The Shadow Knows

The Convention

2009-10-17T20:03:00.000-07:00

Now I'm going to leave before somebody gets the idea that this blog is active again >_>

Day 1

So I got out of the house just fine at about 4:50 in the morning. Tulsa's airport is fairly laid back and I went through the security check with no problems. I even had my toothpaste all ready to go in a zip-loc bag.

When I checked in and got my boarding pass, I was pleasantly surprised to see that I had seat number 1A, which meant I would be right in the front of the plane. “All right!” I exclaimed, “They must have bumped me up to first class or something, maybe there weren't enough first class passengers!” This however, turned out to be a false surmise as not only was it not first class, it had no storage area for my bag unlike everyone else's seats. And leg room was scanty. It was a smaller plane than I had previously flown in and they apparently put the passengers they referred to as “Elite Passengers” (which seemed a bit snobbish to me) in the back. I guess they do that on the smaller planes, I don't really know. It was a fairly uneventful flight and I was able to finish a book that I had started well before the semester had begun. This is the first section of time I've had to be able to do that, which was very nice.

The flight attendant (or whatever the politically correct term is) was a man that I think had mixed parents, he looked something like Obama in skin color and something like Barney Fife in mannerisms and looks. He was very polite and would always offer me things by saying “Sir, would you like.....” and with a long, flowing sweep of his arm, gesture toward whatever it was he was offering. When I got up to exit the plane (that was the one perk of being in seat 1A, I left first) he gave a slight bow, a sweeping movement with both his arms and showed me where the door was. I appreciated it but felt I probably could have found it myself. He was very polite and very obviously took his job seriously, which was one reason he reminded me of Barney.

Leaving the airport was no problem. I guess airports must trust each other's security because no one bothers to check anyone leaving the terminal. That's nice because it would take up more time if they did. I got to the group just as they were getting to drive off. They are taking multiple trips out to get all of the conference attendees. We made several more stops around the airport until we were full. I was seated next to a young man named Zack who is in bio-mechanical engineering but want to be a doctor. He is from Pennsylvania and is taking a “Shakespeare in Film” class this semester. We knew some of the same plays.

The Hilton hotel is very nice. It's eleven stories and mostly class on the outside. At the desk I found out I am sharing a room with a chap named Eli, who has yet to arrive. This didn't surprise me and I look forward to meeting him. I was a bit stunned when I opened the door to the room and saw only one bed however! Thankfully the couch does fold out into a sleeper sofa so it will be just like back home :)

The room is very nice but everything costs a lot. I would have expected that in a fancy place like this, most of the things would be already paid for and “complimentary”. Apparently they milk you for all you've got. Internet is not free. It's something like $10 for 24 hours. They offer movies and games on the TV but those likewise are not free. They also offer a continental breakfast.... in bed! But that's $11 and if you want juice it's another $4.

I get reimbursed for certain expenses but that seems like it would be overdoing it. I'll just go and get something cheap downstairs in a bit.

On second thought.... the cafe had sandwiches for $12 so I'll pass that up and just eat chips in the conference room. The dinner they have planned is free to the voting delegates but for any guests it is $57! And that's one of the cheap meals they have here. It had better taste good and there had better be plenty of it, is all I can say.

I also found out that they do have free Wifi in the lobby with an access code, so that's what I'm doing at the moment.

The actual business part starts in about 15 minutes so this is the Traveler, signing out for now.

Day1 (end)-Day 2

So now I have a brief reprieve. It is nearly 10:00pm at night and our committee has finally finished all its work and will be making a recommendation to the general assembly tomorrow.

Speaking of which, as soon as we got here we hit the ground running. As voting delegates, part of our responsibility was to conduct chapter affairs and review what had been happening. I was on the financial committee so we were looking at things such as expenses, expense reports for next year, fiscal reports, and if the chapter had been spending its money wisely. I volunteered and was voted to be the recording secretary so my little netbook came in very handy, once again.

Our Financial Review Committee was then broken up into five smaller sub-committees to review specific problems. One committee tracked down chapters that had not paid their dues, for example. My committee was probably the most controversial one.

You see, starting about 15 years ago, it was decided to start a program that would encourage secretaries to turn in their paperwork on time. Out of the 220 chapters, only about 50 of the chapters would turn in their paperwork when they were supposed to. So the committee back then decided to offer a $500 reward to those chapters who did their paperwork three years in a row. The number of chapters didn't rise significantly. This program was then evaluated and done away with but many people objected and a motion was made to have a five year trial period. Chapters would be given $100 for turning in their paperwork on time (regardless if this was their first time or not) and for the second year $200, for the third year in a row: $300. Over the past five years, the average number of chapters turning in their paperwork on time rose from 54 to 61 (I did the numbers). Out of 220 chapters that isn't very much and was spent $10,000 doing this. The answer was clear-cut to me and to most people in our committee.

The recommendation was that the trial program was not successful and the monetary award should be done away with.

However, those chapters who do get the money now feel as though they are having something taken away from them, and those who haven't feel they ought to have a chance to get some money too. One guy said “Well now there is no incentive to turn in paperwork on time!” I think this completely misses the nature of the thing. You don't /deserve/ the money in the first place, in fact it seems wrong to reward someone for doing what they are supposed to do anyway! Do I get paid by my teachers for turning in my homework on time? No, I get penalized for /not/ doing it on time. It's what I'm supposed to do.

I find that in general, there is a rather liberal mindset and people look at things in an emotional “that's not fair for me” way rather than objectively and for the good of the organization. There are SO many people saying things like “Well I feel like....” and I just want to say “I don't care how you feel about the money, just stick to the points at hand., seven chapter for $10,000 is not good!” Then some people say “but we have plenty of money” and that annoys me as well. This must be how government is run. “We have plenty of money so we can continue this thing even if it only helps one person.” Where do we get the money?

So.... minor rant aside :)

Our committee seemed by far the most busy. We debated, discussed, skipped refreshments and went straight until about 10:20 that night. Our chair had been so busy the whole time that he had skipped dinner and I had been busy trying to type up proposals and recommendations and the minutes. I did this during dinner and in-between the applau.

Yes, that's what they called it. Right at the beginning of the convention a rather down-to-earth looking chap stood up and said “I'm going to teach you guys something. We have a lot of ground to cover and lots of awards. In the past we've gotten behind schedule because people feel they need to applaud. Well at this convention we're going to “applau”. I'll teach you how it's done: hold your hands apart like this [visual demonstration] and then bring them together once [clap!]. That's it. We're done.”

I liked it very much actually. I am not one of those people that gets carried away with applause. I will clap a couple of times for a person and that's it. And if the rest of the people stand I will not do so simply because everyone else is doing it. If I feel moved by respect or something then I will, otherwise I remain stubbornly in my seat. I won't respond to peer pressure. So the idea of just clapping once delighted me. It got the urge to show some approval out of the way without wasting all the time. Brilliant!

My roommate and I hit the sack around 10:40pm, tossed around a while and went to bed.

Day 2

Breakfast in the morning was rather dull for a fancy hotel. They had some muffins that tasted a bit stale and croissants and that was about it. For drink all they had was coffee and tea, no juice or even water, which was kind of disappointing. Maybe that's to encourage people to buy the $15 breakfast in bed deal.....

Meetings with districts, meetings with chapters, committees, general business meetings, oh yes, it was all there. We met in the morning for our Business meeting, in which the various committees reported and then people voted or made motions.

Off topic, I was noticing that facial hair must really be out of style. I saw two other people (out of 500 delegates) that had any kind of facial hair. It made me think that Hollywood must really be setting the image in this country....

...anyway. The discussion was interesting but very long. The first couple of motions went over very well except that half the delegates seemed to be in a shouting contest to second a motion and be put on the minutes. The gentleman taking the minutes (retired military) was obviously rather peeved about it all since it was both disorderly and made his job harder because he couldn't hear anyone.

But then we hit a couple of propositions to accept the Computer Science programs of two different schools as being an “engineering program” and therefore the students of these programs would be eligible for membership. There was heated debate on both sides, ammendments proposed, votes called, votes contested, ammendments contests, the chair was contested and called out of order, a division was called for twice (which meant that a head count of 234 chapters had to be taken multiple times) etc. etc. The chair was amazing, I did not envy his job.

Some people on the one side were saying very “personal” things like “I feel that they don't have any other honor society to go to so we should accept them into ours.” Aw... how sweet of you.

And at the opposite extreme, one guy essentially said “engineers are better than computer science people and I don't want to be associated with them. It would water down the society.”

Votes were finally called, hours were spent on this procedure and probably 20 people were lined up to talk. It was a big circus and unfortunately our secretary award thing will also probably be hotly debated, tomorrow *wince*

Dinner was very “meager” with the cost only being $34. It consisted of pasta (and a bit rubbery in my opinion) and chicken with Parmesan cheese. It was good, don't mistake me, but it was something that I could have made myself and fed two families with $34. I should start a catering service, if people are willing to pay that kind of money. I guess the expensive part is that it looked pretty.

More chapter business, district business, and committee business. It's all rather a blur at this point. At dinner we had a nice steak and that was very good. Very tender and there was a good portion this time, with mashed potatoes and gravy. I was glad for that. It was more expensive though: $62.

More committee business (a couple of hours) and now I'm in my room and ready for bed. It's late and I'm tired, it was a long day. There were so many awards given out today it was staggering. Awards for having a good chapter, awards for doing a certain program, awards for turning in paperwork on time. Everyone gets this plaque and I wonder what is the point of it all. It seems so silly and pompous. We award each other for everything it seems! One girl was upset that she didn't receive a laureate award and felt she should have and didn't understand why she didn't get it. Maybe she just doesn't understand that some people might be more qualified. Maybe she needs to learn that no one /deserves/ any award at all! that in the real world, not everyone gets the trophy after the little league game.

But then again what do I know? I'm just the lowly backwoods guy from Oklahoma ;)

Day 3

So I began the day bright and early. Breakfast was slated for 6:45 but apparently there was nothing on the menu. I personally checked and after wandering around for a while and only finding the $11.00 breakfast from the cafe, I was pleased to find what looked like a continental breakfast. I grabbed a plastic-wrapped giant muffin and an orange and then realized that this particular continental breakfast came at a cost of $2.00 for the muffin and $1 for the orange. Out of principle (basically I couldn't reconcile paying that much money for a plastic-wrapped pastry) I skipped breakfast.

The main part of the morning was spent in the general assembly. The chair of the committee for which I was secretary presented our report. The ever-controversial Secretary Award was quickly passed by. Since we didn't actually need to make a motion (then it would just expire) we tried to be as low-key as possible. No one objected at the time but this definitely was brought up in “New Business.”

There were some other interesting and boring policies. People were making ammendments to the constitution which scares me because people often write these things on notebook paper without much thought and then we vote on it. I'm apparently very Presbyterian: I like my constitutions/Statement of Faith and I like them to be unchanged unless absolutely necessary! Short and carefully worded language is a must.

Anyway, once new business came there was a lot of discussion with one of our committee members (the one who had called for a vote to reconsider last night) and who seems the very “generous” and “knowledgeable” and “progressive” type from New York, put forward the motion that the committee may have acted hastily and asked for an extension of one year and to have another committee conduct a survey as to why the program did not work. It was a smart move on his part and very carefully worded. In effect it continued the program but only for a short while. He generously agreed that the program did not work but urged us to have a survey as to why it did not work. I could have told him but I don't think that “procrastination” and “moral depravity” are particular buzzwords on convention floors. People are lazy. People aren't naturally generous. If there is no personal incentive (i.e. “I don't get any of the money myself but my chapter does) then people don't do it for the chapter. People, like Adam and Even tend to dump their responsibility on others and don't bother to train new officers or to obey existing rules. It's all very simple really!

There was MUCH discussion and eventually someone put forward a motion to amend the motion. This is always a bad thing in my opinion. It means much MORE discussion without specifically addressing the point at hand. We then have to vote and discuss amending the motion, then go back and vote on the newly amended (or left unamended) motion. Then of course someone usually contests the vote (done by “Aye” or “No”) as needing a written vote because it was too close and much time is spent having the runners going around passing out slips of paper, then a vote is taken and we can finally get back to the vote at hand. Lots of people proposed amendments and I think all of them were stricken down. The one exception was to this particular motion about the Secretary Commendation Award.

The amended motion was broken into two different motions, one that proposed to keep the program for another year to be evaluated by the committee next year, which *cough* is /exactly/ what we did this year. It made no sense to me but again good for him. People are very free with giving away money for another year, especially when they think they can get some of it themselves. The second part of the motion was to set up a committee to survey and find out why the thing didn't work.

In the middle of it all there were members coming forward saying “I'm from a small chapter and we use this money for scholarships”, “we depend on this money, please don't take it away.” There was one older gentleman (the same who had addressed our committee personally and who looked as though he were about to cry) who said that the students at his school are not very wealthy, they have debt and they used the $300 (matched by the Dean) to set up two scholarships for Juniors and he didn't know what they were going to do if they didn't get the money.

I had to be calloused but I wanted to say “Cry me a river!” The point of the program is /not/ to help small schools who are struggling with money, it is to give incentive to secretaries to turn in their paperwork on time. It's not working. One shouldn't have to give a bribe for doing what you're supposed to do anyway. If they really want scholarships, raise the funds themselves instead of expecting to get money for turning in paperwork. Once people get it once, they feel entitled to it. Yikes people!

The survey passed (so there will be an official inquiry next year) but happily the extension to the program did not, and by a significant margin as well. I was very pleased to see that. Maybe democracy does work sometimes.

One group got up and gave a little skit about the goings on at the convention and made fun of so many awards being given out. This was particularly amusing to me since so many chapters got plaques for turning in paperwork, for having a project, for voting in members: all things they are supposed to do anyway but now they get rewarded for it. Yay! So the skit basically said “well, we know you're all special anyway and you /all/ deserve rewards so we're giving away Nobel Peace Prizes!” In light of recent happenings, this was a well-aimed remark :)

But overall, a good many of the people were well-behaved, intelligent, and reasonable. Though some appeared to be a bit prideful and even haughty, there were a good many that were down to earth and just wanted to get some work done. I think everyone I spoke to was planning on being in academia and in retrospect, it was a rather dry and dull conference without any children around. It seemed that most everyone there was childless, even some of the middle-aged folks. They had devoted their lives to academia and science and children would just get in the way. I found it rather depressing but the same thing happens at school. Either the professors are always talking about how messed up their kids are (yelling and screaming at each other) or they are married but have no children: that would ruin one's career after all......

Now for the interesting part (took me a while didn't it?!)

There was an event at the local university but... my plane left at 4:55pm, the bus going to the airport left at 3:15 and arrived at 3:30. However, the proceeding at the university ended at 3:00. and buses from there would not get back to the hotel until after the buses for the airport left. I talked with one of the local students and said that I probably should just stay at the hotel then. “No problem, I'll just give you a ride, I'll have you back before 3:00, it will be no problem.”

Upon his assurances I did go. We had a lunch outside, in 40 degree weather, under a tent, with the wind and drizzle. We had a box lunch consisting of a Fritos bag and a croissant sandwich that had been sealed in a bag. Oh, it was good and all, but not $25 good! Food prices still strike me as exorbitant....

So we went to the ceremony and about 2:45 I was getting a bit nervous, looking around because we would have to leave at 2:45 in order to get back by 3:00 and catch the bus at 3:15.

At 2:55 I was thinking we were going to be cutting it really close, the ceremony was still going.

At 3:05 I felt like we might be able to catch the bus (maybe) if it was late.

By 3:15 I gave up and finally found the guy as he was coming out. He gave a sign of recognition. “Oh yeah, you needed a ride didn't you? Well just get on the bus.”

“You don't understand, the bus from the hotel has LEFT by now. It doesn't matter if I get on the bus or get a ride.” He seemed.... slightly apologetic? He said I should have called him. I did. His cell phone was off during the meeting. That will teach me to trust student assurances! He said he couldn't give me a ride to the airport but did take me back to the hotel. I wasn't sure how much good that was going to do but when I got there I went up to the desk and ordered a taxi. It was the only thing I could do because otherwise I would not have made the plane. I was informed it would be about $70 and a call was made to “George.”

While waiting for George, another cab pulled up and looked at me and asked if I needed a ride. “Sure, how much?” He hesitated a moment and then said “Sixty dollars”. I jumped at the hesitation and feeling confident said “fifty.” He thought a moment and then said “Okay, get in.” I ran in to the desk to tell them that I didn't need George anymore and went with the new driver whose name was Josef. I tried chatting with him. He was from Lebanon and according to him had been working there for 10 years or so and was trying to earn money to get his family over. I hate to be suspicious but I have to admit that I'm not sure his story was true.

He called in to the office with my credit card number (I do have fraud insurance so I felt it was safe enough and besides that I didn't have any option) and noticed that he didn't give the person on the phone the amount we had agreed on. He didn't say any amount...... would I get it for $50 like we had agreed on?

As I got out he said “Okay, so that will be $50, then there is the $5 for the toll fee and the $5 for the credit card fee.” Tricky guy. A word to the wise: don't try to get the best of a bargain with a cab driver.

But now I'm in Chicago and things look like they are on schedule. I think I'll go get something to eat. Something that's cheap..... you know: less than $30 or something.

Echoes in the dark

2008-12-23T20:41:00.000-08:00

It's almost haunting to see this old place....

And I still need to finish part 2 of that dream. I still remember it :)

This evening was a Christmas party at the Y house, with a bit of a Bible study on prioritizing one's time based on the story of Lazarus. It was essentially about training yourself to think in terms of eternity. I think that when Christ said "I am the resurrection and the life" it really did point to His union with His people, and in Him we all rise. Not to sound mystical but it's almost as though since we are part of His body, as He rises we rise with Him. Lazarus was a token of that resurrection promised to believers and as united to Him we should strive to live as part of His church, different parts of the body carrying out the tasks assigned to us. However menial or insignificant it seems at times, all parts of the body are useful and all parts are employed in some way in every part of the world, bringing cleansing to it.

I've been feeling quite a bit unlike myself lately. Tonight I arrived early (accidentally) so took a walk down to the lake. It was amazing to see the ice frozen in wavy form all along the coves and large sheets had built up on the spits. I saw absolutely no one there, it was kind of lonely. I had not been to the lake since September. I sat out there for about 40 minutes, thinking and praying, something I've been doing a lot of lately. In some ways I feel as though a piece is gone and I'm left as a shell, or perhaps have drawn into a shell. In this current state I am certainly not a candidate for new friends (or old friends for that matter). Yet at the same time the only way I sense to get out of it /is/ for that to happen. A very odd conundrum indeed. I've been praying for things to become very obvious to me. It's not good for man to be alone and I realized again tonight how much I just want to say "I went on a walk down to the lake, the ice was really neat, would you like to see it?" Which doesn't really fit into conversations with normal acquaintances. To share with someone even simple things. Feeling like a recluse when I really don't want to be. Wanting to be me again!

Yet all the while confident and trusting that in due time God will provide for me more than I can imagine. It's been comforting to look back upon people like Abraham, Moses, and David and see how God was with them through their lives - even when things seemed difficult - and in the end they were given great joy and peace.

Psalm 128
"Happy are all who fear the LORD, who walk in the ways of God. What your hands provide you will enjoy; you will be happy and prosper: Like a fruitful vine your wife within your home, Like olive plants your children around your table. Just so will they be blessed who fear the LORD. May the LORD bless you from Zion, all the days of your life That you may share Jerusalem's joy and live to see your children's children. Peace upon Israel!"

The Great Escape (pt. 1)

2008-06-30T05:54:00.001-07:00

Every once in a while a man must escape.

He must escape into the recesses of his mind while he slumbers and embark upon an adventure which only he can foresee.

Only, he doesn't know what he will foresee. The subconscious knows. And so does The Shadow.

Listen to my dream.

Darkness covered the realm like a blanket of night. Daylight was hidden in shadows as clouds formed above the small town and soon dusk had fallen. The gathering clouds huddled together as though their combined strength could overwhelm the unsuspecting population below. The wind blew and a steady rain began to fall.

It was a dark night. And it was indeed stormy.

A small group of adventurers was gathering into one of the buildings. The building itself was obscure and did not stand out from the rest. One might pass by it a dozen times without taking notice of it. But I took notice of it this night. Something was brewing and growing with intensity in sync with the rain upon the roof.

"This book says it all!" exclaimed the electrical engineeringish looking fellow standing excitedly above the others. The rest of the group was seated looking rather puzzled. A dark-haired fellow rolled his eyes.
"That's just like you Logan, always thinking about books."
"No Jon! This is for real! The book speaks of a great treasure of knowledge, hidden by the Ancients long ago. I went through a lot of trouble just to track down the missing pages from the book. Seems some old monk decided to use them for scratch paper. Lucky for me he didn't throw anything away!"
"Hmm, well that certainly sounds interesting," said the oldest at the table, a man named Bruce. "I would like to hear more about this."
"Well apparently there are clues hidden away that tell where this treasure is hidden. All we have to do is look for them!"

There was stunned silence.

"No wait, I know it sounds strange and ridiculous but I think that the clues are actually hidden right here! That's why I've asked you all to come on this trip with me. I knew you couldn't refuse once we'd traveled all this way."

The silence grew, if that is possible. Logan continued his monotonous monologue.

"Look, the people here are supposedly descended from the Ancient tribe. From all the rumours I could find while looking on Google, they are pretty reclusive and act rather strangely. All of this sounds suspicious to me. I think I may be onto something."

If there had been a cricket, it would have chirped.

"The book doesn't say much, it just tells of a certain "path" that must be followed to lead to enlightenment. I say we start by talking to some of the villagers here. I admit it's kind of a creepy ghost town with just a few residents, but some of them are old enough to at least remember a few stories. So.... any questions?"

"Yeah!" said the blonde guy with glasses. "What have they got to eat in this town?"

**********

While they are trying to figure out the answer to that question, let me introduce you to the characters of this dream. They are
Logan, which is kind of a given.
Jon, who plays a very reckless part
Bruce, brought along to bring some semblence of sanity to the madness which is this adventure (my brain must have decided it needed some)
Jonathan, who plays mostly the part of a gap-filler and really isn't important
Evelyn, the one who finds the killer and the killer's bullets.... being shot at her.
Laura, who really just appears randomly

So now that the group has apparently mysteriously eaten and is satisfied, we resume the tale after a few disappointing door-knocks later.

"Ungh!" exclaimed Evelyn, "Those who aren't home just aren't willing to talk it seems!"
"Yes, it did appear that they are rather reclusive and reluctant to share any information...." mused Logan. "I did get the impression that some of them knew about it but didn't want to speak on the subject."

A shadow flitted in one of the alleyways and the bent man attached to the shadow appeared.
"Psst, c'mere!" he rasped.
A bit dubious, Logan motioned for everyone to stay back while he joined the man in the shadows.
"I kin tell you a bit" said the gaunt figure, "but you got to promise me you won't tell that I toldja."
"I promise." was the terse reply.
"Good. Now there's a door that leads to an iron house near da edge of town. It's hidden away in da bushes, you could passit a t'ousand times an' never spot it. It's locked."

Logan waited for what seemed like a fair amount of time before asking ".....and..... you have the key?"
"Do what?" queried the geezer.
Logan involuntarily winced. "I asked if you had the key." He repeated in a louder tone.
"Huh? No! 'Course not! Else I had opened it myself a long time ago!" He cackled and scooted off.

Bruce thought he had seen some bushes on their way in so the group walked in that direction silence. The rain had stopped but the darkness seemed to be growing thicker, sort of like gravy left to simmer, if that's even an acceptable analogy.

Sure enough, the door was no where to be seen. Evelyn's keen ears detected it after a bit of poking around in the bushes with a long stick. "Here it is!"

It was locked.

But on the front were six engraved symbols: a cube shape with some intricate indented carvings, a triangle with a scene of children playing engraved. A hollow half-sphere that looked something like a planet with moons circling it in orbit.

"Well, if it's anything like the movies I've seen, it's obvious that something fits inside each of these engraved symbols." deducted Logan, as he sat down to ponder this new development.

"Oh! You mean like this?" said Laura, head cocked to one side as she reached into her pocket.
"I found it stuck in the ground near the building we first met in. I thought it looked like a stone at first but it was too heavy."
"Let me see!" Logan sprang to his feet and crossed the distance in two large steps.

It was perfectly round but had raised orbits that showed tiny moons circling the miniature globe. Though it must have been of an ancient design, the startling thing was that it showed no wear whatsoever. It might have been a freshly made sculpture from a tourist shop, only there were no tourist shops in this town for the simple reason that they had no tourists.

"Aha! This must be one of the six keys! It has probably been buried for ages but the erosion has finally exposed it. The last bit of rain we had must have been the final touch. Great job Laura! Now let's see.... there doesn't appear to be any writing, it weighs about 5 pounds, feels almost as heavy as lead and I wonder what it's made of....hey!"

He said "hey!" just then because (with another eye-roll) Jon had just snactched the sphere out of his hand. "Just see if it fits! Oh my!" He shoved the ball into the slot and the door began to creak open with an ominous sound.

"Well, that was easy." said Bruce.

"Yes.... I really expected us to have to find all six symbols..." said Logan, perplexed and admittedly rather disappointed. The group started to march inside and lit some torches that were just inside the entrance.

Logan and Evelyn were the last two.
"Hey! I said you should have been in an Indiana Jones film and here you are" elbowed Evelyn with a grin.
He grinned back and walked through the doorway wondering what was inside.

And thus falls the curtain on act one of this adventure. Act two should follow shortly.

Trip to Ireland

2008-06-02T15:46:00.000-07:00

Well, another long overdue post but hopefully this one is quite full of information. I make no promises but I'll try to get it all straight, in order, and just hit the highlights. Otherwise this would be far too long. Days are given according to "Stillwater reckoning" and probably do not coincide with Frodo's days.

After a few months of anticipation, the time to take a trip to Ireland to visit E ("Frodo" hereafter I suppose) had come about.

The day before the trip was relatively busy. I had a few things to prepare at home and was swamped with tasks to do at work. My employer was realizing that I wouldn't be there for the next week and a half and wanted a few things done. I got everything done and was in bed by about 10:00.

Day 1:
The alarm went off at 3:00 AM and I was up and getting ready. The N's showed up around 4:00 and we drove the hour-long drive to the airport.

Going through security was interesting and not as strict as I had imagined it to have grown. We had to take off our shoes but there wasn't really a strip-down or anything. My bag was subjected to a careful look through the x-ray machine and I suspected that the Pringles can may have been the cause of concern.

The flight to Newark was pretty smooth. I always enjoy the take-off part. The feeling of sudden acceleration combined with the moment you first gently lift off the ground makes it quite the thrill for me anyway. I was seated next to an older gentleman who sounded Middle Eastern and we didn't talk much.

Once at the airport in Newark, I happened to notice that my sticker for my luggage only said Newark while the other two had luggage which said Belfast. So I checked and it was a good thing! My bag came down the chute and would have been sitting all by itself in the airport. The attendant said it was strange and it should have gone all the way to Belfast.

Anyway, the most exciting part was when Laura and myself got on the bus and took a trip to the Empire State Building. The traffic through New York City was horrendous and I was glad for the experience though I think that if I were to try to drive it myself, I'd have a heart attack! Lanes were disregarded, pedestrians tried to push their way in front of traffic and traffic tried to push their way in front of the pedestrians. Even stoplights seemed useless as the traffic going one way blocked traffic going the other way. At one point it took about 15 minutes to go two blocks distance! Let me walk the rest of the way, please!

But we finally made it. Walking the streets was fun, there were interesting shops everywhere and a hot dog/pretzel stand on just about every corner. I bought one for each Laura and myself on the way back. We made it safely to the building but it took about an hour and half to get to the observation deck on the 86th floor. Elevators took us from the 2nd to the 80th floor in about 45 seconds and we then had to wait around for another space of time until the stairs opened up and we took those the rest of the way.

The view was fabulous. There were rooftops with gardens, one even had a small house on top of a skyscraper that was covered in ivy. The city is amazing and it's incredible that men had the skill to design and build it. It reminded me that God has endowed us with great gifts and we should use it to subdue the earth as He has commanded.

The trip across the ocean was interesting. The plane was very nice and the back of the seat in front of every passenger had its own touch screen with a selection of movies to watch, games like chess, checkers, solitaire, and sudoku to play, and music to listen to as well as relative position on the globe and flight path. I ended up just going to sleep for about four hours amidst the drone of the plane.

Day 2:
We arrived in Belfast fairly early. After going through customs and being asked if we had any plants or foodstuffs and getting our passports checked we were greeted by Frodo! It was so good to see her again and she looked quite well. She took us on the bus to the town central and then we walked to Renwick. I was excited to meet all the friends I'd heard and read about.

We went to the Zoo that afternoon. It had been quite some time since I'd visited one and this one had a beautiful setting. It was on a hillside and all the pens had grass in them rather than the concrete that I had been used to seeing. The favourite site for me was probably the black Spider Monkeys who put on an impressive show for us. The tails grabbing on like a fifth hand looked very useful.

I talked with Frodo for a while that evening and then took a walk to clear my mind before bed.

Day 3:
This was Friday and Philip was arriving so we looked at the botanical gardens briefly and then went to fetch him. It was neat to see brother and sister reunited as they hadn't had much contact the past nine months apparently.

