse in John, though, we find that Christ “lost” the “son of perdition.”
So if I am to have salvation, I must continue in Christ, bearing good fruit, instead of “thorns and thistles (Hebrews 6:8).
If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know.
I Corinthians 8:2
Ouch!
Paul really doubles down on setting the standard here; even if I’m not actually doing anything wrong, I need to be aware of how others perceive my actions.
This is doubly true when I am living in the pride of my own knowledge.
Where does this come into play?
Alcohol?
My speech patterns?
Ouch.
How is it that “the answer of the tongue is from the LORD” (verse 1)?
I know it is not from the LORD when anger, fear, resentment, impatience, and pride come out of my mouth.
On the other hand, “Out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45).
God brings all things to light, even the depths of our hearts — possibly through our speech.
To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you.
Why not rather suffer wrong?
Why not rather be defrauded?
I Corinthians 6:7
It is hopeless for us to try such a thing in human strength.
Who can ever say they would rather be wronged than avenged?
Or rather be defrauded than …raise a storm?
Yet Christ did not answer his accusers one word.
How can I set aside my rights and wholeheartedly work for the good of the body, even when I am not recognized?
When I am not treated fairly?
What claim do I have to fair treatment anyway?
This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.
I Corinthians 4:1
How do I steward the mysteries of God?
How often in my walk, especially in my judgment of myself or others, do I “go beyond what is written” (verse 6)?
Yesterday I noted that discipleship should be (at least in good measure) about making me dead.
In this chapter Paul talks about all the ways that he has become lessor in his service:
Paul chastises the church at Corinth for remaining infants in Christ, not because they have not learned about God and Jesus, but because they have “enmity and strife” (verse 3).
When we disciple, are we worried about knowledge?
Skills?
Character?
Whether they love God and love people?
How much of my Christianity is focused on making me better, instead of making me dead (Galatians 6:14; Colossians 2:20; Romans 6:2, 7, 11, etc)?
How much of me making myself better can really be called worship?
To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours:
I Corinthians 1:2
The church of God … those sanctified … together with all those who in every place call upon the name.
Struggling for months with what is the church?
What purpose and calling does the church serve?
What form should the church pursue?
This verse seems to point to the form simply being everyone who calls on the Name.
What did the church in Corinth actually look like?
We don’t see all their form and technique listed — is it because those things are secondary, and God will work in whatever way He desires to work?
What is important is the people of the church: all those who worship God in every place.
This passage starts and ends with pride versus humility.
I wonder about some of the verses in between:
The heart of the righteous ponders how to answer,
but the mouth of the wicked pours out evil things.
Proverbs 15:28
How does this manifest in pride?
I think the teacher here is saying to me that my tendency to be brusque and impatient with people comes from my pride.
And it’s sin.
Certainly I say hateful or hurtful things more often when my pride is running ahead of me — when I am either impatient for someone to get to the point or when I want to show off my knowledge.
Either way, I’m not pondering how to answer, and what comes out of it is wickedness.
No one expected the resurrection.
The disciples are hiding out, dejected and confused; the women go to the tomb to clean a dead body buried in haste.
But the chief priests… how do you have this incredible thing happen, and not just deny it but pay others to keep it quiet?
How did they think that would work?
What did they think actually happened?
How much is a “sufficient sum of money” for the soldiers to ignore what they had experienced?
The Roman soldiers mock Christ by saying, “Hail, King of the Jews” (verse 29).
The literal lowest thing to them was to be one of God’s chosen people.
They did not recognize His deity, of course, but in their minds the God of the Hebrews was disproven by the very fact that Rome (like many other nations before it) had conquered Israel/Palestine.
People who worshipped this God were worthy of scorn.
Nothing ever changes.
Ever will the world proclaim victory over God.
Ever will God’s victory over us come in the form of Christ and His grace.
Isn’t it strange that the chief priests thought it wrong to put blood money into the treasury, but not to pay blood money out?
Pilate was the only one who understood what was going on: “For he knew that it was out of envy that they had delivered Him up” (verse 18).
But even Pilate could not wash his hands of Christ’s blood.
Strange that Jesus calls Judas “friend” (verse 50). How often are we told to rejoice that Christ names us friends (citing, for example, John 15:15). All of Judas’ story is strange. How great a patient forgiveness Jesus shows in this instance. I do not mean to imply Judas is ultimately forgiven, merely that Christ gives him such grace to continue calling him “friend”.
What does it mean for Jesus to say, “For you will always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me.” (verse 11)?
Is this as simple as His body dying, rising, and being taken up?
Is He trying to tell us something about the poor, or about Himself, or both?
I wonder about the way we see tithes and offerings used in the New Testament: the general rule seems to be that these are for the poor.
Did the disciples think back to this episode when they decided how to use material gifts?
Most of what I’ve seen online says to use Oracle Java 8, but as far as I can tell, WildFly 11 runs fine on OpenJDK. Also as far as I can tell, you only need the headless version of OpenJDK. Most of the installation information is available in the WildFly docs.
Arch Linux: unneeded (the AUR package takes care of this dependency)
Set disk partitioning to Standard Partitions and automatically create partitions, then change swap and /boot to 512 MB each and set / as large as possible
Set hostname , turn on networking
Set root password
Create user, with administrator privileges
Reboot, log in as “stick”, sudo yum update, reboot
Ok, fine, I knew some of these already, but I’m no Vim Wizard. Thanks to Coderwall. If you’re interested, my vim configuration is available.
Undo, redo
u: undo
U: undo entire line
Ctrl + R: redo
Move the cursor
b: move backward one word
w: move forward one word
(: move backward one “sentence”
): move forward one “sentence”
{: move backward one “paragraph”
}: move forward one “paragraph”
^: move to beginning of line
$: move to end of line
fX: move to the next occurrence of X on this line
FX: move to the previous occurrence of X on this line
gg: move to beginning of file
G: move to end of file
Note that a sentence is a sentence-ending punctuation followed by two spaces, at least according to StackOverflow and a paragraph is a block of text separated by blank lines.
Luke 19:7 says, “When they saw it, they all began to grumble, saying,
‘He has gone to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.’”
Thank God that He came to be a guest among sinners! Sometimes I get
irritated on Sunday mornings when others aren’t dressed to my standards,
or don’t praise to my standards, or don’t fellowship to my standards…
but I don’t do any of those things to God’s standards either, and He
still comes to meet with us. Thank the Lord!
I Timothy 6:2 says, “Those who have believers as their masters must not
be disrespectful to them because they are brethren, but must serve them
all the more, because those who partake of the benefit are believers and
beloved. Teach and preach these principles.”
I have been really uncomfortable lately because most of the men with
whom I worship on Sundays and labor through the week outrank me, yet
they don’t want to be called “sir” at church. Perhaps they should simply
give God glory that I believe, and I should certainly continue to
respect them in every way and give God glory that I have bosses who
believe!
Just a quick observation today, brought on by being back in the United
States (after three years travelling the world) for almost a month:
Everyone here speeds. I mean really, constantly, without even thinking
about it. It’s just a normal thing. Seth Godin mentioned
speeding
today, noting that “rushing,” as he calls it, rarely has any
advantages and often ends in tragedy. But we all still do it in our
cars, every day, all the time.
“You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become tasteless,
how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything,
except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men." (Matthew
5:13)
What does Jesus mean by that? (Or in Mark 9:49-50, Luke 14:34, or
Colossians 4:6?)
I just sent the letter below to President Barack Obama (D), Senator John
Cornyn (R-TX), and Representative John Carter (R-TX).
I’m writing out of a deep concern regarding the upcoming bill to be
introduced by Congresswoman DeGette that will ban firearm magazines
larger than 10 rounds. My wife and I are law-abiding citizens with
military training and we each legally carry pistols for self defense.
Every single weapon we own holds more than 10 rounds in the
standard-capacity magazine that comes with the pistol. Even my
subcompact pistols hold at least 13 rounds. I cannot help but believe
that the framers of this bill are oblivious to the fact that many, many
handguns come standard with magazines holding almost twenty rounds and
many rifles have standard magazines that carry even more - there is
nothing “high capacity” about these devices. This law will effectively
cripple my constitutionally protected right to carry by banning every
single standard magazine on the market for all of the firearms I own.
Please, do the research and you will see that this bill does nothing to
deter violent crime while making it more difficult for law-abiding
citizens to defend themselves. Vote against it.
You know what really grinds my gears? I bought a new laptop four years
ago,
and now I’m in the market again, and the market hasn’t improved. Yeah,
so Mac introduced a backlit keyboard four years ago - I’m sure someone
else did it first, but it was the first one I saw - and now, four years
later, backlit keyboards are still not mainstream. My first laptop, a
17" Dell monstrosity, had a 1920x1200
(WUXGA) display.
Guess what? Today, you can get a 1920x1080 display in a five-inch
cellphone,
but there aren’t many options in a reasonably-sized laptop. If you add
those three requirements together - high resolution, 13-14" screen size,
and backlit keyboard - you’ve got a product that no one makes. That
really grinds my gears. And don’t even get me started on PC
touchpads….
The Kuwait City International Airport ranks highly among the most
interesting places on earth.
The building, certainly an architectural marvel, is neither particularly
wonderful nor particularly unique; as such, it might be at home in any
major city of the United States. Curved ceilings and tiered lighting,
Starbucks and Cinnabon facades, and a thousand Ikea-esque chairs serve
as nothing more than a simple backdrop to the sensory overload that is
the people. A group of African businessmen in Italian suits and
traditional caps crowd the check-in counter. Two men - obviously
relatives, if distant, of the royal family and marked as such by their
well-tailored white desert clothing and silvery-edged headress cloth -
bypass even the first-class only line and argue quietly with an airline
representative who asks them to wait their turn; a youth in blue jeans
and an oversized hoodie who trails behind them produces official-looking
documents from his pockets which the two wave about, demanding
recognition of their station. Women, all of whom would be dressed
modestly by American or European standards, nevertheless run the gamut
from flight attendants and tourists in pants or knee-length skirts and
slightly less than demure blouses to dedicated Muslim women veiled to
the eyes and carrying authentic Coach purses who order muffins - only
speaking to their husbands, of course - at the more expensive coffee bar
and whose hands sparkle with jewelry as they sip their lattes.
I say to you, among those born of women there is no one greater than
John…
Pretty impressive words from the Word Himself. Among those born of women
meaning among men, or among humans - John is the best example. But
what was it that made John such a great man? What was it about him that
Jesus held up so highly? I can tell you what it wasn’t - a man clothed
in finery and living in luxury (Luke 7:24) or a “reed shaken by the
wind” (Luke 7:25). No, John was the fulfillment of the role of the
prophet. His message was simple: “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is
near” (Matthew 3:2). Guess what Jesus’ message was? “Repent, for the
Kingdom of Heaven is near” (Matthew 4:17).
So, if I really want to be a man, what’s the takeaway? Should I don a
camel hair cloak and eat wild honey? (Well, I do enjoy wild honey, but
that’s not the point.) I should preach
the Gospel, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near!” It
doesn’t matter how many pull-ups I can
do, how
well you’ve trained for defensive
situations,
or how good your hair looks on the soccer
pitch
(can you tell I’ve been stuck in Europe during the European
Championships?). Let the rest of my life worry about itself (Matthew
6:25), and tell all those around me that the Kingdom of Heaven is near.
One last thing John said that I should try to emulate (John 3:30)….
“I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for
its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which
they defend.” -J. R. R. Tolkien
What’s the difference between wanting something and needing something?
Mark 12:44 is the best example I can find from the Bible. It’s Jesus'
conclusion about the poor widow who put two meager coins into the
offering box. He says that she has given more than all the wealthy with
their lavish gifts,
“for they all put in out of their surplus, but she, out of her
poverty, put in all she owned, all she had to live on.”
I found this video today and tweeted it already but I had to post it
here too. It makes me wonder about my ability to articulate the Gospel
and my faith. The best line in the video? I’ve changed my mind four
times today but I think this is it:
Sin brings death. Give God His breath back - you owe Him.
*It’s a new usual. Yes, I’ve run Fedora for the last eight or so years,
but I’ve just switched to Arch Linux in the
last month or so and I love every minute of it.
I found an article by Malcolm Gladwell this morning about Twitter,
Facebook, and Social
Activism.
There are a lot of interesting points, but the best one is about the
value of strong ties versus weak ones. Weak ties allow us to gain vast
amounts of information very quickly - via Twitter, YouTube, or other
means. What they do not lead to, Gladwell writes, is “high risk
activism.”
Is following Christ high risk activism? I think that’s a fairly Biblical
characterization. Mark 10:29-30 tells us that we will recieve many
persecutions as a result of sacrificing our present lives for His glory.
Sacrifice and suffering persecution sound like high-risk activities to
me. And I’m not just talking about those who are practicing the Gospel
in dark places; I’m talking about the
difficulty of really living for Christ in the tolerance of the Western
world.
