Archive for May 2010
Choose your own assurance
The forest is deep, but it is neither dark nor silent. Even last night’s sounds and the glimmerings of moonlight spoke peace and not terror. You and your mule are more than halfway home, and the promise of feasting quickens your step.
You hear a hoofbeat and voices approaching. Moments later your king and his guard rein their horses before you.
Do you:
- Complain about the violence inherent in the system? Go to page 42.
- Pause to wonder if you got everything in proper order when you swore fealty to him ten years before? Go to page 60.
- Whisk off your cap and look up, glad to see your lord and protector? Go to page 77.
Footdragging
Douglas Wilson, writing in Angels in the Architecture, encourages patience and faith in God’s dealings with kings and nations:
The Psalm says that kings should be worried about the anger of the Lord, not that the Lord’s followers should be worried about the footdragging of kings. (204)
Decimal places
Douglas Wilson, in Angels in the Architecture, writes of the connection between creatureliness and poetry:
Because we men cannot be God, we must learn to be good poets. (181)
And of the limits of precision compared to connotation, imagery and symbolism:
Words do not have decimal places. (191)
Criminal
Douglas Jones, in Angels in the Architecture, writes that
Children should be almost criminal in their love of stories. If they aren’t regularly begging you for stories, even after you seem to have been reading all day, then something may be wrong with them. They live and grow by means of narrative, especially fiction. Families and schedules differ, but our family . . . reads passages from one to three books (fiction, history, theology, or Scripture) at every meal, making sure that we begin the day with plenty of poetry. Meals are especially important for families, since they naturally display sacrifice, intimacy, and beauty. (124)
Blogs I read
Apart from a few work-related subscriptions, these are the blogs in my reader. There are a few more folks I keep up with on Facebook or Twitter (mostly family, church family, and a few friends from college). I feel bad having such a long list, but trimming it down this far has been an accomplishment.
Top three
Family
- My wife, Lisa
- Sister Abby
- Brother-in-law Chad and Judi
Church family
- Brian (also his more techie blog)
- Paul
- Luke and Elizabeth
- Steve and Tracy
- Jordan
- John and Emily
Theology and Christian living
- Our church (plus a few ancillary blogs)
- C. J. Mahaney
- Mark Lauterbach
- Biblical Horizons
- Jeff Meyers
- Gene Veith
- Credenda|Agenda
- Justin Taylor
- John Barach
- Ken Auer
- David Koyzis (also his Genevan Psalter blog)
Comics
Other
- Gene Chase, one of my college professors
- Jon Barlow
- The Big Picture
- Woot! (also Kids.Woot)
Walking
My pastor recently posed the question, “What do you say when your child says, ‘Mom, I’m a Christian’?” He warned against discouraging or stumbling our children by telling them “we’ll wait and see.”
Perhaps you are uncomfortable calling your children Christians, although Scripture uses the word simply to mean one who is discipled. Regardless, it is not enough to appropriate the name “Christian;” we point beyond it, reminding them and ourselves that faith is a daily walking as much as a starting. So we help them to see all the privileges and responsibilities of belonging to Christ. We are repeatedly saying things like: “Isn’t it so good to . . .”
- . . . be forgiven
- . . . have our sins washed away
- . . . have God as our father
- . . . have God as our provider
- . . . belong to God
- . . . belong to Jesus
- . . . be a part of God’s family
- . . . rely on Jesus
- . . . have Jesus as our savior
- . . . have life in Jesus
- . . . be joined to Jesus
- . . . have Jesus as our king
- . . . have the Holy Spirit to help us love and obey
- . . . have the Holy Spirit to comfort us
- . . . serve God
- . . . obey God
This is simply part of fanning into flame — urging our children to grow and continue and delight in these things that are a part of obedient faith. It is such a delight to know, trust and obey a king who is so great and so good to us! God has designed for our children to trust us instinctively, just so that we can help them to see his goodness and to trust him instinctively now, and with more understanding over the years. Jesus even points to a child’s instinctive, joyful, care-free trusting as an example for us in our own faith.
Some of these things are true even for the hardest of unbelievers — Jesus is king over all the earth, and we are to obey God. Part of our children’s and our own walking in faith is simply seeing, delighting and resting in what is already true, rather than chafing or cursing. “Confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, [and] you will be saved.”
Commute Time
Woot.com is selling a 2GB MP3 player today for $13.
At Crossway.org you can buy the ESV on MP3 for $30 (there is also a version by Mac McLean which is more expensive). Sometimes they have discounts, but I can’t find an active coupon code today. If your church has a bookstore you could check with them to see if they have a trade account with Crossway; I’m not sure if Crossway discounts the MP3s for trade customers but it’s worth asking.
Back in January Woot was selling this MP3 player, and I bought it plus the ESV on MP3. At the time there was an active coupon code so the Bible cost me only $20. Since then I’ve been listening to the ESV during my work commute. My drive is a little more than 30 minutes each way, and right now I’m working from home only one day per week. The entire Bible is about 70 hours, so I’ve just now finished and am starting up again. I’m enjoying this greatly. It certainly helps with devotional consistency! And the pace is interesting — there are things to see at every level of detail, and this pace has its own sort of breathtaking.
If you read this after today then Woot will be selling something completely different. But they sell inexpensive MP3 players from time to time so check them daily; alternatively you can find some MP3 players under $30 at Overstock.com. One hint about the Sansa Clip and the Crossway ESV: even if you copy the MP3 files to the Music folder, they will not show up under the Music menu on the device. Instead, the Clip realizes they are books and places them under the Audiobook menu.
I gotta have my orange juice. 