I don't recollect much further from this day aside from Dean visiting and he's quite the interesting fellow. He told us lots of tall tales and the joke of the night was "Did you get that off of Wikipedia?" He apparently edits Wikipedia articles to his own liking, regardless of whether it's the truth or not ;)

I took another walk this evening. Being in a city rather crowds me.

Day 4:
Saturday. We took a trip to the M's dairy farm. We first got on the train and rode it out to where we were picked up by Mr M. I liked him immediately. He was very quiet but very friendly. He drove us out and when we arrived, we were treated to tea and scones (for us Americans it's kind of like biscuits, only better). I put some jam on my scones and he told me I needed some cream so he very nicely helped me to some :) It was delicious. The two boys (twins though they look absolutely nothing like each other) joined us later. I liked Reuben a lot. He reminded me of one of my younger brothers. They had a scattered assortment of guns and swords on the lawn which I thought was the way it should be: one should never have to walk more than a few steps to reach a good weapon.

Reuben showed me the ranch and while the rest were jumping off of the wall onto the trampoline (Mrs M said it would be all right), he and I did some "superman" jumps off the wall. I was kind of sad to leave them, we'd only just met!

But it was on to the Giant's Causeway. Apparently lava cooled and crystalized into these hexagonal pillars about a foot across so you have something of a stairstepped landscape. Some stick out farther than others. It really is an amazing site. It was good to be on the coastline again, I think it had been some time since I'd been to the ocean. Maybe four or five years.

We also saw Dunluce Castle which was built on a cliff and pretty impressive. I really enjoyed seeing the structure and marveling at the ingenuity and skill of those who had built it. The cliffs in this area were really neat because they were rocky and sheer yet there was grass growing all over them as well. It gave it an old and other-worldly feel.

The drive home (the M's lent us their van) was rather exciting, though I'm sure Alan would disagree. Driving on the opposite side along /very/ narrow coastline coastline roads must have been very nerve-wracking. We made it safely however.

I did not go on a walk this evening.

Day 5:
This was Sabbath and another very wonderful day. We visited Shaftsbury Square church in the morning which mostly consisted of small old ladies who welcomed us quite nicely but didn't seem to remember Frodo (who had been going there throughout the last two semesters). Frodo confirmed that they never seemed to remember her and always asked the same questions. We also met a homeless chap named Cliff that Frodo and some of her friends had been able to minister to throughout the year. Oddly enough, the first night I went for a walk I saw him and he asked for money. I was the wrong person to ask for that! I had nothing!

In the afternoon we went for dinner to the W's house and were fed quite royally. The Irish food was a bit more plain than I was used to (more like potatoes, meat, gravy and cauliflower) but it was all quite good and Mrs W kept serving more and more! I didn't want to refuse so I ended up eating quite a lot. We then went on a walk and afterwards sat talking until it was time for the evening service at Trinity.

Pastor D was preaching and I had heard one of his recorded sermons before so I felt somewhat like I knew him. It was a great evening but the best part was a Psalm sing (or "Sam sing" as I found out). I loved being in the room singing praises with the other believers in there. The men's voices were booming and it seemed so easy to follow the baseline with that sort of backing. We got home late that night and went to bed.

Day 6:
This was the day that we took a hike to Cave Hill. It wasn't a long hike and the cave was rather unimpressive (more like a spot that some people dug out of the rock) but the view was great from up at the top. It was a relatively clear day so we were able to see quite a lot. Frodo was very joyful at this sight. It was fun to watch her run from place to place.

We ate lunch down on the lawn and went back to Belfast. Frodo joined me for a short walk that evening and then we all went to bed. This was quite possibly one of my favourite days (though it's hard to choose!) and I'm sorry I don't have much more to say about it.

Day 7:
We took a look at the Botanical gardens and also took a trip to the local Cathedral. It was very impressive but with the organ music playing it was also a bit eerie. It seemed as though everything was shrouded in mystery and in darkness. Like a going back to the shadows of the Old Testament. Humanly speaking it seemed so right, so reverent. I thought about asking one of the attendants if they truly thought God desired to be worshiped in this manner, yet I knew that the answer would probably be "of course! What else could it possibly be?" It seemed right, yet was so uncharacteristic of the light of the gospel and the simple glory and majesty of what God has revealed. Men unnecessarily shroud and confound it. It made me rather sad. Maybe I have some Reformer in me. The building was beautiful though and the stained glass was absolutely spectacular. The colors were incredibly rich and the details even on cloth was amazing. It made me glad that men tried to honour God with their skill and artwork and it must have been a beautiful place to worship, yet there was still that element of darkness that just didn't seem right. It did give me reason to think about it for a while.

Oh! One of the best parts was a stop to a bookstore on the way down town. It was an evangelical bookstore but they had, without a doubt, the best selection of theological books I had ever seen. I could have spent hours looking at all the old used volumes of Brooks, Owen, Hodge, Brown, Watson, etc. Some were quite beautiful volumes too! But all rather expensive unfortunately. We had tea in a little shop (Clements, or something like that) on the way back. I actually had a milkshake, Laura had a smoothie, Alan had hot chocolate and Philip had coffee so I suppose Frodo was the only one who actually had tea. Earl Grey in fact. The stuff that Mrs W would call "absolutely horrid" because it was scented. I had tried and didn't really mind it, though it didn't quite seem like a "manly" tea, if one can consider drinks to be manly anyway.

Frodo and I went on another rather brief walk then I went to bed.

I should also mention that she did a lot of the cooking and was our guide for most of the time and I greatly appreciated all the work she did for us. We must have been quite a burden but she bore it heroically. Thank you so much!

Day 8:
We took a trip to Dublin, about a three hour drive on the bus either way. The first stop was Trinity college and a look at the book of Kells. It was very impressive that the monks who had worked on it could do it all so well without any kind of "technology." It was beautiful and the care that was taken for each page was quite amazing. They clearly had a reverence and respect for the work they were doing. The Book of Kells is a Latin translation of the four gospels.

We went up the stairs and I thought we were exiting but was astonished to find myself in what was called the "Long Hall." It was filled with many thousands of huge, old, leather-bound volumes in racks that stretched up to a high, vaulted ceiling and on the second floor. Now /there/ is a place I would have liked to have stayed in for a while longer! They had a neat display of books and artifacts that I enjoyed looking at too. We also visited a museum which was very interesting too. The artistry of the old Gaelic people was very impressive. Some of the gold filament work was astonishing. Such care was taken in just about everything they had there, from swords to bronze arrowheads to artifact and relic holders. I really enjoyed that museum.

That evening the folks at Renwick were having a "Disney night" and watched Mulan. I don't particularly like Mulan and I was feeling rather claustrophobic that day after Dublin so I excused myself. I needed time to think as well. I thought about asking to leave the house but only three possibilities were presented:
1. Leave and try to get let in later (but I didn't want to disturb the movie)
2. Ask Frodo for a key so I could let myself in. I poked my head in the door but the room was very crowded and she was on the opposite side and I didn't want to disturb the movie that way either.
3. I could climb the back wall and get back in that way but it was raining and the slate roof was rather slippery.

So I just stayed on the back stairway and stared out for a while before finally turning into bed. Frodo, if you read this I hope I didn't seem mopey, I really wasn't. I just couldn't be in a crowded room after being in a crowded city and needed to be out. I'm not a city guy, that much is obvious.

Day 9:
Last day in Ireland. We took a trip to Slemish, a small hill out in the middle of the countryside. It was a fairly steep climb and it was fun to get to the top. There are a lot of sheep in Ireland. Frodo was something of a mountain goat, urging Emmaline to hurry it up. Emmaline's defence was that she had spent the past few weeks revising and getting no exercise.

We also stopped by a forest. For more of a description of that, see Frodo's blog. But it was very beautiful too. Quite different from what I was used to with all of the green undergrowth.

Frodo joined me for another brief walk and then I went to bed.

Day 10:
We took off fairly early to let Philip off at the airport. Emmaline was driving this time which I think Alan was grateful for. The roundabouts especially seemed to be annoying for him.

We all said goodbye and got ready to get on the plane. As we left and I took my last look at Ireland, my biggest thought was that somewhere down there was a good friend whom I appreciate very much.

It was a very good trip. I was glad for the opportunity. Ireland was really neat, the people were very welcoming, and the sights were beautiful. That's about all. There is much more that could be said but I'm sure not much more that could be read ;)

Good night.

Three months?!

2008-04-29T08:07:00.000-07:00

Yike! Time to dust this off!

I am very, very, very seriously thinking about shutting this down after post 200. Since I've only got three posts to go after this one, that's a good possibility.

Well let's see, some brief recollections....

Friday and Saturday, enjoying the fact that it was the last day of classes, spending some time visiting my family, surprising my brother with a cool "punch card" piece of an old Fortran program.

Hauling hay, playing frisbee, watching my mother's team play soccer (she's coach). Girls running, parents yelling excitedly.

Travel home, planning to work on a project, delighted to find it was canceled. Alone in the house, walking in the park, throwing the frisbee around while listening to a lecture on my iPod. Climbing a tree and enjoying the scene as dusk settled. Prayer. Walking home.

Sunday and communion. Time with friends. Frisbee with the kids in Enid. Nerf-dart guns in the Wagner's living room (Mr Wagner shooting Beth). Austin back in town.

Studying for Motors most of the day Monday, feeling prepared. Monday morning getting crushed by the exam. It really is the least favourite class I have ever had.

Monday evening going out to supper with the Jon's at New China Buffet. Then seeing "Expelled" about Intelligent Design vs. Evolution with Ben Stein. Quite entertaining and stimulating.

Now going to work. Glad to be completely done with three classes so far.

Not quite as scheduled....

2008-02-02T17:35:00.000-08:00

So sometimes a day doesn't always go as planned. Or perhaps it never goes as planned. I think it's a humbling experience and makes me mindful that I am reliant upon God for every day. Even if I don't say it, that should always be in my mind: that I am not the one who controls my life, God does.

So what happened?

Well, I'd planned on getting quite a bit of studying done. You know, finish a lab report, work on some homework, write a prelab, things like that. Things were going nicely this morning. Since it was the first Saturday of the week it was time to clean. And like every Saturday morning, my roomies were nowhere to be found ;)

I vacuumed out the top cabinets (finally!), managed to make some cookies, and start some N---- beans for supper. I heard a hissing sound from the back and quickly ran into the hallway to see what was going on. The hot-water heater was blowing water out the top. I shut off the water going to it and it subsided. After waiting for it to cool a bit I took a look at it. I didn't know if it was just hot and something was steaming or what the problem was exactly. Every time I turned the water on and it got to the top (I was draining it with a hose) it would start spraying out the top again.

It turned out that there was a small pinhole right at the top of the heater. A hotwater heater is constructed like a cylinder inside a cylinder. The inner "core" is empty and hot air flows from the burner below up to the top. Then the water is in the outer ring. Well, the pinhole had sprung in the inner ring so water was spraying out and dripping directly down onto the burner. Not good.

I thought about trying to patch it up but realized that if the wall was that thin, then it probably would just spring another leak sometime soon. So I borrowed Dan Y's truck and got a new one at Lowe's. Since I was the only one home today, it took a bit of maneuvering to get the old heater out, and the new one in. The new one was bigger than the older so I had to make a few modifications and an extra trip to Lowe's for some parts. But it's hooked up now and doesn't appear to be leaking, which is a good sign! Lowes would have installed it for another $260! That wasn't about to happen..... It was already more expensive than I'd anticipated.

Now when I turn on the hot water in the kitchen, it's almost with a sense of pleasure. It's amazing how little conveniences like that are so often taken for granted.

So that's two lessons learned today: Never think that I control my day, let alone perfectly, and be thankful for the conveniences I have.

Now I really should get started on some homework :(

Laughter

2008-01-30T10:43:00.000-08:00

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

2008-01-27T19:18:00.000-08:00

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.

2008-01-07T19:08:00.000-08:00

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

2008-01-07T17:43:00.000-08:00

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.

http://www.box.net/shared/kzlrd2r4sg

"Three Topics To Think (upon)" of which this is the third.

2007-12-21T16:32:00.000-08:00

The third topic for this evening also comes from Edwards initially, but from other books as well. It has to do with marriage.

First, I was reading a little bit of Edwards' life and it mentioned that he had died of an experimental smallpox shot. He was away from his family and as he lay dying, he gave this message for his wife:

"Give my kindest love to my dear wife, and tell her that the uncommon union which has so long subsisted between us has been of such a nature as I trust is spiritual and therefore will continue forever."

This was considerably edifying to me. I had often wondered about the marriage bond. Truly the Sons of God in heaven are not given in marriage, but I've had a desire for a longer relationship than simply one that is on this earth. Please don't mistake me, the idea of heaven is not to be with our friends and family, the idea is to be with Christ! I imagine that all other affections will certainly pale in comparison to that which we will have for Christ, quite possibly one won't even be looking at anyone else. At the same time, wouldn't it be joyful to see someone you have spent your life with, sharing the shadows of Christ and helping them to grow, nurturing them in the faith, to finally be made perfect and complete and wonderfully like Christ themselves? It almost seems that the only thing better than experiencing that yourself, is sharing that experience with a spouse.

Of course I am unmarried, but is still something I'd thought about. The encouraging thing was that Edwards had that hope, and I think I may as well. There does seem to be a spiritual bond in marriage that is a good gift of God.

Edwards would often ride out into the fields with his wife, Sarah, to spend time alone with her. For someone who was so busy constantly, this must have taken tremendous discipline, especially with all their children! I imagine that this got easier as their eldest grew old enough to look after the rest ;)

It reminded me of what I was hearing when I was listening to J I Packer's lectures on the Puritans earlier this week. They are available for free on iTunes if anyone wants to look for them, just search for "Puritans." Not many results come up so it should be easy to find! Anyway, the last couple of lectures brushed on the family life of the Puritans, and marriage especially. In an age where women were often put down, coming out of the Dark Ages, the Puritans stood as a shining light. They saw their wives as a companion, and Matthew Henry used the description which seems to have originated with Augustine, that the woman "was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved." Indeed, the woman needed the man, but the man needed the woman perhaps even more. It is in his nature to desire to look after his wife and see her grow in grace and beauty. On the other hand, she wonderfully complements him by adding a bit of tenderness where he is more rough. Such a wonderful thing this is that God has done, that those who labour by themselves are sometimes inadequate for the task and that often the case is that when two Christians are yoked together and pull together in the same direction, the result is much more than the sum of their individual labours.

They were very good lectures, and were very beneficial and encouraging to me. I think today that it has turned into something more like two people living together rather than two Christian's working and honouring God together. The glory of the man is his wife, whom he delights in, and the glory of the woman is the man whom she trusts in. There is confidence, mutual help and growth, love, and protection that is not to be compared with in this world. Packer said that some of the earlier church men thought that women were subservient and that a man's true confident and best friend had to be someone of his own sex, and they appealed to the case of Jonathan and David. On the other hand, the Puritans believed that the wife (or husband) was to be the bosom friend, a good gift of God and a confident and companion like no other.

I am thankful to see the godly marriages in my church, the mutual respect and love. Oh, no life is perfect and there are some times that are harder than others, but on the whole, God has definitely blessed the families that I see around me, and I'm thankful for that. Mom and Dad, I'm thankful for your marriage as well and I do hope that it grows deeper and more rich with every passing year.

But now I've exhausted my time. I should go now. I have at least one other topic that I'd like to talk on soon, but it's much less profitable than these were (profitable to me at any rate) so I'll save that for later.

"Three Topics To Think (upon)" of which this is the second.

2007-12-21T16:18:00.001-08:00

The second topic that I wanted to discuss is the combination of two of Edwards' discourses. The first of these two discourses was on the subject of procrastination. Not the type of procrastination we typically think of, but more of the type of procrastination that puts off spiritual things until later, thinking we have plenty of time.
The second discourse was on the subject of the preciousness of time. This fit in very well with the first topic so I'll attempt to dive right into both of them.

First, Edwards draws a very good distinction between two ways of living. One is living for tomorrow and the other is depending upon tomorrow. These may, at least to my eye, appear to be very similar, but there is a very striking difference. The person who lives for tomorrow is doing what is required of him. He plans ahead, he sows so that he may reap, he lays up store for his family, he works to make a difference in the world and community and has a long-term plan. We don't know but that God may let us live a while longer upon this earth so we plan accordingly and attempt to put whatever time He gives us to the best use possible.
The second person, who depends upon tomorrow, puts off things of today because he is very certain that he will have time to do it tomorrow. Edwards, again, applies this to spiritual subjects: the man who thinks that his soul's good can wait another day. Surely he'll have time to repent tomorrow, or surely he'll have time to pray and study tomorrow and so pursues his pleasures now.

Do you catch the difference? This ties in closely with the preciousness of time. God has given us time, it is a gift to us! Edwards said that if we saw people spending money as freely as they spend their time, we would think they were mad! And yet the time that we have here is one of the most precious gifts that has been given to us. Use this gift wisely and for the glory of God, not for one's own pleasures.

Now I'll state right off that God does intend for us to enjoy His creation and relationships and everything good that He has created, but all of this tends to His glory insofar as it directs our hearts and minds to thankfulness and praise.

There are some people out there for whom time appears to be a burden. When they have time, they spend it all in front of the television or wasting it doing nothing. Their only goal seems to get this time off of their hands because it is too heavy to bear. They waste the precious gift that God gives.

One day we will have to give an account of all of the time that we were given and how we spent it. It's very similar to the parable of the talents: the master had given his three servants varying amounts of money and they were required to use it wisely. The first and second servant had been faithful with their differing amounts and were able to say to their master that they had used his gift in a very wise manner and for His benefit. The last servant had merely buried it. He hadn't done anything to profit even himself by gaining interest from it. He was a worthless servant.

It was convicting for me, to try to spend my time more wisely, to spend time alone in prayer and study, and time with others for their edification and my own. It has encouraged me to try to talk about spiritual things and things that really matter, rather than just trying to pass the time having "fun". My question to myself has been to ask how my speech and conversation edifies my friends. Spending time laughing and having a "good time" is all fine, but I should try more to profit from it, and help benefit them as well. I think that's what God intends to give true, lasting enjoyment from, not something that fades after one or two evenings.

So yes, time is precious! Seek to glorify God with the time He has allotted you.

"Three Topics To Think (upon)" of which this is the first.

2007-12-21T15:56:00.000-08:00

Yah, I couldn't think of another word that started with "T."

Hullo! It's been a very long time since I've updated. Life this past semester was busy as I'm getting into some more difficult classes. There were struggles, there were some very good things, but that's not what I'm going to talk about now.

By the way, I've thought about retiring this blog..... but I'm not ready yet! It gives me a platform to speak upon that is unlike any other.

First topic: The Sabbath
I've been reading a few pieces upon the subject. The first was when I opened up some of the works of Jonathan Edwards and began reading one of his discourses upon the Sabbath. He gave some very interesting remarks on it. First he sought to build the case that it was established by God and was meant as a perpetual ordinance. This is seen in two different things:
First, as most people will admit, it was instituted by God at the creation, along with marriage and work, which are two very good things that God has given us. It is said later in the Bible, in Exodus, that we are to labour for six days and rest on the seventh, because this is what God did. He didn't need rest, He is the almighty, rather He did it for our example and edification.

Second, God also gave the command as part of the ten commandments, which Edwards says were written on stone to signify their perpetuity, their unchangeable nature. It is interesting when looking at it, that the commandment does not specify a day, just the seventh day after six days of labour. It is the principle that is in mind here, not a specific day. We could very well begin our counting from Wednesday but the idea remains the same.

After building this case, Edwards continues to make the case that God still gives us a day of Sabbath rest. He asks the very pointed question as to whether or not God would have left the decision of when and how frequently to worship, up to the imaginations of men. There were a lot of people in his day (and in ours) who believe that Sunday is just a convenient day that we have chosen, by tradition or otherwise, to meet. Edwards says no, God has not left us without instruction on this matter.

He brings up some very interesting points, first, that as the Jews were very reluctant to change in many things, so God changed many of their traditions by degrees, or very gently. So there was no immediate command to change from Saturday to Sunday, but He did show more favour upon that than any other day. Take for example, the Spirit catching up John on "The Lord's day" which is a reference to Sunday. Or to Christ appearing to the apostles on that day, in the shut room, or when He sent the Spirit to them on the day of Pentecost. Each of these instances was a Sunday. The apostles began to set an example by gathering together weekly to break bread (communion) on the first day of the week. One important verse is found in 1 Cor. 16:1,2 where Paul makes specific command for people to lay up, or tithe on the first day of the week. This isn't arbitrary, or something that Paul just thought would be good to do and you might as well set a week to do it on, no, this is inspired Scripture and there is a definite purpose behind it. If it isn't to instruct us to meet this day, then it wouldn't appear to have any meaning at all.

The conclusion to all of this is not to become legalistic and claim that we should try to obey strict rules and make a list of "don't do's" etc. As Dan Y. described on last Lord's Day, those people who begin to do this are really forgetting the picture. They have a wonderful steak which God has prepared for them, yet they argue over whether it is all right to eat the peanut butter and jelly off to the side.

The Sabbath is a blessing! It was instituted by God for a purpose, for our rest and edification. The Puritans referred to it as the "market day of the soul" when one would feed his soul well. I have found that the gift of leaving all of my worldly cares behind on that day has been a great relief to my mind. I can concentrate on Scripture, meditation, prayer, worship, singing, things that I don't normally have much time for during the week. It truly is a blessing and a gift and yet it is so often shunned. Why? Why would anyone wish to argue for the cessation of the Sabbath? Why would anyone wish to argue that it's a day like every other and that every day is equally sanctified? We know from experience that it's not true. The testimony of Scripture seems to place more honour on one day than the rest.

Lastly, Edwards exhorts the Christian to expect, as God did in the past, an outpouring of the Spirit on this day. It's a day for the soul, take advantage of it and spend the day in study and communion with God. Don't squander His good gift, but accept it gratefully and use it to your advantage.

A few thoughts

2007-10-28T18:09:00.000-07:00

Aptly named I hope, because this shouldn't be an extremely long post.

This past week I had occasion to hear of a young girl who had a child out of wedlock. Now her mother is a grandmother at a very young age. This started me thinking on a rather lengthy and possibly random chain:
This older woman is a grandmother physically. She may or may not have wanted something like this but physically she is. Very similar to this, sometimes people may become grandparents in name and in actuality not be. Something of this nature requires more than just a physical relation.

Very similarly (and this ties back to the marriage study on Wednesday nights), the relationship between a husband and a wife is not purely physical. There cannot be merely a legal agreement or a contract that the two share the house together. That is not what a husband and a wife are supposed to be. For a male and a female to call themselves husband and wife merely on legal terms would be a complete mockery of God's institution of marriage. It goes so much deeper than that! It is indeed a picture of Christ's love for the Church, of God's love for His people, and how that ought to be reciprocated by our people. Christ gave of Himself freely and wholly. His disciples certainly didn't deserve it, they were just previously arguing as to who should be the greatest! Yet Christ never complained but gave Himself. How great a love was this!

It cannot be in name only, there is a bond much deeper than this, to a spiritual level. Oh I know this is not news to anyone but I've been rather saddened by the relations I've seen around.

Just this past week a former classmate of mine was talking to me when he got a text message. He said it was from his girlfriend in China where she was on a study abroad trip and she wanted to know if he could talk to her. He said that he was at school and they didn't have webcams there so he couldn't, besides that, he wanted to get something to eat. He was complaining about it to me and my first reaction was that it sure seemed that he was focusing on himself. True, they are not a husband and wife but there appears to be very little foundation for that to ever occur! My thought was that she was in China, where quite possibly there were very little people of her own language to interact with. His thought was that she was bugging him all the time and he wanted to just live his own life. Relationships require sacrifice and commitment, selfishness only destroys because selfishness is not about the other person, it's about me, and "me" is not part of "us."

Another thought I had this morning. I was thinking of the passage that talks about the wheat that must die before it can come to life and applying that to our spiritual lives. It struck me as quite amazing:

Our earthly bodies, as Henry says, continue to die as soon as we are born. Yet the amazing thing is that our spirits continue to grow in strength. I had this mental poetry of our flesh, or earthly man growing weaker and weaker with the ravages of time. He struggles against the spirit but in the end he must give way and die. The spirit grows stronger through this time, like a bird that is breaking free of its bonds and then soars heavenward. At last, the prison of the earthly man, the flesh, crumbles and the spirit is free and not only that, but because Christ has conquered death, our flesh is made renewed because it has been redeemed. Even our very bodies were purchased by Christ. Oh yes, we grow weaker but for the Christian, it only means that our flesh (and I use that in the biblical sense) is losing the battle! We shall be more than conquerors.

And not to say that the flesh is bad, I'm not proposing gnosticism by any means, but it does afford a spiritual allegory or picture.

That is all.

Ride in the breeze/Ridin' the breeze

2007-10-20T20:38:00.000-07:00

I know it's been quite a while.

These past few weeks, and the next few have been and will be busy, with not a whole lot of time to do anything other than my school and work responsibilities.

I'm currently working on a new employee manual for one of my jobs, which should kill three birds with one stone: first it will be used as a report for one of my assignments. Second, it will be useful to Dan because that's what he's wanted me to do: basically condense all of the things I know and do for the company and write them up in a report for a new employee. Third, it will hopefully result in my replacement! I desperately need one :)

Today I took a bike ride out to see the Stillwater parade at 9:00 which they had for homecoming. It was fun to see all of the floats and vehicles they had. The "lawnmower" team was very funny (and impressive) to watch, and Joseph absolutely loved the tractors of course. When the first one came along, he was sitting near me and I said "Hey Joseph, there's a tractor" and his head snapped around so fast! Dan said "that got his attention!"

Later that afternoon, after having finished a report for my circuits lab, Jonathan was getting ready to leave for work and I decided on a whim to bike up there with him and continue on, trying to get to Dr Allison's house to collect his signature (he's never on campus). The wind was positively howling, going directly north, so the ride up there was a breeze! (if you'll pardon the pun).

According to weather.com, we had a steady average of 22 mph winds with gusts of 29 mph. I made it up to about airport road almost coasting the entire way. I needed to find Rogers street but though I had a general idea where it was, the only specifics I had was a recollection that it was somewhere past Lakeview.

So when I got near Airport road I turned back and peddled a bit south. It was nearly painful! I struggled to go past a jogging pace, right on that busy highway too, since there were no sidewalks! I backtracked for about half a mile, thinking it might be down Liberty, off of Perkins somewhere. I couldn't find anything but I did find a mailman and if anyone knew where Rogers street was, he would. He said that it was north a ways, before Airport road he thought. So I biked back north about 3/4 of a mile and didn't find it. So I headed south again. The wind had picked up and in that area where there were no trees and just a flat road going over a hill, man! It was hard peddling!

I saw a couple of guys outside the Stillwater radio station and stopped by to ask them if they knew where Rogers was. One had a map so we looked it up and it turned out that it was about 3/4 of a mile /past/ airport road. I again headed north. Going north was easy but I was dreading the return trip.

"Oh well, I'll have a good story to tell about getting Dr Allison's signature" I thought. I pulled into his driveway, which looked rather vacant. There were a couple of old newspapers on the doorstep and the mailbox was full of mail. I knocked on the door but didn't get any answer. I nearly shed a tear....

So then for the return trip. ARGH, UMMNGH, EEEPH, OORF.
I felt I could almost have made it faster walking back! Lots of people zooming past me, going to the big football game. Plump people wearing orange and driving big, shiny trucks with OSU flags. I almost flagged one down to give me a lift ;)

Traffic was worse today and several people made an attempt to run me over, though I clearly had the right-of-way or even a crosswalk signal! In the end, I made it down to OnCue, ordered a big Dr Pepper flavoured Icee and then biked the rest of the way home. Golly the wind was strong! I know I'll sleep well tonight ;)

upposedly, according to Google maps, I biked about 10 miles in about an hour. It took about 15 minutes to get up there, and 35 to get back :) Woowhee!

Until next time... whenever that may be, this is The Shadow.

New Post?!!!!!

2007-09-22T20:04:00.000-07:00

Yes, yes, I apologize! It has been a very long time since this blog has been updated and it may be a while before it is updated once again. And this update isn't much more than entertainment :)

My schedule has been extremely busy. In addition to work, TA hours, school and my own household needs, I've also been trying to join an honor society called Eta Kappa Nu which is for Electrical Engineers. It's for the upper 1/4 of Juniors or 1/3 of Seniors. It was pointed out to me though that to be in the professional school, you have to have a B average so maybe it is more honourable than it seemed at first :)

I have to help with tutoring (more Circuits, so it's not a problem, just more time) and various meetings and gathering signatures of instructors. Yesterday I went and got a few more signatures for my collection and managed to catch one older instructor while he was on his way to his office. He said that he would have to ask me a question before he gave me a signature. So he asked me
"Do you know what the speed of light is?"
I said "about three times ten to the eighth meters per second."
"Good. Hmm.... what about the charge on an electron?"
"Approximately One point six zero two times ten to the negative nineteenth Coulombs."
"Hmm, very good! Let me see.... do you know the diameter of the earth?"
I paused for a second and then said, "No, and I don't even have a rough estimate."
He took a long sigh and then proceeded to give me a speech which went like this:
"Well, now, you know. You have to know these things. Life is all about numbers and if you don't know these... say for example you wanted to know how far it is to another country, you could count the time zones and then calculate the distance based upon 1/24 of the circumference if you knew the diameter. Well, okay" (another long sigh) "I'll give you a signature if you /promise/ me you'll learn these things."