Seth Godin posted an interesting
thought
the other day. A lot of the time, it’s impossible to persuade people of
anything with just a bunch of evidence, no matter how concrete. Godin
writes that in marketing, we should try a different tactic:
…Evidence isn’t the only marketing tactic that is effective. In
fact, it’s often not the best tactic. What would change his mind, what
would change the mind of many people resistant to evidence is a series
of eager testimonials from other tribe members who have changed their
minds.
I’m concerned about a bill you submitted on December 16th, a “rider”
that would ‘prohibit the FCC from using any appropriated funds to
adopt, implement or otherwise litigate any network neutrality based
rules, protocols or standards’.
I’m concerned about this bill firstly because I am in the military,
and I find it unbelievable that military spending is so often used as
a vehicle for other political aims. If military spending bills are to
be nothing more than a way of passing less popular legislation, that
says a lot about both our legislative system’s flaws and about our
nation’s feelings towards the military - namely, that we are just a
budget item.
No matter their background, Dean says committed Christian teens share
four traits: They have a personal story about God they can share, a
deep connection to a faith community, a sense of purpose and a sense
of hope about their future.
Played an interesting card game last Sunday that I thought I’d pass
on…
Do you love Monopoly, right up until an hour into the game when things
start to get ridiculous and boring at the same time? Yeah, I’m right
there with you. Monopoly Deal sounds pretty hokey at first - another
Monopoly knockoff? - but it really does bring out the fun of Monopoly’s
gameplay in a condensed form that lasts all of twenty minutes.
I think the sentiment in Mark 9:24 above is profound. It’s a plea for
hope, when we’ve started to place limits on God. The exclamation comes
from a father who brings his little boy to Jesus and asks, “If You can
help him…”
And Jesus said to him, “‘If You can?’ All things are possible to him
who believes.”
I heard a pastor talk Sunday morning - incidentally, a pastor who was
once a Chinese law student and present at Tiananmen
Square
and he had some great things to say about how we should pray. His text
was Matthew 6:11, which is pretty short, but his message was that we
should pray as receivers of all
good things from God, as hungerers for God and His grace, and
as our brothers’ keepers.
Now, aside from the fact that “hungerer” is, in
fact, in the
dictionary, it’s a neat word for our relationship to God. The pastor
this morning said he knew what hunger was, because he remembered a
six-day hunger strike, and he remembered many months in a Chinese jail.
I know what hunger is, because I remember missing breakfast Sunday
morning and then sitting in the Mexican restaurant after church
wondering if my poor tummy was going to implode. It’s an eternal human
condition, a need for basic sustenance that everyone shares (except
maybe this guy -
I’m not really sure what’s going on there). According to the dictionary,
that means that we are all hungerers.
I’ve got a truck just like the one pictured.
It’s a 2001 Chevrolet Silverado 1500HD Crew Cab with a six liter V8 and
a sprayed-in bedliner. It’s got 110,000 miles on it, a brand new set of
Wildcat tires, and a window decal that reads, “Real Men Love Jesus.”
It’s the only vehicle I’ve ever owned. That truck may as well be my
identity.
But I’m going to have to sell it. My wife and I are moving to a large
city where it won’t be possible for me to park, and with gas prices on
the rise, 13 MPG just isn’t cutting it. I never thought it would be
difficult, but man, that truck just feels right to drive. It’s perfect. In
the Truck I Trust, you know?
The nineteenth chapter of the book of John starts with “Pilate then took
Jesus and scourged Him,” and it ends with, “they laid Jesus there.” It’s
a moving story of the crucifixion of an innocent teacher - remember, the
people involved didn’t know about the resurrection yet.
In the middle of the chapter, Pilate asks the Jews, “Shall I crucify
your King?” (John 19:15). I think their response is chilling.
First, empathy, the new default chat
client, does video. But to make it work seamlessly with your friends who
use GoogleTalk on Windows, you’ll need all the gstreamer plugins. Here’s
how to get them:
Second, Google Earth is a pretty sweet
program. But to make it run on 64-bit linux, you need some compatibility
stuff added in. Here’s how to get it working, courtesy of
bigjim-network
John 13:34-35, probably one of the more often quoted passages of the
Bible, centers on the commandment that we love each other as Christ
loved us. Pretty straightforward, except Jesus starts it with this bit
in John 13:33 about the disciples not being able to follow Him to the
cross.
Peter doesn’t get it. “Lord, where are you going?” Then, “Lord, why can
I not follow You right now? I will lay down my life for You.” (John
13:36-37)
I have a problem with authority. Specifically, I think I ought to have
authority over my life. Which doesn’t sound ridiculous, but it is. Check
out these examples.
Luke 14:18-20 - The Parable of the Feast
“But they all alike began to make excuses. The first one said to him,
‘I have bought a piece of land and I need to go out and look at it;
please consider me excused.’
“Another one said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to
try them out; please consider me excused.’
“Another one said, ‘I have married a wife, and for that reason I
cannot come.’”
On Thursday, I wrote that there was something terribly wrong with my
ministry: it was about me getting credit with people. But I knew
something was missing. This video, from Chuck
Wood, asks the fundamental question that
I wasn’t asking myself.
Chuck says that we need to ask those we’re discipling, “How are you
becoming more like Jesus?” If someone had asked me that two months ago,
I might have said all kinds of things, but today I’d probably tell you
that I hadn’t become any more like Jesus in a long time. I was doing all
the stuff, because that’s just what you do. Because I was supposed to to
it. I don’t even know why I was doing it. But it made other people think
I was good, and that made me feel good about myself.
Yes, I realize it’s April Fools
Day,
but this post isn’t a joke, or even related to that holiday.
Mark 2:27 says, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the
Sabbath.”
I’ve been on a Sabbath of sorts this month; my wife and I pulled back
from the ministry we were doing with our church’s praise team and the
men’s and women’s Nav bible studies. We
knew that we’d both be extra busy with work this month, but even more
than that, we were feeling burnt out. According to the U.S. Army
Aeromedical manual,
Reading my Bible made me angry this week. It doesn’t happen often, but
some teachings are hard to accept. So here’s what I learned, from Luke
17:7-10.
“Which of you, having a slave plowing or tending sheep, will say to
him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come immediately and sit down
to eat’?
“But will he not say to him, ‘Prepare something for me to eat, and
properly clothe yourself and serve me while I eat and drink; and
afterward you may eat and drink’?
“He does not thank the slave because he did the things which were
commanded, does he?
“So you too, when you do all the things which are commanded you, say,
‘We are unworthy slaves; we have done only that which we ought to have
done.’”
I found this idea on Jake Seliger’s blog The Story’s
Story
and it seemed pretty insightful….
List the ten most expensive things (products, services, or
experiences) that you have ever paid for (including houses, cars,
university degrees, marriage ceremonies, divorce settlements, and
taxes). Then, list the ten items that you have ever bought that gave
you the most happiness. Count how many items appear on both lists.
After reading
severalarticles
about Chrome on Lifehacker this week, I decided it was time to try
Google’s browser again. And I think I might keep it.
I’ve been a die-hard Firefox user since way back when it was called
Phoenix (that was before
Firebird)
and I can’t stand browsing the web without my beloved AdBlock. But
Chrome is changing things; it does (almost) everything Firefox does!
“God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him;
male and female He created them.” -Genesis 1:27
I’ve
seen a lot of people lately making themselves in Peyton
Manning and Reggie
Bush’s images - or at least
wearing their jerseys. There are also a bunch of people making
themselves in the image of a “Tea
Party,” aside from those
making themselves into the image of President
Obama or Rush
Limbaugh. One of the guys at work chafes
every day that he must make himself into the image of an office
professional and wear khakis and a shirt, rather than being the image of
Mark Martin, his
favorite NASCAR driver. Personally, I just put on my boots and belt
buckle and make myself into the image of a cowboy.
James 1:26 says that if anyone doesn’t
bridle their tongue, their religion is worthless.
So do you bridle your tongue? Or do you fence it? Or does it roam
free?
There are two reasons to build a fence. One is to keep things in; the other is to keep things out. When we’re talking about horses,
fences keep them in the pasture
and out of the dangers of the
wild. So if James had written to “fence your tongue,” we’d be good if we
just never said anything bad - if we kept ourselves from gossip, malice,
deceit, and all unrighteousness (Romans 1:29). But he didn’t. He wrote
that we must bridle our tongues.
So, I didn’t know this, and I’ve been
installing TrueCrypt from source every time I update my system, but via
a comment on this guide
page
I found out that RealCrypt is
a rebranded version of TrueCrypt that’s available in the RPMFusion
repository. Hello, encrypted files (with no
compiling required).
Just thought I’d share the knowledge since it’s Data Privacy
Day.
That’s the total amount (thus far) spent on 100 interesting projects
funded by the recent government stimulus bill. It includes such gems as
$2.2 million spent to build water pipelines to a golf course in San
Francisco and $350 million to build a map of America showing where
broadband internet is and isn’t available. Or $219,000 for a “Study on
‘Hookup’ Behavior of Female College Coeds.”
No really, that last one didn’t come from some college humor website or
even Facebook - it’s real (number 33). The Stimulus
Checkup
is Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) and
Senator John McCain’s (R-AZ) look at
what’s costing America so much money. I vote we fire some people.
Just opened my iGoogle page and the “Quotes Of The Day” widget had two
very insightful quotes… so here they are!
To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worthwhile.
The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse
resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter.
He was right… but nowdays, the newspapers are
failing
due to their failure to adapt to the ubiquity of the internet… but I’m
sure Aleister Crowley would say the same about ninety-nine percent of
the 3.6 zetabytes of
data
consumed daily in the United States: “canned chatter” at best.
Today at a Saturday morning study with some guys, one of them mentioned
the Engels Scale, of which I had never heard. So I looked it
up. Basically, it’s just a
number line applied to a person’s receptiveness to the Gospel.
+5 Stewardship
+4 Communion with God
+3 Conceptual and behavioral growth
+2 Incorporation into Body
+1 Post-decision evaluation
New birth
-1 Repentance and faith in Christ
-2 Decision to act
-3 Personal problem recognition
-4 Positive attitude towards Gospel
-5 Grasp implications of Gospel
-6 Awareness of fundamentals of Gospel
-7 Initial awareness of Gospel
-8 Awareness of supreme being, no knowledge of Gospel
This post brought to you by writer’s
block. If you’d like, find the Skribit box in the sidebar on the right
and give me something to write about!
You’re reading this blog, which means that you’re using the internet.
Which means your data is insecure. If you don’t believe me, here’s some
evidence. Read it, and you’ll want to lock yourself in an internet-free
box for the rest of time… until you get bored with no
Twitter. If you
want more information, two books I’m reading through that cover the
topic pretty extensively are Googling
Security by Greg Conti
and Steal This Computer Book
4.0 by Wally Wang
Turns out that the default monospace font on most Windows computers is
awful. Which made this site a pain to read for anyone using that
operating system. I did a day’s worth of reading on typefaces and font
selection last week which resulted in the new stick online font stack
(code below). Many thanks to Code Style for their Font stack
builder.
My church is starting a sermon series (well, started last week) on the
Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, 6, and 7. Today the pastor talked about
why it’s important to study this passage of scripture: it’s basically
God’s standard for our lives. I want to share a quick list that he put
out, almost as a sidenote to the sermon. These are eight “new” concepts
(well, they were new to the Jews in Jesus’ time) from the Sermon on the
Mount. They are definitely not conformed to this world!
As I was driving back to work today after a stop at a computer parts
shop, I was wondering if the shop owner I’d just spoken to was as much
of a nerd as he seemed. Did he play Everquest?
And I had a thought. I sometimes treat Christianity like a role-playing
game. Like I might not be a Christian at work. Or I might not be a
Christian on Saturday. I’m a only Christian when I’m at Church or at
praise band rehearsal. It’s like I waited all week to play ChristQuest
on Sunday morning with my guild. I don’t want to be one of those weird
guys who dresses up as their character or really gets into it, you know?
Heck, I don’t even talk about the game except to other people who play.
I’d never mention Christ to a non-Christian - he’d think I was a nerd!
I’ve struggled with this post (and it’s a couple of days late) because I
really don’t know what to do for resolutions this year… 2009 was the
first year I ever made resolutions, and putting them online turned out
to be pretty good motivation, so I wanted to do it again. But I have no
idea what to resolve for 2010. I could go the comedy
way,
but I want to actually accomplish something. So I’ve searched teh
Interwebs and taken whatever I can find.
Back on 10 December, I urged you to quit
Facebook after
they changed their privacy policy (and I quit myself). During the
holidays, I ended my brief Tumblr career,
deciding that having an in-between step filling the space between
Twitter and my blog* just didn’t make sense. Why post things on a
website that doesn’t even allow comments? Anyway, after canceling
Facebook and Tumblr, I started to wonder about some other
social-media-Web-2.0 type sites where I had accounts.
