Laughter

A while back I wrote a guide for a game called "The Hobbit" (the game was excellent by the way) and I frequently receive e-mails from people who usually don't take the time to read the guide and simply e-mail me with their questions, expecting me to take time out of my life to help them with their gaming problem that they could have simply looked at the guide to find: after all, that's what the guide is for.

Most of the time these people don't even bother to respond with a "thank you." I guess they think I'm life-less AIM bot whose only purpose in life is to wait around for questions on games that I can answer.

The following is an e-mail I received recently that caused me to laugh quite a bit. Okay, so perhaps it isn't nice to make fun of people but this case deserves sharing. It's stereotypical of what I sometimes have to deal with.

hey my name is xxxxx and i bought the game the hobbit for ps2 and im on chapter 8 im supposed to go into the cider house now i dont know if my game is bad or what but where there should be a door it looks like as if you are looking outside into the water and it wont let me walk through it its behind bard i cant get into the cider house can you tell me if there is a door there and its just my game or am i doing something wrong if i jump into the water i can see the cider house and ppl standing there even check points but it wont let me get into it please help if you can im about to throw the game through a wall thanks if you can

After a properly written response on my part (albeit confused because I have no idea what she's talking about):

ok so i have done that believe me i love play station but there is no place that i can get into across from him is a place that has side rails on the steps right well it wont let me in ive gotten all the jems in the water even the white one ive walked along the building ive jumped into the water i think i have done everything ive saved at all the save points just to see what would happen and nothing do you know what i mean when i say the door behind bard isnt there that its blue is it like that in your game there isnt even a sign in front of anything that it will let me read when i first got to that level it did but not now i have no idea what im missing and im pretty good at finding what i need to do

The punctuation police will come and find you! Do you need someone to help you fix your broken shift key! Something! Anything! I have no idea what you're asking of me!

I responded with a request for a photo of the problem she's having. In this case, a picture is certainly worth a thousand run-on words.......

Gouge

I've been reading Gouge's book "Of Domestical Duties." It's very good and for an old book (1600s) it's remarkably accessible. Unfortunately it's also difficult to get. There was a recent reprint but it's somewhere in the neighbourhood of $35.

And I must say that I've not been this engrossed in a book for quite some time. He has quite a few insightful things to say and the topics are varied enough to maintain my attention for quite a span. There were a couple of things in particular that I wanted to share.

First, I have a confession to make, if it wasn't already obvious. I'm a very non-traditional sort of guy in the sense that if a tradition seems to have no significance, I could care less about it. Like
throwing rice at weddings. I'm sure it must signify something like the desire that God shower His blessings of provision upon the new family but unless it's something like that, it seems silly.

And I still don't get the "something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue" tradition. Or throwing the garter. Why?!

Gouge related a history of the Romans when talking about how the man and wife were to
make a new family and each was to love their spouse and not let devotion to parents rob their spouse of that love. Apparently the Romans used to put a yellow veil on the bride (kind of like a
blindfold) and then spin her around a couple of times and carry her to their house so she didn't know the way back to her father's! I was amused but I think that it has more of a significance in a Christian context if one chose to see it that way. It's similar to the bride seeing the bridegroom waiting for her but seeing him dimly as through a veil, like we see Christ. When they are pronounced to be wedded, the veil is lifted and she sees clearly the face of the bridegroom and the wedding feast begins, similar to how we will have the veil lifted from
our eyes and shall be wedded to Christ.

Second, Gouge talked about the covenant before marriage, which though he didn't say was absolute, yet he said that there is example given from Scripture of betrothal that would be similar in a way to what we consider and engagement. Apparently in his day there was a custom of actually making a covenant before marriage that went like this:

The man would say:
"I, A take thee B to my espoused wife, and do faithfully promise to marry thee in time meet and convenient."

and the woman would say:
"I B take thee A to be my espoused husband, and do faithfully promise to yield to be married to thee in time meet and convenient."

He did make the good point that both could begin to more carefully prepare themselves for that marriage, knowing that they had made a promise to marry when the time came. I thought this was interesting. An engagement today, if properly done, signifies the same. Unfortunately many people treat it very much like they treat marriage: as being made null when I think it should be.

Third, Gouge pointed out that one good benefit of marriage is that the love of Christ is more fully demonstrated than to the unmarried. I thought this was very interesting too and deserved some more thought.