I kind of had a hard time not laughing because he was dead serious this entire time. I hope life isn't all about numbers!

Okay, so now for some pictures :D

I got a new computer (you heard right Amigo) and it's amazing. I really like it a lot. It also has a built in webcam with software that is called photo booth and you can take all sorts of goofy pictures. So......

Check these goofy things out :D

http://www.flickr.com/photos/loganwest/sets/72157602126765111/

Bye now.

A Sabbath Afternoon

2007-08-05T16:32:00.000-07:00

And a busy one at that. I stayed home from Enid because I had quite a few things I've wanted to get done. The first was an e-mail to a professor at a seminary that a friend of mine is looking at attending. He had already responded to some of my questions and I wanted to ask some more and thank him for his time. He also had suggested getting in touch with another professor so I also did that, asking him varied questions on dispensationalism. Then I e-mailed Bruce the link to the seminary (I had spoken with him about this over lunch this afternoon) and lastly sent a very long e-mail to Silas trying to explain somewhat summarily, the points where I would caution him. The seminary teaches a "progressive dispensationalism" which I didn't know what it was, so I spent a bit of time researching that as well.

I have been desperately wanting to read some of my own books this week as well but time has been scarce. I've only read a couple of chapters in Henry, for example and I've dropped behind in other studies I'm doing with various people. So I'd like to do some reading this evening. So I finally decided that I should stay home from Enid and I may have to do that this next semester if I'm to prepare lessons for the next week.

Things I have left to do:
*write up some lessons for the Pilgrim's Progress Sunday School class I'm teaching this fall (I know I'm not going to have much time this semester so I'd like to get a head start).
*Finish the revisions of the Cowboy's Progress Script and finalize something that could be used by other churches.
*Post this on the CY blog as Sarah asked me to
*Write-up for Lights on Stillwater flier

The last one Dan, Bruce, and myself had been talking about over lunch. They were talking of a way to get the word out to new students who were looking for a solid church, or even to students who /didn't/ know they were looking for a solid church. I made the suggestion that something which would have attracted me is names or pictures of familiar people (Sproul, Spurgeon, Edwards, Pink, Luther, Calvin, MacArthur, Piper, Chandler) and then thought that since the question I receive the most is "What does the "reformed" mean in your name?" that it would be good to have a flier that has
"Stillwater Reformed Presbyterian Church"
"What does 'reformed' mean?"
And then go on with a brief explanation of our Scriptural beliefs and perhaps a list of names of those who might be considered reformed, like Chandler or Piper, or Spurgeon, since it's surprising (and encouraging) how many people recognize and like those pastors, yet they've never heard the term "reformed" and think it's some new and improved, fancy offshoot of the main Presbyterian church. So I was unofficially assigned that task, as well as a few articles on topics to go on the website for those interested in more information. Jon and Jonathan can help me with those since they know more what people might be interested in finding out more on (i.e. predestination, inerrancy, etc.)

Busy week. By the way, Jonathan Mounts isn't sitting behind me right now, but Mount Jonathan is, ie.e a huge pile of Jonathan's belongings that are dangerously obscuring the desk. I had to do that to get it out of the kitchen and living room. I couldn't even get to the sofa, let alone pull my bed out! :)

Hopefully this will all be cleaned up by the end of next week.

Hopefully. :)

Okay, so now for some quotes and thoughts:

I've been reading some sermons by Spurgeon at the assisted living center. I'm not really sure how the reception is. Jimmy never says anything and the two other ladies, well, one is very attentive but I have a feeling it's more politeness, but I truly hope she is listening! The other kind of nods off after a while, then sometimes says something "spiritual" that doesn't really relate to the topic. For example, today the sermon was about the Syrophoenecian (if the spelling is correct) woman that Jesus told it was not proper to give the children's bread to the dogs. The point Spurgeon kept hammering was the woman had such great faith in Christ that nothing he could say (calling her a dog, telling her essentially that he wasn't sent to her etc) could shake her faith, she still believed in him like Job who said that even though God slay him, yet would he trust in Him. Well, after the sermon, Willie says "Reminds me of 'Oh ye of little faith.'" but maybe she was thinking of something else. It's been almost a full year now that I've been doing this, I really hope that there is some benefit. It's been a great encouragement to me to read this sermon myself, to realize that even though I might not see the fruit, to not give up and to be more like the canaannite woman in the account and have faith that God does listen to prayers and does work indeed.

He brought up some very neat imagery of her bringing in this "little dogs eating the crumbs from the children's table" and how full it was of symbolism. In the East the dogs were something grown men would not tolerate, yet the children (who didn't know any better) would play with the pups in the streets and they would be tolerated near the table for the children's sake. He said that even though the children (like Christ's disciples) would be mean sometimes and "pinch and pull" (they told her to go away) yet that doesn't discourage her, she even calls herself a little dog, but one who would eat whatever scraps the children didn't eat, and the point was that even the "crumbs" were enough, she had faith to realize that Christ's "crumbs" were more bountiful than any king's table.

I can't do justice to the sermon, but it was very good, and an encouragement to me. I needed someone there to discuss it afterward, since no one joined me today except the three residents mentioned.

Another interesting thought, is that Jesus says that he was not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And something Spurgeon brought up that was very interesting (that I'd not thought of) was this: That it was a reference to spiritual Israel and the doctrine of election. That Christ was meaning that he was indeed sent to her as one of the "true Israel" even though she would have understood it to have meant ethnic Israel. Now that's a neat thought! He didn't dwell on that long, but took it more as a double-meaning.

This month we are looking at Psalm 48 as our Psalm of the month and there are some neat things I'd like to share from Spurgeon's comments there as well.

First, as Dave very clearly pointed out, this can be very spiritually applied to the church as the New Jerusalem, or to the heaven which is basically the church in her glorified state dwelling with God forever. Now, one of the persons Spurgeon quoted, J.L. Porter, said the following, which I liked very much:

"When I stood that morning on the brow of Olivet, and looked down on the city crowning those battlemented heights, encircled by those deep and dark ravines, I involuntarily exclaimed, "Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth is mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great Kind." And as I gazed, the red rays of the rising sun shed a halo round the top of the castle of David; then they tipped with gold each tapering minaret, and gilded each dome of mosque and church, and at length, bathed in one flood of ruddy light the terraced roofs of the city, and the grass and foliage, the cupolas, pavements, and colossal walls of the Haram. No human being could be disappointed who first saw Jerusalem from Olivet."

And yet, even with all of this glory and splendour (David speaks very lovingly of this city), the real fulfillment is in the Church, and the New Jerusalem is the one which our heart also longs for.

Spurgeon also points out that the men of the earth also see the Church and are troubled and dismayed and haste away. Yet all that flee from the New Jerusalem, flee to punishment and they do so of their own choice. Yet Zion is such a joy to Christians!

He talks about the ships of Tarshish being broken and had three interesting explanations.
First, that as easily as God breaks vessels of wood, he also overturns the most powerful adversaries.
Second, that though the strength of some nations is in their ships, yet they will be broken and our strength is in God and does not fall.
Third, Though God is our defence, he takes vengeance upon our inventions and those things we trust in, our earthly ambitions so that we may look to Him. He says "Speculative heresies, pretending to bring us wealth from afar, are constantly assailing the church, but the breath of the Lord soon drives them to destruction. The church too often relies on the wisdom of men, and these human helps are soon shipwrecked; yet the church itself is safe beneath the care of her God and King."

Of course, one near to my heart is this telling of it to the following generations. He says that those who owe such a debt to the past generations can only attempt to repay it by instructing the future ones.

Lastly, under the daughters of Jerusalem being glad because of God's judgments, he points on that it's not just God's ruling or decisions, but His actual punishments of the wicked. He says
"Justice which to our poor optics now seems severe, will then be perceived to be perfectly consistent with God's name of love, and to be one of the brightest jewels of his crown."

And that is all for this evening.

Out of the dusty shadows

2007-07-23T19:48:00.000-07:00

Out of the dusk
Comes a dark creature forth into the light.
His eyes glitter in the half-darkness that enshrouds him,
Teeth grinning, white bones.
Tattered remains of a past unknown
Cling to his gaunt frame,
Hands reach trembling
So also thoughts racing through numb mind.
Keyboard clatters. Fingers curl about keys as friends
Grasping at a moment untaken.
The Shadow Returns

Okay, bad, cheesy intro, but it has been a long time I realize and a lot had happened. First, let me share something I was reading this evening. It's from one of the many introductory comments to John Owen's "The Death of Death in the Death of Christ"

"There are two rotten pillars on which the fabric of late Arminianism (an egg of the old Pelagianism, which we had well hoped had been long since chilled, but is sat upon and brooded by the wanton wits of our degenerate and apostate spirits) doth principally stand.

The one is, That God loveth all alike, Cain as well as Abel, Judas as the rest of the apostles.

The other is, That God giveth (nay is bound, "ex debito," so to do) both Christ, the great give of his eternal love, for all alike to work out their redemption and "vires credendi," power to believe in Christ to all alike to whom he gives the gospel; whereby that redemption may effectually be applied for their salvation, if they please to make right use of that which is so put into their power.

The former destroys the free and special grace of God, by making it /universal/; the latter gives cause to man of glorying in himself rather than in God,-- God concurring no farther to the salvation of a believer than a reprobate. Christ died for both alike;--God giving power of accepting Christ to both alike, men themselves determining the whole matter by their free-will; Christ making both savable, themselves make them to be saved."

Part of what Owen addresses in the book is this idea of universalism, or hypothetical universalism, that God died to make salvation /possible/ for all, but they have to come to him in order to seal the deal. This view, as the above author points out, makes it to appear that God loves everyone equally alike, he basically had his son die just as much for the reprobate as the elect, it is them that makes the deciding factor. Opposed to this, the Bible teaches that God "loved" Jacob but "hated" Esau, they did not make themselves to differ, God made them differ because he first poured out his love upon them! Noah was a righteous man, blameless (Gen 6:9). Why? Look at the preceding verse, because Noah found favour in the eyes of God. Noah did not find favour /because/ he was righteous, but he was righteous /because/ he found favour. This idea is repeated over and over in the Scriptures.

So let's see, I'll try to cover as much ground as I can here because I want to go to bed/read tonight (tired) and break it up into categories:

Work:
Has been going well. We had run into some problems with the coiled loop antenna that I was trying to implement. It had been designed by my predecessor but never tested. When we got it all developed and implemented, it didn't work! I spent a week researching antennas and even the potting material (we were "potting" the ear tag boards by basically molding them in polyurethane). The potting material was having a severe effect upon the antenna tuning. See, an antenna has to be tuned using a combination of capacitors and inductors. I could go into details of complex impedance and having to "tune out" the imaginary part of the impedance, but that's probably something no one but myself would really care about. Suffice it to say, that the polyurethane was making the antenna extra capacitive and meant that the antenna's range was severely limited. So I compiled all of my findings and presented them to my employer but he didn't really listen. So he called a couple of guys and found out what I had been saying was correct, which relieved me and hopefully give him a bit more confidence in what I've researched. So we're experimenting with a straight wire (which yes, would stick out the end of the cow's ear) and I've been working on building other things.

One of them was a "golden board" for the Bolus. The board manufacturer sent us the bare boards and then we'll send them to SMD who will put all of the parts on by machine, much faster than I can do for a couple hundred boards :)
However, they have an optical scanner that will look at the components and compare to a standard "golden board" to see whether they've done it right. So I was given the task of making the golden board, which I enjoyed. The tiny perfectionist work suits me, though by the end of the day my eyes feel ready to fall out of my head. Ben (my co-worker) said "wow, it looks like a machine did it) and I was pretty happy with how it turned out too. So they'll compare to that one as they make theirs to prevent further mistakes (they've goofed up a lot of builds in the past).

VBS:

Also went very well. I wrote a script or narrative for a skit based on Pilgrim's Progress, but with a Western (Cowboy) theme. So I would narrate it and the actors would pantomime it out on stage. I was very glad to find out that it worked well in Enid too, because that means that it's easily adapted to different actors and different sets and a different narrator. I tried to make it "reusable" as much as I could, or easily "ported" from one place to another. Bruce seems to think it could be used by others too so I've contemplated putting together a package with hints, tips, and instructions along with the lessons he prepared to play off of the skit and maybe offer it to other RP churches or other churches in the area. It's very low-budget, enjoyable, easy, and hopefully spiritually profitable as well. The characters from Pilgrim's Progress afford so much good material for questions and discussion.

Sunday School:

I was also filling in for Liz in Sunday School this past week which I thought went very well. I only had two students this week because many people were out of town though. And I probably had the two quietest but even they were talking a bit. We studied 1 Sam 23 and 24 about Saul trying to kill David. We didn't have time to sing Psalm 54 (which David wrote at that time when everyone seemed to be against him) but we did look at a map and a picture I'd found. I also found I had more than ample material to talk about from having read Henry's commentary on those not many weeks ago, so I definitely didn't feel there was a lack of things to talk about or point out from the passage. I tried to ask questions to get them to think about the Christian life and apply it to their own lives. For example: when David consults the Ephod and God speaks to David, I said "Now God doesn't talk to us in a voice or through an ephod (a gold vest or chestplate that the priest wore) but he does talk to us in other ways and we can talk to him. Can you think of ways God talks to us?
Answers from the two girls included:
Prayer
The Bible
and other suggestions I gave included the Pastor, teachers, parents and others whom God uses to instruct and direct us. I enjoyed it very much.

This fall I am (D.V.) going to teach a class on Pilgrim's Progress to some of the young youth. I am really looking forward to that. I shall definitely not have a lack of material and I really want to lead them in some questions about various things. I've enjoyed hearing Abigail or Dani talk (like last night in Enid) about various things, which belies a depth to their thinking which is beyond those of their age, but at the same time, as I was talking to Jonathan, I feel like sometimes young children have knowledge like cookie dough dropped into their brains, but they lack the wisdom to use it. If the right questions are asked, they can make the connections themselves but if you were to ask right off to explain the way of salvation or even the doctrine of election or something like that, it's something they've heard but not thought through for themselves, so they might not really understand it yet. Those trails through their minds need to be blazed, the food that they have eaten all their lives needs to be used to build muscles, through the exercise of those muscles. I really hope to help in any way I can there. Of course I'll be teaching, but I don't want to just lecture, I want them to be thinking through and studying and giving me answers to my questions. So I'm looking forward to that.

Well is that enough for one night? I'm rather tired, been working since early this morning. My father and brother came up to help pour concrete. They arrived yesterday and spent the day with me in church and even went to Enid, but today, after and during digging the footings, we had quite a downpour of rain and we couldn't do much more because of the mud. We'll have to wait until it dries out so we can drive the tractor back there. I was grateful they came up, though sorry it wasted a day of work for them. I went in at about 11:20 (having stopped by the Assessor's Office to fill out some paperwork) and worked until about nearly 6:00.

Things have been going very well, but very busy. A typical day starts out early in the morning, eating breakfast, reading, singing, memorizing (if there is time for all three) and making a lunch. Then I head out at 7:40 and go to work, usually staying until after five and working through lunch time (one hand on the keyboard while the other has a sandwich) and then come home, eat dinner and then start in on customer service, calling back and responding to questions and problems, correcting accounts, etc. Then answering personal e-mail received throughout the day (maybe) and then it seems it's jut about 10:30 already. I don't know where the evenings go.

Oh, Jonathan and I went to see Ratatouille (pronounced Rat-a-TOO-ee) on Friday night and I really liked it. The voices and character development were very good. At first I thought the hair-control was a bit weird, but it suited someone like Linguini and afterward I reflected that it was clever. The high point for me was actually the villain/critic that everyone was afraid of: Anton Ego!!!!! It seemed to me that just about every thing associated with him was perfect, from the huge portrait on the wall of his study, to his old, old type-writer to his thin, wind-blown physique to his very words. Favourite line? Probably either his dialogue about ordering perspective or his response to "And you're a bit thin for someone who likes food" which was (in sinister tones):
"I don't like food, I love it, and if I don't love it, I don't SWALLOW!"

The philosophy was pretty bad and I was surprised because I could see how many parts could be scary for small children (guns, down the storm celler, dead rats etc.) but all in all, the character development and voice acting really won for me. I liked it a lot, not as good as Incredibles or Monster's Inc. though ;)

Interesting things I found out while looking at the actors for the movie:
The voice of the short mexican cook was Ian Holmes who played Bilbo in The Lord of the Rings.
There is going to be a new National Treasure movie apparently. I hope it's as action-packed and clean and clever as the other one!

And that, it all for tonight.
Feet clanking to bed
Chains to hold a person until the dawn
Freedom awakens and a new day rises.

O_O

New everything?

2007-06-11T19:13:00.000-07:00

The following is a recent post I made in "Now that's a good thought!" on my brother's message board. It follows somewhat from reading A.A. Hodge's comments on the Westminster Confession, chapter 32 and from Alan's sermon on this subject about a year ago.

Tonight I was reading a bit and contemplating the new heavens and new earth. It's strange, but it seems that for the most part, people talk about heaven, but they don't talk about the new earth.

Lewis imagined that this was the "shadow" lands, that everything we see here is only a shadow, an outline, black figure (and hard to see) of what is to come. This comes out beautifully in the Chronicles of Narnia, the Last Battle where the children see that this land where they are at is joined by many other lands, all more beautiful and more "real" than they had been while they were still "alive" (though I would argue they are more alive now than ever).

There is a very remarkable sense in which things will be familiar. We shall all be changed and shall be made perfect. The young girl whose face has been scarred by a fire will be made completely whole and beautiful, yet shall be completely recognizable. Somehow we shall know each other and Christ. I firmly believe that when I see other saints in heaven, I shall know who they are. I shall recognize my grandfather, my unborn sibling I never met, Paul, the servant of Christ, and so many more! There will be a familiarity that will make heaven "home." In the Scriptures, it also talks of the New Jerusalem in very endearing terms. Why is it called the New Jerusalem? Merely because it is the new center of God's worship? I think that is part of it, but I think it shall resemble the Old Jerusalem, or more properly, the Old Jerusalem resembled this new one! There shall be a familiarity.

Now back to the new heavens and new earth. I believe there is strong evidence that though this world shall pass away, yet it shall be remade anew.

Rom 8:19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.
Rom 8:20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope
Rom 8:21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
Rom 8:22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.
Rom 8:23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

Why would creation eagerly wait for its destruction? It says that creation shall be set free from the bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. This freedom obviously can't mean freedom from suffering (as in annihilation), because that isn't the same as the freedom of the glory of the children of God, to which its freedom is compared. God's children shall be made anew, perfected, brought into that state which man was meant to inhabit, as God planned from the beginning. The creation is also awaiting a "new body" and shall be made anew.

2Pe 3:12 waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn!
2Pe 3:13 But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

Yes, it will pass away, even as this body of ours "passes away" but as our body is made new, so the earth is made new. Completely new as in unrecognizable? I am inclined to think not! Again, the evidence seems to point to the fact that the creation will be redeemed, and re-created in glory, not merely destroyed never to be seen again.

To be honest, I have enjoyed exploring the creation God has made, and when I was young and inclined to climb rocks, trees, explore caves, and dig tunnels, it disturbed me to think that all we would have is one big city, all white and bland with gold streets and a river and a tree and that's about it. It sounded boring! Yet now of course I realize the real focus is Christ and being with Him for eternity, yet at the same time, I believe that if He has endowed us with the wonderful creation He has, and if it's only a shadow of what is to come, and if the earth itself will be renewed, then what we have to look forward to is a world BETTER than this one! Is it indeed possible that something like this passage from Isaiah, which has been figuratively fulfilled, might be literally fulfilled? :

Isa 11:6 The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them.
Isa 11:7 The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
Isa 11:8 The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den.

I believe it is possible! If God has made wonderful creatures here on earth for our enjoyment, how much more will He do so for the Paradise He is going to create. If God's original creation was "good" and His second creation is "better" then can you imagine what we have to look forward to? Yes, I believe that you can expect to see animals in heaven, places that are familiar, places you've wanted to visit. The creation will be entirely given to us, but more than that, Christ Himself is our inheritance and everything else, as wonderful as it may seem, will pale in comparison. Marriage and the marriage relationship is the most intimate and loving that we have, the highest form of spiritual, emotional, physical, and mental bonding, yet the love that Christ has for us, His church is even greater than this, it's only a tiny taste of what is to come, the love we shall have for Him, and the love He shall have for us and the knowledge we shall have of each other in this paradise He is both preparing and will prepare.

The short of it?

2007-06-09T19:13:00.000-07:00

So today I spent a bit of time reading. I finished a couple more chapters in A.A. Hodge's commentary on the Westminster Confession, read another chapter in Christ of the Covenants, and finished up Pilgrim's Progress in the 19th Century. The last one was fairly good for the most part, though the author certainly had an agenda. The first hundred and fifty pages encompassed some discussion about Thoughtful and how he started on his journey, some discussions between him and Feel-well and Love-Self and then they got to a town where they stayed and talked about revivals for 230 pages! The last 50 pages or so were devoted to their continuing, passing through the areas of Vanity Fair, where Demas was, Giant Despair (although now it was Giant Self-Confidence or something like that) and their going through the grounds of enchantment and finally reaching Beulah. So by far the bulk of the book, they stayed in one spot, talked with the same two people, and talked about one subject. It was good, just not really good in a literary way!

I sent out a few e-mails, finishing up some business that I'd been meaning to do. Then Jon came over with his futon in the back of Dan's truck, which he had borrowed, and I went over to his apartment and helped him move a small dresser over here as well. So now when my family comes to visit, they can use the futon :)

I listened to some music, played a little bit of the Zelda game, and barely started on day 2 of the Western Pilgrim's Progress. I've had two comments now, one from my mother. People must be busy! As I said before though, I really would like feedback, I've been kind of holding off on the subsequent parts because if I do have to re-do things, I don't want to have to re-do more than one and waste the time.

Some plans for this skit include (as suggested by JD and my mother)
* Western themed music, at least for the start-up, tentatively for mood music thoughout the play.
* Western costumes, bandannas and hats and boots and jeans would suffice generally.
* having kids from the audience "help out" each day. I plan for day 2 having one kind be "Mr Lazy" laying under the tree. All he or she would have to do is lie their with their eyes closed, snoring (and a big grin on his or her face no doubt). For day 2 I would also like to have a couple of kids acting like roaring lions that Christian has to cross through. That may take a little more planning (don't want them actually jumping on and eating poor Christian!).
* That is, if we /can/ get a person to play Christian!
* The daily lesson (which I'm also doing, to my knowledge) would be themed around the story, with questions asked like "why was Mr Lazy called Mr Lazy?" "Why did Christian want to get his burden off his back? Who could help him do that? Why did he have a burden?" etc., pulling off of names and themes I'm focusing on.
* Mr Worldly Wiseman (taking a literary license here) will appear, dapper as always, on a daily basis, always with a little more affected shine than before. There may be a final showdown between him and Sheriff Shepherd over the gospel and Christ.

So this evening I was puttering around the house, I'd washed dishes, etc. and just had to get out. Although it's not normally my custom to take a walk to spend time with myself. If I do go out by myself, it's usually to find a quiet spot to pray. I walked around in the park for a little while, singing Psalm 143 and 2 and then walked back, grabbed my frisbee and iPod and listened to the RP International conference (all the Psalm singing tracks since I listened to the sermons already) and practiced my long throws with the frisbee, for when we play Ultimate. Oddly, being by one's self during the school year is very different than being by one's self during the summer. In the former period, I guess I have more to think about, I certainly have plenty to do now as well, so I'm not sure what the difference is. But I did feel myself wishing that someone would show up, or send an e-mail or something! It's been rather quiet and isolated today...

But tomorrow is Sabbath and I'm very much looking forward to it and worshiping in the congregation once more. So good night all!

How interesting!

2007-06-08T15:29:00.000-07:00

For those of you who don't know about it yet, my "western themed" Pilgrim's Progress thing for the first day of VBS is online. I would seriously like some comments because so far all I've had is one person say "cool" and that's all the feedback. I'm concerned that it's too boring to hold the attention of the children, that it's too long, that more western themed things could be brought in, that more changes could be made. The link is at:
http://www.box.net/shared/tixa6z5nfj

But what I really wanted to do is share some thoughts from Henry:

Regarding Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan that David asked for, found, and brought into his house to eat at his table, Henry states:

"Now because David was a type of Christ, his Lord and son, his root and offspring, let his kindness to Mephibosheth serve to illustrate the kindness and love of God our Saviour towards fallen man, which yet he was under no obligation to, as David was to Jonathan. Man was convicted of rebellion against God, and, like Saul's house, under a sentence of rejection from him, was not only brought low and impoverished, but lame and impotent, made so by the fall. The Son of God enquires after this degenerate race, that enquired not after him, comes to seek and save them. To those of them that humble themselves before him, and commit themselves to him, he restores the forfeited inheritance, he entitles them to a better paradise than that which Adam lost, and takes them into communion with himself, sets them with his children at his table, and feasts them with the dainties of heaven. Lord, what is man, that thou shouldst thus magnify him!"

I thought it was interesting to compare man's impotence due to the fall, to Mephibosheth's impotence due to his fall.

Another neat comment came from 2 Samuel 10. David had heard that the Ammonite king had died and since he had showed some kindness to David at one point, David sent men as ambassadors to comfort this king's son. The king listened to his advisors however and they cut off half of their beards and their cloaks and sent them away calling them spies. David then gathers his army and the king suddenly realizes that he doesn't have enough men. Henry states:

"Yet it seems, they had not considered how unable they were, with their thousands, to meet his; for now they found themselves an unequal match, and were forced to hire forces of other nations into their service. Thus sinners daringly provoke God, and expose themselves to his wrath and never consider that he is stronger than they, 1 Cor x.22."

That is all.

WHO LET THE BLOGS OUT!

2007-06-01T17:27:00.000-07:00

*Takes of hat and cloak*

Phew! It's been a while!

Should call myself the musty traveler, or at least someone who hasn't been updating for a while :)

But things have been busy. For example, the last two days I've spent a total of 20 hours at work, Steve (my employer) wanted to get a few things done that evening, like order some PCBs (printed circuit boards) because that was the last day they were having a 20% discount from the company. I just wish I had known about that sooner so I could have concentrated on that earlier. And besides that, the money we saved from the discount probably wasn't worth the extra hours put into it. But it means that this past week I've filled in enough hours to have counted Monday (which I took off) as a work day, and four hours besides! So yes, I've put in quite a few hours this week it seems.

But I'm really enjoying my work and seem to be doing well at it. Rob does almost all of the programming of our boards. I replaced Matt who had been the hardware guy, then Ben was hired on additonally a go-between for Rob and myself and to get some more cross-pollonization between everything so it wasn't just one person that had all the knowledge for a specific part. Now however, I'm being told that they are switching gears a bit and I was called into a meeting today by Sajin and Vicke who are basically trying to organize everything and make it all "modular" and streamlined and "professional" and they wanted to know how the Bolus code works.

Bear in mind that I've never seen a line of this code, never worked on the Bolus at all. I had no clue. From their standpoint, everything has to be software development and the things they talk about all have to do with that. From my standpoint, I'm happy to let Rob do all the programming and I just go play with my hardware, now they're trying to drag me into the programming and told me to look over some of the code this next week and figure it out. I dislike programming and it's been over a year since I did my last bit of it, and I'm honestly not very good at it. Plus, this is in a language I've never worked with before, so suffice it to say that I'm not too happy about that! :)

I would much rather focus on what I have been doing, testing and developing hardware, I guess I wouldn't mind a working knowledge of the programming but not this way! I especially don't want to spend that much time just looking over code on the computer. Thursday I spent 11 hours straight at a computer, then went home and did another hour of tech support (on the computer) for Dan. Yikes! Let me out of here! I almost don't want to see any computers for a while :)

But it is going well overall and I'm really not complaining. I'd like to show some pictures of what I was working on, perhaps I'll upload those.

And I've been doing a bit of reading as well, but I'd like to move on to a couple of observations and things to share:

First, today as I was driving home and thinking about lightning (there was a thunderstorm) I started thinking a bit about light in general. More specifically, I started wondering about what would happen if the semi I was next to at a stoplight, were to be struck (since there were some near strikes) and if I would be blind for the rest of my life, and how to pull off to the side of the road to let other cars go by, but then realized that they would be blind too.....

But I started thinking that the nerve sensors in our eyes are rather sensitive, to be able to detect waves of energy and assimilate them into various forms of images that we see, they sense various colours etc., it's absolutely amazing! But give them too much and I'm sure they would be blinded permanantly, and damaged. This led me to consider how appropriate it is in Psa 36:9 to say "For with thee is the fountain of life: in thy light shall we see light." and even how the first words God spoke have to do with light. Light is used 272 times in the Bible, 25 times in the Psalms. Just like a lightning flash, or an atomic bomb flash which annihilates the sensitive nerves in one's eye, God's greatness would completely consume our poor spiritual beings, this body, this person would be completely consumed. It's only when God strengthens and brings one to Himself that we could stand it. His greatness is so excellent that He only reveals a tiny dim shadow of Himself to us on earth, and even that seems so bright at times! One day He will reveal Himself in all His glory, we shall know Him as He knows us, we shall /see/ Him face to face, we will be able to take in all of His majesty and have all eternity to enjoy it! A book I read recently talked about how marriage and the relationship enjoyed there is the highest form of friendship and intimacy that we know, to be loved and to love someone in return is amazing and something I can't quite fathom, yet it is only a tiny taste, a dull and bitter taste, a dim and faint shadow of what is to come. The love that Christ has upon us and the love that we will be enabled to have for Him are so amazing that I can't even begin to imagine, and I mean that in all seriousness and not as a cliche.