Read through my Bible this year before I get married May 23 this
year; the entire thing, cover to cover, reading at least a chapter every
single day. I did it.
Use my credit card whenever possible but never carry a balance.
This worked great. I highly recommend it.
Contribute the maximum amount to my Roth IRA account.
$5,000 in. Good to go.
A friend just sent me a link to a great essay written by a major in the
US Army about his perceptions on the conflict in Afghanistan. If you
have any interest in the situation in that country, or the condition of
the United States-led effort there, it will be of interest to
you.
This idea is not original - I’ve seen
it presented at least twice, by two different people. However, I
couldn’t (easily) find it on Google, so I wanted to put it here anyway.
I wrote last week that I’d finished the Bible and that I was thinking
that maybe reading the Bible straight through more than once would be
less than productive. So here’s the method I intend to use.
I’ll admit, I’ve done it, and I always secure my own wireless networks
as much as possible, but there are some pretty good points made here
about the idea that while illegal in many places, it might not be wrong.
What do you think? I’m divided.
Yeah,
you read that right. Frontal assault style, Genesis 1:1 to Revelation
22:21, straight through, do not pass go, do not collect $200. It took me
347 days, but I did it. Do I recommend it? Yes, but just once. Because
it’s definitely not the most efficient method of reading in terms of
Christian growth*, but you gotta do it, if only so you can say to your
friends, “Yes, I’ve read the Bible, the whole thing, straight through.”
Because a direct answer is a lot more helpful than saying, “Well, yeah,
I’ve read it all, I think, but never all at once or straight through,
mostly just the parts I liked because the story moves or the characters
are interesting….”
You also have a set of publicly available information, which helps
your friends find and connect with you. This includes your Name,
Profile Picture, Current City, Gender, Networks, Friend List and
Pages.
This is an unacceptable change to account privacy. If Facebook wants to
publish that information, they need my consent and they do not have it.
I have deactivated my account and I would urge you to do the same.
I started stick online with this
post back on 10
November 2008. It’s been just over one year and there are now 162
published posts, running the gamut from short
“found” blurbs that
took me two seconds to some long, wandering articles that took me days
to post and probably aren’t even worth reading. However, in the mix are
a few good articles, and I want to highlight (what I think are) the Best
of Year One.
Read through my Bible this year before I get married May 23 this
year; the entire thing, cover to cover, reading at least a chapter every
single day.
I have exactly ten pages of the Bible left to read in December. I’m in
Revelation 5, when a bunch of seals start getting opened. Talk about
some crazy stuff.
Use my credit card whenever possible but never carry a balance.
Once again the budget saved us. Aside from having four people over for
Thanksgiving (plus ourselves!) we upgraded our media
center
and paid almost $400 dollars to fix the truck again after the front part
of the starter fell off and broke into a bunch of tiny pieces inside the
flywheel housing. But it all got paid without touching our emergency
savings. Hooray budgets!
But I don’t even know what it means to serve money.
No, really, what on earth does that mean (Matthew 6:24)? Apparently I’m
not the first to ask the
question,
and I think that this
article gets at least
this much right: it’s a warning,
against the kind of storing up that is a symptom of greed and
acquisitiveness, of the love of money, and a love of the independence
from God that it seems to allow.
Something to spice up your weekend: Go to the pet store and pick up
about fifty feeder mice (the live ones you feed to snakes). Divvy them
up between yourself and four or five friends. Go to the movies, with the
mice in your bags. Once the movie starts, wait for a really dramatic
part, then stand up and yell, “SNOWBALL FIGHT!” I think you can guess
the rest.
I really wish I had a (better) picture for this post.
So this buddy of mine (whose name was Sunshine) had a great shirt. It
was kind of an ugly yellow color, and it had three things on the front,
which I’ve attempted to re-create below.
Now, of course upon seeing the Nike Swoosh, the first three words that
pop into any American’s mind are “Just Do It.” These words are followed
by a strong desire to go watch the Chicago Bulls play basketball until
one remembers that Michael
Jordan is now (for the
last time) retired. That’s not important, though; what’s important is
those three words. Just do it.
“I believe in the United States of America, as a government of the
people, by the people, for the people; whose just powers are derived
from the consent of the governed; a democracy in a republic; a sovereign
Nation of many sovereign States; a perfect union, one and inseparable;
established upon those principles of freedom, equality, justice, and
humanity for which American patriots sacrificed their lives and
fortunes. I therefore believe it is my duty to my country to love it, to
support its Constitution, to obey its laws, to respect its flag, and to
defend it against all enemies.”
– William Tyler Page
So that Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of
many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to
sin, to those who eagerly await Him.
What does it mean to have salvation without reference to sin?
Hebrews 4:15 tells us that our High Priest, Jesus Christ, is without sin
despite having suffered all the temptations of earthly man. He is the
one and only perfect person - 100 percent.
Read through my Bible this year before I get married May 23 this
year; the entire thing, cover to cover, reading at least a chapter every
single day.
In all of October, I’ve read just 14 pages (to page 916) but that’s
included Thessalonians, Timothy, Titus, Philemon, and Hebrews 1-4.
Partly it’s also a symptom of the fact that these books are so packed
with knowledge and insight into our lives in Christ, but two verses came
together this morning to make it clear: I need to consider Jesus
(Hebrews 3:1) and pay much closer attention (Hebrews 2:1). Still very
much on track to make my goal, but I want all my reading to be
worthwhile - for it to bear fruit that remains (John 15:4-5).
Manliness is a hard
thing to define. If I wanted to construct it in depth, it would take
volume upon volume and double the size of the internet. Manliness is
like beauty… you just know it when you see it. It makes you pause for
a second or two; it makes you wish you had …whatever it is. Like when
you see a John Wayne movie, or the look on Bruce Willis’ face during
that one scene in Armageddon.
Godfrey and Balian, in Kingdom of
Heaven. King David.
Today
our pastor likened Christian life to flying a helicopter.
It’s not much of a stretch, and it’s not all that amazing a metaphor -
probably a couple hundred people have used it before. However, one thing
that did seem really insightful to me was that the pastor correlated all
the people in the back of that helicopter to my Christian life.
So here’s the basic metaphor: can you fly a helicopter? (For all you
pilots out there, hush up.) So if you can’t fly a helicopter, would you
climb up front, during a flight, and tell the pilot to scram, that
you’re taking over? For the pilots, would you tolerate some passenger
climbing up front (or even just getting on the intercom) and telling you
to move aside, they can do a better job?
I
tumblogged
(is that a word?) James 4:17 yesterday with the tagline, “Ouch!”
Anyone here never not do the right thing? Yes, that’s an intentional
double negative. I’m not asking if anyone’s never done anything wrong,
but whether you’ve ever not done something that was right. Is it wrong
by default for me to not do something that’s right? Or is there some
point total, where as long as I don’t do anything wrong, the “right”
things I do just add points and I might not get a gold medal like the
overachievers who do all the right things but at least I could get
bronze? Yeah, if you want conviction from a kid’s movie, the video
previewed at the right slammed me with that verse from James last
night.
The 10 Commandments of
Marriage, by Ed Young,
is definitely the most basic of the seven books I’ve reviewed so far in
this series. It’s a great primer on the relationship of a husband and
wife… how do do the big things. Here’s the ten commandments:
Everyone wants to know what heaven will be like. You know, streets of
gold and blind people acting like they just got LASIK and no
wheelchairs. I saw something at an airport today and now I know what
heaven is like. You’ll never guess what it was.
What does that sign have to do with heaven? Well, I Corinthians 6:9-10
and Galatians 5:19-21 are pretty clear that those who live in sin will
be stopped short at the “Authorized Personnel Only” sign that’s hanging
on the pearly gates. If you don’t think the regulations are all that
serious, read Luke 16:19-31, specifically verse 6 - there is a great
chasm fixed, so that no one may go back and forth.
I read I Timothy today. (Yes, the whole thing. It’s not that long.)
Among other things, I noted I Timothy 4:8. Paul writes, “bodily
discipline is only of little profit.” Wait, what? What about I
Corinthians 9:27? Paul wrote that too, right? “I discipline my body and
make it my slave,” right?
Actually, the two passages say the same thing. They’re both contrasting
our worldly ambitions with our spiritual ones. My wife and I went out
running tonight, about two and a half miles. Not bad for us, about 20
minutes. I hate running. But I discipline myself to do it because I know
if I don’t then my fondness for food will destroy my gut. But, that
worldly discipline will be of little use to me in heaven - I’m pretty
sure that my earthly waistline, whether 34 or 48 inches, won’t affect my
new body when Christ comes in glory.
I have found that all my writing utensils are woefully inadequate, and
I’ll tell you why.
My favorite four writing tools:
Staedtler
Multi 4: This
is a great writing tool: four different writing instruments. It came
with black, red, and orange (“highlighter”) ball point pens and a
0.5mm mechanical pencil installed; I’ve removed the red pen and
replaced it with a stylus cannibalized from the 4-in-1 below. I
really like the (not rubber) grip on the Staedtler, and having four
different points is pretty awesome, even if I almost never use the
orange pen (even though orange is my favorite
color). How could
they make it better? Well, a laser pointer (and flashlight) would be
cool to have built in, but my main gripe is the cheap, loose feel of
the tip selection. It’s “gravity-based,” according to the website,
and that just seems to mean that it rattles like the Texas
Giant.
Promotional
4-in-1:
Lasers are cool, of course, but only when they work. This would have
been a great pen if it had included a pencil; with a ballpoint pen,
(now removed) stylus, (weak and now dead) laser pointer, and (very
weak) flashlight all in one slim metal cylinder, what’s not to love?
The convenience of having all the tools in one was great, but once
the laser died (less than two months after I got it free with my
OpenMoko FreeRunner), the lack of a pencil made it less than cool.
A. T.
Cross ATX Rolling-Ball
Pen
and
Pencil:
This matching set was one of the best gifts I received at high
school graduation, until I lost the pen. However, I do have a few
gripes… mostly that the pen and pencil were separate. And no
stylus (or laser). And having a cap on the pen (rather than a
retractable) means one more piece of which to keep track. Less
importantly, the design of the tools was just a little too wide.
Pilot
G2 05
Pen
and G2 05
Pencil:
These are like a cheap version of the ATX set above - a joy to use,
well made and solid feeling; smooth flowing ink and extra-fine soft
lead. The same criticisms apply - two separate instruments, and the
rubber grip makes it them just slightly too wide. One note about the
pencil - the eraser is awesome! Best design I’ve seen in a
mechanical pencil. Big enough to be useful, doesn’t fall out all the
time….
I always preferred pencils (they’re erasable! what’s not to like?!)
until I had Mr. Sam Wilds in sophomore and senior history in high
school. His feeling was quite the opposite - and I quote,
In awarding President Obama the Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegian
committee is honouring his intentions more than his achievements.
For comparison, here’s a list of my intentions:
I intend to cure cancer (all forms), HIV/AIDS, and every other
disease. Looks like they better
give me the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine.
I intend to end world hunger and poverty. I smell a Nobel Peace Prize!
It is among my long-term goals to discover, in a flash of
brilliance, the Theory of
Everything.
Definitely an intention worthy of a
Nobel Prize for Physics, no?
Also, I’m going to write a book which every person in the world will
read and it will instantly become their favorite. Sounds like a Nobel Prize for Literature
is coming my way!
I guess they can keep the prize for Chemistry, but I definitely deserve
the other four for my achievements intentions, don’t you think?
Just a quick blurb of good reading today in honor of Cyber
Securityhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif Awareness month (via the
Official Google
Blog)….
First, update all your software. Seriously. Run updates on everything.
If you’re using IE, stop right now and go get a better browser. I
use Firefox (since Chrome Just Doesn’t Work™ on Fedora yet…
actually, I just found this
article
that says it does, so I’ll be trying
this), and Mozilla has a
pretty nifty little utility to make sure your plugins are updated
as well.
Mac users, ya’ll aren’t
immune.
(No, I don’t know what you should do about it, I just wanted to make
sure you knew.)
And neither are us Linux geeks. If you’re a “sloppy Linux
admin,”
you’re leaving yourself (and your people) at
risk.
If you really want to be secure, here’s a set of guides from the
NSA
for securing a lot of common operating systems.
I recently rediscovered Carl Sagan’s Cosmos when the video below was
posted to
Slashdot.
I had forgotten how awesome the Cosmos series was. One of the best lines
in Cosmos, I think, is in the very beginning of this video….
If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent
the universe.
It reminds me of God’s words to Job in Job 38:4-11.
Colossians 4:17 is an exhortation from Paul to
Archippus, but it’s valid for
each one of us:
Take heed of the ministry which you have received in the Lord, that
you may fulfill it.