Fourth, he also made it clear, as I've often told my siblings, that one should take especial care to look after their own duties and not be scrutinizing the duties of their spouse. A husband is responsible for loving his wife, not for seeing that his wife reverences him, and a wife is responsible for reverencing her husband, not making sure her husband loves her. Sinful, fallen creatures often lose sight of their own duties and focus on the other's duties. Thank the Lord for godly marriages that are seasoned with humility!

Fifth, and this one I particularly liked. Gouge made the usual comparison of the husband to the head, and as the head is more exalted than the rest of the body, it should be treated with respect and should look after and cherish the rest of the body, giving it its protection. However, he also said that if the husband may be likened to the head, then perhaps the wife should be likened to the heart. As an example, he cited that woman was taken from the side of man, near his heart. This made me think a bit and compare:

The heart, metaphorically is more compassionate and sensitive than the head in being tender and caring and without the heart, the head could not survive. The heart needs the head to look after and protect it so that neither can say that they can do without the other. Both have their function to perform and though the head has more honour put upon it, that doesn't mean that it is more necessary or important than the heart.

So that's what I've been reading. It goes along nicely with the study on the Song of Solomon that has been occurring on Wednesday nights with the church. I've just finished the sections on who is eligible for marriage and an exposition of the relevant passage in Ephesians. Next I believe are the common duties between man and wife.

Fust day o' class suh.

Indeed! The semester has begun. My first class this morning was at 9:30 so I had quite a bit of time to make breakfast (pancakes and bacon) finish up Job in Matthew Henry (very good and rewarding) and sing our new Psalm of the month, Psalm 53. I even saw my roommates before I left the house!

The first class was with Dr Bunting. We had some trouble getting the volume up for our single student in Tulsa (distance learning) but the class itself sounds interesting. We're going to be using computer programs mainly, and programming our own programs to come up with solutions. That sounds very practical and I'm looking forward to it.

However, for the benefit of the Tulsa student we are supposed to push a button on a microphone near us when we answer a question. The problem with that, is the camera in the room swivels quickly and noisily to focus right on you. This is rather intimidating in my opinion. It's like one of those robots in Star Wars poking his face directly at you, and you had better not answer this question wrong!

The second class immediately followed and was with Dr Krazinsky, an old Polish gentleman. The class was solid state devices (electronics) but his examples all seem to focus on war. He said that world war two was responsible for the rise of semiconductors and likened the movement of an electron in a material to going through a group of soldiers and said that red LEDs were good for sniping. I've heard that his quizzes and class in general are extremely difficult and require a lot of memorization. We shall see.

The final class was with Dr Fan. This was the most interesting. He had a bit of a cold so sounded hoarse but this didn't stop him from getting very, very excited during his lecture. He began by telling us what we were going to learn, then started to talk about trees. The top of the tree is called the crown but underneath is the root system which often spreads two to four times the diameter of the crown. "This class" he said, "is like these roots. It might not look pretty but it's foundational, you need this and you need this solid foundation." He went on to show us a video clip from "Facing the Giants" (a football film I've never seen) in which a coach gives a /very/ motivational and forceful demonstration, then Dr Fan starts yelling at us and saying how he believes in us, we will have to work hard and keep up and get this done so do it! I felt like we should have cheered or said "yeah!" or something ;)

The nice thing about that class is that he said that the top three people in the class will not have to take the final. I'm going to shoot for that. After he said that, one of my classmates said "ha, Logan doesn't stand a chance" jokingly, but I think that may be closer to the truth than he knows. There are some smart people there.

So that was day one. Currently there are some unexpected guests at the house but I don't mind. It's just about seven people more than I was expecting ;) I need to talk to Jonathan and let him know that he needs to /ask/ first and let me know what's going on. They are watching a movie and I'm going to join them in a bit. So good night all!

A Westful We-tweet

One of the highlights of this past break (which was just a bit too short by the way) was a trip to Colorado.

After spending a good few days with my family down at their house, I brought my youngest brother back up with me to my place. I spent most of the time with him at the house and then we took a trip to Colorado to go on a retreat for the Midwest Presbytery youth. I was one of the "drivers" as I'm not sure I'm considered one of the "youth" any more ;) Not quite sure about that though.