And then the light turned green and I drove off thinking it would be good blog material :)

I was also reading Pilgrim's Progress in the 19th Century this past week (again) which is still decently good. The author definitely had a motive, the last 200 pages have been spent in one town, talking with the same three persons about revivals. It's not bad, much of it is quite good, but the story hasn't been moving along in the slightest! I'd at least like it to mention that they started walking on the highway while talking, so I felt like I was going somewhere! But there was a good passage that I wanted to share, a good analogy. Lately I've been seeing so many analogies (like the one I just shared) that I've begun to suspect that God made the world the way He did so that everything could have an analogy. Like a tree's roots and growth make many good analogies! Blame it on Frodo. ;) Anyway, this one is talking about a sinner who thinks that he is saved because he submits to God, not that God saves him regardless:

"Attraction is to the world of matter, the same that disinterested love is to the moral world. It belongs to every little atom on the surface of the earth to remain in its place, and in connection with its kindred atoms, to revolve aroudn the sun, the centre of our material system, attracting and being attracted, according to its quantity of matter. But if a single atom were to take state to itself, and fly off from the surface of the earth high into the firmament of heaven, and claim to be the centre of the material system, and require suns and planets to revolve around it as the acknowledged centre of attraction, - this would resemble a rational creature who makes himself his supreme object and who wishes the Creator and all his creatures to make his good their centre of attraction. But because we deny to this atom the place of a common centre for the system, has it therefore no appropriate place? Certainly, it had its proper place. It was the place of an atom; and it behooved it to cleave to the surface of the earth, and in connection with its kindred atoms, to attract and be attracted; and in a steady and orderly manner to revolve round the real centre of the system. If this atom is not acting in character, when it seeks to make all other bodies revolve round it, so neither is any man or angel who sets himself up as the supreme object, and seeks to make all other beings subordinate to him."

And this, is my update. Adieu.

Updates? Again?!

2007-05-14T18:56:00.000-07:00

Yes, I guess it is a long time since there has been an update. I'll justify that by saying that I've been very busy trying to do things here at my (new) house, finishing up school, and other sorts of things.

The last few weeks of school went pretty well. Although towards the end of the semester I've got plenty to do myself but many other students begin to panic, so I had students from the Circuits class (which I was an assistant for) sending me e-mails (one guy said "Hey Morgan, how do you...." which is kind of odd, that he didn't even know my name by this time, but anyway) and asking questions. I had some people stopping me in the hall, and even when I was all by myself in a computer lab, trying to get one of the several dozen things I wanted to accomplish, a classmate showed up, 45 minutes before we were going to take the practical, saying he hadn't studied at all for it and he was worried and he started asking me all sorts of questions. Admittedly, that kind of annoyed me a bit because I was making it obvious that I was rather busy and didn't have time to baby him through the course.

But I was glad to help, and seriously I think I may have volunteered too much of my time, because with several other students who were working hard, I told them to feel free to e-mail me and ask questions. For another classmate, Garrett, who had asked me to review his project report (60 pages long) I went through and corrected as many mistakes as I could find, gave suggestions and pointers and advice on their presentation. Then went and watched it. So yes, busy, busy busy, and probably because I never said "no" to anything, so it's my own fault! :)

Because of that, a lot of projects got put on the back-burner (which is figurative, since I don't actually have any burners yet, since I have not stove) and in the week following finals, I was trying to catch up on a variety of things.

Backtrack. I got an internship, which was neat. I was helping the head TA for Dr Bunting when he got an e-mail from one of the professors saying there was an internship position here in Stillwater. I told the TA that I would be interested in that. He said, "really? Okay, I'll call Matt." So he called and I had the interview, ended up getting the job, etc. It was definitely a working of the Lord, and I was so thankful for it! It is such a blessing to be able to stay for the summer, for more reasons than one!

So during Finals week, I was taking exams, working any time I could in between exams, and then going home at night and looking over material for the next day's exam. It was rather tiring but I was able to learn quite a bit at the job. I'm replacing Matt and he's leaving at the end of this week so I need to gather as much as possible from him before he leaves.

So let me see, the end of Finals week Jonathan, Jon, and Andy came over to my house and we had a few hotdogs and then they played some games while I took off and then Frodo and myself went for a walk in the graveyard (not a "normal" place to walk) but it was a real blessing. We had an opportunity to speak about a variety of things and it really was a good finish to the week, the sunset at the end of a VERY long day you might say. Some of the gravestones had good inscriptions on them but those were rare. For the most part, they were rather disheartening or simply superficial, like "gone but not forgotten" which really means nothing. I said that I had hoped to find something like "Resting in the active obedience of Christ" or something along those lines. It made me more aware how a gravestone, if one has one, should be something meaningful that would draw the observer to reflect on his own mortality and how he must one day meet his Creator.

My family came over the next day, Saturday, to help work on the house. I went to Lowe's to pick up a countertop and helped my father install it on top of a couple of cabinets he had made and brought. The girls and Tanner painted the clotheline posts (I'm going to have to use them now!) and then we painted the house. In my opinion, it looks much, much better than it did before!

The past few Sundays have been a blessing as well, I've really been enjoying being of from school just so that in the evenings and on the weekends, my mind isn't preoccupied with such things. I can leave all of that stuff behind. Now I'm interested in learning things in conjunction with my job :) It's been really interesting and I'm learning a lot.

Let's see, this past week I've been working on soldering little tiny SMT components, for a size comparison, this is what it looks like:

So they are really small and you have to use tweezers and you have to have steady hands. And after five hours straight (like today) you have to run outside and scream before coming back in. I don't know, I can do a hundred of these (all different values and types) in a couple of hours I think. I'm getting much better at it and the boards are looking much prettier when I'm done with them :)

One Wednesday, I had the opportunity to go out to Watonga with my employer and the secretary and speak to a cattle manager. I was able to understand what he was talking about because I'd seen it for myself before when working for another feedlot, and afterwards Vicke asked me to write a report, which she said she really liked. On the way back I was talking with Steve (my employer) and he asked what "Reformed" in "Reformed Presbyterian Church" meant, because he knew Presbyterian was an elder form of government, and I explained that it was from the Reformation. He asked how it differed from mainline Presbyterian and I started talking about the doctrines of grace and God's sovereignty and he said "Oh, so calvinism basically?" I was surprised, I was specifically trying to avoid using that word so it wouldn't be an unnecessary stumbling block for him (a Baptist) but he said that he was calvinistic in his beliefs, so we had a good time talking on the way back. There were some things I disagreed with and I'll talk later I think, but you can't know what a blessing it is to have an employer who is not only a believer, but apparently one who is closer to the truth of the Bible than most! (Yes, I am saying that "calvinism" is what the Bible teaches). So that was good to find out.

I'm enjoying my work and learning a lot, we shall see what this next week yields. It's Matt's last week so I need to pick up everything I haven't before, which is pretty much not going to happen. I really hope I work out well for the company though, I'm afraid when Matt goes I won't be able to figure things out and do them well enough.

Oh, and I spent a lot of time working this past Saturday on my house, and put some plastic between the steel straps holding up the pipes under the house (and got good and dirty in the process), put some tar on the roof in a couple of spots (but not because there were leaks), raked the entire back yard, weed-whacked everything, and tore down a bit of fence that was behind my property, sealing off the little alleyway. The back fence stays.

I'm getting a lot of things done, but there is more yet to finish, hopefully these next few weeks I'll finish almost all of that up and can concentrate on reading for the rest of the summer :)

The Interview

2007-04-17T15:56:00.000-07:00

So I had a job interview today, which was an interesting experience :)

I started by leaving about 25 minutes early, which should have given me plenty of time to make the 5 miles or so necessary to get to the place. I had completely forgotten about the road construction that is going on around Sangre however (which was where I needed to go) and when I got out to the highway and saw it, I wasn't quite sure what to make of it. I recalled Matt (the person who was interviewing me) saying to make it to 19th and Sangre, then head north. So I decided I'd come back and try going down Western and hitting 19th. No problem.

Well, when I got down to 19th, I saw that was closed due to construction as well! I tried to bypass it by going into a little residential area but though I went all around back there, there were no outlets other than the one I had come in by. So I had to worm my way all the way back through these little residential streets back to 19th and the road block. I seriously contemplated just zooming past all of the machinery that was there because by this time I was getting a bit nervous.

I made it back to Western and went up north figuring I'd circle all the way around to the west side of Sangre (I was on the east) and get to it that way. On the way I saw 9th and 8th street and tried both to see if I could cut across like that. It was a bad idea, both were dead ends. It was like a bad dream, one where you're trying everything you can possibly do to get to the job interview and no matter how hard you try, you're blocked off every way! I made it back to the highway and went out west of Meridian and then weaved back to Sangre and found the place. By now I was ten minutes late and so I ran to the door, rather embarrassed.

Matt was very pleasant though and said it was completely understandable, with all the construction that was going on around the place. He took me in and showed me the lab where they work and then we went to a small conference room where he proceeded to grill me. The first question was what to do when you have a box that is outputting five volts and you need something less than three volts on the input of the next box. I suggested a voltage regulator in the circuit (which would have worked) or I said the simplest thing I could think of would be a voltage divider. He said that is essentially what they did, a voltage divider.

Next, he asked me what I would do if I had something that was sending and something that was receiving from an antenna. I suggested diodes to limit the flow to only one direction but he said at high frequencies, diodes would act like shorts because of their capacitance (which I didn't know) so I just said you needed some kind of module that would allow incoming signals to go one way and outgoing signals to go another way. He said that was correct and they use RF switches for that.

Lastly, he had a transceiver (which both sent and received) and wanted to get a gain on it. I suggested an opamp for that and he asked "but what about returning signals?" I thought you might have to step them back down but he said that incoming signals were usually weak anyway. So they would just go straight to the transceiver. So again, you'd have an RF switch and out of that, a gain of 1000 and coming back in you'd just have the straight wire. He asked what to do to get the maximum gain and would all the power be dissipated through the antenna (which was 75 ohms and the transceiver was 50 ohms). I said some would be dissipated through the circuitry and then he asked well, what are the conditions for max power then? I said "Oh! The antenna would have to be 50 ohms, or the transceiver would have to be 75 ohms." He said yes, usually they adjusted it with a potentiometer or something, and that was largely what he did.

"Okay, you did well. Very well actually!" And he sort of laughed. "I had a grad student in here yesterday who just stared blankly at me."

I have to say that most of what he was saying was new to me and it was only after we had worked through them that he found out that I hadn't taken fields or devices yet. But he said he'd get back in touch with me next week and I may come in for another interview then.

"What's your phone number so I can get in contact with you?"
"Actually, I don't have a phone number so my e-mail is the best way."
"What? No phone? Oh, you and Rob would get along great."

As we went back into the lab, he said "Hey Rob, there's another person in the world who doesn't have a phone." Rob looked up from the work bench and said "All right! Hi, I'm Rob." And I introduced myself.

Matt showed me some of the things they were working on and how they were used. A large plastic capsule was used to house some of the circuitry which would go into the stomach of large animals, like cattle. They could then identify it and monitor its temperature etc. He had an antenna that he said was stronger and had a range of 11 miles. "That could be used to help prevent rustling!" I said, remembering the Covington's bulls. He said "Yeah, I guess so." He said some of this stuff worked with an implant in the ear. I explained that I'd helped to put in the implants before at a ranch I worked at a couple of summers ago. "Hmm! So you actually put them in?" He thought that was interesting and said they didn't really have any interaction with the animals so they didn't know about that. They just make the components.

So I think it went well. I was thankful that they are at least considering me. If I'm going up against grad students then it's nice that they'd even consider someone who is as low as I am. The good thing is that Matt said he was just about where I was in his education when he began this job, he's graduating and going to work for Garmin.

And now a couple of things I thought really neat from Henry that I meant to post a while ago but wasn't able to:

A couple of things from Henry on relationship between Sampson's mother and father:

First, when the angel appears to Manoah's wife:

"Manoah is not disgusted that the angel did not this second time appear to him, but very willingly goes after his wife to the man of God. To atone (as it were) for the first fatal miscarriage, when Eve earnestly pressed Adam to that which was evil, and he too easily yielded to her, let yoke-fellows excite one another to love and good works; and, if the wife will lead, let not the husband think it any disparagement to him to follow her in that which is virtuous and praiseworthy."

And then again, when the angel ascends and Manoah says they shall surely die:

"In his wife's reflection upon it there is great faith, Jdg_13:23. Here the weaker vessel was the stronger believer, which perhaps was the reason why the angel chose once and again to appear to her. Manoah's heart began to fail him, but his wife, as a help meet for him, encouraged him. Two are better than one, for, if one fall into dejections and despondencies, the other will help to raise him up. Yoke-fellows should piously assist each other's faith and joy as there is occasion."

An update.

2007-04-14T20:34:00.001-07:00

It's late, but I desperately want to update my blog!

This past week has been very good, for one thing, I bought a house and have been living in it. I have really enjoyed that and I can't exactly explain why. It's just good to own a place.

I have not really had the opportunity to meet any of the neighbors since I moved in and I hope they don't think I'm unfriendly because of it, I just get home later in the evening and leave early and I've not seen anyone. Well, I take that back, I did see one guy walking around so I went out and introduced myself but he said he just used to live in the neighborhood when he was a kid and was coming back to see it and a friend.

But because of all of this, my week has been somewhat busy. Monday morning I was scrambling around trying to finish up some things that I needed to have taken care of for classes, setting up a checking account so I can pay my bills, and trying to set up an appointment for Internet access (which I do have and it's great!). I also set up a wireless network in the house, moved things around and got it set up, put my books on the shelves that my father built me for my birthday (and I love 'em!) among other things. I sometimes feel like I don't have enough time to eat (come to think of it, the last two days I've had one meal each day). But I'm staying strong and healthy and thankful to the Lord because of it (and when I do eat, I eat a lot).

On Wednesday I was supposed to meet the W's to show them the house. On my way out from class at 5:40, I realized that I didn't have my keys, so I walked back to the computer lab where I had been using them (attached to my keychain). It was about a half mile walk each way I think. Well, my keys weren't in the lab. I searched frantically around and found a janitor and we went up to the office (which was locked up by now) to see if someone had turned them in to lost and found. He told me that normally they leave them in the computers because the guy who lost it will probably be looking for his keys quickly. So I figured that
a) someone wanted the jump drive and stole the whole thing
b) someone picked them up to turn in but forgot about it.

Needless to say, things looked rather bleak. After fruitless searching (but not fruitless prayer) I went to the car and used a plastic spare key I had from AAA to get inside and then gingerly started the ignition. I went to the house and since I just moved in, the only spare key was in the house. So I managed to "break inside" by discovering that a window did not latch. Kind of good at the moment, but something I need to fix. I then went to Bible study and made it there on time and explained what had happened. The sermon was very good, about anxiety and how it really is a display of unbelief and it was good for me to hear that because at the moment, I was a bit concerned about my keys. But by the time I got home, a fellow TA had e-mailed saying that the keys had been taken to a building that was halfway across the campus. It turns out that the computer lab I was using was run by CEAT and they periodically go around straigtening chairs and such. And anything they find, they take to their lost and found. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me (you'd think they would at least let the keys stay in the same building) but I was glad to get them back and stop using the plastic key.

Thursday I was invited to an IEEE banquet. Most of the college students congregated around eachother, but I purposely went to another table and met some sponsors from Garmin (who make GPS systems) and Ditch Witch and IBM. They provided some of the door prizes and I think were something of scouts. I took the opportunity to drop in a line about my current work with MyLaptopGPS (oh, hey Dan) and how it works. They sounded impressed with the idea but I didn't get any sign-ups ;)
I enjoyed talking to them but after a while I noticed that the conversation was rather superficial. Eventually it was just talk about the weather and nothing deeper than that. The speaker for the evening was the Assistant Secretary of the Navy and she showed us some very interesting things the Navy is doing in the field of engineering.

They also announced scholarship winners and I was excited that I was awarded two scholarships by the department, one for $500 for the year and the other for $2500. They will certainly help me with tuition!

Friday I was pretty busy also, trying to finish up things for the weekend. I had finished grading and there were three of us left and we needed two to enter the scores, so I volunteered to stay and help with that. We were doing that when Vignesh got an e-mail which said something about an internship in Stillwater. I told Vignesh (offhandedly) that I would be interested in that and he said "Really?" I said "Oh yes." He said "Okay, I'll call him." So he grabs his cell phone and as he's dialing says "You're sure about this?" I emphatically said "Yes!"
He talked to the guy who had put out the add and told him where I was in my coursework and highly recommended me to him. So I sent in my resume yesterday and we'll see what happens. God does provide though and I'm excited about the possibility!

Today (Saturday) Philip and I took a trip out to Tulsa to visit Evelyn. We went to the Gilcrease Museum which had art galleries of western scenes. I really enjoyed it a lot. They had some really interesting paintings, and a lot that were fun to make fun of :) I really enjoyed it. We also took a look at the gardens and then we went with Kevin, Holly, Spencer, and Jenny to a sushi place in town. I guess I can say I've had real sushi now, but I still can't say I find it particularly tasteful. It was fine, it just wasn't my favourite.

Evelyn had to go to orchestra practice and Philip and I stayed around for RUF talent night. It was supposed to start at 8:00 but it was only 7:00 at the time so we fenced in the parking lot (I had my gear) for a while, I was instructing him and giving him pointers. We went inside and helped set up a bit then hung around until 8:25 (when the event finally got underway) but had to leave immediately afterward at 8:30.

That seems like a very quick overview but it will have to suffice. Sorry for the long wait in between updates but sometimes I feel like I'm running around like a chicken with its head cut off and barely getting the things done that I need to :)

They are upon us! Retreat!

2007-04-02T07:50:00.001-07:00

Whoo! It's been an extremely busy week. This morning I slept in until about 7:15 because I think just about every day this week has been from 6:00 in the morning until 11:00 at night. I just needed a few extra z's to recuperate :)

Monday
I seemed to have a million and one things (as Arwen said) to do that morning, from homework assignments to submission of papers, applications, and a meeting with Bruce, my pastor, etc. I was running all over that morning like a chicken with my head cut off. I heard that the P family is doing a competition for "steps" to see who walks the most in a day (as a fitness activity). I'm guessing that most of the days this week I averaged a lot of 'em!

Tuesday
Also busy as I was preparing both for upcoming assignments and the retreat that weekend. I enjoyed taking a break for a little while and talking with Alan, Jeff, and Bruce at Hideaway for nearly an hour.

Wednesday
Hectic. I had lots to do on campus and was struggling to get it all done. We had our lab that evening which seemed like it was going to take a while but we ended up getting finished early. I went to the College Group Bible study, though neither of the students I'd invited were able to make it that week. Perhaps this next they will. Afterwards, Dan asked Jonathan and myself if we could help him take a couch from the Kreider's to his place, they were giving him their large sofa! So we went over there and packed it up and took it, then he gave us a ride back to the Spitler ranch and we went home. It was already about 10:20 by that time but I was able to work on a little bit more homework before bed time. I had an exam coming up on Friday as well so I wanted to be prepared for that.

Thursday
I worked on lab reports and prepared for my exam. Also, Garrett had some trouble with a class I had taken previously, so I spent an hour working with him. It's funny how when one starts to plan their schedule and say "today or tomorrow I will work on this or that assignment and get it all done" that things like this and the couch intervene and you find yourself humbly dependent upon God to get you through the rest of the week :)
I met with Alan and we had a good discussion time, though we didn't get as far in the book that we were supposed to be discussing. I was talking too much!

Friday
was my Linear Algebra exam. I think I did just fine on it (I had worked through about 12 old exams) but I'm almost positive that I forgot to change back from standard basis to the polynomial basis, so I might get some points taken off for that. By that afternoon, I had nearly finished everything I needed to for that week and the next, so I could finally breathe again. In fact, I went over to Jonathan's place and we went out to Taco Bell and then came back and watched an episode of Stargate. It was a compromise: I had him watch an episode of that and now I'm supposed to watch "Castle in the Sky" which is an animated film. He claims that this one actually has a plot ;) I had printed out the bulletins the previous day and then dropped them off at the Noell household Friday evening.

Saturday
The point of the entire week of preparation (almost). The Midwest Presbytery was having a retreat and I was "wheedled" into going. Apparently Mr Yost was going to be the only guy going so he told me I had to go to keep him company. I found out later that he told JD that he had to go to keep me company or else I would be the only guy going. Tricksy. ;)

I was up at 6:00 again and managed to quickly finish everything and be out the door at 6:25, I picked JD up and we met at the Fisher's house. Dan came to pick us up and we headed out somewhere shortly after 7:00.

I was told that the trip was remarkably quiet. JD and Rachel and Betty hardly said a word, Jesse was in the front with Dan because she got carsick. I spent quite a bit of time reading Matthew Henry.

We arrived around 10:20 and registered. There were familiar faces, a few names I remembered, and I got to meet a whole bunch of new people. I would estimate that there were at least 50 CYers there for this retreat, it was a good-sized crowd. We first all sat down and had a "game" where they handed out two starbursts each, and depending on what colour you had, you were supposed to tell something about yourself. Orange was an embarrassing story, pink, was a special talent (demonstrated if possible), yellow was a place you wanted to visit, and red was a pet peeve. It was good to get to know people a bit better but there were so many that I honestly could hardly remember what most people said. There was one chap, Kyle Finley, whom someone handed off a pink to because he liked to play around with voice acting ;) He got up and did a Shaggy and Scooby Doo short skit about the CY trip which was great, I'd like to hear more from him. Later, I also had a pink and I had previously planned to attempt some Homestar Runner voices (because of the multitude of college students) but the Stillwater crowd (A.K.A. Dan and Anna) shouted me down for the Gollum routine instead. There was one girl there who said she wanted to visit the redwoods someday, but though I asked around afterwards, I couldn't figure out who it was, and no one seemed to remember it either, though I asked about 6 separate people.

Midway during all of this, Stan Copeland, who was our speaker, gave a few lectures on Psalm singing. One of the things that he brought out which I thought was a particularly excellent point, was that we shouldn't be out there beating people over the head and saying "you can't sing hymns, you have to sing Psalms" but rather, we should be more demonstrative of the value and beauty and sheer treasure of the Psalms. It's a Desire and not merely Duty. He gave us a handout with some excellent material on it. I had an opportunity to talk to him for a while and ask some questions as well on a couple of passages. Unfortunately, he had to leave immediately following the second lecture so I didn't get to speak with him then.

Some of the things (from my notes) that were brought up during this time:
Do we worship the God of the Bible, or the God of our own imagination?
Do we do what we do because of tradition, or for evangelism? The main focus is to love Christ and then evangelism naturally comes after that.
Do we bash hymns or do we show God's blessings to us?
Do we follow the Regulative Principle out of belief in it? i.e. do we realize that God doesn't give us negatives in worship but positives? Example with Cain and Abel: God accepted Abel's offer and refused Cain's. Why? Because God had not commanded that fruits be offered, it wasn't that He had specifically said "don't offer fruits." God's positive commands are what we are to follow, He doesn't have to tell us we cannot do something, it is enough that He tells us what we should do, and then we should not deviate from that.
Does God ever command uninspired men to create their own songs? No, He does not. Paul could have written new, inspired songs, but he didn't. Jesus could have written new songs for us, He didn't. If these didn't feel the necessity to write new songs, which would have been inspired, then why would we think that we who are uninspired need to fill the gap? Why would God have given the Old Testament saints inspired songs but not the New Testament ones, to those who are considered to be even under more spiritual blessing?

In fact, God has given us a Psalter and we are blessed to sing from it. Those who say the Psalter is insufficient for the Christian need to seriously consider what they are saying. If the Psalter is insufficient, then the Bible is incomplete. If it needs adding to, then Jesus short-changed us. The point of the matter is, that the Psalter is sufficient, and more than sufficient, it is God's inspired songs, given to us to sing.

Afterwards, we went out to a nearby park and while most of the "wimps" played Volleyball (there was seriously about 10 people per team on two courts, about 40 people playing in all) the "REAL" men (and two women) went and played Ultimate Frisbee on some grass nearby. The team I was on ended up being ahead by 5-0 and then later, by 6-1. Eventually we got up to 8-4 and then their team had a comeback and we wound up with 9-8, we were beginning to sweat (er... we'd be sweating for a while actually) and we ended up finishing it off with another point. I think I caught about five or six of our points in the endzone. And seriously folks, I was feeling pretty out of shape, huffing and puffing up and down the field.

The same group of CYers who had played Volleyball went and played some "football" on the grassy spot when we were through. That's soccer for most people but I feel that if anything deserves to be called football, that does. I proposed the idea to Anna that American Football be changed to be called "Eggball" but she didn't seem to think that would go over too well with most Oklahomans or Americans.

I took a walk over to a small island that was on the lake. It had some nice trees and benches on it, so I sat for about 15 minutes watching a swan swim by and took a time of prayer too. It was nearly time to head out so we piled into the van and went back for supper. While supper was finishing, I started to read a little and then Shawn came over and we began talking and I was explaining some of the things I really like about Henry. He said "Wow! Let me go get Nathan, he'd love to hear some of this." So Nathan came over and we all started talking, I have a rather lengthy story of my beginnings in the RP church and God's Providence in my life in leading me there, the things I struggled with and went through. Bob Mann, Keith's father, was sitting at the table and after a while he came over and said "I couldn't catch all of that, what were you talking about?" So I explained it again to him. He's an older gentleman who wears hearing aids but is still a bit hard of hearing, and it was especially difficult in that noisy room. Nathan and I came from similar backgrounds so he had struggled with many of the same issues I had. He had apparently come to some conclusions (on the Covenentalist) side just recently and had some questions to ask, which I answered as best as I could. It was a good time of discussion and afterwards, the whole crowd headed over to the nearby gym and we continued it there for at least another hour, while everyone else was playing some games on the gym floor. It looked pretty fun, some kind of capture the flag and baseball (but with kicking, not with a bat). But it was just as much fun talking to Nathan and Shawn and Bob. Bob had a few questions for me, as far as my background and what I thought on various issues (such as differences between the church as it was in the Old Testament and the church as it is now). Speaking of which, I read an interesting quote from Matthew Henry Sunday morning, on Gideon's fleece:

"Some make this fleece an emblem of the Jewish nation, whih, when time was, was wet with the dew of God's word and ordinances, while the rest of the world was dry; but since the rejection of Christ and his gospel they are dry as the heath in the wilderness, while the nations about are as a watered garden."

But thanks be to God that He has not fogotten the Jews, but is waiting to make them jealous until the fulness of the gentiles shall come in.

We headed back, had a period of Psalm singing, and then JD and I tried to go to sleep in one of the classrooms. All of the general hubub was fine, even the piano and guitar didn't hinder me that much after a while, but when there was a sudden scream (from a guy, since the girls had gone to nearby homes) then that didn't help me to fall asleep rapidly :) I have no idea when it all died down. I was up at 6:30 and reading the next morning. I was walking around dressed when Alex Greene shuffled out of the sanctuary (where a lot of the guys were sleeping) and squinted rather slowly at me for a few seconds. I said something to the effect that he didn't exactly look like a morning glory and he said he wasn't a morning person. It was about 7:30 by this time :D

We sang a number of Psalms that morning and then Andrew Scoby gave a talk on worship. One of the points he brought up that he really didn't talk about (but which caused me to think) was the institution of many of the devices used in worship for the tabernacle, things that were very specific. Especially the annointing oil, which was to be made to a special formula and there was to be none like it, no one should make anything like it. Similarly, I thought, if God has instituted Psalms, then should we not be just as desirous to guard them? That there should be no imitations, or things like them for our own use?

He talked about worshipping in Spirit and in Truth and asked if one could worship in Spirit only but not in truth. Keth Mann said that well, not really because that wouldn't be proper worship, could "half" worship be really called worship? True, no one worships perfectly, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't exhort one another to worship in spirit and truth, spirit and truth, spirit and truth. I said it was like two sides of the same coin, if you've lost one side of the coin, by its very nature, you've lost the other side! Or you might extend the analogy to a handful of coins, each with a part of truth and a part of spirit on it, if you lose the truth to one part of worship, you lose the spirit in it, and vice versa.

During the service, we heard from John 11 when Jesus was going up to Judea and his disciples were afraid that they would be killed. Jesus said that we must work while it is yet day, and that was the main message of the sermon. It was very good.

Afterwards, the pastor pulled me aside saying that he had to show Gabriel my Gollum voice and told me to go into a room. Pretty soon, not only Gabriel, but about six other guys were in there and the Pastor was telling them they had to hear this. I was rather embarrassed :)

We had a wonderful fellowship lunch and then we all started to part ways. Anna listened to John MacArthur's lecture on eschatology on the way back (which I had on my iPod) and she said some of it seemed to be rather inconsistent, even with the hermaneutic he was proposing and agreed that it was a mischaracterization of different views. I was glad to have a second opinion and to hear it wasn't just me that thought it was a bit odd. Though I highly respect MacArthur, I strongly disagree with him in this lecture.