I wish it was rendered with an exclamation point! How painful it will be
on judgment day if the Lord of Hosts says to me, “Stick! You wasted your
ministry! You received it from Me and you didn’t fulfill it!”
Read through my Bible this year before I get married May 23 this
year; the entire thing, cover to cover, reading at least a chapter every
single day.
I’ve just finished Colossians, page 902. 47 pages to go this year.
Use my credit card whenever possible but never carry a balance.
The wife and I barely bought anything this month aside from groceries,
so this was too easy.
Now, I just reviewed DFD 5 a few weeks ago, so this is a little out of
order, but I completed The Spirit-Filled Follower Of
Jesus
way back in January, before it was suggested to me that I run my mind
back over each book at its conclusion. It’s probably a good idea for
anyone working through the series to go back and review earlier material
anyway, so whatever.
Matthew 24:13 and Mark 13:13 are two of my favorite verses. They’re two
of the hardest verses to live with. He who endures to the end shall be
saved.
If
you read my Father’s Day post, you’ll remember that my father once told
me, “Never, never, never give
up.” A
paraphrase from Winston Churchill, it’s an incredible statement of
character. I don’t even know what to write about it. Perseverance is the
act of faith. It is the fight in the dog, but also the quality of
commitment in a man who goes to work every day to provide for his
family. Perseverance is Thomas Edison’s 1,000 ways not to make a
lightbulb. Perseverance is why the astronauts of Apollo 13 survived.
Taken with self-control and intentionality, perseverance is the root of
discipline.
The following is an outline of a workshop
that my wife and I presented last Saturday after hearing an extended and
more in-depth version a few weeks ago. The theme of the talk was
“Ministry While Deployed,” but it included a lot of things that are just
as applicable to ministry wherever you are. The meat of the workshop was
guerrilla tactics used by Che
Guevara and Fidel Castro
during the Cuban revolution… and on the model of Christ’s ministry
during His time on earth. Keep in mind what’s below is just an
outline… if you want, leave me your comments and I’ll answer any
questions you might have.
Those are some pretty weighty areas of study! Who is God? Pretty deep. The actual
questions are deeper than those of the earlier books as well. Each
chapter ends with a blank page for you to outline/summarize/paraphrase
its most important points. Sometimes it takes a while - chapter one took
me a month!
I heard that phrase today for the first time. It’s a new one for me, so
I decided I’d explore it a bit and share some thoughts here. What does
it mean to guard your testimony?
John 17:16; John 18:36; Romans 12:2
We are not of this World, just as Christ and the Kingdom are not of
this world. If we let ourselves become conformed to the world,
what’s the point of our testimony? Your witness is that you are
different.
I Peter 3:15
Each one of us needs to know why we are who we are. What is the
reason for the things that we
do? Your
testimony is pretty weak if you don’t really have any reason for
anything, if you’re just a Christian because “that’s where my
parents went to church,” or “all my friends in high school went to
Bible study on Tuesdays.”
II Timothy 2:15 Know the Word of God, and
through it know God Himself. You can be the most unconventional and
moral person ever, but if you don’t know Christ, you won’t be able
to make Him known to the world. That doesn’t mean just listening to
the preacher on Sunday morning, or even just doing your homework for
Sunday school. It means being in daily communication (at least) with
Christ - having a personal relationship with Him.
John 18:20; John 17:15
We must be open with the
world. Jesus’ prayer for us is that we are protected from evil, but
not that we are taken out of
this world. How can we witness and testify to the truth of Christ if
we never interact with people who don’t know Him already, or if we
only interact with them on a superficial level?
Matthew 10:16 Innocent as doves - if your
testimony to Christ crucified, Lord and Savior, is paired with
consistent sin and no spiritual growth, then you’re not doing much
for the Gospel. No one will take you seriously. They also won’t take
you seriously if you’re a bumbling fool, if you have no idea what’s
going on, and if you aren’t awake and alert to the world around
you - shrewd as serpents.
What do you think it means to guard your testimony? What specific things
are you doing to protect your witness?
Let a man regard us in this manner, as servants of Christ and stewards
of the mysteries of God. In this case, moreover, it is required of
stewards that one be found trustworthy.
Think about all that you are a steward of:
Your own body (I Corinthians 6:19-20)
Your wife (and children) (I Peter 3:7)
The world around you (Genesis 1:26)
The mysteries of God (II Timothy 2:15)
Here’s a quick refresher on the word
steward: a person who manages another’s property or
financial affairs; one who administers anything as the agent of another
or others.
“And be subject to one another in the fear of Christ.”
Everyone gets all up in arms about this verse. I really don’t think it’s
all that controversial. Here’s my take on being subject to one another:
Be a servant. Philippians
2:3 tells us to consider others more important than ourselves. Even
better, Matthew 20:26 tells us that to be great, we must be
servants. Be subject to one another in reverence for Christ, who is
a servant to us.
Accept a rebuke. Proverbs
12:15 contrasts a wise man who listens with a fool who thinks his
own way is best. II Timothy 2:4 and other verses tell us to grab our
brothers and get them on the right track, if they need it… so we
need to be humble enough to accept it when they do it to us!
Love each person as a member of
Christ. Galatians 3:28 - there is no male, female, rich,
poor, black, white… we are all made in the image of God (Genesis
1:26). How disrespectful to God if we fail to love His creation, and
especially the very image of our Creator and Salvation!
Ok, so that’s a pretty crazy list… I’ve got to humbly accept it (and
take action - II Chronicles 7:14) when dudes say, “Stick, you’re messin'
up! Fix yourself!” I’ve got to love that one dude that just keeps
talking and talking and talking about …what was he even saying? And
I’ve got to work and work and work for the Kingdom, the Church, the body
and bride of Christ, even if people give me no credit. Whoa. How do I do
all this?
Read through my Bible this year before I get married May 23 this
year; the entire thing, cover to cover, reading at least a chapter every
single day.
I’m now on page 863, Romans 8. I’ve read every chapter in Romans two or
three times - I’d forgotten how long it’s been since I’ve read the New
Testament. There is so much more to God and the Gospel that I’ve been
missing! Romans
3:10, for example.
86 pages remaining, but a lot of meaty stuff (Hebrews 5:14). What are
you reading? How do you divide up the Bible for reading? Why? What are
you getting out of it?
Look, I don’t care who you are, there is no reason you should be texting
while driving. Your life will not end if you put the message on hold
long enough to pull over, but you might end someone else’s life (or your
own) if you take your eyes off the road! Texting is worse for you than
alcohol, where driving is concerned, and I’m all for the legislative
efforts to kill the combination. I’m tired of idiots on the road who are
alternately
speeding and
dropping well below the speed limit, weaving erratically, and generally
making life a (dangerous) pain because they think that the world
revolves around their cellphone. DROP THE PHONE AND DRIVE!!!
I am for standards in
general, but tonight I’ve realized a list that I’m against. I am against
them because they fail in their purpose, either having no positive
effect or actually making things worse.
Daylight Savings
Time. Who
thought this up anyway? (No, it wasn’t Benjamin Franklin - go read
the linked Wiki). The whole point is that we’re wasting free light
from the sun - because we don’t get up early enough. There’s little
to no effect (and often times that little effect is negative) on
energy usage, and the demands of keeping up with daylight savings
time and the various ways and points at which it is implemented are
the cause of all kinds of headaches for computer programmers and
people who commute, physically or via telepresence, across time
zones. I’m with Benjamin Franklin - tell people to just get up
earlier!
Time zones. I’m not going
to argue this one a lot, but it seems to me that we’re at the point
where this whole idea is pretty moot. Yes, it makes a lot of sense
for standardizing commerce in discrete geographical areas, but those
lines are pretty blurred in places like Phenix City,
GA.
The military, the internet, and the airlines (indeed, all aviation)
make use of standard time because it is standard. Not a random jumbly
mess - if it’s 3:00 pm here, what time is it in Bermuda again? Oh,
that’s in AST, so it’s UTC-4 - oh wait, do they use daylight savings
time? - I can’t remember, so maybe it’s UTC-4+1? - and we’re CDT, so
that’s UTC-6+1, so…. I think you get my point.
The
U.S. Customary
System. SI
(metric) is BASE 10. Whoever thought that base 2, 4,
16,
12, 2000,
5218,
et cetera, was a good idea? Yes, I realize that it wasn’t all done
at once and that things just sort of happened. I also realize that
there’s no way to change it and have everything work out or even get
everyone on board. That’s not the point. It’s a stupid standard and
a better one exists.
Any other standards you like to bash? Think I’m an idiot for using
GMT/Z/UT/UTC/WET
or the metric system? Post a comment.
This post was spawned by this article from Time
Magazine,
wherein a 15-year-old is allowed to use a computer on standardized test,
since his handwriting is so bad. I say fail him. If he can’t read and
write, then he doesn’t meet the standard. Especially considering that
the reason he can’t write is that he likes the attention of being “that
kid with really bad handwriting.”
“And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
John 8:32
I value truth because there is no point in knowing something that is not
true. There is no point in being
something that is not true. Who
wants to live a lie?
One of the best proverbs regarding truth is Proverbs 23:23, “Buy truth,
and do not sell it; get wisdom and instruction and understanding.” How
many thousands of dollars do we spend in our culture trying to learn? I
was talking to a friend today and he told me, “You never get out of
school. I’m 30 and I’m still doing it!” He hasn’t literally been in a
classroom his entire life since preschool, but he’s always been trying
to learn something. We all have to, if we want to grow or progress,
either in careers or in relationships or in our selves. Everyone wants
to have the best teacher, too. You know what makes someone (or
something) the best teacher? They get across the most truth.
Someone at work showed me this video yesterday and I think it’s
hilarious. Definitely a cop-out post so I don’t have to write anything
and I get to say I posted!
Seth Godin wrote a
while back that he finds bad punctuation
“distracting.”
I’d say that’s entirely too kind a characterization. Maybe we blame the
terribleAmericanpublicschools,
or maybe we blame mobile phones and the internet, or maybe the ubiquity
of spell check. I don’t really care. My hammer of judgment falls
(figuratively) whenever I accidentally view
comments on YouTube.
People like to talk a lot about spiritual gifts, doing what you’re good
at - what God has made you good at - for the good of His kingdom.
Filling pews is not a spiritual gift.
Romans 12:6-8, I Corinthians 12:8-10, I Corinthians 12:28-30, and
Ephesians 4:11 make up a pretty decent laundry list of spiritual gifts.
Here’s a gee-whiz table to show them off:
Two months ago, as part of the 30 Days
to a Better Man project, I posted my five core
values. I’ve
decided that they’re one subject that could do with a little more
explanation. So here’s value number one: Christ.
“And the witness is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this
life is in His Son. He who has the Son has the life; he who does not
have the Son of God does not have the life.”
I John 5:11-12
Say “God Bless” fifty times this week. And next week. And the week
after….
Say it to the people who check your ID when you go into the security
area at work. Say it to whoever is left in the office when you leave.
Say it as a closing in your telephone conversations. Sign off from
email
and IM with those two words.
The only reference I have for this is Numbers 6:24-26, but I still think
it’s a good idea.
The article is about a woman who’s suing her college because she can’t
find a job. A woman who graduated with a 2.7. A woman whose job search
has lasted only three months. A woman whose excuse is, “It doesn’t make
any sense: They went to school for four years, and then they come out
working at McDonald’s and Payless. That’s not what they planned.”
To wrap up my examination of prayer, I’ve been mulling over what to pray. What does one say to
God, the Creator, Master, and Redeemer of the Universe? What does one
say to our Father, our Savior and intimate Friend? To start with, here’s
the prayer I pray more than any other, it seems:
Read through my Bible this year before I get married May 23 this
year; the entire thing, cover to cover, reading at least a chapter every
single day.
Another 50 pages
down,
still slow, but I’m pretty bogged down in everything right now.
Consistency is the name of the game for me now.
Use my credit card whenever possible but never carry a balance.
Still going strong with no balance on the card.
Stu Weber has some
pretty intense manliness credentials. At left is the Bronze Star, the
fourth-highest combat award of the U.S. Armed Forces. Stu Weber has
three of them. That he won as a Green
Beret.
He also holds a Master’s of Divinity, and a doctorate. Anyone with
higher qualifications of manliness may skip this post. Now that I have
everyone’s attention, on to the book.
I’ve always prayed mostly for myself, my family, my church, my nation,
and the world, and generally in that order. Last week a buddy of mine
(Kit) gave a talk on prayer and he used the term, “praying in concentric
circles.” I think it’s a fantastic way to structure requests in prayer.
So here’s how I work prayer request subjects. I tend
to start in the center and work outwards. First, myself. This is
generally either, “God, this is AWESOME. I can’t believe how much you
love me to have given me a day like today,” or something more like Psalm
102 (Prayer of the Afflicted). It might seem selfish to start with me
during prayer time, but getting my immediate worries out of the way
(Philippians 4:6-7) helps me clear my mind for the other (some might say
more important) things to talk to God about.