Anyway, the trip up was rather nice, in a comical sort of way. First, my car's defroster doesn't seem to work that well with four hot-blooded boys in the car. Next, the windshield wipers were frozen and stiff so every time a vehicle passed my low-riding car, a spray of mud would come up on the windshield. The wipers were only getting one tiny patch down low so I was nearly peering through my steering wheel trying to see. Nearly got a crick in me neck ;)

A couple of hours into the trip, Stephen mentioned and I suddenly realized that the hood was smoking. We pulled over soon after and put some more radiator fluid in but soon after that it began smoking again. We limped on in this fashion nearly to the Colorado border. I was thinking in my mind that I felt like I was limping along on three wheels when suddenly we were! A tire blew out so I quickly grabbed the walkie-talkie and let Alan know. We pulled over and it turned out that I didn't have a wrench to get the nuts off so we tried flagging someone off the road. It took nearly fifteen minutes! Everyone pulled over to the other side of the road like the pharisees in the story of the good Samaritan. But a nice young couple did eventually stop and we were able to get the tire off and the rinky-dinky spare back on.

It was providential that the Colorado border was within 20 miles though because it was after 5:00 our time and all the places would have been closed. However, across the border it was just after 4:00 and we were able to get into a tire shop, get a new tire, and be on our way within just a few minutes. They didn't have anyone else there so they were able to get us in and get us out very quickly indeed!

From there we started going up into the mountains. The defroster kept failing and it was simultaneously too warm and too cool because the windows had to be open while the defroster was on full blast in order to keep even a small area for me to be able to see. It was dark by this time.

We ended up making it safely to the Colorado Springs Reformed Church. We were half-way into the opening lecture but what we heard of it was good.

The retreat itself was beneficial to me, there was more time than usual for games and such. I could only take a little bit of that though, then I grabbed a book and began to read. Such a pleasure to have a bit of time for that!

After the retreat was over, we went skiing, which was very fun. However, it was also (we were informed) one of the coldest days they had had. The sun was covered by a thick layer of clouds and the snow was swirling about constantly. The wind was blowing stiffly through the trees and, in my own un-wisdom perhaps (though I didn't have anything else that I owned) was wearing a mere pair of jeans. With a hole in the knee no less! I survived as long as the bundled up people though, so I felt pretty good about that, though by the end of the day I was very, very cold. Everyone was having trouble warming up their toes but I think everyone agreed that it was a lot of fun.

I spent the first three to four hours with Laura helping to teach her to ski. She was doing great despite the poor instruction. We took two beginning trips down the "bunny slope" and then headed up the lift to a higher run. It was much steeper in one spot and quite a bit longer. Laura did very well and we went on several runs up there before trying an even longer, though still the easiest rated one. We went inside to warm up briefly, then back out to ski down a bit more before lunch. During lunch, Laura admitted that she had been feeling very terrified but she never told me until after the fact! Quite the trooper.

After lunch, Tanner, Josh Mann, and myself had time for three black-diamond runs (I fell down a couple of times, quite fun in the powder!) and then headed in because it was time to go. I was feeling rather iced over anyway. The ski mask I was wearing had ice all around the mouth and nose and Tanner's goggles had ice on the /inside/ of the mask. Later we heard that on a nearby peak, what with the wind-chill and all, the temperature was supposed to drop to somewhere around 60 degrees F below zero!

The drive back home was fairly uneventful, one of the people at the church had very generously said he would look at my car, and he found a small leak in the heater hose so he replaced that and I had no cooling problems since then! Plus the defroster worked a bit better as well. Laura drove for eight hours of the way back home, which was a great boost in her driver's permit time that she needs.

Now, as for the retreat itself. The topic was prayer and a more opportune time in my life could not be had.

I've been praying and considering trying to be more active on campus as an encourager and to help start a prayer group. I'd been talking to another classmate of mine and we've laid some plans but I've not heard back from him as to the place or time yet. I would really like to pray specifically for revival and even if it's only a couple of students a week, then that would be enough.

So the lectures on prayer were good reminders for me. There was one in particular, the last one, that was most helpful. I'm going to upload it (or most of it) so you can listen to it as well. The topic of the last lecture was "Importune Prayer" and he begins by explaining what that is.

I also had the opportunity to talk to some of the other CY about some spiritual issues. We all know that it's so much easier to say that it would be a great thing to start praying more and be very active in that, but much harder to put it into practice. I challenge you to listen to this lecture and really begin praying! God has established this as a means of accomplishing His will and what a blessing that we can come to Him.

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