I ended up dropping JD off after the trip and was invited (or rather, coaxed) into staying for supper. I heard about the robotics team and we told about the trip, then I headed home and did a few things before heading to bed.

I'm now in chapter 13 of Henry's commentary on Judges.

And that's about it for now, hopefully the next post will be shorter and will be sooner rather than later :)

Another month bites the dust.

2007-03-17T14:12:00.001-07:00

Phew! It's been a while since an update. And there have been a lot of things going on. Which is the reason why there hasn't been an update in the first place.

1. School is going very well. I've had two rounds of exams in some of my classes and have done well in them. My Networks exam didn't go well (in my opinion) but the instructor curved the exam (which we didn't deserve) and I had the top score. He said I did deserve the score and I had done well. Clearly we disagree on this matter :)

2. Being a TA is a lot of fun some times. I really enjoy seeing the students coming in and being able to explain concepts to them. With circuits at least, I seem to be pretty quick on my feet and even if it's a concept that is a little new or put in a different way than I've ever seen before, I can usually keep a few steps ahead of the student, enough to make him think I know what I'm doing! Dr Bunting told me that he normally doesn't have a lot of feedback from students but there had been several students who had told him personally how much they appreciated my help. Now that is encouraging!

3. A week ago there was a lecture at OSU which a man from Britain gave about optics and "cloaking" devices. They've managed (at least in theory) to come up with a meta-material which is able to bend microwaves around an object. So to someone on the other side receiving the microwaves, it's almost as if the object doesn't exist because he sees a "normal" pattern of waves. The goal is to be able to do this with light waves. He also talked about the "perfect lens" which, in few words, has a negative angle of refraction and so is able to reproduce the image perfectly on the other side. There would be no limitations as to the wavelength of the light, the only limitation would be the size of the photons I imagine. The N-lings went with me (all of them!) and we went out for milkshakes at Braums afterwards. I enjoyed that evening very much.

4. A week previous to that (or earlier in that week actually) I went with the N's to a concert in Tulsa. Alan paid for my meal that evening, we went to Panera Bread, they had some pretty good sandwiches and I was especially intrigued by the little electronic gizmos they handed out so while you were sitting at your table, they could "buzz" you and let you know your order was ready. The concert was good though in that particular room it sounded a bit muffled. It was 10 times better than the Mariposa Symphony Orchestra, I can tell you that! The place where I was seated was rather inconveniently located behind a row of heads so I couldn't see Frodo except when there was a miraculous parting. Come to think of it, perhaps one of the guys in front of me had shaved his head so I guess there couldn't have been a parting there. Hmm.....

5. This past week was extremely busy in comparison to "normal." I took a CLEP exam for English (which I passed this time, but I'm still annoyed my essays were scored by a computer) and met with a few people, picked up things, did my regular school-work, etc. There was an exam for the Circuits class so Dr Bunting sent out two revisions of the test for us TAs to work on and provide feedback for. Dan Y gave me a new task with MyLaptopGPS.com and that's been taking up a bit more time, so actually I think the last three nights in a row I've been up until 11:30, which is rather late for me. But I don't feel tired (maybe sleeping in until 7:00 this morning helped that!) and it was all well worth it.

6. Probably the best times of the past couple of weeks has been getting to spend a little time with Frodo and just catching up on some things, especially this last Saturday (at the N's) and Thursday on a walk around the lake. The N's have been very generous in inviting me over for supper on many Wednesdays and several Saturdays (I've lost count of them all I think) and in making sure I have something besides burritos (like a heaping bowl of salad?). Speaking of burritos, Sandra K has given me some things of her mothers for my new house (if I get that, D.V.) among them being a Toaster Oven. I am happy to announce that I've already tried two burritos in it and it works marvelously. Toasted Burritos are so good!

She was very generous and I was compiling an inventory for my mother and thought I might as well put it up here, it's quite a list!:
1 sleeper sofa
1 cofee table
1 bedroom bureau
2 Large Pyrex dishes
1 Small cassorole dish
1 Toaster oven
1 8-cup muffin pan
1 12-cup muffin pan
4 bowls
5 small plates
1 electric can opener
2 mixing bowls
2 kitchen knives
7 scraping spatulas
5 small knives
1 butter scoop
1 meat hammer
1 pizza cutter
1 garlic crusher
1 egg white separator
1 small measuring cup
3 large mixing spoons
2 spatulas
1 spaghetti spoon
1 tongs
1 oven stick
10 dinner knives
8 forks
9 large spoons
7 small spoons
3 grapefruit spoons
assorted silverware
2 pizza pans
2 basting brushes
1 cookie sheet
2 bread pans
1 large skillet with lid
2 small pots with lids
2 large pots with lids
7 teacups
10 plates

Quite a blessing! I've finished a couple of small books during TA hours or in between classes but I haven't progressed very far in Joshua and Matthew Henry. It's been extremely good so far though. I really appreciate Henry and highly recommend that everyone at least read through his commentary on Genesis some time.

Well, not much more to say at the moment. I'd like to finish some of the work for Dan Y, get my Linear Algebra homework finished, my Physics homework, and my MatLab homework done today, but I'm not too optimistic about it. Hopefully the next update will be less than another month away :)

Back from the Point of No Return

2007-02-19T04:27:00.000-08:00

My apologies for the long interlude between updates. Things have been busy admittedly. Though I guess some of the time I could be writing, I spent late at night in my bed with my calculator and circuits text book, solving problems for entertainment. Can you say "nerdy" with me? :)

First off, I've really been enjoying my TA position and being able to help people out. Since I've spent so much time reading up and practicing with my calculator, in some respects I think I'm known as "Mr Calculator" (not literally (speaking of parentheses, Bunyan had parentheses inside parentheses in Pilgrim's Progress, isn't that funny?) of course) by some of the students. A few come to me when there are any questions on the 89 at least.

"Thumbs up" if you can find any kind of flow in that last paragraph.

As I was going to class on Friday I saw once again an elderly Mechanical Engineering professor with a green slouch hat on (from the UK apparently). I say hello every day as I go past and this day I had a few spare minutes so I paused and said "Since I pass by you every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I thought I'd introduce myself. My name is Logan, I'm an Electrical Engineering student."
He paused for a moment and then folded his hands in front of him as if reciting something. "I am Eric Price and my son-in-law is an Electrical Engineer. He's called a "nerd." And he gave me a dry smile. Then he kept talking for a while about how his son-in-law had worked for a certain professor and another professor whose name he didn't recall, I stated that I didn't recognize the professor's name and he said
"Well, you obviously don't know much, so good day!" smiled, and left. I just laughed to myself as I went in the building. Melody said that he was the type of guy whom you thought was a riot and though you feel you were just insulted, you're still laughing! :) I liked him. The first time I saw him was about a year ago and he was talking with another person about how students complain about such and such and then he winked at me and said "Us adults can handle it, but the children fret."

Yesterday (Sunday) was a beautiful day, I was sorry to have spent so much time indoors. I guess I did go out for a bit at the request of Nathan V. to free Greg and William from the clutches of the villain Henry. Then ran around for a little while myself ;)

During Sabbath School, Dave gave a lecture on Deborah and Barak mainly and offered some of his findings, for example, whether it really was a lack of faith on Barak's part to want Deborah to go up with him, after all, he is listed in the Hebrews' Hall of Fame. He also passed around some art work of the scene where Jael slays Sisera with a tent peg through the temple and one of Eglon on the ground with a sword in his belly. I enjoyed watching people's expressions as the pictures went around!

The sermon was on 2 Cor 7:13-16 and spoke of the joy of repentance and restoration. Both Dave's lecture and Bruce's sermon were very good, and the sermon especially hit home for me.

During lunch, I had brought my calculator with a new program I'd found and asked Philip to draw a circuit for me, which he did (explaining to Christa all the while the wonderful theories of electron flow) and then Jonathan got very upset and said Phil! Do you want to destroy the world like that! Everyone knows you have to add one of these to the circuit: and he drew a couple of symbols on the bottom of the circuit. I glanced at it and said "Oh! A five Pi Theta!" And he nodded "Yes! You MUST have a five Pi Theta."

Then he spent another fifteen minutes explaining to poor ignorant Philip how to construct a five pi theta from a single molecule of copper wound 700 times around a tiny keg, the diameter of the barrel was 1.2 inches or 0.4 meters, depending upon whether you were in SI or English units ;) As though the two are even close in length!

It then degenerated into a drawing lesson on how to draw a scroll rolled up, then smiley faces (Laura put down a huge, buck-toothed grin on the paper) and then JD grabbed a pencil and drew some anime characters, a "much-too-cute" little girl with pigtails and a little guy with wild hair, madly waving his arms around. It was EXTREMELY stereotypical of anime but Jonathan grabbed at it with a shriek. No! NO! That is NOT anime!
"Yes it is Jon, it's more Japanese than the Avatar and stuff you watch!" needled Norman.

In other words, the CY table was a riot, for the most part. I laughed at the scenes and drawings (I think the backs of about five bulletins were filled) and wandered around, the men were busily engaged in two different groups and the ladies were chatting away, I went inside and watched the young girls' "talent show" as they were auditioning for parts in their school play of Cinderella. I think Paige was trying very hard for the part of the stepmother, she croaked when she sang and galloped around when she danced. "Not bad, for a hippopotamus or an elephant" I murmured. "What did you say?!"
"I said, Not bad, for a hippopotamus or an elephant!" She swung at me and I ducked it.

The second service was again about compassion and ministry, another very good lesson and one which I'll defer any description to the audio file.

After cleaning and talking with Laura, Stephen, and Elizabeth for a time, I headed out to the assisted living center and met Jonathan there and we went inside. The ladies were gathered in their usual spots. Willie was very glad to see me again, she appears to know quite a bit about the Bible and enjoys making comments about the king of Egypt being stubborn. As I go along I like to point out things that I believe are important or things I find interesting, in a Matthew Henry sort of way ;)

Well there was one thing that jumped out of me very strongly while reading about the institution of the passover and I wanted to share it here as well.

I noted that the passover is easily a type or a foreshadowing of Christ to come, He is our lamb, without blemish, and a year old (or in other words, the prime of manhood). Without the blood of Christ applied to our lives, as the blood of the lamb was applied to the doorposts, we cannot escape God's wrath. It is only through His blood that God passes over us, and we are saved.

Yet there is the institution of the Feast of Unleavened bread at the same time. I wasn't sure if the Passover came at the end or at the beginning and upon investigation, found that both the commencement of the Feast of Unleavened Bread and the Passover, took place on the 21st of the first month. So this was my observation:

Immediately following and with our Passover, or our justification, also comes our sanctification, a period of seven days, or completeness, when we are set aside and sin (leaven) is taken out of our lives and our dwellings. Of course I do not think that there is only a seven-day sanctification, but regard seven as the number of wholeness or completion. It strongly reminded me of when Paul says "Being confident of this, that He which began a good work in you will complete it."

I just thought it was a neat picture of how our salvation doesn't merely stop with justification and the blood of Christ, but immediately turns into our sanctification. Of course, I could be stretching things, but in this case I don't think it's a stretch. While at the Wagner's, I looked it up in Henry because it sounded very Henryesqe to me yet I didn't remember reading it. I just was uncertain whether or not it was Henry who had stated it and I was only just remembering it. But just stop and think about that picture for a minute, I find it very beautiful and refreshing.

And here is a quote from Henry that I found interesting:

In Deuteronomy 20, when talking about how the trees are not to be destroyed when the sieges were laid to the inhabitants of Canaan, he said
"That reason, for the tree of the field is man's (the word life we supply), all the ancient versions, the Septuigint, Targums, etc., read, For is the tree of the field a man? Or the tree of the field is not a man, that it should come against thee in the siege, or retire from thee into the bulwark.
"Do not brutishly vent thy rage against the trees that can do thee no harm."

It reminded me very much of the trees in Tolkien's world, and the evil that Saruman did to them. He also points out how in the heat of passion, sometimes men destroy the land around them, not thinking of the future and how God provides for us and would not have us destroy what would support us. Nor would he have us destroy his works needlessly.

Well, that's all folks!

Preserve us a posterity

2007-01-28T16:45:00.000-08:00

I'm a bit sick this evening (have a head cold) but this is a topic I wanted to write upon for a while, especially since last week. I haven't had the chance however. In fact, of the 14 things I wanted to accomplish Saturday (yeah, busy day and very draining), this one was of the five that I didn't get to, and it's much more important than them. All this to say, I really want to make this good, yet I won't have much time to really write it out very well. My apologies in advance but I'm taking advantage of the time I've got this evening.

It has to do with the church and God's means of preserving it. Ordinarily, this is done by natural generation, through the children and grandchildren of believers. Sometimes God does work in revivals and brings people to himself who have had no history of religion but the main means for preserving the church is through descendants. That being said, the church has a problem that has existed for thousands of years.

Take Adam and Eve for example. God was certainly a God to them and to their children (at least Abel and Seth) but Cain was a bad apple (pun), though I'm sure his parents cared dearly for him. After this we find the descendants of Adam quickly multiplying at a fast rate and their apostasy multiplying at an alarming rate. The distinguishing marks are made between the "sons of God" and the seed of the serpent. Think about it: during this time, Adam was still alive, for nearly a millennium. He could lift up his shirt and show he had no belly button. He was the oldest man, undoubtedly the wisest (God endued him with knowledge to name the animals and care for them) and everyone could gain instruction from him. Yet the very large majority forsook the God of their father, Adam, and followed their own pursuits. It became so bad that eventually only Noah and his family was left, and God saved them and destroyed the rest of mankind.

Noah was a godly man, "perfect" in his generation, he offered sacrifices to God and I'm sure instructed his children to do the same. Two of his sons appeared to at least consider their father with honour, the other, Ham, mocked his father's nakedness and was cursed for it. As we read of the generations that come after Noah, it is remarkable how the entire earth so quickly falls away from God, until it appears that none is left except possibly Melchizedek (even Abraham was brought out of an idolatrous nation by God himself).

Abraham served God and his son Isaac seems to have followed closely in his father's footsteps. Thank the Lord for this! Yet Ishmael seems to have followed in his mother's, and mocked the promised seed of God (and thereby God himself). To Isaac was born Jacob and Esau, and both didn't seem to follow their father or grandfather at all, yet God was merciful and brought Jacob to himself and renamed him Israel. Esau was left in his sin, his weeping comes too late.

Of Jacob's 12 sons, I only know of one (Joseph) that seemed to follow God wholeheartedly. Not much is mentioned of the others, though the first four (Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah) certainly have grievous sins mentioned against them.

Yet God is faithful to His people and years later brings them out of the land of Egypt. It says that they cried for rescue (Exo 2:23) and yet I think it's important to note that it doesn't say they cried to the Lord. But the Lord remembers His covenant and rescues them.

Now let's jump forward a year later when they are about to enter the land of Canaan. The don't believe that God can rescue them from the inhabitants. Think about this: they had God's glory dwelling visibly on the tabernacle, most likely behind them. In front of them was the shining face of Moses. That morning they had eaten Manna from heaven, probably last night they had eaten meat that the Lord had provided, they had seen the fire and smoke of Mount Sinai, they had been rescued from the Egyptians, they had water provided out of a rock for them, their clothes had not worn out, God had wrought great miracles in the land of Egypt, all within the previous year! Yet the disbelieved. What a forgetful generation! Was there not one person who stood up and remembered all that God had done?

Fast-forward some more and go to the book of Judges (which is where I'll stop). Judges 2 describes the death of Joshua and the elders that were with him and then comes the sobering statement in verse 10:

"And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers. And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel."

I've contemplated this quite a bit. Was there not a single man who did not take his children upon his knees and explain to them how great Jehovah was and how He had saved the people from their enemies and had given them the law? Assuredly there must have been some, but the general tenor of the people was to apostasy.

The Church has faced a similar crisis all throughout her history. There is a godly generation who rises up and throws of the chains of years of tyranny and bondage. Who holds steadfastly to the Scriptures and staunchly opposes the enemy against all odds. Their children enjoy peace for a time and then, as in the book of judges, there is great darkness once again.

This past summer I had the opportunity to go down to an RP mission which had been abandoned during the last century. It was sobering to think of the thriving community that had once been there and to realize the same thing was happening right under our noses around the country. RP churches that were down to a few, even a dozen or so, old members who couldn't even support a pastor. Where will these congregations be in 10 years? Deceased with their members? Vacant and forgotten as the mission down at Cache Creek? What had happened to their children and their grandchildren? Doubtless many of them moved on from those locations and went to other congregations, in our society it is much easier than it used to be, to go from place to place and spread out across the country. But as a general rule, the membership in churches is declining (not just RP churches) and as the old generation dies off, the new comes along that does not know God.

An example from my own experience is some of the Baptist churches around here. The older members seem to be from an intermediate generation. Their parents fought and held firmly to their beliefs, their children (the ones who are now dying out) basked in the freedom their parents had won, but it wasn't necessarily their own religion, it was the religion of their parents and when things started to waver and to become watered down, they didn't care so much as the things they remembered as being "essential" were held to. Their children tend to be even less discerning and to have wandered into various churches, seeking fulfillment, looking for something that pleased them.

The generation that fights and defends has much more of a personal understanding, they realize how much there is at stake and how much of it is precious. They pass this down to their children, who accept it upon the testimony of their parents but unfortunately, sometimes it doesn't necessarily become their own, but something they hold to simply because they've always held to it. Their children see no strength in the faith of their elders.

There is a lot of important things I want to say in here, but I'm afraid if I get to wordy then I'll lose whoever may be reading it.

This is something that is strongly on my heart. God give us the wisdom to train our children, not just so they may train their children, but that they may train their children to train their children to love the Lord! An instruction of a son or daughter cannot be merely to the end of having them stay true to the Lord all their life but must be more foundational, more far-reaching. There must be a bringing up in the fear and admonition of the Lord, an explanation of doctrines and the enemies that lie without. Their children must take up the Bible as something precious not to their parents, but to them! God must not just be a God of their father and mother, but their God, and a God to their children after them.

Where does it start? A very important place is Family Worship and training: catechizing of children, or in other words, instruction of children. Children who see their parents and grandparents following the Lord whole-heartedly will be able to see that as a visible manifestation of God's power and presence. Their religion cannot be merely accepting the facts because it has been told them so, but they should be shown where it is in the Bible, what the Bible teaches, and what men will try to say to oppose them. First of all, there has to be information to process and that must be taught. Pro 22:6 says to train a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it, but I dare say there is more to that verse than appears on the surface.

Training. Do not deceive yourself by thinking Satan has no interest in your child. Can he but turn that one child and he has turned the generations that will come from him (should the Lord not intervene). That is why this training is so vital, and the training must also encompass instructions on how to train their children, and to train their children to give instructions to their children to train their children (the flow of that "sentence" is hideous). Training is incredibly important.

The responsibility of the head of a household is enormous. He is responsible for doing his duty towards his wife and towards his children, he is accountable, in some measure or other, for the safety of their souls! If like the watchman in Ezekiel 36, he "blows his horn" in training his family, being diligent to pray for, instruct them, and help them grow, then he is guiltless. But if he should not fulfill every bit of his duty, their blood, in some measure, is on his head. What a tremendous responsibility belongs to the head! To a lesser extent it belongs to the mother as well, for she will most likely have the most influence upon her children by her manner, character, and instructions.

It is my contention that it is the failure to live up to responsibilities which has resulted in the mass turning away from God that we have seen, both in times past and in times present. O Lord, who can withstand the burden of so great a responsibility!

Well, there is one last, very important thing, and that is God's promise and His working. We can work and labour but unless the Lord builds the house, we labour in vain (Psa 127:1). God has promised to be a God to us and to our seed (Gen 17:7) and we should pray that He might fulfill that promise. Not that we should be slack in our doings, but it is a comfort to realize that after we have laboured all we can, it is God who gives the increase.

May we convey this responsibility to our children. May God impress upon them the fervour we have for them. May He keep not only us, but our children and our children's children. May He preserve a godly seed and remember His promises. May He give us the strength and wisdom to instruct our own children that they may cling to Him as their God, and to His promises as being made to them. May He quicken our hearts and the hearts of our children and may our generations never grow cold. May the children even be more godly than their parents, even unto the end of the world.

Amen.

New Post!

2007-01-25T19:03:00.000-08:00

I've been wanting to post for this past week but haven't had opportunity to. This is probably going to be short as well.

First off, as most everyone knows by now, I was accepted as a TA for the Circuits class, which is good news. I was hoping for the position, so thank the Lord for that.

It's good in the sense that I'll be gaining some experience (and I enjoy helping people when I can) but it means that well..... it's ten hours a week more than I was having and being the conscientious TA that I am, I work all the homework problems before coming so I know I can do the problems efficiently. So it's almost like I'm doing homework for an additional class as well as having 10 hours besides eaten up every week. There are few times when I can personally see a TA for a class that I am taking, but God will provide.

Thus, my schedule is adjusted:

Monday
11:30-12:20 Linear Algebra
12:30-1:20 Networks
1:30-3:20 Methods
3:30-5:00 Circuits TA
7:00-8:30 Jonathan's Bible study

Tuesday
9:00-10:15 Dynamics
2:00-3:15 Physics

Wednesday
11:30-12:20 Linear Algebra
12:30-1:20 Networks
1:30-2:20 Dynamics Lab
2:30-3:30 Circuits TA
3:30-5:20 Methods II Lab
7:00-8:30 Home Group Bible Study

Thursday
7:00-8:00 Men's Prayer
9:00-10:15 Dynamics
11:45-1:00 Meeting with Alan
2:00-3:15 Physics
3:30-5:00 Circuits TA

Friday
9:00-11:00 Circuits TA
11:30-12:20 Linear Algebra
12:30-1:20 Networks
1:30-5:30 Circuits Grading

And I have a couple of topics I'd like to speak on, but it's nearly time for my bed and I've not read my Matthew Henry for the day, so I'll take my leave.

He causeth the south wind to blow

2007-01-18T17:55:00.000-08:00

I was reflecting a few minutes ago how so many things had been cancelled this week: the schools, basketball games, etc. In fact, I heard it said that everything (including OSU) might as well have been closed down for the entire week because the ice wasn't going to melt anytime fast.

But that was before today. I was reading in Numbers about the quail that God sent to the Israelites and this verse in the Psalms sticks out:
Psa 78:26 He caused the east wind to blow in the heavens, and by his power he led out the south wind;

Everyone expected the ice to stay around a while (including myself) but when I got up this morning, there was a steady breeze from the south and by noon, the ice around campus had turned to slush, there was no sliding to be done on it any longer. By later that afternoon, the roads had cleared up. All of this snow came and men, with all of their gasoline and diesel powered machines could barely scratch into the top layer while on the roads. Yet God causes a gentle breeze to blow and it melts before His breath. While it seems like an ordinary circumstance, just marvel at the power! The energy required to melt all that ice is immense, more than the entire city consumes in a year most likely.

It was very fun while it lasted. I enjoyed taking a running start and sliding back and forth from the bathrooms, when we went to Tulsa we "skated" on the ice there though we were without skates (I heard someone brought ice skates to OSU and was skating on the lawn by the library). I actually really enjoyed this storm even though the roads were dangerous.

I had Monday off, so I wrote up and gathered material for scholarship applications, then left close to noon to go to the Noell's house for lunch. Only Alan and Liz were there at the time, the rest had gone sledding and they returned with the report that Laura had bumped her head and Nathan (C) had possibly broken his leg (which it turned out later, he did). After lunch, Stephen and I drove Evelyn back to Tulsa. The ride was fairly uneventful (which I say is always good in this weather) and seemed to go pretty quickly. The roads were clear on the turnpike, for which I was thankful. I'm glad to see the toll money is used for something beneficial! They had done a good job of keeping it clean. The muddy spray from trucks in front of me caused me to have to pull over and wipe the windshield with my jacket however. My windshield wiper fluid was frozen and the wipers had ice on them so didn't do a great job on the window.

We dropped Evelyn off near the library and started back. The sidestreet roads in Tulsa were very bad. I was going about five miles per hour and still sliding when I tried to apply the brakes while going down one hill toward a stoplight. We filled up on gas while a truck nearby, who was hauling a backhoe Bobcat, spun his tires trying to get up out of a small dip in the road. He worked at it for about 10 seconds, his tires flipping up snow and mud all around. I think if he would have eased into it, it might have been better, or possibly worked it so he applied the gas, let the truck rock back, go again, rock back, and so on until he worked up a little momentum, or maybe his idea was just to burn away the ice :) He got away anyhow.

On the way back a dual-wheeled truck passed me and sprayed a wall of muddy water onto my windshield. I could not see at all for a few seconds while the wipers worked furiously. Now how am I going to wash this off? Hmm.....

Tuesday my afternoon class was cancelled so I talked with a couple of professors and met Philip and Liz in the Engineering North office. Philip, as a prospective student, was going to be taken on a tour of ARTC so I tagged along. They had some interesting things down there, a webbing machine (which wound up material such as plastic wrap) and a wind tunnel with thousands upon thousands of straws (drinking straws) at the end to let the air out. Some poor undergraduate was probably locked away down there until he finished gluing these things in place.

Then Philip and I headed back to Tulsa for RUF that evening. We arrived and were leaving the car when I spotted a couple of asian girls trying to get the ice off their windshields, with water bottles no less! They were whacking away with these bottles trying to break the ice. I grabbed my ice scraper and we lent them a hand for a little while. "Oh! Thank you!" they giggled. I had the impression that they weren't engineering students ;)

Evelyn met us in the lobby of her hall and we went over the boys dorms, back to Kevin and Bob's. Kevin started talking about Go and Philip went with David to play the Wii in Spencer's room. I joined them a bit later to watch them having a bowling match. Later, Philip, Evelyn, and myself all had a match, Philip won but Evelyn had three strikes. I had none, though a number of spares :(

It was a lot of fun and I was glad to be able to finally see Wii Sports. Then Kevin challenged Philip and I to the old Smash Bros. and creamed us both.

Kevin suggested a Sushi place but with the time allotted, decided to go to Arby's instead so he, Evelyn, Philip, and myself took a ride in his car while he played a Tribute to the greatest song in the world, which was pretty funny.

Bob and....hmm... the name escapes me.... later showed up at Arby's so I finally did what I have been wanting to do for a while: challenged Bob to arm-wrestling. He's shorter than I am, but built like a tank, arms straining at his sleeves and a thick chest. We sat down at a booth and both pushed, and pushed, and pushed. Physicists would have loved to have pointed out that we were doing no work, for there was no movement going on. After a while, both of us felt like we were not able to push any longer, it was a strange feeling. His hand was turning white but he finally gave a tremendous effort and pushed me down. I lost to a good man :) It was a long match. I don't think either of us sustained any permanent injury though ;)

Kevin and Evelyn had to go to orchestra practice so Philip and I hung out waiting for RUF to begin. John gave a good, provoking sermon, but the first part I didn't quite understand what he was getting at. I'm sure there will be a conclusion to it later one. He was beginning on the book of Jonah this week and pointing out that no matter how we try to run, we cannot escape God's will for us.

I talked for a while to Asher, Spencer, and Bob, respectively, and then Philip and I said our good-byes and headed home. We were able to talk for a while on the way home as well, about the sermon, about the providence of God in my coming to OSU etc. I thought it was profitable. We got home past 11:00 however. The ride out of Tulsa was longer than I expected.

I'm going to have to close this post, I'm getting a little sleepy and may think about heading to bed soon. One quote for tonight:

Henry notes that Eleazar and Ithamar (the two remaining sons of Aaron) were to minster "in the sight of Aaron" and says "It is good for young people to act under the direction and inspection of those that are aged and experienced."

I heartily agree. It is a blessing to have fathers and older men and women who are able to guide one. Paul placed a high regard for the older women for example, who were to instruct the younger.

Twas the evening after the first day. And it was good.

2007-01-08T18:17:00.000-08:00

Well, the first day of classes is over. It was busy, but it's good to be back.

I saw lots of people on campus that I recognized, fellow engineers and past classmates. The first class I had was at 8:30 and was Engineering Economics. The instructor was from Argentina and he joked that our class would probably be difficult because they didn't have an instructor who spoke English. He also told us that sometimes his jokes don't translate well into English, so if he makes a joke, he'll raise his hand so we know when to laugh. I think I'm going to like him :)

Then I had a two hour break where I read my assignment for this next class session, checked up on a few things, dropped by the office and talked with Dr Teague, Barbara (the secretary) and Helen about scholarships and the TA position.

Afterward, I spoke with Dr Bunting. Things are very hectic for him right now and he says I'm still a possibility but he's not decided on anything yet.

Then came time for Linear Algebra with Dr Binegar. He went over algebraic interpretations of vectors and then we let out. Unfortunately my next class is almost entirely across campus, from HES to Cordell and I couldn't find the door to get into the classroom. There are three doors on the outside and I went through two of them before finally going through the third and finding it. Luckily he hadn't started yet even though I was a minute or two late. This is Dr Chandler's first semester here and he's teaching Networks. I watched his presentation when he was a faculty candidate and I thought his to be the most interesting and well-presented of all the candidates, so I have high hopes for this class. There were only 10 students enrolled interestingly.

We got out early so I went over to Engineering South and up to the Methods lab room and sat and read for a little while before class started. The professor came in, gave us a little speech and told us we'd probably never see him again. The TA will be handling almost everything. The TA was Moayed, he was a TA from Physics II and recognized me as one of the students who did "really well" in the class.