The whole idea of this post is that we are unlimited in our
possibilities for communal prayer. We can pray alone, in ones and twos
and threes, in groups (Acts 1:14), or in masses (try Psalm 135:1-3).
Christ prayed alone; in this series I’ve already alluded several times
to Mark 1:35 and Matthew 14:23 as examples of Christ having a quiet time
of prayer, alone and therefore unhindered by anyone else’s presence, but
there are varying degrees of “aloneness” modeled in Christ’s prayer
life. Take Mark 14:32-35 (and onward). Jesus takes along all eleven of
His disciples - whom He just prayed with back in Mark 14:22-23 - to His
evening prayer time. Then he leaves all but three behind. Then he leaves
the three of them behind. I think it’s a pretty good model that He opens
up to some degree with all His friends, then opens up more to His three
closest men.
In the middle of this series on
prayer, I want to
share something that God showed me today during my study through DFD
5.
Luke 6:46 reads, “‘Why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what
I say?’”
Christ is really on to something here (imagine that). Matthew 21:22
tells us that if we believe, we
will receive; if you believe, you will be obedient. James 5:16 says that
the prayer of a righteous man will avail; righteousness is in obeying
God. Why on earth would we cry out to God and believe, and yet not
believe that we are to obey? Why would we believe in God’s power to save
us, and not in the perfection of His will? If we don’t believe in Him
enough to do as He commands, why would we waste our time trying to
believe in Him enough that all our prayers will be answered?
I’ve been pondering speed limits a lot lately. Did you know that the
German word for speed limit is geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung? It means
something along the lines of the
absolute highest speed at which you can drive. Why is it that
people have such a problem getting that simple idea into their heads?
Now, before you call me hypocrite and start throwing tomatoes, yes, I’ve
been known to speed some, like most of us on the road today. But not
anymore. I am resolving from this day forward to obey the speed limit.
As I mentioned in the first post of this series, my wife and I pray
together every night before
bed; we also pray
before each meal and I generally try to make prayer a part of my quiet
time, although I
have not done as well as I would like. So in this post, I’m researching
times that the Bible
shows us we should pray.
Sheet
Music, by Kevin Leman,
is an interesting book to review since it deals with marriage
exclusively through sex. This is perfect if you are newlyweds, or if
your marriage needs some “BAM! Kick it up a
notch!”; however, it’s not a book for anyone
who’s more than a week away from marriage. That said, the review will be
G-rated (and rather short since the book certainly isn’t!). Leman
describes the book best in chapter one when he writes, “It’s not just a
how-to-do-it manual… [it’s] a do-it-yourself look at why to do it
and how to do it better.”
Here’s a great article my wife Twittered
@me today from Time Magazine. One good
line: “A lasting marriage is the reward, usually, of hard work and
self-sacrifice.” Now, that’s certainly not to say it isn’t worth it. But
it’s like anything else: a good marriage doesn’t come from a
microwave.
Is there hope for the American
Marriage?
If I look back at my (nasty, brutish, and
short) life, I can
easily find the main reason I’ve prayed: I was in trouble. E.M. Bounds
writes
in The Essentials of
Prayer, “Trouble belongs
to the present state of man on earth,” and “What an infinite variety
there is in the troubles of life!” I’ve lived a pretty blessed life thus
far - I mean, my main trouble is that I wish I had a new MacBook
Pro instead of my
six-month-old MacBook - but somehow I still find the need to cry out to
God for earthly salvation on a weekly basis, and I probably should be
doing it more often. Psalm 46 is a great prayer for these times; it’s a
song for us to pray with others, remind each other that God is our
strength and glorifying Him for our lives, our provision, and our
protection. The video below is a great musical take on the psalmist’s
words. (Much to my chagrin, as many times as I have sung this song, I
cannot remember the composer’s name! If you know it, hit the
comments!)
My lovely wife and I pray every night before bed, thanking the Lord for
one more day together on this earth and asking Him to give us the next
one. She told me recently that a lot of her friends envy this small
gesture that I make in my relationship with God and my relationship with
her. I started to examine my own prayer life to see how it is, and it’s
not where I want it. So I’m going to examine prayer over the next few
weeks and see what kind of improvement I can make!
Read through my Bible this year before I get married May 23 this
year; the entire thing, cover to cover, reading at least a chapter every
single day.
I’ve moved from page 729 to page 777 and finished Matthew and Mark this
month; I wish I could say that it’s because I’m spending so much time
meditating on each passage but it’s actually just because I’m spending
so little time reading. At fifty pages a month and a little under two
hundred pages to go, I’ll certainly finish the whole thing this year,
but I’d like to be able to focus more on what I’m reading. Now that I’m
into the schedule for my work training, that should get easier, but life
is pretty hectic. I’ve got to do a better job of setting aside time to
read the Word.
This is a guest post from my lovely
wife. I’m including it in my series of reviews of books for married
men
since it is the original book from which For Men
Only was
derived. I will say that the book (which I haven’t read yet) has helped
me a ton, since it’s helped my wife love me, and a loving wife is the
most precious gift God has given me aside from salvation.
[W]hy are you doing what you’re doing? Why are you doing it the way
you’re doing it?
I started writing this
blog eight months
ago because the opportunity was
there.
I thought that an online, indexed, accessible forum would allow me to
store and access my thoughts in a way that my memory (highly imperfect),
a notebook (not indexed), and even my own computer (not always
accessible) don’t. While all those methods are great, and I use them
every day, they also preclude by their nature sharing my thoughts with
others - and receiving their input, critiques, and insights.
Wow. I own an aluminum
MacBook,
and it’s pretty tough, but this Panasonic Toughbook is
ridiculous.
Wish I could pull the video over, but Forbes’ website doesn’t allow it,
so you’ll have to click through to see the ridiculousness.
This website is partially my
stream-of-conscious
attempt to answer those questions. At the heart of many of the bits of
answer I’ve posted is one principle: discipline.
There are a lot of articles about Walter Mischel’s Bing studies on
self-control
out there, and while not statistically perfect, the studies provide
pretty good evidence that self-control is a good indicator of potential.
I think that in large part that’s because self-control, applied with
perseverance and intentionality, is what’s known as discipline. Discipline, I would
submit, is among the most necessary characteristics of a man and, aside
from providence, is the single determining factor between greatness and
many merely good men. I don’t mean that the formula one part
self-control, one part perseverance, and one part intentionality will
automatically create a man that will change the world. I mean that a
truly disciplined man is the one I’d like to watch, study under, and
emulate.
The most important role model in my life is my father. The moment in my
life that has had more impact than any other was a Sunday morning right
before I was graduated from high school. My church held a breakfast for
all the graduating seniors and their parents. The parents were
encouraged to write letters to their children and then read those
letters at the breakfast if they chose. I will never forget my father
standing with tears in his eyes and speaking in a clear voice of his
pride in me, and giving me the admonition of Winston Churchill at
Harrows School in
1941….
“Never, never, never, never, never give
up."
For Men Only (and the
counterpart For Women
Only) by Jeff and
Shaunti Feldhahn were required reading when Emma and I went through our
marriage counseling. They’re quick reads - but they were also some of
the most helpful books we read.
For Men Only is really a guide to understanding why women do certain
things. It’s broken down into six categories - “Key Findings About
Women” - that were noted handily in a “Quick Start Guide” right inside
the front cover. The six areas are outlined briefly below.
After posting my short review of Ubuntu
9.04 a
couple of days ago, I felt that I had not done justice to it, nor to the
effort I’ve poured into learning it. This post will attempt to both
provide interested parties (myself included) with a complete reference,
and chronicle my missteps in a (hopefully temporary) migration to
Ubuntu.
Tesla Motors, which produces the
all-electric Tesla Roadster, is one of my favorite companies to watch. I
saw a review in Road and Track
magazine
that gives very good marks to the Roadster, and noticed something I’d
missed - Tesla now makes a
sedan!
A quick look at the company’s
website shows the
sedan does 0-60 in 5.6 seconds, seats seven, and goes 240 miles on a 45
minute charge. With gas averaging $2.548 a
gallon nationally, the Tesla Model S
sedan’s starting price of $49,900 doesn’t look so bad!
After a dismal showing from Fedora 11 on my
MacBook,
I downloaded Ubuntu 9.04 last Friday. It is slick; they’ve got a lot of
stuff working very well on the MacBook
5,1. I have a few
gripes about Ubuntu so far, but I am using it until somebody figures out
how to get multi-touch functionality for my MacBook in Fedora 11. So,
here’s the good:
Wireless works, out of the box. Even in the LiveCD.
Trackpad works for single-touch right out of the box (like it did in
Fedora 10); making multi-touch work only takes a few minutes
following the
guide.
I meant to post this video a couple of months ago when it first came out
and I found it in my “stuff to blog” pile, so here it is. How much
cooler does it get than cooperative flying robotic penguins? Am I the
only one that thinks this is AWESOME?!
I was reading Matthew on Thursday and I came to Matthew 25:14-30, the
Parable of the
Talents.
I’ve read this scripture, or had the parable explained to me in sermons
and Sunday school, probably a thousand times. But it never occured to me
that there are four servants in the passage, not just three. First,
there’s the guy who gets five talents to start with and ends up with
five more - pretty good investing. He gets some pretty high praise. Next
up, guy with two talents; he also doubles what’s been given to him and
also gets praised. Now, the last guy brought back no decrease, but also
no increase. He gets slammed.
This post is a response to the 30
Days To A Better Man
project,
Day 12: Create Your Bucket
List.
I read through the challenge yesterday and I’ve had a lot of real
trouble coming up with anything. I’m not a huge thrill-seeker, so
jumping out of airplanes or cliff diving or whatever sounds cool but I’m
not going to have an unfulfilled life if I never get to do those things.
There was a post a while back on Art Of Manliness about every man
needing
adventure…
Turns out I’ve already done lots of things on that list, like
So far, after a day of use, I’m completely unimpressed. Fedora 11 fails
to even recognize the trackpad on my MacBook; while in Fedora 10 I
couldn’t enable multi-touch options, at least the trackpad worked! Also,
the default browser is Firefox 3.5.4b, which is still beta - and I get
that this is Fedora, so it’s supposed to be the bleeding edge and all -
but seriously, Firefox 3.5 beta 4 is not ready to be a default browser.
GMail doesn’t even load correctly!
Love and Respect, by Emmerson
Eggerichs, was given to Emma and me as an engagement gift and the advice
in it has helped us more than we know.
Dr. Eggerichs writes about relationships between man and wife based on
Ephesians 5:33. He believes that the deepest need of a man is to be
respected, while the deepest need of a woman is to be loved. That simple
explanation really resonated with Emma and me on our respective sides of
the equation, but Eggerichs goes deeper. Men, he writes, are motivated
to love when they feel respected. Women are motivated to respect when
they feel loved. Out of this, according to Eggerichs, relationships
develop into three different cycles.
Found this
articlevia
Slashdot
the other day, thought I’d share it. Not that I recommend downloading
music illegally, just that I think some of the things that the music and
motion picture industry says and does to “protect their business” and
“protect the artists” are ridiculous.
I found this article in Time
magazine
as I perused a copy while waiting in line to get my hair cut last week.
The article is about the Thunderbird School of Global
Management in Arizona; what makes them
special is the “Thunderbird Oath Of Honor.” While they don’t require graduates to take the oath,
it’s recommended and included in the graduation ceremony.
I will strive to act with honesty and integrity. I will respect the
rights and dignity of all people. I will strive to create sustainable
prosperity worldwide. I will oppose all forms of corruption and
exploitation. And I will take responsibility for my actions. As I hold
true to these principles, it is my hope that I may enjoy an honorable
reputation and peace of conscience.
A good subtitle for this post might be, “Why I’m still using Firefox.”
I’m not happy with Firefox’s performance; it should not, under any
circumstances, take up 1GB of ram and another of swap space. That’s
ridiculous. I suppose the colossal list of extensions I have running
might be half the problem, but after playing around with nine other
browsers today (Opera 9 isn’t listed below), I’m pretty sure Firefox is
the best thing around for me. If anyone can tell me how to get the
functionality of the AutoPager and Adblock Plus Firefox extensions in
Opera, I’m pretty sure I’ll switch, but until then… no dice. Below are
my oh-so-objective comparisons after trying them all out today, ranked
by score on the Acid3 test. If a browser didn’t beat my current Firefox
on the Acid3, I didn’t even continue to test it.
It’s a pretty common recommendation for newlyweds to read, and for good
reason. Dr. Gary Chapman’s The Five Love
Languages is a relationship classic
with editions for couples, singles, parents, divorcees, those struggling
to feel God’s love…. I know without a doubt that it has helped Emma
and I to understand and show love for each other - which makes us both
feel more loved!
A couple of days back, Seth Godin posted a thought-provoking
question.
He asks, “Where are you?” on a spectrum of “greed/joy/work/good” in your
current job, and in your current spending. Where am I? He mentions a few
extremes, and I think it’s interesting to see who his saints are. First
one is, “[Y]ou donate all your belongings and income to the poorest
and sickest in the slums and ghettos.” Then, “Would you take a 10% pay
cut to market a product you truly love and believe in?”
I got married last
month, and lots of
people have given me books about how to be a married man, how to treat
my wife, how to understand (or at least cope with not understanding) my
wife, etc, etc, etc. And I think that, if you’re married, being a real
man depends very strongly on how you get along with your spouse. So I’ve
decided that I’ll review each one of the books as I read them (or as I
find the time to write reviews) with the goal of doing about one every
week or two. Below is a list of the books I intend to review in this
series; comment if you think I’ve missed any good ones!
My current apartment feels cozy, and it’s 1019 square feet - almost
twice the size of the house in the article. But I can’t help wondering
how cool it would be to get rid of all the clutter that having so much
space generates. Maybe I wouldn’t go quite as extreme as 575 square feet
I’ve decided to get on board with Art of Manliness’ 30 Days To A Better
Man
project, on condition that anything they end up including in the project
doesn’t violate my own sense of manliness.
Five core values. At some level it seems ridiculous to categorize myself
by five finite words, but here goes. You can click each value to read a
detailed explanation.
Read through my Bible this year before I get married May 23 this
year; the entire thing, cover to cover, reading at least a chapter every
single day.
This didn’t happen. In April, I wrote that I had only read 71 pages in
an entire month; this month, I’ve gone from page 485 to page 729 - 244
pages. A major improvement, but not enough. I finished the Old Testament
on May 21, and it’s pretty taxing to read the entire New Testament in
two days when you’re trying to get married. So I’m back to the original
goal, reading the entire Bible, at least one chapter per day, before the
end of the year. I’m pretty sure I can finish the remaining 220 pages of
my Bible this year. While I’m not happy that I missed this goal, I know
I can’t change things now so the best thing to do is keep pressing on.
“Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us believe, a form of
madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius
and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because
genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the
opinions and vagaries of the crowd.” -Edith Sitwell
My roommate’s New Yorker from a couple of weeks back has a great
article on using the full court
press
in basketball. It also mentions Lawrence of Arabia and King David’s
younger years.
What do all these things have in common? Incredible success, due to
incredibly unconventional tactics. While I’m inclined to dismiss claims
that doing things differently from everyone else will always work out perfectly, I think
it’s great to examine every single thing you do and ask if there’s
really a good reason to do it the way you’re doing it, or even to do it
at all! Romans 12:2 says 1) don’t be like everyone else just because
they expect it, and 2) transform yourself through the renewing of your
mind. So why are you doing what you’re doing? Why are you doing it the
way you’re doing it?
And a little bit scary: this
article, emailed to me
by a friend, details a San Diego couple who are being told that they
will be subject to fines if they continue to hold a regular Bible study
in their homes without a “major use permit.” The article is watery on
legal details, but I assume the law in San Diego County differentiates
between primarily residential and primarily commercial properties, and
that churches provide income to the county because they must be zoned as
commercial properties. But this is the couple’s home! There is no basis
for the prosecution of anyone holding a gathering in their home save
that the gathered persons participate in some illegal activity; last I
checked, Bible study was still (thankfully) legal in this nation. Anyone
want to read the first
amendment?
A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned my $200
knife. A lot
of frugal people might think that’s an exorbitant purchase, considering
that pocketknives may be had for $3.95 and up on
Google. I’ll
wager very, very few knives that cheap have blades made of steel as good
as the S30V in my
Benchmade
943SBK.
The point is that a knife is, beyond doubt, essential
gear. The
convenience of having a knife close to hand makes everyday life quicker
in hundreds of tiny ways. Aside from the everyday - opening letters and
packages, crafts projects, etc. - a simple bladed tool increases
survival possibilities in all kinds of situations. Art of Manliness has
a post on the
subject,
and while it’s largely tongue-in-cheek about the uses of a knife, it
does give a good overview about the basic types of knives and agree with
me that every man should carry one.
Finally! Emma, I have longed to be with you day after day… this is the
happiest day of my life, and I know that when I wake up tomorrow morning
with you beside me, I will be that much happier. I love you. If you were wondering, yes, I wrote this post
ahead of time; right now, I’m completely focused on my wife.
“An excellent wife is the crown of her husband.” -Proverbs 12:4
So, I am now the proud owner of my very first firearm: the Springfield
Armory XD Sub-Compact
9mm. It
was a gift from my lovely fiancée, who also bought me a SuperTuck
concealed carry holster from
CrossBreed. She
received from me the XD Service Model
9mm, as well as an
“adorable” (her word, and I agree) dress she’d picked out at
Caché. We’ve been thinking about buying pistols
since last May (before we were engaged) and we finally had the money in
our “Goal” account to do it. So we did.
I’m all for getting things done as efficiently and thoroughly as
possible, so when I saw this post on
Lifehacker,
I immediately installed the Wolfram Alpha Google extension in
Firefox. It’s a
great idea - two very different and very useful search engines, with the
results on one page. One slight concern is that the Wolfram
Alpha results take forever to load, but I
can live with it.
The Simple Dollar had an
article
a few weeks back where Trent explained each item in his messenger bag
(andLifehackerhasseveralsucharticles),
so here’s my response. Trent wrote about the frugality behind each item
in his bag; my bag is about convenience and readiness. I think that a
man should be able to respond to his situation when necessary; part of
that readiness is knowledge, and part of it is tools and equipment. It
would be ridiculous to carry around enough gear to respond to every situation, but a minimal amount
of gear can account for most of the likely situations I encounter.
Here’s how. It’s called OneBag, found via
Unclutterer. I grew
up as a Boy Scout, and while “Be
Prepared” is a
great motto, it does lend itself to taking too much stuff everywhere you
go. At this point, I would argue that manliness is completely unrelated
to the stuff you have with you (except perhaps a knife), and dependent
on the physical readiness and skills you posses which will allow you to
deal with whatever situations you encounter.
Seth Godin has a great post
today
about the difference between luxury goods and premium goods. His insight
into luxury goods - “Luxury goods are organized waste,” is spot on.
Luxury goods are when you pay more for a designer’s logo. I don’t buy
luxury goods. Premium goods, he writes, are “Pay more, get more.” I own
a $200 Benchmade knife. While it probably didn’t need to cost that much,
it is very high quality. I
wanted a premium knife when I
bought it. There were plenty of $500+ luxury knives on the Benchmade
website, but none of them would have performed any better than mine.
When I’m reading my Bible, I often find it helpful to mark certain
passages because they seem especially important, but I’ve never had any
method for deciding which ones to mark. A friend showed me this
technique several months ago and I couldn’t find any place where it’s
explained online (if you know of one, please post it in the comments!),
so here it is. This is the best method I’ve found for highlighting
important verses to find them later. I highlight using five colors;
other variations of the technique exist using four, or six, or seven.
Here’s the list, with a few examples:
I thought it was great that a blog like Art of Manliness posted what
they did about pornography. While the author would not agree with reason
number 1 above - he writes, “it transforms porn into an even more
desirable forbidden fruit… and prevents men from being honest in their
need for help” - he does present a lot of good arguments and he’s
certainly on the mark in his conclusion, if slightly indecisive - “I
don’t think porn is good in any setting.”
Ever wonder what your conscience is? Isaiah 30:21 says that our ears
will hear God correcting us whenever we turn to the right or to the
left. The whole passage, from Isaiah 30:18-23, is really interesting
because it’s smack-dab in the middle of one of Isaiah’s prophecies about
judgement, and yet these verses are an assurance of God’s love for us.
“Burning is His anger… His tongue is like a consuming fire,” says
Isaiah 30:27, and yet Isaiah 30:18 states that God waits on high,
longing to be gracious to us! I don’t know about you, but when I’m angry
enough that my tongue is a consuming fire - which it can be all too
often - I’m certainly not longing to be gracious. I’m longing to
destroy! How great is our God - even though vengeance is His (Hebrews
10:30, among other verses), He still loves us. He loves us enough to not
destroy us. It makes me want to obey that still small voice. “How
blessed are those who long for Him!” (Isaiah 30:18).
I found
this
on Slashdot this week… it’s an article about how hard it is to fire
teachers in California. I think that it says a lot about personal
responsibility. The article notes that even when commissions found that
a school district had reason to terminate teachers, they weren’t allowed
to do so. One example reads, “The district wanted to fire a high school
teacher who kept a stash of pornography, marijuana and vials with
cocaine residue at school, but a commission balked, suggesting that
firing was too harsh.” Isn’t marijuana ILLEGAL? And we wonder why some
Californians are so screwed up! President Obama had this to say: “I
reject a system that rewards failure and protects a person from its
consequences.” Bravo. Now let’s see you fire some people who have no
business working with children!
I can accomplish nothing; I can give nothing back to my Creator. What’s
the point?
I’ve just finished reading through Ecclesiastes; can you tell?
Ecclesiastes 1:2, right off the bat, tells us that everything on earth
is useless. “All is vanity,” writes Solomon, and I know just what he
means. Ever get that feeling like you can’t do anything right, or that
even if you do, it won’t matter in the end? I’m sure Solomon felt the
same way. He writes in Ecclesiastes 2:4-10 about all he has done, about
all he has built and acquired. This is Solomon, King of the Jews, the
richest and wisest man in the world. In Matthew 6:28-29, when Jesus
wanted to point out the splendor of the lilies as beyond that of any
man, he used Solomon as his example - Solomon, who had more glory and
splendor than any man ever had. And yet what does Solomon write about
all this? It is vanity (Ecclesiastes 2:11).
When I reviewed DFD 3: Walking With
Christ last
month, I wrote that each chapter built on its predecessors in a grand
process of maturing in Christ. Design for Discipleship 4: The Character
of a Follower of
Jesus
again points out that process, in chapters at either end of the book,
and then covers three somewhat separate and very practical applications
of Christ’s teaching to the life of a man.
Read through my Bible this year before I get
married May 23; the entire thing, cover to cover, reading at least a
chapter every single day.
At the end of March, I was on page 414 of 949, starting Psalms. Today I
finished Psalms, and I’m on page 485. Nothing near the 300 pages I had
planned to read this month, so I’m way behind. No excuse. I have to make
time for God in my life, and that means I have to make time to read,
study, and meditate on His Word.
I started using Linux in mid-2003. I had received $2000 to build a
computer for Christmas 2002 (and nothing else, either for Christmas or
my birthday, that year) as I was at the point in high school where I
really needed one and interested in learning how to put my own together.
Knowing that I could spend an extra $100 on slightly better hardware if
I didn’t pay for Windows 2000, I obtained a copy from a friend… yes,
illegally. Convinced over a six-month period that Windows 2000 was too
much work, and that it was probably a good idea to go along with
existing copyright law whether I thought it was good or not, I started
to seek alternatives. A classmate gave me a copy of Slackware, but
text-based installation was a little intimidating. Finally, a friend who
was a Linux administrator at the local community college gave me SuSE
8.1… and it was great! Now, by great I mean it worked, and I embarked
on the long quest to figure out how to do all the things I was using
Windows for. I had already been using Firefox, Thunderbird, and
OpenOffice, so that was easy enough, but what about the games??? No dice. Wine? Needs 3D
acceleration. That means getting graphics card drivers… and I had a
Radeon. Not an auspicious start, as those of you with ATI cards probably
know, but after months of fiddling with it and getting deep into the
command line, my interest shifted. The rest is history. When Novell
bought SuSE, I bought Fedora 4
Unleashed
and switched distros. I’ve used SuSE 8.1, 8.2, and 9.0; Slackware 11.0,
and Fedora 4, 6, 7, 9, and 10. Can’t wait for
11!
I’ve spent the last few days helping out some old friends with their
four Windows XP computers (all from Dell) and it amazes me the amount of
stuff I needed to do. My friends wanted me to wipe three of the four
computers and see what I could do to speed up the fourth (I couldn’t
wipe it as it actually belongs to their church and too many people use
it for me to have talked to each of them about what they actually needed
backed up). Here’s a consolidated list of the things I did and wished I
could have done to each of the computers.
“To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten
thousand.” -Shakespeare
Psalm 15:1-2 tells us that a man who walks with integrity will abide
with the LORD. The Art of Manliness has an article this
week
on doing just that - and it’s one of the best articles I’ve read there
yet. If you want a rock-solid explanation of integrity, read the
article.
I read an article in the Birmingham
Weekly
a few weeks ago that really struck me, and I just found the page I’d
clipped as I was wading through the deep piles of stuff on my desk.
While the article is about other things, one paragraph near the end is
worth noting for the on-the-money comments about real service in our
culture.