I then visited Dr Rosenberg (from Physics) and he remembered my name. I picked up my final exam from last semester and reviewed it. There were a few mistakes that I had made but overall I did well in the class. He told me I was fifth in rank (for the semester) and congratulated me. It's better than I'd thought I'd done.

Then I stopped by the bank and made some deposits (they have stacks of checking deposits but whenever I go there I have to specifically ask for savings deposit or withdrawal slips), then to the post office to mail a package (there was a huge line) and then to Walmart in order to pick up groceries for the next couple of weeks.

Finally I got home and was swamped with messages for SafeRegistry, people wanting to cancel, who didn't want to be charged, wanted refunds etc. I called them back but wasn't able to finish before 5:35, which is when I left to go to the J & J residence. The Bible study group was going out to McAllister's at 6:00. I had eaten a late lunch so wasn't hungry, I just had a sweet tea. Or two to be exact (a refill). Two 32 ouncers, for a total of 64 ounces of sweet tea. Now every time I yawn, sweet tea squirts out my ears.

They all went to the BCM to watch some football game, I came back to finish up gathering papers for the next couple of days, bookmarking websites, and finishing up my tasks for SafeRegistry. Tomorrow I just have two classes. Speaking of which, here's my weekly schedule, with Bible studies and meetings in case anyone is interested, they know where I am:

Monday
8:30-9:20 ENGR Econ
11:30-12:20 Linear Algebra
12:30-1:20 Networks
1:30-3:20 Methods
7:00-8:30 Jonathan's Bible study

Tuesday
9:00-10:15 Dynamics
2:00-3:15 Physics

Wednesday
8:30-9:20 ENGR Econ
11:30-12:20 Linear Algebra
12:30-1:20 Networks
1:30-2:20 Dynamics Lab
3:30-5:20 Methods II Lab
7:00-8:30 Home Group Bible Study

Thursday
7:00-8:00 Men's Prayer
9:00-10:15 Dynamics
2:00-3:15 Physics

Friday
8:30-9:20 ENGR Econ
11:30-12:20 Linear Algebra
12:30-1:20 Networks

Now for some quotes:

Note, (1.) We have need to watch carefully over our own hearts, lest fondness for any relation prevail above our love to God, and take us off from our duty to him. It is charged upon Eli that he honoured his sons more than God (1 Sam. ii. 29); and see Matt. x.37.
(2.) Even good men are apt to cool in their zeal for God and duty when they have long been deprived of the society of the faithful: solitude has its advantages, but they seldom counterbalance the loss of Christian communion.

This is Matthew Henry and the point he was making is that our acquaintances should be those who will help our Christian walk and not hinder it. It's also a good point that we shouldn't let any relation or friend take the foremost role in our lives, for that belongs to God. That being said, a Christian companion is of incalculable value.

"You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts."
-Screwtape

As is apparent, this is something Screwtape said, and he is right. The easiest way to hell is a gentle one, not being pulled into grievous sins necessarily, but little ones, ones that "can't possibly hurt that much." I thought this was an observation worth noting again.

When commenting upon Exo 21:1-11 Henry says:
"This law will be further useful to us, (1.) To illustrate the right God has to the children of believing parents, as such, and the place they have in his church. They are by baptism enrolled among his servants, because they are born in his house, for they are therefore born unto him, Eze_16:20. David owns himself God's servant, as he was the son of his handmaid (Psa_116:16), and therefore entitled to protection, Psa_86:16. (2.) To explain the obligation which the great Redeemer laid upon himself to prosecute the work of our salvation, for he says (Psa_40:6), My ears hast thou opened, which seems to allude to this law. He loved his Father, and his captive spouse, and the children that were given him, and would not go out free from his undertaking, but engaged to serve in it for ever, Isa_42:1, Isa_42:4. Much more reason have we thus to engage ourselves to serve God for ever; we have all the reason in the world to love our Master and his work, and to have our ears bored to his door-posts, as those who desire not to go out free from his service, but to be found more and more free to it, and in it, Psa_84:10."

And I liked that analogy. Christ would not go free but engaged to serve forever. This should drive us to do accordingly.

Moses, accordingly, rose up early (Ex 34:4), to go to the place appointed, to show how forward he was to present himself before God and loth to lose time. It is good to be early at our devotions. The morning is perhaps as good a friend to the graces as it is to the muses.

This is Henry again, giving a very practical application to a simple observation. I have found that the morning time is one in which I am most attentive. This next semester I shall have more time in the morning than previously I think, and I hope to devote this time to studying and prayer.

There are more quotes from Henry and from Lewis (I finished the Screwtape Letters) but they were too long to put here. I am still enjoying Henry's observations and applications very much.

Twas the day after Christmas

2006-12-26T05:33:00.000-08:00

I suppose I should start with last week, which was good. I spent a lot of time reading, some time writing, and a little time thinking.

On Saturday, my brother and I volunteered to go to Walmart to do some grocery shopping for our mother. Beau wanted to show me his office anyway. So we drove down to the office and snuck through the halls (which were empty). He showed me pictures and cubicles and the room where he works. He has /two/ large flatscreen monitors and an expensive, fancy keyboard that has pressure sensitive volume control, a calculator, and the temperature and time built into it (on a little screen on the keyboard itself).

Then we went shopping. It wasn't too bad actually, considering it was the last "real" shopping day before Christmas (if you don't count Sunday) but it seemed to take forever to find everything. Perhaps it's organized so mothers can find everything, but definitely not for engineers and computer programmers. Why is the crumbled bacon bits next to the salad dressing instead of canned meats? Why is the crumbled blue cheese not there also? Why is it not with other cheeses? Why is there a hundred and fifty different brands that completely clog up the aisle? I came out feeling like Bugs Bunny when goes "eep! Guzzerp! Horp! Glep! dada-ipp!" And his limbs get twisted up.

I did take my blood pressure in there while my brother was looking for hair conditioner, if I had known what he was looking for, I could have told him it wasn't in the cosmetics, however much sense it made. My readings were 119 over 71 with a pulse of 62 bpm. Perhaps Keebler can tell me, but that sounds somewhat low, perhaps too low, I didn't know I was bodily dead already! Beau's was more normal, at 128 over 77 with a pulse of 74 bpm. Yes, we both bared our arms rather than try to take it through the jackets we were wearing.

Christmas day, I slept in a little (though the younger kids were bouncing around since 6:00) and showered. We started opening presents somewhere around 7:30 I believe. From my brother I received a boxed set of hardback books, /The Screwtape Letters/ and /Mere Christianity/ both by CS Lewis of course. He also bought me a rare, hard-to-find game for the GameCube (where you're a reporter taking pictures of an alien attack, really cool!) and season 2 of Stargate on DVD. He had to get me that since the end of last season, earth was under attack and we had NO IDEA how it was all going to turn out! We promptly watched a few episodes that afternoon.

It was a very relaxed day. My father cooked doughnuts and sausage for us, we had an afternoon lunch/early supper of corned beef, cabbage, and red potatoes with blue cheese mixed in. Autumn invited us all over for a Christmas party in "Animal Crossing" a video game that I showed Liz and Stephen I believe. We had a contest where we found arrows that had been strategically placed all over her town, and then handed out presents. I gave coconuts and received an orange, a shovel, and a chipped axe (which Autumn didn't want any more).

Now for the good stuff: What I've been reading.
"Fear not for the Church of Christ when ministers die, and saints are taken away. Christ can ever maintain His own cause. He will raise up better servants and brighter stars. The stars are all in His right hand. Leave off all anxious thought about the future. Cease to be cast down by the measures of statesmen, or the plots of wolves in sheep's clothing. Christ will ever provide for His own Church. Christ will take care that 'The gates of hell shall not prevail against it.' All is going on well, though our eyes may not see it. The kingdoms of this world shall yet become the kingdoms of our God, and of His Christ."
-J.C. Ryle "Holiness" chapter XIII
I really liked that because I often wonder about the outcome of the church, especially the RP church, and even more specifically, the one in Stillwater. I don't think I worry, but it is comforting to be reminded of that above statement. All /IS/ going well, whether we see it or not.

Here's another one. In response to the argument that people without Christ do not go to hell because God is merciful and they hope He will be merciful to them, Ryle says:
"Merciful He is, beyond all question: rich in mercy, plenteous in mercy. But His mercy is inseparably connected with the mediation of His beloved Son Jesus Christ. It must flow through Him as the appointed channel, or it cannot flow at all."
Many people think they can plead mercy with God in the last day. Let it be known that he has provided a mercy, the greatest that ever was or can be! Yet people reject that. How futile it is for those who have rejected this gift, to expect another.

"We want more men and women who walk with God and before God, like Enoch, and Abraham. Though our numbers at this date far exceed those of our Evangelical forefathers, I believe we fall far short of them in our standard of Christian practice. Where is the self-denial, the redemption of time, the absence of luxury and self-indulgence, the unmistakable separation from earthly things, the manifest air of being always about our Master's business, the singleness of eye, the simplicity of home life, the high tone of conversation in society, the patience, the humility, the universal courtesy which marked so many of our forerunners seventy or eighty years ago? Yes: where is it indeed? We have inherited their principles and we wear their armour, but I fear we have not inherited their practice."
The more I read, the more I realize just how much things have changed. Entertainment seems to be all right to me, but it consumes most people (consuming the consumer). In the opposite, our spiritual ancestors were more often marked by a caring after the things of God. They lived in the world but it was clear that they were not of the world. Their lives showed a very clear-cut distinction between their habits, and the habits of those who feared not God.

Under the notes on Genesis 40 speaking of the butler and baker:
"We should not have had this story of Pharaoh's butler and baker recorded in scripture if it had not been serviceable to Joseph's preferment. The world stands for the sake of the church, and is governed for its good."
I just thought that was a very good point to be reminded of.

On the notes when Joseph leaves his steward to greet his brothers (on their second trip) and bids them wait until his master's return:
Though Joseph saw Benjamin there, he would not leave his work at working-time, nor trust another with it. Note, Business must take place of civility in its season. Our needful employments must not be neglected, no, not to pay respect to our friends."
Which is how I feel some times. There is a time for that sort of thing, but not at the expense of what must be done. Hopefully work wouldn't consume however.

Rachel's sad story. I was reminded again of truly how sad this makes me, the beloved wife of Jacob dies in childbirth. Henry pointed out that Rachel told Jacob "Give me children or I die!" Her wish was granted, she was given a plurality of children, yet she did die because of it.

In the story of the butler and baker, when the Butler forgets Joseph, Henry says:
"Some observe the resemblance between Joseph and Christ in this story. Joseph's fellow-sufferers were like the two thieves that were crucified with Christ-the one saved, the other condemned. (It is Dr. Lightfoot's remark, from Mr. Broughton). One of these, when Joseph said to him, Remember me when it shall be well with thee, forgot him; but one of those, when he said to Christ, Remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom, was not forgotten. We justly blame the chief butler's ingratitude to Joseph, yet we conduct ourselves much more disingenuously towards the Lord Jesus. Joseph had but foretold the chief butler's enlargement, but Christ wrought our ours, mediated with the King of kings for us; yet we forget him, though often reminded of him, though we have promised never to forget him: thus ill do we requite him, like foolish people and unwise."
Which makes me recollect that this is true in my own life. Today I finished JC Ryle's "Holiness" and the final chapter was "Christ is All" wherein he describes how truly lovely Christ is and how necessary to the Christian. If our union with Christ be not our utmost goal, then we are not living as we ought. He is the firstborn, our Lord, our Head. How much should we then be in communion with Him and how much more should he be our talk! I admit my failings in this point very much. It was this love for Christ that caused Spurgeon, in everything he read in the Bible, to see Christ as the focal point. This same love I see in Matthew Henry who points to the promise of the Messiah throughout the Scriptures. He presents it as a homogeneous whole, not broken up into different plans and actings of God, but as one, glorious and eternal plan set forth abundantly throughout the pages of Scripture, for the coming of Christ and the redemption of His people.

Henry points out the "blessing" and "promise" in the patriarchal accounts, this blessing that Jacob coveted was probably because of his realization that this was the blessing promised to Abraham, that in his seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed. Woven throughout his discourse (and throughout Scripture) is the religion, faith, and resting in God's promises held by the people of old. They did indeed have a hope and that hope was Christ. They did not know how it would all work out, they were in an era of shadows and types, yet they had faith and believed. But the focal point is Christ! In this age today I hear many people discounting the Old Testament as unnecessary for today's "modern" Christian. How much more appropriate and blessed is it now that we can see clearly? The same argument applies to the Psalms, why would we discard them at the moment when they become the most meaningful? We understand the shadows alluded to, we can look back with the light of the fullness of the gospel and see Christ upon every page. Christ should indeed be our all.

And that, is all I have.

Finale: Finals are Finally Finished!

2006-12-16T10:56:00.000-08:00

I apologize for the lack of posts this semester. Things haven't been extraordinarily busy yet I've had plenty to do every day.

My reading has been carried on, I'm not sure how many books I've finished this semester or year, I should attempt to keep track I suppose. I am currently mostly reading Henry's commentary on Genesis and enjoying it very much indeed! He brings thoughts out that would never have crossed my mind, Spurgeon said if a young pastor was to read Henry with his notebook in hand, he should not have lack of material for sermons and thoughts would begin to swarm about him like swallows. I do find it very thought-provoking and pleasantly fresh. The quotations that I like are far too voluminous to set down here though. My plan is to read through the entire commentary as I make my next trip through the Bible, it may take me three years at my current rate (of slightly more than a chapter a day) but I am very much looking forward to it.

This semester went very well, I have been notified of two A's so far and I'm fairly certain of A's in the other three. All the material I've been learning has been enjoyable and I feel as though I've been able to retain it rather well also, which is always nice to know. I think that my extra-curricular studying has helped with that oddly enough. All of the theological books that I try to read, instead of overloading, has been a source of much pleasure and peace. I had a classmate this semester, after I told him how many studies a week I participated in, tell me that he didn't know how I did all of that besides school, he felt sure he would feel completely swamped! On the other hand, I don't know how he goes all week without Bible studies and fellowship with other believers, it's such an encouragement to me!

I feel as though this semester has been very conducive to my spiritual growth as well. Oh I still have a long way to go in every department but as I look at the start of the semester as a bench-mark, and where I am now, I feel as though there has been definite progress. I didn't make it as far as I had hoped in all of my reading but I did make a bit of progress there as well. God has been very good to me this semester and I've been grateful for the N family especially. I was just adding it up today and realized that as of Sunday, there will have been 12 days in a row that I have seen at least one of them! From the Geography Bee (of which I was the officiating reader, Jonathan was the timer) to JP and Kacey's going away part, to Tulsa to Basketball.

This week has also seemed to have gone by very quickly. First, Monday was rather slow, I just read and studied (or reviewed rather) because I knew I might be gone most of the day Tuesday. As it was, Tuesday morning I woke up at 4:00 A.M. in pain, the details of which I would feel uncomfortable going into. I had some abdominal pains in my lower groin area and at about 6:00 ended up admitting myself to the emergency room (it was excruciating trying to drive). My plan was to go to Tulsa that afternoon but I didn't know if I'd be able to make it. I had an exam at 10:00 that morning, so this wasn't the best of timing.

God is merciful though, and by the time the doctor finally came in to see me (I hope there never is a true emergency, or I'd probably be dead by the time all the paperwork and rigamarole is through) I was feeling a bit better. They confirmed it wasn't something which could have been rather dangerous (which I thought it might be) and said it might be kidney stones. Well, I'm glad to say it's not because later that afternoon, I could walk around with only slight discomfort, by 5:00 I wouldn't have known there was anything wrong earlier in the day.

I had limped slowly to my 10:00 exam (refusing to pick up the pain prescription they gave me because it would make me drowsy) and STILL walked faster than most of the slow-pokes on campus, then went home and sat under a blanket with my eyes closed for a time, reviewing a few old Differential Equations exams and Calculus papers. I was thankful it had gone away in time for me to visit Tulsa. The evening was very pleasant and I was glad to spend time with F.B., Rachel and the RUFfians (in my mind they not quite crazed college students). Next time I may attempt a tussle myself (but I thought I'd better take it easy that day). I also need to arm-wrestle Bob. I'm almost sure he'd take me down but I almost never turn down a challenge (even if it's one of my own making)!

I ended up making it home somewhere after 11:00 and getting in bed close to 11:30. It had been a long, tiring day (from 4:00 to 11:30) but I was thankful for it. I was up at six the next morning and off to Calculus. For some reason I didn't get to bed until 11:00 that night either, then back up at 6:00 and then to bed somewhere after 10:30. I never really did get to sleep "on time" this week, and I'm not sure why. For being a relaxing week, it sure was busy!

Well, I'm going to close there while I'm ahead. If I continued on any longer it would probably only get more monotonous than it already is. Thanks to everyone who spoke to me, encouraged me, or prayed for me this semester, it has been a good one.

Divers Readings

2006-12-12T03:52:00.001-08:00

Here's a couple of quotes that I'm sharing.

First, in Thomas Brooks' "Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices" I really appreciate the following under the device of "Suggesting to sinners their unworthiness" and so keeping them from Christ:

"The third remedy against this device of Satan is, that if the soul will keep off from Christ till it be worthy, it will never close with Christ, it will never embrace Christ. It will never be one with Christ, it must lie down in everlasting sollow. God hath laid up all worthiness in Christ, that the creature may know where to find it, and may make out after it. There is no way on earth to make unworthy souls worthy, but by believing in Christ. Believing in Christ, of slaves it will make you worthy sons; of enemies, it will make you worthy friends. God will count none worthy, nor call none worthy, nor carry it towards none as worthy, but believers, who are made worthy by the worthiness of Christ's person, righeousness, satisfaction, and intercession."

I just thought that was an excellent point, that all worthiness is laid up in Christ and that we can/should never seek to become worthy first before coming to him. Those who believe themselves to have a little wealth, upon these will Christ never come. But upon those who realize how completely destitute and poor they are, he delights to bestow the riches of his mercy.

The second quote from the same book is from Augustine who said

"He that willingly takes from my good name, unwilling adds to my reward."

That doesn't take any commentary :)

Now, I've been reading some of Matthew Henry's commentary on the Bible, I'm planning on working my way through it, probably these next couple of years, as my personal study. Spurgeon had highly recommended him to any young pastor and though I am not a pastor, nor aspiring to be one, I thought it would be good for me too. In commenting on the opening verses of chapter 2 of Genesis, when speaking of man's body he says:

"The body would be a worthless carcase, if the soul did not animate it. To God that gave us these souls we must shortly give an account of them, how we have employed them, used them, proportioned them, and disposed of them; and if then it be found that we have lost them, though it were to gain the world, we shall be undone forever...........Let us not be of those fools that despise their own souls, by preferring their bodis before them."

I just thought that was a very good point, both our body and our soul have been given to us by God, and as stewards we ought to use them wisely. The soul is the important part, the body is merely its instrument, yet so many people rashly choose the body and its delights over their eternal soul.

Lastly, I just had to share this, I read it several times because I thought it was very beautiful. When speaking of the creation of the woman he says:

"[Notice] that the woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved."

That's all for now.

The Wonder of Inspiration

2006-12-03T19:14:00.001-08:00

One of the greatest beauties of the Bible, especially made manifest in a chaotic world, is it's unity and harmony. As the Westminster Larger Catechism says "The Scriptures manifest themselves to be the Word of God.....by the consent of all the parts, which is to give all glory to God."

Try taking a plumber, politician, a farmer, and a college professor, just four men, from the same era, and set them down to write something like the Bible, tell them to create their own religion. The result would be (as one can imagine) disastrous. Even if they collaborated and worked in the same room, there would be disagreements and a vast difference in quality. The end would be an abandoned project.

And yet, can you imagine a prince and lawgiver (Moses), a general (Joshua), prophets and scribes, kings (David, Solomon), musician (Asaph), herdsman (Amos), statesman (Daniel), Priest (Ezra), tax collector (Matthew), a physician (Luke), a scholar and Pharisee (Paul), fishermen (John, Peter), Greek, Hebrew, and then they all write and unite with one voice and proclaim what God has spoken to them? In other books, written by one man, there is often a lack of harmony. Even one man by himself, contradicts himself. How then, is it possible that dozens of writers, across a period of 2000 years, with a wide variety of skills, thoughts, and occupations, could be so harmonious, so beautiful? The only answer that makes any sense and is even remotely believable, is that they were inspired by God.

Somebody's off-key.

2006-12-02T10:54:00.000-08:00

The product of extra time and an attempt at reading music. There are definitely spots that are worse than others.

http://www.box.net/public/0mcmcyjl0i

Laugh. I have no range.

Mono to Theo doxa

2006-12-01T12:45:00.000-08:00

Or that's about as near a literal translation as I can do, with my limited knowledge of Greek letters. Basically, to God alone be the glory.

There should have been an update here long ago and I apologize for that lack of one. Here is what has been going on:

I had a very nice fall break, having Thanksgiving with my family, eating lots of great food (and being sent back with leftovers!) and a little time to study, to pray, walk, and have fun. I worked through eight old Statics exams in preparation for the upcoming third exam of the semester in that class.

On Saturday, my brothers and I went paintballing with a bunch of other lads, there were probably about 17 of us total. My older brother and I were put on opposing sides, my younger brother was on my team. We had a youngster named Jonah who was with us, very small, so our team made it our sworn duty to protect Jonah, he was our VIP and we were his bodyguard. The first round we did, our team moved quickly through and to the right, with me staying close to Jonah and moving him quickly from point to point. The other team members moved in on the enemy and I took Jonah to a safe spot behind where our team was situated and went off, I think I took out a guy and then was shot in the back by enemy fire, but our team won by a landslide.

The second round, I went into the woods to do a little recon, and spotted my brother coming after me. We're both clad in black and present a formiddable appearance, and we both know eachother well. We popped a few shots and I crept into a better position, making fast moves from spot to spot to outflank him, waiting for backup. He turned to retreat through some brush but I saw him making for an opening and fired one shot at the opening before he passed by. The ball sailed through the air and connected, perfect timing, right on the back of his jaw (helmet area). He said it hurt.

We had various rounds with various scenarios. The team I was on won most of the time for some reason, though I thought the opposing side had some better players. One time I was behind a pile of brush and an enemy, running away from the area of fire, came right up to me and stopped on the other side, stunned. Then he dropped and began shooting as I shot back at him (I hesitated because it was so close range). We popped up and down, I dove to the left and popped back up in time to see him losing his balance and falling back, that was enough and he was quickly eliminated. He said that was the wildest thing all day, and his highlight. I then started walking down a road, slowly making my way toward where the enemy was. Two of them shouted "There's L-!" and started shooting at me but they were too far away and I just kept walking steadily towards them, unperturbed. They fled.

Oh we had a bunch of fun. It's fun to be in a black suit, with a black mask and gun and when people see you, they run away :) I also had two team mates firing on me until one of the enemy (who was out) said "that's just sad you guys!" They thought I was my brother since in the black suits and masks, we look somewhat alike! That was one of the highlights of the break, just to be out there with some guys (though there were two girls who played, I was glad to note). I tend to be more conservative on my ammo, and used less than 2/3 of a hopper (the container that holds the balls) while a couple of other guys used six full hoppers each! I'm more of a sniper I guess. One boy told me "You know, you're so quiet all the time, but you're always ready to go. It's great!"

That night, the N's had invited my family to dinner (they came up with me) and we had a very good time there. Though I feared we stayed too late.

This past week was to be a week of exams, I had four scheduled, one on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. The Tuesday one was in Physics and I think it went well, we shall have to see. Wednesday was Calculus and I know I messed up on one problem but he eliminates our worst problem from the ones he grades, so that may be taken out of the mix. I messed up because I was trying to remember this part, moved on, came back, and finally figured it out and was frantically working on it when the instructor announced with a grin "guys, you have minus two minutes left now." But I know I was on the right track, I just didn't finish the last step or two.

Thursday class was cancelled because of the snow. I was hoping to pick up Circuits quizzes, homework, and get the results from the Physics exam. We were also supposed to have a Statics exam and a Circuits review, but these were cancelled as well. I e-mailed the instructor and he said that my studying those eight exams over Thanksgiving break would serve me well for the final though.

So I had planned on getting a lot done on Friday on campus, getting the results from the Calculus exam, the Physics exam, the old quizzes, and then we were supposed to take an exam in Circuits, which I had been preparing for a couple of weeks for, but that was cancelled too because school was closed :( I felt kind of helpless in a way. That exam has been rescheduled for Monday.

I had a former classmate, an electrical engineer ahead of me, tell me today (through Gmail) that I was the only "friend" he had whom he felt he would recommend to an instructor by name. Normally he doesn't mention names because of the possible repercussions: i.e. the teacher might not like them. But he said that he was certain I had no enemies. Of that, I'm not sure, but it was a high compliment and I appreciated it.

So things I've been learning. Well, I've been learning that I'm not so self-reliant as I sometimes seem to think I am. I need company from time to time, and perhaps that is a reason I did NOT want school to be closed.

I'm learning that I really am not content in all circumstances, because I started to groan inwardly when I found out that "my" plans had been thwarted. My idea of taking the exams was gone. One thing that somewhat irked me though is that many students rejoice when their exams are cancelled, simply because they have not been diligent beforehand.

I'm learning that perhaps I am too dependant upon schedules, and need to be grateful for whatever is thrown my way. I am grateful for the opportunity to get some other things done, to finish some books (I finished Messiah the Prince just a short while ago) to send e-mails, to even write this blog post (Arwen, I had this on my list of things to do while on this break :).

Oh I'm thankful for the snow, and the warm camper, I'm thankful for Garrett, who even offered to get me the key to his room and I could stay in there over the weekend while he went home! I'm thankful for Jonathan who has insisted that if I get cold, or lonely, I can come over to their place. I've learned that I should be more mindful and humble when interacting with others, and how gracious they are to me most of the time and how ungracious I am toward them.

I learned more today about the mediatorial dominion of Christ and how all things, rulers and authorities, governors, senate, the president, kings etc. are all subservient to him. He commands their allegience, and nations his respect. That the state and world are two different things, and the state, as being under Christ's rule and set up by him, needs to honour him. Rulers of a Christian nation have a responsibility to make Christian laws, to keep the Sabbath, to uphold Christ. Far from being a separation of church and state, the two should work together, as Moses (state) and Aaron (church). Christ is Lord over both, the church should not control the state (that is not its duty) and the state cannot control the church, is has no authority to do so, but the state does have a responsibility. And all men, but especially Christians, have the responsibility to elect such leaders as will uphold God's law. We cannot elect those or choose those whom we know do not respect Christ, and have them to be our representatives.

I learned that there is a tendency for people to willingly accept the priesthood of Christ, and forgiveness of sins, but many are unwilling to accept the kingship of Christ, and swear their allegience to him and obey him. The two go together and are inseparable, you cannot have Christ as Saviour without him being your Lord.

And I have learned how far short I fall in everything. How often I fail. Yet it is a great comfort to know that we do have a high priest, and king, who intercedes for us and upholds us by his hand. There is much to learn and I'm going to try to squeeze a bit more out of this day. Thanks :)

I wish I could have given you my days off Frodo, but you had some of your own and I must learn contentment with these things. Don't laugh, it truly is a struggle! I didn't want school to be cancelled! Jon on the other hand, was practically dancing with glee. He says I'm weird. Maybe so! -(0)_(0)-

Comic

2006-11-27T12:32:00.000-08:00

Here's something my brother worked on over this break. Enjoy!

http://www.box.net/public/oh3hnuzq23

Grand Update

2006-11-18T14:21:00.001-08:00

This is partly for Sarah (who requested my take on how the printing press trip went), F.B., who I'm sure would have liked to know about that as well, and of course, the M.O.M. because I've been a bad boy lately and not kept up with all the nooze as I should have :(

This all probably /seems/ rather scattered. Don't worry, it is!

I think the last post that was lost had something to do with the trip over to Enid to give Austin a send-off and then a description of the trip to the printing press.

By the way, I had decided to discontinue the reading of Pilgrim's Progress in the 19th Century because the 18th chapter was in need of being almost completely edited out. Despite the very good points that the author would bring up from time to time and his putting the Revivalism of his day in a true light (and thereby showing it to be dishonouring to God), there were parts having to do with the atonement of Christ that I believe to be unbiblical and fallacious. So rather than trying to edit it all out and possibly missing something, I'd prefer to read someone whom I do trust and would be willing to recommend. Unfortunately I can't say that for Mr Weeks, as much as I've read of him. Hopefully these are things that were added posthumously and he is not to blame, but in any event, no more chapters. Sorry, I should have looked through it more carefully before I had begun.

Anyway.....

Austin's party was fun, Jonathan was taking myself and Jon over for the ride (and we'd pick up Ben and Greg). We took his car and frankly, I don't think he has ever ridden in the back of his own car, he claims that it's just as roomy as my own, which I contest vigourously. Jon had a late time at ROTC so we didn't leave until after 6:00 and then headed on to Enid. There was still plenty of things left to eat so we sampled a few things and continued on. Jon and Jonathan had planned a skit to show and had given me the quick rundown because I was to be the narrator/sound man. I gave a brief introduction and then started the music. Christy recorded it so I won't spoil anything, but it was a big hit and pretty much made fun of Austin, Mr Wagner, and the Air Force in general.