“That’s where we’ve relegated service in our culture. We’ve made it
something for the young to do instead of getting drunk … on a beach in
Mexico,” writes the author. “But if you’ve reached that threshold tax
bracket, don’t life a finger unless it’s tax deductible.”
Read through my Bible this year before I get
married May 23; the entire thing, cover to cover, reading at least a
chapter every single day.
I’m on Psalm 1 today, and I haven’t done today’s reading yet; page 414
of 949. I’m slightly behind the curve for finishing before May 23, but
it’s definitely still an achievable goal. Gotta hit the Book!
Use my credit card whenever
possible but never carry a balance.
Going well so far!
Or at least my apartment. I am oh-so-thankful in this moment to have
[most] everything backed up and have more than one computer, since my
main desktop will no longer respond to the “on” button. Everything was
behind a surge protector, and almost everything survived, but not
elijah. Hopefully my renter’s insurance will replace it?
However, that is only small consolation, as my cable internet modem also
fried and upon calling Time Warner this morning I found I will be
without internet in my home until at least Friday. That’s an entire
week! I may die. Probably won’t be many more posts this week!
I recently finished reading Justo L. Gozalez’ The Story of
Christianity,
both volumes. A friend loaned
me the book after I remarked that I felt uninformed about the origins of
things like the Apostle’s Creed and the various Protestant
denominations. Volume one works (basically) at the ascension until
Luther’s revolution; volume two completes the Reformation and brings the
reader into the present.
The book is great. It’s an engaging read, and while the
author is Methodist, he
gives an extremely balanced treatment to every form of Christianity, if
slightly minimizing the Eastern Orthodox tradition. While the focus of
the book is not theology, Gonzalez makes it easy to understand how world
events influenced theology and vice versa. Patterns of cultural thought
and world opinion make a big difference in how we view God!
Well, actually, as far as God is concerned, I was.
John 1:1 says that God was here when time began… John 1:3 says that He
made everything, and I firmly
believe that everything
includes time itself. I discovered an interesting passage in Job today,
Job 8:8-10. “Bildad the Shuhite” is trying to comfort Job by telling him
that God will bring good to Job’s life again, despite his terrible loss.
He says that Job should consider history - God had never failed! - and
reminds Job that “we are only of yesterday, and know nothing.”
The Art of Manliness blog has a good article today that’s just a list of
“Unclassified Laws of
Etiquette,”
from a very, very old etiquette book. Here are a few of the best ones on
the list:
Never fail to tell the truth. If truthful, you get your reward. You
will get your punishment if you deceive. (Proverbs 11:3)
Never borrow money and neglect to pay. If you do, you will soon be
known as a person of no business integrity. (Proverbs 6:1-5)
Never fail to say kind and encouraging words to those whom you meet
in distress. Your kindness may lift them out of their despair.
(Proverbs 19:17)
Never refuse to receive an apology. You may not receive friendship,
but courtesy will require, when a apology is offered, that you
accept it. (Matthew 18:21-22)
Never give all your pleasant words and smile to strangers. The
kindest words and the sweetest smiles should be reserved for home.
Home should be our heaven. (I Peter 3:7)
Etiquette can be ridiculous when it moves beyond common sense and
courtesy, but rules like these are a great application of Christian life
and being a real man.
It’s interesting to me how little the modern church points to the
glorification of God as the point of our lives. Perhaps that’s a harsh
statement, but this is a harsh reality - we’re all gonna die! (Romans
6:23)
II Chronicles 7:13-14 says that if we humble ourselves before the LORD,
He will be gracious and merciful towards us. James 4:10 says the same.
II Chronicles 7:19-21, on the other hand, says that if we forsake God,
then our fate will become a byword to everyone.
Hooray, Johnny, you’ve come to school for 13 years and not killed
anyone! Here’s your diploma! Hooray, Billy, you didn’t actually even
come to school very much the last three years and you’ve been busted six
times for marijuana possession, but you’re going to some Division I
school on a basketball scholarship, so here’s your diploma!
No wonder our nation is failing… our workforce believes that they are
entitled to all
the benefits and none of the work - they’re told over and over in
school that they’re
special and
good and perfect and, wonder of wonders, they actually believe it. While
every person is created with some inalienable
rights, a
high-paying job isn’t one of them; that’s something you have to work
for. And no, I don’t have one. Talent, motivation, and guidance are all
necessary for results in any enterprise, but time is a critical element, and the
discipline to work through that
time. I think schools should teach kids discipline; I know that the
business sector doesn’t generally care about a bachelor’s degree, and if
all you have is a high school diploma, you may as well not apply, unless
you intend to work as a janitor. Why? Because it doesn’t take anything
to get a high school diploma today. All it takes to get a bachelor’s
degree is a set of student
loans and a few
all-night study sessions to catch up after the debauchery of spring
break.
I was listening to NPR today in the car and I
heard a blurb about East Brunswick, NJ high school football coach Marcus
Borden. I was surprised to learn that the US Supreme Court had declined
to hear his
case
after he was barred from even bowing his head and taking a knee while
his players prayed before games. The argument was that he had previously
(for 23 years) led his players in prayer before games and that to allow
him to bow his head showed that if a player didn’t pray he might not
play, causing religious discrimination. I think it’s ridiculous and
causes religious discrimination against the coach!
Last week I finished the NavPress’ Design for Discipleship 3: Walking
With
Christ.
I think the overall point of the study is summed up well in the first
chapter, “We must remember… that there is no such thing as ‘instant
maturity’ in following Jesus.” The book does what I think is a pretty
decent job of setting up four crucial steps in that maturity in the
later four chapters.
Read through my Bible this year;
the entire thing, cover to cover, reading at least a chapter every
single day.
I’m on page 310 (I Chronicles 1:1) of
949,
or 32.6% finished, not including what I’ll read this afternoon. That
puts my average at just over 5 pages per day, finishing on July 5. I’m
upping the ante. I want to finish the entire Bible before May
23,
my wedding day. I’ll need to average just under 8 pages per day to get
there, but it’s doable. Way doable. And the reading I’ve done so far has
given me a lot of insight, like I Kings 14:8. It says that David kept
God’s commandments and followed
Him with all his heart… so they’re two different things; not that you
can follow Him and not keep His commandments, but it’s possible to keep
His commandments halfheartedly. I want to be like David and do both!
It’s funny because it’s halfway believable. We all know our government
needs all the help it can get right now, but the
A-Team isn’t going to help
us. I heard a story on the radio this
morning about dairy farmers laying off their
cows,
and the DJ ended by saying, “Let’s keep those farmers in our prayers.”
all four gospels and a few other passages during the 40 days of
Lent. I know I’m a couple of days
late, but I’m going to add it to my daily readings for the next 38 days!
BibleGateway has a few other reading plans
available,
as well, that I may delve into once Easter arrives.
Psalms 23:6 finishes one of the best known Biblical passages with the
words, “Surely goodness and lovingkindness shall follow me all the days
of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD forever.”
The word lovingkindness is from
a Hebrew word that’s rendered mercy in many translations. Mercy is
not getting what we deserve; grace (or goodness) is getting something we
don’t deserve. Seth Godin had a blurb
yesterday
that reminded me that God has indeed been good to me. He asks what will
I do with this grace that I’ve found? I Corinthians 14:12 is a great
place to start… build up the body of Christ! It feels almost
MacGyver-ish: I’ve got a small
apartment, some free time, moderate musical talent, interest and
knowledge in computer science, and the love and grace of my Savior. How
can I work so that others will see his glory?
This is a list of verses I’ve found that speak about real men, or what
it means to be a man…
Genesis 4:26(b) -> Call upon the LORD
I Samuel 16:18 -> Musical, valorous, prudent, and the LORD’s favor
Proverbs 24:16 -> Persevere
Matthew 5:13-16 -> Be different from the world’s ideas
Ephesians 4:11-16 -> United with other believers and speaking truth
Ephesians 4:25-32 -> Speaking truth; not being controlled by anger
Colossians 3:19,21 -> Love his wife and children
Colossians 3:23-24 -> Do everything to the best of his ability
I Timothy 3:2-13 -> Above reproach, free from vices
Titus 1:6-9 -> Not addicted to alcohol or quick-tempered
Titus 2:2, 6-8 -> Temperate, sensible, sound in faith and doctrine
Hebrews 13:7 -> Imitating Godly mentors and models
James 4:10 -> Humble
I Peter 3:7 -> Love his wife and care for her
II Peter 1:5-8 -> Constantly growing in order to be productive
I know, I’m getting married. But we all get carried away sometimes by
marketing hype… what office worker can resist an Embody
Chair? I think the next big step for
me in living a frugal lifestyle and building wealth is to ditch the
marketing. It’s amazing to me that I somehow still fall for marketing,
since I browse ad-free, I don’t watch television, and most of the ads on
Hulu (where I watch
Bones with my fiancé) aren’t even for
purchased products - they’re for stuff like Feed The
Pig, which, ironically enough, is a website
devoted to saving! So how do I get caught up in marketing hype? Somehow
it happens.
Well, it’s already February 3, so I’m a few days behind, but here’s my
monthly update on how things are going with my 2009 New Year’s
Resolutions,
point-by-point.
Read through my Bible this year;
the entire thing, cover to cover, reading at least a chapter every
single day.
Well, I missed a few days here and there, but none in the last two
weeks. I finished Numbers and started Deuteronomy this morning, and I’ve
been struck by some of the things I never noticed before, like the fact
that the Ark of the Covenant had a cover over it whenever Israel
moved,
so all those movies where you see the ark itself being carried are
missing something. Anther verse I found particularly interesting was
Deuteronomy 4:9; it points right towards one of my favorite sermons,
that forgetfulness is like faith cancer. As soon as the nation of Israel
began to forget the things God had done for them, they strayed from the
path… In Deuteronomy 4:9, Moses implores them not to forget, but to
tell their children and their grandchildren about the goodness of
God!!!
Here are a couple of screenshots from my home computer; they show my
personal desktop configuration. I don’t run a desktop environment, since
I don’t need most of the things they provide. My window manager is
FVWM2, which is very lightweight, standards compliant, and extremely
configurable. FVWM configuration is not for the faint of heart, since it
requires creating and editing a text file, but that same early learning
curve also makes the infinite personalization possible.
[EDIT 29 Jan 2009:] I just figured out something very important. Upon
completion of the “Firefly” series on
Hulu.com, I pop in my DVD of Serenity, and… nothing. VLC won’t open
it, neither will xine, nothing. Having used libdvdcss in the past, I
immediately go to yum and try to install it, but it isn’t there. Afer
searching teh blagoweb for several minutes, I finally find, in a comment
on this post, that the repo at rpm.livna.org is
still up to serve one package that RPMFusion refuses to carry. Guess
what that package was? The first long command in this guide now installs
the livna repository and libdvdcss.[/EDIT]
This weekend I found, by way of Get Rich
Slowly,
a post from Coleman
Unlimited
that intrigued me about the usefulness of credit cards. The post’s basic
point, lost on me when I made my New Years’ resolutions, is that some
credit cards do, in fact, pay you money!
Upon checking my account online, I found that my credit card has earned
between 0.35 and one percent cash back on all my purchases. My debit
card, for comparison, earns half a percent.
Here’s your future:
The 5x optical zoom, 10-megapixel digital
camera
is built in. Video playback (which means audio, duh)
is built in. Instant messaging
is built in. Internet browsing is built in. Mobile
gaming is
built in.
“eBooks”
are built-in.
Video capture is built in.
Video conferencing is built in.
Once you pair your earpiece with the phone, it automatically, and
wirelessly, connects whenever it is turned
on.
When you set your phone down on your desk, it will automatically, and
wirelessly, start charging.
Once you pair your external keyboard, mouse/trackball, display, and
speaker system with the phone, they will automatically, and wirelessly,
connect whenever you set your phone down on your desk.
Once you pair your car to your phone, keyless entry, remote ignition,
and other “car key fob button” functionality will be right there in your
phone.
Found a great article in GQ today (no, I don’t get the magazine, no,
I’ve never picked it up before, I was waiting as my fiancée got her hair
cut) on a great man, GEN David Petraeus. The whole article is available
online, for
which I give props to GQ. One of the recurring events in the article is
a question GEN Petraeus poses to soldiers serving under him. “What have
you learned?,” he queries them. It’s a great question for any man to
focus on at day’s end; how have I made myself better today? What have I
learned? Did I get stronger, physically, mentally, morally, somehow? The
article is a remarkable portrait of a committed man.
I’ve never made New Year’s resolutions before, but I think this is a
great year to start. Proverbs 12:15 says, “The way of a fool is right in
his own eyes, but a wise man is he who listens to counsel.” I know that
there are a lot of things in my life that aren’t even right in my own
eyes when I look back on them, and if even a fool thinks his way is
right, what does that make me?
I’ve just figured out that BOINC is
included in Fedora. I’ve been installing it manually and it’s right
there in the repos. Hooray less work!