Then Missy said "L-, you HAVE to do your Gollum imitation!" When I showed signs of declining she appealed to the crowd with "Hey who wants to hear L- do his Gollum imitation?!" Talk about pressure. I did do the entire scene where Smeagol/Gollum has a conversation with himself, to the best of my memory (much longer than at the Talent Show) and Christy recorded that too, though you couldn't hear very well over all the laughter. Apparently it was well-received but I don't want to be perpetually known as the Gollum-man. Both times I was forced into it from crowd appeals.

Austin opened some gifts, which were very funny. There were a lot of gummy worms (apparently he's always opening up some can of worms or another at the study, figuratively) and a Napoleon Dynamite air freshener. We then spent some time playing Telephone Pictionary, which was quite amusing! I had never played before and almost didn't this time but was glad I did.

Basically you start off with a stack of small sheets of paper, you write something down on it, and then pass the entire stack to the next person down. That person sees what you wrote, places the top sheet on the bottom and then tries to draw it. Then that person passes it down, and the next person places the top sheet on the bottom and describes what was drawn. And so on. Example: Jonathan started out with "Obadiah" (which is his and Jon's inside joke having to do with Beer). So the next person drew a picture of someone getting a glass of beer from a keg. The next person wrote "Obadiah needs a refill on his beer" which was passed to me, I drew a picture of a person getting a glass of beer from a keg, looking sad (because the mug was empty) and then on the side drew a Bible with a cross on the front, a man with a mining cap and shovel, and two dollar signs. That was probably a bad move but I thought it was clever, it was supposed to signify a minor prophet ("miner profit") from the Bible. Well, it got passed down and around and I think it ended up with someone saying "a man inside a box", so someone drew a picture of a man's shadow on the ground with a box on top of him and the next person wrote "human pancake" and finally Jonathan drew a waffle iron with a man inside of it. That was probably the most hilarious one. I am SURE that Jonathan, Missy, and Anna were all purposely trying to mess things up though, you just couldn't get that far off on accident! :)

Mine, which was 'Babe Ruth' ended up being a robot standing inside a circle with a laptop computer and a picture of a Christmas tree. How that happened, I have no idea.

Now, in no particular order, the trip to the Printing press, or Quebecore I think it was called. Apparently it's the largest four colour printing press in North America, at least, and it's located here in Stillwater.

As a side note, the four colours are of course, black, yellow, cyan, and magenta. Many people (including myself until last year) thought that the three primary colours were red, blue, and yellow, but they are not, they are really yellow, cyan and magenta, at least in inks. You can make any colour from these three.

Now the three primary colours of light however, are red, blue, and green, which is why HTML codes are in sets of Hexadecimal, with Red being the first two, Green being the second two, and Blue being the last two.

As a further side note, Hexadecimal goes like this:
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
A
B
C
D
E
F
And then starts over
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
1A
1B
1C
1D
1E
1F
20
21
And so on, up to 256 (in decimal) or FF (in Hexadecimal)

If you wanted to make a blue color in HTML code then, you'd write
#00000FF (meaning that Blue is at the highest and red and green are both zero)
Red would be
#FF0000 (red is highest and green and blue are both zero)
and pure green would be
#00FF00
Make sense? So just mix up a bunch of colours and you can make just about any colour, well, 256^3 or 16,777,216 of them.

#FFFFFF is a mixture of all the three colours at their highest value, which is white, and #000000 is absence of any colour, so that's black. If anyone happened to be interested in how these codes worked....... there ya go.

So back to the printing press. It was quite impressive. And noisy. There were ear plug dispensers all over the place though so we picked up some of those. Much of the plant is robotically controlled, they control the amounts of colour that go into the printing and even change rolls of paper when it runs out. The paper came in rolls that were about 4 feet in diameter and six feet long and weighed something like 5000 pounds! We were able to look back into a warehouse and they had several acres of these things stacked probably six high or so, tons, and tons (literally) of paper! Forklifts would go and get these and bring them to the printing press, which would automatically load them on and change the rolls. The paper was sent through at probably 30-50 feet per second, large rollers (which were dipped in water so that the ink would only stick to certain spots and not smudge the image) would make their impressions as the paper whipped by through the various colours.

The paper traveled back and forth at this breakneck speed down the length of at least a hundred feet, going up to the ceiling forty feet above and on diagonal rollers to change directions, it was really quite amazing. The final products would come out as little pamphlets and be taken away on a conveyor belt far above us, probably at fifty per second, easily. A man stood next to the conveyor belt and periodically took one off and examined it, adjusting the various levels of yellow, blue, and cyan to make the perfect image I believe. I couldn't see any change over the period he did it but obviously his eye was better trained.

A machine would stack the papers rapidly and send them along another conveyor belt where a robot would take the papers, pick them up and place them on a pallet, all in a certain order so that it would line up with the ones beneath oppositely (so they didn't all fall over).

That was the most impressive part of the entire factory I thought, though there was also a place where we were able to see the designing end and how they transfer the images to the sheets of aluminum to place on the rollers (and I was pleased to note that they used G4 and G5 Power PCs by the way.... those are Macs in case you happened to not know :D). They showed an "older" assembly line, where the papers went by and were labeled with mailing addresses and stapled at probably three or four per second. Then they were creased and folded and stacked, wrapped in plastic, and sent through a hot oven to shrink wrap them. A man would take the packaged stacks and put them on a pallet.

It was a most impressive factory and I was very glad for the opportunity to go there!

Now let's see....
Last Tuesday I had the opportunity to go to Tulsa. Alan had to go in early to meet with F.B. and some people on campus about something so I drove Philip out there to see the RUF that evening (since is a prospective student, had already seen the campus, and yet wanted to see RUF). I wanted to see all those "RUFfians" too, and was excited for the opportunity to visit. I almost felt bad though, as though I was cheating on good ol' OSU. I guess University Loyalty does reside in me somewhere.....

The ride over was nice and pretty, despite the brown grass. We got to a place where there was some road construction though and there was a truck with a small enclosed trailer (about the size of a two horse trailer) in front of me. I WAS paying attention but all of a sudden it looked like it had come to a stop and I made it to my brakes quickly and came to a halt, it looked like we had inches to spare. I was sitting there thinking how in the world I could have been so unobservant when I noticed that the tail lights did not function on the trailer. So I had no idea when he was slowing down or stopping, besides the rate of change of the distance between us (there is probably some derivative function available in that last sentence). That was quite dangerous so I left plenty of distance between us after that. It's amazing how much harder it is to see whether someone is slowing down or not when their tail lights do not work.

That reminds me of a story told by the associate pastor of Grace Community Church a while back, and one which I like to think I emulate. He said he was riding with a friend when suddenly an accident happened ahead of them. His friend was one of those few gifted people who when such an emergency happens, make it to the brake faster, but don't panic and slam on the brakes, thereby losing their static friction with the pavement (and everybody knows that kinetic friction is less than static friction) and sliding and losing control. Well, I was pleased that I had the sense enough not to slam on the brakes but apply them enough to come to a halt. Philip said he didn't see any clearance :D I'm grateful that God spared us from getting into a little bumper-bender like that, even though it probably would have been the other driver's fault for driving without tail lights, I don't know.

We first went to the boy's dorm and met Bob and Kevin, the former who is a Mechanical Engineer and the latter who is a Petroleum Engineer. He was telling Philip all the great things about TU, including that if you were a Sophmore or beyond, you didn't have to have any classes before 8:30! :D

F.B. showed up shortly and we took a quick walk to her room to see if Rachel was there, then went to the cafeteria for supper. I'd been told that the cafeteria food was bad but I'm having a hard time believing that, I thought it was pretty good actually! Bread bowls with beef stew. Admittedly I was also told that this wasn't the ordinary fare, in fact, a possible first!

A large table of RUF folks gathered and I enjoyed listening to the conversation and friendly banter that went back and forth, though it was difficult for me to hear things at the other end of the table sometimes. Crystal tried some fried Okra with her frozen yogurt, David took some and said it tasted oddly like funnel cake. A group of girls went around inviting people to lazer tag and handing out glowsticks. Mine (a blue one) died Thursday :(

Afterwards, we headed to the boys dorms again and stood in the hallway for a while while the boys tussled. I nearly jumped in I admit :), I was feeling a tad frisky. Asher ended up locking himself and David in their room and I was getting hot in the hallway (they must keep the thermostat high) and said I wanted to go outside for a bit, so F.B. offered to show myself and Philip around, to see the library and such. Philip already had of course but I was glad for the opportunity. We went in and up some stairs, past where there was a lecture in progress and into a large study room. I had trouble shutting the huge doors quietly. There were many books in the cases along the wall having to do with dissertations from the former students at TU. I opened one from the fifties and was amused to see a comparison of methods used in Engineering schools to the ones used in the industry. There were lots of funny things such as that Engineering students use a T-square much more than someone in the industry, they use a different type of lettering system, etc. I'm not sure how much of a help it really was, but at least it was fun to read!

We went around campus to some various spot until it was time for RUF to begin. I ran out to the car to get Philip's and my Bibles, then jogged back in time for it to begin. I was able to meet a few more of the people F.B. has mentioned and then the service started. There were couches lined out in the basement of the boy's dormatory so it was quite comfortable, and there were probably forty people present at least. John, the campus minister, gave a lesson on the last part of Ephesians 1 and I very much appreciated his sermon. By the time it ended however, it was past nine o'clock and I needed to get going home, so I said goodbye and Philip went out with me to get his bag from the car.

The ride home was uneventful and quiet. I spent some time praying and some time listening to a lecture from Dave on Contentment, made it home, and tumbled into bed. And that's about it. I've had a great week, see you all next update!

Post 160

2006-11-11T18:44:00.000-08:00

Okay, well that's the last time I type everything up in Blogspot. I had a long post typed up about this past trip to the robotics and today. It took me about 45 minutes and then the browser crashed. I am not a happy camper and I don't feel like retyping it right now. Forget it.

I did go into Walmart today, after filming with JD I just put my jacket over the top of my Captain Thunderbolt "fan" shirt and I went to the book section to look for a book light. I saw this book:

And started laughing. From the book's inside flap:

"[as a boy the author often] ran around his house and neighborhood with an old football jersey with a thunderbolt on it and a towel about his neck that served as his cape, leaping tall buildings in a single bound and vanquishing awful evildoers (and morons)—in his head—as 'The Thunderbolt Kid.'"

I didn't even know that "Thunderbolt" was a proper term! But look at the shirt! Is that scary or what?! There were people standing next to me and I wondered what they would have thought if I'd ripped off my jacket and stood there with a very similar shirt on......

Sorry for the short post, but I'm not in the mood to retype everything. Grrr..... Microsoft. Operating System. Terrible. Sure, the box that comes up says "we're sorry" but does that make it any better?!

New Post

2006-11-04T17:15:00.000-08:00

This blog is in serious need of an update. The only problem is that I don't remember everything that happened these past couple of weeks! It would come to me in time but I want to read a little this evening :)

I had some three exams the week before this past one, and one this past week. I did all right in all of them but there were a few silly mistakes I made. Ones which I really, really shouldn't have made! They weren't conceptual mistakes at all, nor would any amount of additional preparation have corrected those, it's just as dumb as writing down someting as Watts when it should be in Amperes. *sigh

As some of you may know, I had been asked by a boy named Will, to meet with him once a week. He told me that he wanted someone who could disciple him, something like a Paul and Timothy relationship. I told him outright that I was no Paul, but I would be glad to meet with him and we could sharpen eachother! He has a hunger for more knowledge, and a passion that would be great if pointed in the right direction. He is the type of guy who stops people on the sidewalk and says "how can I pray for you this week?" Very upfront, very vocal. He wants to go on a mission trip to Africa and we spent some time talking about that. His father (a professing Catholic) has said that he doesn't want him to go into a situation like that and he told him "Dad, though I think this is right and this is my life and I'm old enough to make these decisions, you're still my father and I feel I need to honour you and I won't go without your consent." He says he prays that God would break his heart down.

Will himself comes from a Catholic background obviously, but he has seen the problems with it. I asked him if he would mind going through the Westminster Confession of Faith, a chapter a week, and he said that he would like to do that. I did warn him that the Roman Catholic church would come up more than once in the discussions and he asked if they were "bashing the Catholic church?" To which I responded with a "Yes, pretty much." And he said "sweet man!" So that was encouraging. At least it's not something where he is still very defensive of them. I was encouraged and hope not only to help him grow, but to gain a lot myself as I try to read up and prepare for these weekly study times.

I finished Charles Hodge's "The Way of Life" this past week and I have to say that I highly recommend it. It's well-deserving of the title of a Christian Classic. There was one point that struck me on the last few pages. I got so excited about it that I wanted to mention it to the people in the hallway next to me (waiting for the class before ours to let out). The section (which was short) went like this:

"Jesus is a Saviour, because he saves his people from their sins. Those, therefore, who are not sanctified, are not saved."

He went on to talk more about that, but even that is hard-hitting in itself. Something I /know/ and have known, but never before shown in such light to my heart. It was as though suddenly I realize "OH! So THAT's the difference in people today!" You see, so many people, including the men I was with at a prayer meeting today with Dan, see salvation more as something physical. "Thank you Lord for giving us eternal life." Yes, that is something to be thankful for, but that is neither the object, nor the most important part of salvation. Most tend to view salvation as being saved from hell. Being thankful that now they don't have to be in hell for all eternity, or that they get to be with Christ (which is closer toward the true mark). I myself, when young, used to imagine heaven as pretty much just the opposite of hell. Being saved was "not going to hell."

The biblical view of salvation is much more than that, but for the believer it is salvation from sin. From the very presence of sin. It is the complete opposite of sin and a conformation to Christ! Many people today are apparently saying that one can be a Christian and yet still live completely in sin and never be sanctified. They can even deny the faith and turn to Buddhism, yet because they "said the prayer" at one point, they are truly "saved." But as was pointed out, Jesus was called Jesus because he would save his people from their sins! Someone who is not saved from their sins then, is not saved at all.

As a note, we cannot confuse sanctification with justification though. Sanctification is a necessary outcome of salvation, a necessary "stepping forward" of it (thus Paul can refer to believers as those who are "being saved" 1Co 1:18) but it is by no means a work we perform. We are justified when we believe on Christ, sanctification follows and is intrinsically bound to our salvation. We cannot be saved without it! A man whose passions do not change and who is still set again God, would be be ill-suited to spend an eternity with Him. I just want to be clear to draw the fine line between saying that "sanctification is necessary to salvation" (as though it were a work) and saying that "sanctification is necessarily bound to salvation."

Anyway, I was glad for the opportunity to muse upon this. I had the good fortune to run into Jon N. shortly thereafter and spoke with him about it. As well as F.B. later that night. And I plan on mentioning to Jonathan yet again. The more I learn, the more I realize how important and how central is our union with Christ.

And realizing that everyone else around me seems to know this already, and I did too, but I'm still excited about it!

Last Saturday, Elizabeth, Sarah, Dan, and myself went out to Gus' house to do a little work for her. We washed the car, swept out the garage, cleaned the wheels on a wagon, and raised birdfeeder so the squirrels couldn't knock it from below, among other things. We finished much earlier than expected!

Last night I went to see some basketball games that the Stephen, Laura, Philip, and two of the B. girls played in. I enjoyed all of them, especially the older boys though. The Kirby brothers are impressive to watch, and all of the N's hustle to their destiny and put their hearts into the game. There was this one lad on Stephen's team as well who always seemed to get the rebound, his arms were always in the right spot. I don't recall his number however. Most of the time I spent actually talking to F.B. in the back though. Relating muddled stories of a mission trip to the Philippines about 12 years ago, hearing about school and upcoming classes. I enjoyed the time very much. Laura stopped by for a little while and I pulled out a little bit of chocolate. Her jaw dropped and she stared, gaping for a long while. Then made a grab for it (and missed). Then she proceeded to tell me that the NBA players had to wear tuxedos while playing. I nodded along with "really! I didn't know that!" until F.B. exclaimed "Oh, don't believe a word she tells you!" I'm not /that/ gullible though, and I do know a little bit about sport. I do have a father who liked to watch the Laker's games when he had the chance ;)

Personally, I thought they were all "hotdogs" as our friend Mr Savage used to say.

Today I spent a little time finishing up some Statics homework for Monday, and Calculus homework for next Wednesday. Then I decided to download the manual for my TI-89 calculator and read it for a while. After spending about 45 minutes reading it, I was just shocked. It could do far more than I had realized. I played arround with three-dimensional graphs, directional fields (for differential equations) and polar coordinates. I then went online again and found a webpage that had very brief tutorials on various funtions. Again, I was flabbergasted! I was actually so excited about my calculator that I messaged my brother (who was online) and told him about it! This thing could solve second order ordinary differential equations! And Euler-type Differential Equations too! I sent three e-mails to my fellow classmate, Garret, telling him about my finds and bubbling over with excitement. I paced up and down the camper saying "Oh....Oh WOW!" to myself. I just couldn't stop.

Perhaps that's really nerdy, perhaps I don't get enough excitement so that's why I was excited especially about these things I've made mention of, but I don't care, it's amazing to me! If anyone want to see how to do a Taylor expansion, solve a differential equation, or even factor a number, I'd be happy to show them! I told my brother that I felt like sleeping with it under my pillow from now on. I don't know how I got on without this thing! I was dying here all alone, wanting to share it with someone (not that anyone would care to listen). I just needed to tell someone! I almost sent an e-mail to my calculus instructor, I wanted to see if my differential equations instructor might happen to be in the office today, oh, a number of things. It's hard being alone when you're just dying to share something! That's one thing I liked about being with my brother at home. Neither of us really talked much, but I have to say that he's been my "best friend" and it was nice to share things with him from time to time, even if there was silence in between. And it sure is nice to have someone to tell something to when something comes up. Instead of reading something (like one of my books I'm working through) and saying "whoah! Listen to this!" as I repeat it to dead silence :D

And on that diverging thought.....
it makes me think that it's not really necessary to be talking all the time to be good friends. Just being there to listen counts a lot sometimes.

Well goodnight, and sorry I don't have much more of an update.

Chapter 17

2006-10-27T18:10:00.000-07:00

Sorry that there hasn't been an update for a while. I'll try to get one up soon. Here is another chapter until then.

http://www.box.net/public/vqms8xulyt

Chapter16

2006-10-19T07:41:00.000-07:00

Sorry I didn't post this yesterday, but I don't think anyone is up to this one yet :)
I'm glad you enjoyed the beginning F.B.! These last few chapters have been the best in my opinion.

http://www.box.net/public/hf26s2phuh

The Shadow Goes

2006-10-19T06:04:00.000-07:00

My goodness! A real update?!

Yes readers, browsers, or onlookers, I have two weeks of things to tell about and yet not enough time to do it in. My memory fails me and the events of the past few days recede into the depths of subconsciousness. School overwhelms me, bringing me down into the monotony of daily life, unless you think that double integrals are exciting, as I did when we finally got to them!

Let's see, I'll start off with Friday, nearly two weeks ago. JP and Kacy, Jon, Jonathan, and myself went to the International Coffee House in the evening. We played a little bit of ping-pong and hung around playing with the kids. Jon was frantically trying to get a little girl to say "pen" but all she could manage was "boo." Jonathan chimed in and the two of them were hammering away on her while I worked on my Statics problems. The manager's wife spoke about a book she gives to everyone about Christians in China, something about believing in God and having visions of the gospel before it was preached, and miracles being worked (if I'm not mistaken). I raised my mental eyebrows. I don't deny that such things are possible, yet I'm always skeptical when other people claim them. God ordinariliy uses ordinary means, but that doesn't mean He has to.

Sunday, I'll insert a piece of an e-mail I sent regarding my experience at the Assisted Living center. I volunteered to go and read to the elderly people on Sunday afternoons:

First, when I showed up, the caretakers had no idea why I was there. Apparently the lady who is on duty as manager during the week, didn't let the weekend staff know what was going on (though she said she did). Actually, one lady did know but she thought I was coming between 2 and 4. So they said they would round a few of the residents up for me, herding them into the front area. In the meantime I spoke with a gentleman who said that his commanding officer lived to be a hundred and five and told me of his exploits under him (who in turn was under General MacArthur) in the 11th Airborne. He asked what major I was and when I told him said that he, if he had it to do all over again, would major in hypnotism! That way he could make all these politicians do what he wanted (he absolutely hated Bush). He said that those Arabs out there were just desert rats and you know what we should have done with them? We should have drowned them by busting their dam. That's what we should have done. He said that Jesus "washed his hands of them" and so should we. I said that I believed God had not forsaken the Jews but he wasn't listening to me, he just carried on. He also told me that all of this money that Kennedy wasted on space was a horrible idea, that we already know from the Bible that there isn't any life out there, and did I know where in the Bible it said not to mess with the stars? I said no and he told me that there were ten kings of Judah and had I heard of Jehoshaphat? I said yes and he told me that God told Jehoshaphat not to preoccupy himself with the stars but Jehoshaphat didn't listen so God made him jump around until he died, though we don't know how long he was jumping, see. I was completely bewildered, yet he was serious. I wondered where in the world he had read that story. My father, when he heard it, laughed something about "jumpin' Jehoshaphat" and it makes me wonder whether or not this man was making up a fantasy based upon that expression, or if it really was some tradition somewhere! He didn't have Alzheimer's or anything like that, he was pretty sharp, but very obviously misinformed. I politely said I had no recollection of that. He also asked me if I was a reverend, seeing my Bible and such.

So I started reading and Jon and Jonathan showed up. I read three chapters in Genesis and pretty soon there were nine people gathered around. I tried to read loud and clear but at first there was a lot of interruptions going on, they were testing the intercom system (which would beep and say "one, two, three" every five seconds for several minutes, and people coming in (at which one of the ladies would very noisily hush). I was surprised though, they were extremely attentive. There were a couple of ladies that pretty much were wheeled in and sleep all day long but no one else fell asleep and they just watched me. After finishing Genesis 1-3 I moved on to Pilgrim's Progress (much to the delight of one of the ladies, who seemed to know the story quite well) and tried to be animated as I went through it. Raising the eyebrows and making gestures toward "yonder wicket gate" and pointing to the burden upon the back. I think the voices helped too. I read to the part where Christian turns to go toward the mount Sinai. After that, I finished up by reading the first three chapters in Matthew, and then it was time to go. A couple of the ladies told me I read very well and told me thank you very, very much. I was asked by them to come back and I certainly plan to next week. There was an older gentleman who said something like "God bless you, thank you" to me and about five of them wanted to shake my hand as I went out. I was very excited at the response. They clearly liked it very much, and I hope it was for the message. I also hope there was some discussion amongst themselves afterward as to what we read. Unfortunately I can't really give a commentary, though I did make mention that the "book" that Christian refers to is the Bible.

So the older people seemed to think it was wonderful to have Scripture read, and I know I enjoyed it (though I was thirsty afterward from having read so loudly). There was an older lady that kept wheeling herself back and forth in the hallway and would shout from time to time "I can hear you!" And another lady that would always be saying "SHHH! Be quiet Mildred" When Mildred was just moving around and it was this lady who was making a loud disturbance :) They are sweet old ladies though. I feel sad seeing some of them though. One was wheeling herself around (very slowly) and said she was looking for the exit and wanted to find her daughter. I asked what her daughter's name was and she said she couldn't remember. I just wish there was something I could do to help.

Monday I visited my family during my Fall break. It seemed amazing to me that Fall break came up so quickly! I wasn't prepared for it, unlike a host of my fellow classmates. I enjoyed the time down south however, and spent a little time getting my voting out of the way, finishing up a scholarship application, and playing Mario Kart and Animal Crossing with 4 siblings at a time! I returned home on Tuesday.

Wednesday, labs were cancelled so I went and visited my TA during those hours. The lab that I had finished early (though everyone else stayed late) and thought I did well on, I had an 87 on it, and I was surprised. The entire last page was negative 4's and 3's so I took it to my TA and asked him about it. He glanced at it and then began to apologize profusely saying that he thinks I was the only one who did it right and he was going too fast and just marked it wrong. He corrected it and I received a 98 on the lab instead. That's a big difference!

Thursday I had a meeting with HKN, an Electrical Engineering society on campus that I had been invited to join. They described the initiation process which included scavenger hunts, wearing suits on certain days, collecting signatures from 75% of the faculty in the department (and they were allowed to ask you a question they had prepared before they gave you their signature) and a service project. I was seriously considering it, though undecided, when I noted that the service project and some of their meetings were on Sunday. I sent an e-mail to the president asking if it might possibly be changed to a different day (why Sunday?!) but haven't received a response in nearly a week, and I doubt it would be changed for one person anyway. That settled my mind for me though.

Friday evening I headed over to the International Coffee House again. Jonathan was the ping-pong champion last time, this time I beat him. JP and I talked a little bit about the baptism issue and then the two "real" ping-pong players showed up and we all watched for a while. At the end, there were three young lads who were playing around and Jonathan and I ended up getting into a ninja fight with them.

Saturday afternoon, after getting some homework done earlier in the day, I headed over to the N house for dinner and to meet Aunt Helen. As I arrived, Stephen and Daniel waved to me, they were outside playing frisbee so I joined them. Shortly after that, Gus and Aunt Helen drove up and we went down off the hill to say hello. Then we returned to frisbee until it was time for Daniel to leave. We headed inside and I talked with the elder (elder as in years) Mr N for a time and then we sat down. Shortly thereafter, F.B. and Daisy arrived. We went outside after supper and played some frisbee until we couldn't see anymore (and then played for a while after) and played Sardines (Daisy found a great hiding spot, she's methodical!) and Flashlight Tag (I think it was called). I was "it" and ran around the house trying to gaurd the cat's brush while not "camping" out on the spot. There was a brief time of family worship in the evening and then Aunt Helen went upstairs to see some of Philip's films, and I decided I had better head on home.

Sunday I read in the afternoon again. This time there was an elderly lady who was there first and I asked her what her background was. She said baptist but she didn't believe that there was only one God or right way, though she did believe in Jesus. I began to read and other residents showed up after some time. After finishing the Old and New Testament reading, I took a brief break to ask people their names and their background. The second lady I came to said that her father ran a baptist church. I asked her if he was the minister and she said "Oh no! He hired the minister." Which made me a little er.... concerned. Then she said that she was also thankful for her catholic experience because she felt they were the closest to the Bible. I politely said that I had to disagree with her, that they held tradition on equal footing with Scripture. She stared at me and said "son, who told you that?!" I said that you could look in their own creeds, I don't think any knowledgeable Catholic would deny it. She started to get upset and talk faster, and when she talked faster her dentures kept on falling down from her upper gums. Have you ever had a person angry at you who was trying to talk while their teeth were popping out? I have to admit that it's hard to keep a straight face. I changed the subject and she forgot almost immediately about it. She kept forgetting what we had talked about previously. After that though, I only asked what their names were!

One man asked me where I was getting my training. I was puzzled and asked what training he referred to and he said training to read out loud like I do. I said I didn't have any and he said "Oh! Well, you read very well." It was a very high compliment! I read up to the Interpreter's House in Pilgrim's Progress, taking the time to make a couple of comments along the way, to help keep the attention of the residents. At the end, I asked what Christian's burden represented, and was rather sad to see that no one could tell me. So I explained that it was his sin that was weighing him down, and he could feel his guilt. And gave a sneak preview of the next section where the sin is forgiven and the guilt is taken away at the cross and what a beautiful picture that is! I also explained what Mount Sinai and Mr Legality represented, and how this was the path that people chose when they tried to fulfill the law to gain their salvation. As Christian felt, his burden became even heavier!

I said good-bye to them all and one of the caretakers said "thanks for keeping them busy for an hour." Huh! Busy indeed! I hope it's doing more than just being a break from daily life!

Monday, in my Differential Equations class, it appeared that the previous class (Psychology) had left a drawing on the white board, a drawing of a pig with a ring around its middle. Above it were the words "do not erase." I contemplated whether or not they had done that for a test to see if people would unquestioningly obey instructions (so it would be there next class session) or if perhaps that people wouldn't obey instructions even for two days! My math instructor came in, glanced at it and the writing and said with a grin "Don't you just hate imperatives?" and promptly erased it. That afternoon I met with Alan and we had a good time of discussion on various subjects, but more particularly on the first chapter of Ryle's Holiness, which was on Sin. At least (I should say) it was was profitable for me!

From there it has been pretty much just a regular week, not a whole lot has been going on out of the ordinary. School, homework, reading a little here and there. I'd probably best be getting back to that right now, so I'll close this "brief" update.

Chapter15

2006-10-17T19:12:00.000-07:00

I've recorded a few more chapters and I'm really enjoying the last few. I had to edit some of the qualities so that they could be uploaded to my webspace though!

http://www.box.net/public/7tvpdyyblt

Chapter14

2006-10-13T19:13:00.000-07:00

Thanks Arwen, I'm don't want anyone to feel like they have to listen, or necessarily that I want them to, but it's there if they'd like :)

I'm enjoying it personally though!

http://www.box.net/public/k8r64i5tah

Chapter13

2006-10-12T18:48:00.000-07:00

They keep coming.

http://www.box.net/public/6lqutth959

Chapter12

2006-10-11T15:24:00.000-07:00

The chapters seem to be getting better to me, I'm excited about getting further in the book.

http://www.box.net/public/ez8cprn5cu

Chapter11

2006-10-07T08:47:00.000-07:00

This one concludes the time spent at the house Beautiful, and means that I don't have to try to do Charity's voice anymore! Yay! I liked the discourses that they had though.

http://www.box.net/public/4avu5yr5al

Chapter10

2006-10-06T17:04:00.000-07:00

I need to record some more, my buffer is all spent!

http://www.box.net/public/x9v2bo6igd

Chapter09

2006-10-05T09:06:00.002-07:00

This chapter was also good, as they recapped what had happened in chapter 8 and explained it a bit. I'm enjoying this book for the most part, it's just when all of a sudden there is a theological discussion upon the work of Christ, that things seem to go amiss. Which is unfortunate!

http://www.box.net/public/sd3joyn2rn

A Catalogue of Days

2006-10-05T09:06:00.001-07:00

This blogger is in serious need of an update!