Now, if you’ve never heard of BOINC, it’s a distributed
computing program
which allows your unused processor cycles to be pressed into service for
any one of several worthy projects doing anything from looking for a
cure for cancer to looking for
alien life. My personal favorite is
the World Community Grid; it runs
several other projects, mostly medical, alternatively. BOINC is great
because it runs on everything - Linux, Mac OS, Windows, even the PS3!
I love this stuff. The background is from
Stratification,
edited to reflect that this is no ordinary Mac. Yes, I blurred out the
names… but that’s the only editing done on this screenshot. Enjoy.
I’ll post an explanation of my desktop software sometime in the future.
A Scout is Trustworthy, Loyal,
Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave,
Clean, and Reverent.
Yes, I was a Boy Scout, Eagle Scout, OA Vigil honor… and I think it
was great preparation. Just look at the Scout Law above and replace
“Scout” with “Real Man.” Think about it for a second, and measure
whatever standard you have in your mind, whatever man you admire. I
think the only point which brings up questions is Obedient. But the
Bible quickly clears those questions up; a real man is obedient to God.
Deuteronomy 27:10 reads, “You shall therefore obey the LORD your God,
and do His commandments and His statutes which I command you today.” So
the Scout Law provides insight into what a real man should Be. The Scout
Oath then elaborates into the things he should Do.
This sets the soundcard model option for the sound server. I then
followed this
guide to get
PulseAudio running by changing one line of the pulseaudio config file
/etc/pulse/default.pa, adding tsched=0 to the end of the line
load-module
module-hal-detect. It also directed me to install a bunch of
PulseAudio packages, some of which don’t exist and others I didn’t need.
The command I ended up running is below. I’m not sure if all of these
packages are necessary; most of them were already on my system. In any
case, sound works now. Out of the headphone port.
While it does poke fun at the Christian religion (which is different
from following Christ), this comparison of religions to programming
languages made me laugh this morning. Aegisub: If programming languages
were
religions…
A friend of mine brought this article to my attention yesterday: 10
years later, school still sugar free and
proud.
It notes the surprising story of Browns-Mill Elementary School, and the
principal who, according to the article, single-handedly removed soda
and junk food from her school and got kids asking for
broccoli. I think it’s
terrific. Someone saw a problem, and, instead of complaining to the
federal government for more money or new laws, went out and fixed it.
Now, we can
debatesoy
milk as a health
food or the benefits of
exercisefor the
brain
all day long, but there’s no doubt that something positive happened at
Browns-Mill, and there’s even less doubt that the federal, state, or
even local government was necessary to pull it off. While I do support
some level of funding from those levels of goverment to the nation’s
schools, along with a baseline standard to which students should be
held to receive a
diploma,
I think that it should be as hands-off as possible, so that parents can
influence their childrens’ educations to the greatest extent. I have no
idea how best to do it, but I applaud people like principal Dr. Yvonne
Sanders-Butler who just do it anyway.
What is “essential gear”? Trent Hamm at The Simple Dollar wrote earlier
this month about the Suitcase
Test.
The premise, as he states it, is “If you had to fit all of your
belongings in a suitcase and walk away, what would you pack?” From a
personal finance standpoint, this leads to getting rid of a lot of stuff
anything that doesn’t fit in the suitcase - and only buying new things
if they fit. I think that a suitcase for your whole life is a little
extreme, but I am certainly on board with the underlying idea: there are
a few things in life that you need. Things that are essential to
survival, either in the wilderness, the post-apocalyptic urban jungle,
or mundane life today. These things are essential gear, things that a
real man should always keep close to hand. As the Boy Scout motto
states, “Be Prepared.”
So, my basic needs as a human being are air, water, food, protection
from the elements, and communication with others. Assuming I’m on planet
Earth and not kidnapped and released at the bottom of the ocean without
a scuba tank (both pretty decent assumptions, since I’m not a
millionaire with space-travel
hobbies or a high potential
ransom), I’ll have air, so that’s one down. Water isn’t much trickier;
in day-to-day life I have a faucet, but it’s always nice to have it
close in either a bottle or a pack, especially when I’m out of the
house. Food I generally assume I can buy, but a knife in my pocket
prepares me for the possibility of being stuck in the wilderness.
Protection from the elements means shelter and clothes. Easy enough; I
tend to consider a waterproof jacket in this category as well; depending
on your climate, you’ll need other items as well, like
sunglasses,
parkas and boots, or sunblock and chapstick. Last necessity is
communication. While I could certainly survive without it, I put a
cellphone in this category at the very least.
“The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is
good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is
evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart.” -Luke
6:45
I hope that my heart is not only filled with the evil things that come
out of my mouth all too often.
“But the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and
those defile the man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders,
adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders. These are the
things which defile the man; but to eat with unwashed hands does not
defile the man.” -Matthew 15:18-20
In my first post about
notebooks,
I mentioned a green Army-issue notebook that is roughly the size of a
moleskine, 5.5" by 8" and 92 pages. I
couldn’t find them online at the time, but now I have: the Federal
Supply Service item
7530-00-222-3521.
Price? $2.33 each, shipping included. Moleskine notebooks run $9.60 and
up.
Add a piece of duct tape and you’ve got a pen holder - wrap it sticky
side out around a pen to form the holder, place that against the spine
of the notebook, and wrap another piece of duct tape around the whole
notebook cover (sticky side down) to hold it in place. Too easy, and it
makes a nice contrasting stripe around the cover!
I own four computers. Three of them actually work. All three run Fedora
10.
In preface to my earlier post about Fedora 10 on my
MacBook
(yes, I know that prefacing something that’s already happened is
backwards, but I’m doing it anyway), here’s a guide to installation and
post-install configuration of Fedora 10 for my uses. YMMV. Note: all
commands meant to be performed as root.
That’s right, folks, I’m running Fedora 10
on my shiny new MacBook 5.1… and you
can too!! Here’s how to do it.
Partition your harddrive with
BootCamp. My
harddrive is 160 gigs (yes, I bought the cheapest MacBook since it was
all I could afford), so I shrank the Mac OS X HFS+ partition to 40 GB
and left the rest for “Windows.” Note: don’t actually install Windows,
just exit BootCamp once the partitioning is done.
George Washington
wrote
that “it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of
Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and
humbly to implore his protection and favor.”
“I know I’m a lucky man; God’s given me a pretty fair hand.”
-Montgomery Gentry
“I think we all sin by needlessly ignoring the apostolic injunction to
‘rejoice’ as much as by anything else.” -C.S. Lewis
Sloppy-Focus
(Focus-Follows-Mouse). If Apple implemented that one feature, I’m pretty
sure I’d recommend Macs to everyone. But all indications are that
Focus-Follows-Mouse without Autoraise isn’t coming any time soon, since
for some reason the Apple UI doesn’t recognize a difference between
focused and foreground. Steve Yegge (no, I don’t know him, I just found
the article in my search for some way to get sane behavior from my new
window manager) has a very informative
article
on his blog about the subject. To solve this problem, I will be turning
to linux when I get a chance over
Thanksgiving. Pre-emptive Fedora
FTW!
Since I spent a fair amount of time yesterday configuring a Gateway
T-6330U that became
worthless
inside an hour of use, and I’ll be looking for the same application set
on whatever computer I buy today to replace it, here are the “killer
apps” that I use every day.
-> Firefox (duh). Yes, I
regularly try Opera, Safari, and IE, but the plugins always bring me
back.
-> Adobe Flash Player. Too many
websites use it for me not to have this installed.
-> Java Runtime Environment. Anyone say AJAX?
Web 2.0?
-> Greasemonkey
Yes, yes, I have fallen to Steve Jobs’ evil empire… I bought a
MacBook. It’s the lower-end of the two
new aluminum 13" laptops. And it’s a thing of beauty. The one thing I
regret about it is that my local PX didn’t have
any with the backlit keyboard available.
So small, so light… battery life of four to five hours…
Bluetooth… Energy
Star qualified… there’s no way I could
have gotten all the features of my new MacBook from another retailer.
After my abysmal
experience
with the T-6330U, I was ready to pay well for a new laptop, and pay I
did… $1,299. But the hardware is so beautiful.
Don’t get me wrong; the software is nice too, but I’m not a huge fan -
at the moment - of the OS X look and feel. At some point in the near
future there will be a Fedora-On-A-Mac experiment. However, I can say
that I’ve never had a computer that was this easy and this painless to
set up before. Did I mention that the keyboard is a joy to use and the
machine is virtually silent?
Well, my old Dell finally bit the dust. HDD just couldn’t keep up any
more. So I bought a new one… and then I returned it. DO NOT BUY a
Gateway T-6330U. They
donotwork.
During normal usage, the T-6330U freezes every 5 to 8 minutes. Normal
use. Freezes. Don’t buy it.
After my recent (and sporadically continuing) laptop
woes, I
was reading through the
Uncrate blog
and found the Voodoo Envy133. Good
grief this thing is pretty. While the technical specifications fail my
wishlist expectations, it’s still a tempting buy. The big killer, which
also rules out the new Samsung
X360
line, is the lack of an optical drive. I can live with only 2GB of ram
and a 1.8 GHz processor (current laptop has 1.5GB and runs at 1.7 GHz);
the 64GB SSD more than meets my requirements. But the look is fantastic.
You should go check it out. Try building one with the “Sunset” color…
amazing.
I’m traveling away from home each week this month, and my laptop
harddrive failed last night.
Horror.
Although all my data was backed up on an external (aside from the
presentation I’d just started), it all became useless. Thankfully, it
magically rebooted
six hours later, but not until I had seriously considered a new laptop.
Having done the consideration, I figured it was time to post ’em. So
here’s my wish laptop.
I demand a lot from my sunglasses, just like all my other
gear. AR
670-1 states that
sunglasses must not be “trendy, or have lenses or frames with initials,
designs, or other adornments.” The lenses must also not be “extreme or
trendy colors, which include but are not limited to, red, yellow, blue,
purple, bright green, or orange,” but rather “traditional gray, brown,
or dark green shades.” Since my sunglasses have to go with everything I
wear, brown is out… can’t wear those with a black suit or jacket. As
an avid shooter and future second amendment participant, I want
sunglasses to be rated at ANSI
Z87.1-2003 high impact
standards or better. Lastly, I want polarized
lenses, but I also want
to be able to swap the lenses out any time I want.
Guys, let’s face it. Women got the better deal whenever it was decided
that they could carry stuff around in bags during the day, and we
couldn’t.
There are plenty of blog
entries
on the net
defending
the
murse,
but this isn’t one of them. I am proposing something completely (sort
of) different.
Backpacks.
Yes, that’s what I carry. I do have an “Urban Plumber’s Bag” from the
now-defunct Bohemian
Traders,
and it gets a lot of compliments. It also draws a lot of attention as a
murse. However, I recently bought a
CamelBakTransformer.
It’s a great bag for a lot of reasons. First, I’m a big fan of
hydrationpacks in
general.
Not having to take the backpack off and dig through it to find my
Nalgene bottle when I’m on the go is
a great deal. Plus, the Transformer is modular. The basic pack is just a
camelback sleeve with shoulder straps, two small zipper pockets, and a
single open flap pocket. However, it comes with two other pockets that
clip on whenever I need them.
“I write down everything I want to remember. That way, instead of
spending a lot of time trying to remember what it is I wrote down, I
spend the time looking for the paper I wrote it down on.” –Beryl
Pfizer
One essential piece of gear for anyone who needs to remember anything is
a notebook. I have one with me, either hand carried or in my gear bag,
ninety percent of the time. Bible study and sermon notes, shopping
lists, to-do lists, and things to remember are all in the same place; as
long as the notebook is long enough, everything current is there.
Here’s what I want. A good quality weapon that I can use to maintain
proficiency shooting on a target range once a month or so, with
ammunition in a caliber useful for personal defense that also won’t
break the bank on those monthly range outings.
My pick: the Springfield Armory XD
9832HCSP06. A .40
S&W caliber pistol, small enough
for concealed carry, but the right size (with a magazine
extension)
to practice shooting as if it were a Beretta
92. Yes,
I realize that there are plenty of other weapons on the market which
meet those conditions, but having fired the XD .40 and .45 service
models, I really like the XD. It fits my hand, feels like a natural
extension of my arm, and fires as smoothly as anything else I’ve used.
The 9832HCSP06 also has Trijicon Night
Sights
built in from the start, always a good thing.
Image credit: 
I tend
to start in the center and work outwards. First, myself. This is
generally either, “God, this is AWESOME. I can’t believe how much you
love me to have given me a day like today,” or something more like Psalm
102 (Prayer of the Afflicted). It might seem selfish to start with me
during prayer time, but getting my immediate worries out of the way
(Philippians 4:6-7) helps me clear my mind for the other (some might say
more important) things to talk to God about.