So this week so far (in brevity):…..

Sunday we had more visitors than is normal, which is kind of funny because this always seems to happen when Pastor is gone. In Sabbath School, Dave had a very good lesson on Precious Remedies. That class has been very good for me because I do so often fall short. It’s been both convicting and encouraging.
Before the class started, one of the younger girls had drawn some animals on the white board and Dave started to erase it. Beth asked slyly if he was going to teach us on how to make these animals. He said “I wouldn’t spend five minutes on that.” To which Beth countered with “But God spent a whole day making animals!” And Dave responded simply with “Yes, but he had the time.”

Alan gave a very good sermon on the new heavens and new earth. It has been a subject that I’ve been thinking of for the last couple of years, one of those many that are always floating in the back of my mind. The idea of the earth being renewed or redeemed, not that everything that is physical goes out of existence and we live on the clouds forever after that. As Dan F. said recently to JP, I did want to see the world when I was younger, but I realized that one day I will get to see it, and in perfection. There is meaning behind the “new heavens and new earth” that we should ponder upon I think, though I’m not qualified to even begin.

We all went out that afternoon for the Life Chain, and held signs up, a silent witness against abortion. I spent about a half hour praying and praying through a couple of Psalms. I told Philip that though I desperately wanted to see the country brought to its knees and the people repent and turn from the sin of abortion, that I certainly didn’t have the love Paul had for his countrymen. I had no desire to wish myself accursed for their sake. It made me think on how little love I really do show to others.

That afternoon, Jonathan was supposed to come over to the camper but ended up reading at his place instead. I went and picked him up and then went and got the three stooges from the N house and we headed over the F’s home. All of the boys (except for poor Stephen) rode in my car. Stephen was trapped in a vanload of girls. We despaired of ever seeing him again. Alive at least.

I asked Philip if he would read his book out loud, which was “Thoughts for Young Men” by JC Ryle. I enjoyed it very much and he would pause and comment every once in a while and we’d discuss a few points. Jonathan and Greg fell asleep in the back and I think Ben may have dozed off so the care was pretty quiet.

And this study concluded the book of Hebrews. It was somewhat sad to see it end but it looks like we may have a couple of weeks of “Hebrew’s Greatest Hits” until the next study starts. It was a very good study and I’m grateful to Bill for doing that.

Monday started my busy week. It’s odd but it seems that when I have exams, I’m far less busy than when I don’t. Perhaps because I don’t really study all that much for exams and there isn’t any homework. Anyway, on my Differential Equations exam, I missed a negative sign and forgot to raise on of my answers as an exponent of e. So I had a 95%. On my Statics exam, I scored a 97 which should have been 100% but I missed a negative sign there as well! I have tried to be optimistic about it though: at least next time I have a chance for improvement. Jonathan’s Bible study met outside and it went really well. We discussed God’s plan of redemption and everyone seemed to be agreeable to it. We’ll be covering his “calling” next week.

Tuesday I and Jonathan were invited to go over to the Knox residence, we were asked to bring something we had read, to share. I brought a couple of paragraphs from “The Christian Life”. We had a good time and I appreciated their doing that.

Wednesday was extremely busy, I was almost literally running around all day long, from office to office, class to class. From 7:00 in the morning until past 5:00 that afternoon I was on campus, trying to get a bunch of stuff done. When I got to my Physics lab, we were told that we were going to do Lab 6 instead of lab 5 (which was on the schedule and which I had prepared for). So I was disconcerted at that. They supposedly sent out an e-mail letting us know of this change (they made it a couple days before) but I never received anything and neither did half of the class. That rather disturbed me. So I felt like I stumbled through the lab, trying to get all caught up and do the pre-lab along with the regular lab. It was a mess. But I feel like I got a lot of work done that day overall.

And now I’ve got a lot of other things that need to be finished, so I’m going to have to close this post for now. But first… some quotes:

From the Christian Life by Sinclair Ferguson, pg 147 speaking about 1 Cor 7:32-35:

“On occasion these words have been taken to reflect a very low view of marriage on Paul’s part. But men who have lived through revival days like the ones the church at Corinth was undoubtedly experiencing, and who have been sensitive to their Christian responsibilities, have often come to realize that Paul was advocating realism rather than masochism. He was not thinking about marriage as a battle-ground, but of the inward battles the married person would have to fight with himself or herself to maintain a spirit of loyal devotion to Jesus Christ. Marriage is a blessing (as Paul clearly indicates in his letters to Colosse and Ephesus). That is why it can also be a source of temptation. It is the paradox of earthly blessing that because of our own wayward hearts we can worship the gift rather than the giver.”

And the point was to help cultivate a spiritual detachment from this world, in the sense that we really are not of this world and our hope is set on Christ and not anything else! It was a very good reminder to me, because too often I tend to focus on physical things rather than the ultimate goal.

Pg 160
“Mortification from a self-strength, carried on by ways of self-invention unto the end of a self-righteousness, is the soul and substance of all false religion in this world.” – John Owen

Man! He hit the nail right on the head! Basically, all false religions are man-centered, Christianity is God-centered. When we invent our own ways to earn our way by our own strength and our own righteousness, we are surely wrong.

Pg 161
“But what is the inner logic of this argument? It is that our union with Christ gives us a new identity in which our relationship to sin is radically altered, and we are raised to a new dignified status in Christ. Since we are thus united to him the foundation has been laid for an entirely different way of life and a new devotion of our affections. Our new identity is itself the new incentive we need to deal with sin. Just as a newly-married bride is given a new name and with it a completely new identity, that new identity is the only incentive she needs to live her life in which her affections are entirely set upon her husband. Beforehand she may have felt varying degrees of affection towards others. Now her husband must have a unique affection, and anything that would mar, distort or destroy that affection must be rigorously and consistently refused. So with those who are married to Christ by grace and faith.”

And another good reminder for me. Union with Christ means that my devotion is set fully upon him, or needs to be.

Also, I just got an e-mail this morning from Marijke asking me to take a look at a couple of sites she was reading, basically how to test “True Christians” but mocking those who claim to be and are not. I did so, and sent her my response, yet it was sad to see how all the verses that were used were taken dreadfully out of context. Basically, since Jesus told his disciples to “give freely to him who asks” that if you ask a Christian for their money and they refuse, then you have the right to say they are not a true Christian. I spent a lot of time trying to explain each of the points that these sites brought up. She came to me because she said I’m just about as close to a “True Christian” as anyone she knows, and more serious than others. I just hope that my responses don’t seem to evade the issue but clearly explain what the Bible says and refute what these other people say.

Chapter08

2006-10-04T15:26:00.000-07:00

I liked this chapter a lot. It effectually highlighted some of the evils of the "persuasive" system.

http://www.box.net/public/9bqtv2ku7a

Chapter07

2006-10-03T15:46:00.000-07:00

I need to do a real update soon. But no time today!

Chapter seven I had to do a little editing as well, because there was something about Christ's righteousness not being applicable to us, that his righteousness only fulfilled the law for himself. Basically denying double imputation.

The Westminster Larger Catechism says that it was necessary that Christ be God so that he might "give worth and efficacy to his sufferings, obedience, and intercession;"
Which I remembered and seemed to be clear enough to me. Being man, Christ was qualified to partake in our sufferings, being of like nature, but being God, he was able to give infinite worth to those sufferings. Anyway.....

http://www.box.net/public/psxqv7gdk5

Chapter06

2006-10-02T15:52:00.000-07:00

In this chapter, The Interpreter declares that he doesn't think that Christ was actually punished for anyone's sin, because this would mean that God could not offer of grace what was already due to these people, for whom Christ had suffered. This is an error and was taken out of the recording.

http://www.box.net/public/ftdjvjzyn3

Chapter05

2006-10-01T05:56:00.000-07:00

And here comes the next installment.

Nothing of particular to note on this one, I don't think at least.

http://www.box.net/public/ye94il6nd3

Chapter04

2006-09-29T10:48:00.000-07:00

Here is the latest installment.

There was one thing in there which rather shocked me, the author, who is described elsewhere as an anti-liberal Calvinist, had some statements in there in which he made a distinguishing remark between natural inability and moral inability, yet later he says that only by the Holy Spirit's drawing does anyone come to Christ. If then, people cannot unless the Spirit draws, would that not imply a natural inability? If it is by nature that we cannot do this?

So I edited that part out, so the recording sounds a little funny overall, since it was an edited recording. The original sounds better ;)

http://www.box.net/public/6xjo7ltse2

Chapter03

2006-09-28T08:00:00.000-07:00

And here is the third installment in the series. I have been enjoying this book so far and have recorded up through chapter 6, so even if I should get sick or something, I should be able to post for a few days. Not that I plan on getting sick, but just in case ;)

http://www.box.net/public/v0y9div55f

Chapter02

2006-09-27T13:12:00.000-07:00

Here is chapter 2 from Pilgrim's Progress in the Nineteenth Century. I really liked some of the "shadows" you see in people from the real world, because they are so true! The ministers that lead people astray, either the hyper-calvinist or the "cheap grace" minister. I liked Thoughtful too (apparently he's the main character). Keep in mind that I'm reading these chapters for the first time myself, so I don't know whether to make a character "good" or "bad" sounding some of the time. They will change as I become more accustomed to them.

http://www.box.net/public/88e60ky9bu

These can be your night-time stories Gus!

Slight Update

2006-09-27T13:04:00.000-07:00

I did take my Physics exam on Tuesday and I think it went really well. At least I felt confident that my answers were correct while I was taking it! I have two more this week.

Physics lab.
The previous lab section was late getting out, everyone was frantically working right up to the time for our lab to start. I was worried that we wouldn't be able to finish ours also!

I had done my pre-lab early (like you're supposed to) and it was an exceptionally long one. Most of the students wait until the lab time because the TA goes through it with us and gives us all the answers, but that wastes time in my opinion. While the instructor was going through the pre-lab, my partner was taking notes while I started on the lab, measuring resistors and calculating percent differences from the labeled resistance. I used to go around the old lab back in California and gather up all the resistors and place them in their proper drawers. I still remembered the codes from that so it made it a whole lot easier for this lab!

This was all just time-consuming stuff, there wasn't anything special involved so my lab partner said he didn't feel like he missed out on anything.

Immediately afterward, I set up the circuit and began measuring voltages while he recorded them and made small calculations. We then measured the current at various points. I asked him if he wanted to do it but he said he was fine. I just explained what I did along the way. I told him I wanted to be sure he understood it. I finished the lab and we turned in our reports.

The TA has been getting to know me a bit and he said that it was very impressive. He didn't expect anyone to finish it because this lab they used to allot two weeks for, but now they tried to cram it into one. He had told all of us that if we didn't finish, to go ahead and turn it in anyway. We finished the lab a half hour early and everyone else seemed to be still on the first part (out of four)! The TA told me "You are very good at this, to finish this lab. And not only that but you do top work too." I was beaming, it's such a compliment to hear something like that! Perhaps I should stick with this electrical stuff after all ;)

Chapter01

2006-09-26T17:41:00.000-07:00

I just received a book I had bought today, it's called "Pilgrim's Progress in the 19th Century." I failed to exercise self-control and now I'm into the second chapter and enjoying it very much (sigh, I need to finish all these books I have going right now). Anyway, I recorded chapter 1 if anyone is interested in listening to it. I thought my siblings might enjoy hearing it. The book has been very good so far.

http://www.box.net/public/kglyclxcbt

Something old, something new?

2006-09-25T07:41:00.000-07:00

Hey look kids! An update!

Well, a lot of interesting things have happened this past week but it seems I've had no time to write about them. I probably don't have time right now either but I'm going to take advantage of the lull in bewteen classes ;)

I spent some time on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday trying to figure out how to do double integrals. The book said don't do double integrals, you'll mess up. The instructor said that the author didn't know what he was talking about, doing it by double integral is the only way, you won't mess up if you do it like that! I went to the TAs and the first one told me "never try a double integral, they're too hard." I tried figuring out what the book said but it seemed to complicated, so I went back to the TAs. The second girl told me she could show me if I really wanted to do it that way. So she spent about twenty minutes trying to figure out how to set it up, then gave up and said "just use the tables in the back of the book." I did that but I still wanted to do the double integral! It was a matter of principle!

I finally just decided to have a go at it myself and using a website I found, was able to figure out how to set up and solve a double integral (yay) and then another guy came in to the TA section and affirmed that I had done it correctly. It was such a relief to finally be able to get that done!

Thursday I was studying for a couple of exams on Friday, on in Circuits and one in Calculus. Down in the deep, dark basement of Physical Science, a couple of other students (that were in my Physics class) were trying to figure out the homework for Physics that week. I helped them out on a couple of problems since I had completed the assignment earlier in the week. One of the guys asked if anyone would fill in for him at the CEAT Student Council meeting. Apparently you can only miss two meetings or you're off the board and yet you could have someone fill in for you and just say "by proxy." Bad Brad's was catering so I volunteered to go (sit through a meeting with a book or something and get free food? Why not?!). I ended up taking notes during the meeting but I don't think it was necessary. The whole thing seemed a waste of time to me, but the food was great! Baked beans, potato salad, ham and brisket. I had seconds after the meeting and then a guy came and just gathered it all up to throw away. I could have cried. I wanted to take a bag home or something, all that great brisket going to waste!

Friday morning, bright and early we had our Calculus exam, which was very easy. I just got the results back today and while it was an A, I still made a few dumb mistakes that I shouldn't have. Like when taking the cross product, the magnitude is the square root of the sum of the squares, not just added together like the dot product! Sheesh! I knew that, but made this mistake :(

The circuits exam seemed a bit harder but still was all right. I'll get the results to that in an hour and a half. I worked on homework that afternoon, trying to keep ahead so I could volunteer for the Celebration Stillwater the next day.

Saturday morning, Team Zulu went around looking for people we could help with yardwork, or anything. Jonathan and myself were drivers but we got separated when he stopped to ask someone at a church if they wanted help, which worked out since most people don't need a huge crowd anyway. I was surprised at how few people there were out at 10:30 on Saturday morning! I guess they were all still in bed!

We ended up seeing a guy cutting a tree branch so I pulled up and got out and asked if he wanted any help hauling limbs off or doing anything. He said no but his wife told us that there was an elderly person across the street who had a branch that they had offered to cut for her, so if I wanted to bring that over I could. It wasn't a huge limb so I was able to pick it up and carry it over while Stephen, Betty, and Jesse went next door to help another elderly couple. The lady told me that there was another older person in a yellow house down the street who might need some help. So I walked on over there. She did in fact have something she wanted done and she was wanting my estimate on how much it would cost to fix it! I assured her that I didn't want any money, we were serving the community but it made me concerned that this might be a bigger project than we could handle!

She had a small gate that had a gap between it and the latch. Because of erosion, the gate had slid down a little and was cock-eyed at an angle. She wondered if I could put a bar or post there so that there wouldn't be such a large gap because her dog would escape through it. I said I thought I could fix it and asked for a shovel.
Basically, I just dug up the post that the gate was hung on and around it, moved the gate closer to the wall a couple of inches, and sank it down deeper (it was in a concrete column) and then packed dirt around it again. She had some bricks on the bottom to keep the dog from getting out there, but I lowered it so she wouldn't have to do that. Then I used some lumber she had in the back yard as well as my cordless Dewalt Skill Saw to cut a 2x8 and make a little retaining wall by the fence so it wouldn't erode any more. Then used the rest of the 2x8 to close up a small gap (with nails and wire) by the gate and fence. There was no way that little dog would get out! All in all, it was a fairly simple job but she was extremely pleased with it and very thankful, she just couldn't believe it.

On Sunday I walked up to the table where the men were at and I think it was Dave who said "I heard you picked up a gate and moved it with just one hand!" and Dan said "I heard it was just your pinky." Really, it wasn't a very big gate at all and the entire thing (concrete column and all) probably weighed less than 100 pounds! It was a one man job but for half the time, Betty, Stephen, and Jesse were over helping a lady plant a bush or tree or something. We then found another old lady walking out on her front lawn (in curlers) and asked if we could help, she was shocked that anyone would be out helping for free. We raked her back yard and swept the back porch for her and then it was time for us to go to the main even of the day (at the park). I think our team was able to help out quite a few people, considering. We drove around for probably 20 minutes trying to find someone but the other teams had harder times than we did finding people, so we were blessed in that. It was funny to be driving around with a haw-eye on the lookout trying to spot somebody in need of our assistance :)

I went home for the afternoon and worked out a bunch of Physics problems in preparation for my exam this next week (I have three this week). Then I went back over at about 5:00 to see what was up and to help clean everything up. We got the tents put away rather quickly, our team from the church did a great job, picking up trash, moving chairs, taking down tents, etc. We had enough help for all that I think!

I dropped by Jonathan's apartment that night and there was no light on so I tried the door, it opened and I poked my head inside. Yup, dark in there. I saw a couple of feet sticking out on the bed in the living room and figured he was asleep there and started grinning. He popped up and looked blearily at me, sat up, and rubbed his eyes. The light was shining behind me so he couldn't tell who it was an he thought it was 3:00 in the morning or something. "What do you want?" He asked. I didn't say anything for a few seconds, just kept grinning. Then I told him I was just dropping by to see what he was up to and he said I really creeped him out. He couldn't tell who it was in the doorway but he could see this weird smile and to have someone to be doing that at what he thought was 3:00 in the morning, well, yes, I can guess that would be weird. I didn't mean it that way, I was just chuckling inside because he was sleeping at that time (he stayed up too late the previous night).

I'm reading Josh McDowell's More Evidence that Demands a verdict, Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices, The Christian Life, and Let's Study Galatians. I also bought some more books at the booksale this past Thursday.....

Okay, so that pretty much brings me up to date for now. I've got a class in a few minutes so I'm going to try to get moving. Laters!

More updates

2006-09-19T17:08:00.000-07:00

Wow, this is my One Hundred and Thirty-Seventh post, let's all have a celebration! >_>

It's come to my attention that some people have problems posting comments. I apologize for this but it's probably because I'm part of the "testing community" for the new Beta Blogger. I like the control panel but I can't post with my account on non-beta bloggers, and non-beta bloggers apparently can't post on mine. I do appreciate comments though, so if you have one, you can always leave it as "Other" instead of logging in with your normal user name.

Well, this blogger deserves an update but we'll see how much material I can remember!

Last Friday the church put on a picnic dinner for the International students here at OSU, I had talked to some young Indian men at the Mayor's Welcome a month ago and had seen some of them again at Lights on Stillwater and they assured me they were looking forward to it, yet they didn't show up. There were three girls (possibly four, I wasn't sure if one of them was new to the States or not) who came to the dinner. I had forgotten but I remembered that a lot of Indians especially try to stay away from meat. In particular, beef, since they consider cattle to be sacred for some reason.

Sunday was very good, I am so thankful for the encouragement each week in the sermon, and the lectures that Mr C gives on "Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices" is so very applicable. If only I would apply them to my life! Captain Thunderbolt made another appearance in Enid. Sightings have been increasing. That night, Jon, Jon, and I had a "debate" against Philip. We were Arminian "Non-Denominational Baptists" (who didn't "interpret" Scripture, we just read it like it was) and Philip was arguing against the views from Scripture. I found out, when I got back home, that there really IS such a thing as "Non-denominational Baptist." I had no idea! It sounds contradictory to me!

Monday night the Bible study at the Jon^2 place went well. We actually got into the first chapter! I'm curious to see how the next chapter, on Man's Depravity, goes.

This last week has been going well for me. In fact, tonight I have finished my Physics homework for the week, my Calculus Homework for the week, and also my Circuits (and Statics for the day). I need to get busy on Differential Equations (due next Monday) but other than that, things seem to be going very well. I have a couple of tests coming up this week and a couple more next week, but I don't think they should be a problem, I've been keeping up with the homework and think I understand it fairly well. A lot of other students are stressing out and saying how they should be studying, so it makes me wonder if I should be studying for it as well. I will probably work out a few more problems as practice, but other than that, what more can I do at this point? I really don't know.

I just went to the campus a few minutes ago in order to get help on a Statics problem, only to find out that I had done it correctly, I was just thinking I hadn't completed it. So.... I guess that's nice.

I finished Hodge's Systematic Theology on Sunday, it took me longer than it should have but I finished about a half dozen books while reading that one. And I'm working on about six right now (the three paperbacks shouldn't take too long, they are for the three weekly studies). Right now, the main book I'm reading is a compliation of Josh McDowell's books "Evidence that Demands a Verdict."

In my Bible reading, I've been up to Jeremiah. Just the other day I was reading in Jeremiah 33, where God restates his promise to David. He says:

"David shall never lack a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel."

I stopped there and pondered it for a little while, imagining how it must have sounded to a Hebrew back then, who would think literally of this happening, the physical line of David, generation after generation, forever and ever. But obviously (as Hebrews makes clear) this was fulfilled in Christ, and he reigns forever, he does sit on that throne. I continued to the next verse:

"And the Levitical priests shall never lack a man in my presence to offer burnt offerings, to burn grain offerings, and to make sacrifices forever."

My jaw just dropped! This was fulfilled in Christ too! I mean, I've known about this, but seeing it predicted in the Old Testament, and then seeing the fulfillment in the New, just made me excited! I tried sharing this with a few people but I don't think it bubbled over for them like it did for me. I felt like a little kid pointing his finger at the passage "Look at this. No really, LOOK at it! Look at it!" Christ did offer one sacrifice for us, yet he continually functions as a priest (which is what I take the gist of this verse to mean) in the presence of God, on behalf of His people, on behalf of me! To think back then that this would be fulfilled in a continual line of priests and then to realize that it was ultimately fulfilled in the "great priest" just made me excited. Anyway, I had to share.

Lastly, there has been a program that I've been testing out for a little while. It's called "Page Update Watcher."

What you do, is make a list of all the webpages that you frequently check, or want to keep tabs on (such as bloggers). As you enter each page, you can set the frequency with which the program checks for updates. I set mine for a day yet I check manually.

When I get home from school, or whenever I want to check, I just click the "check all" button and it runs down the list, comparing the html code on the page with the last time it checked and notifies you if the page has been changed at all. For bloggers, this means that you'll be notified when there is a new comment (because that changes the number of comments on the page) or a page layout change, or whatever.

Instead of closing the program, I minimize it and it runs in the system tray (the lower right corner of your taskbar). This is how I save time on checking everything. All the pages that show up as having something new, I double click one at a time and view them. So instead of visiting every page and seeing if there is an update, this program does it for me and I can just look at the ones that have actually been updated. It saves time and keeps me notified! I hope someone else can find it useful as well.

Career Fair, Post Office, and School, oh my.

2006-09-12T18:37:00.001-07:00

Okay, I may take a break for a few days after this post.....

This morning I went to classes and then headed over to the CEAT Career Fair. There were 143 companies there looking for employees! Unfortunately, less than half wanted EE majors, and of those, only about 15 offered positions in the state of Oklahoma, and of those, about 10 wanted people for internships (the rest wanted full-time employees, which is certainly understandable). I went to the five or so booths that qualified for my criteria. I had this one guy pull me aside and give me quite a sales pitch about why his company needed me and even though I was an Electrical Engineer they use students like me from all sorts of majors etc. etc. He went on for a while, I tried saying a couple of things but couldn't get a word in edgewise. He then asked me how far along I was in my major, I said I had nearly three years to go and he groans "OH!, man, will you let me cry on your shoulder!" I got that reaction a bit. Companies aren't necessarily looking for students who will just work for a summer, they were looking for December graduates who would work for a lifetime! I certainly understand that.

I stopped by the FBI booth. The lady introduced herself and asked if I wanted to work for the FBI and carry a gun. I hope that's not the only incentive! She said I had to be twenty-three though, and be physically fit (I don't think she was insinuating I was not). She gave me a small, handheld calculator that looks like a tiny plastic cell-phone. It flips open. Cool!

I also stopped by Lockheed Martin and a couple of other companies and got some information. One company, that makes GPS systems, said they might be able to use me, they work out of the East side of Tulsa (which is within my range I guess) and he said to contact the office in about January with my resume (just imagine there are little accent marks over that).

I came home and finished up some things and ate lunch, then headed back to campus. After my 12:30 class, I printed off some papers in the Classroom building and then headed back to talk to my Physics professor about a problem I had worked on (incorrectly as it turned out). He pointed me in the right direction. Then I went down to the basement to await my Physics TA, working on Circuits homework in the meantime. I also discovered that somehow, all of my pencils had been taken out of my backpack (I'd grab one when I needed it for a problem and they all gathered on my desk) and the ONLY pencil I had, was a huge carpenter's pencil that I had found on the sidewalk. So I used that to leave big fat symbols on the page.

When my TA showed up, he helped me with this week's homework, getting it all laid out. Sometimes I just need a few pointers on the problem and then can take the rest of it from there, I just don't know where to start all the time (this is all new to me). There were a couple that I didn't finish, but the majority of them are. I've got two session for help in the coming week, so I should be set!

I dropped by the post office on the way home to see if a package was possibly there that my mother had sent priority mail and had not arrived for well, nearly three weeks! Sure enough, it was and the guy there wagged his finger at me, pointing to the date on the box and said I received a notification about it. I emphatically denied it. There has not been a single slip of paper in my box since I've been up here, save for a newspaper that showed up last week. The RV park owner here said that was during the time they had a substitute mail carrier and he/she always screws things up. I'm glad to get the box though (it's tapes that the W's let me borrow for my family).

And I finished up a few things at home. Right now, I've got about an hour left before I hit the sack, so I'm going to spend the time (D.V.) doing some reading finally!

And more and more!

2006-09-11T19:27:00.001-07:00

Sunday afternoon...

The Sabbath school, morning, and afternoon services were great, very encouraging and strengthening.

Jon^2 (that's both of them) came over after church, bringing Pilgrim's Progress, which I read aloud until it was time to go. Jonathan fell asleep, awakening to me peering down at him (laying on the floor doesn't help you stay awake apparently). He asked what was going on and I told him that Christian had just been killed. "What?! No way!" It was on the discourse between Christian, Faithful, and Talkative just after the Valley of the Shadow of Death and he was tired so that was probably it. I refuse to see all of these "coincidences" of people falling asleep when I read as meaning that I have no tone. Yup, it's just a coincidence I'm sure ;)

The Bible study in Enid was on Hebrews 13 and we got from verse 5 through verse 8 and had some good discussion upon the various points brought up.

Afterwards I talked with Bill for a little while and eventually headed outside. There were some young damsels in distress that Sherrif Dead-Eye had to save from the evil Spider-Monkey (eight legged, furry monkey, Jonathan, bleck!). I'm not sure where he disappeared to, but he would have come in handy later on because those horrible hooligans took Paul the Pole (from Poland) and captured him, taking him off to jail! He escaped but was shot down by one STupendous. Sadly, he never recovered *sniff

On the ride back home Christa begged for a story, so Jonathan told it with me doing the voice effects. He would say a little bit like "Frank the goblin was talking to George the giant one day and he said......."
and I would jump in with something in the whiny goblin voice and respond in the big growly, dumb giant voice.

It turns out that Frank was a conniving little goblin and he wanted George to take candy from Christa and Calvin, George demanded the candy but C and C said no! So Frank decided to trick them and said that the candy was bad. George asked why it was bad so Frank took him aside and explained the plan, but George, being as dumb as he is, repeated everything Frank had said. Very loudly!

Frank got very upset and Calvin and Christa ran off. Soon there was a scarecrow that got blown nearby, so Frank asked him if he would help get the candy for them. The scarecrow agreed but went about it all in the wrong manner and Christa and Calvin again escaped. Frank was furious. Then he found a Rock Ogre and asked him to wait for Calvin and Christa to come along, in exchange for some nice fresh dirt. The Rock Ogre agreed but fell asleep, snoring VERY loudly.

Calvin and Christa felt sorry for Frank and offered him their candy but Frank realized that he really didn't want it after all, and that it would probably give him tooth rot. The end. It was ridiculous but pretty funny at the time! Jonathan and I played off of eachother, my characters adding to the plot and Jonathan narrating.

Then Ben and I chatted for a while about the Catholic church, relics, and Noah's Ark and the possibility of the supposed Mount Sinai not being the real one. He said that someone claimed they had found the garden of Eden and explained why that couldn't be true.

Then I came home and went to bed.

Today, Monday, went well as far as school goes. And in the evening we met at Jonathan's for the Bible study, which went well though we really didn't get into the book yet. Everyone shared their testimonies but there was only 13 people there and that thirteen was composed also of Julianna (the other team leader), Jonathan, myself, JP, Jon Norman, Paul, and Jonathan's friend Mark! So more than half of us were um... kind of planted in a way. There was another young man who is in electrical engineering who is taking two of the same classes (the two with the "fun" group projects) that I had last semester. I wish him luck, muhahahaha!

The testimonies that people gave were very encouraging actually! I didn't hear the usual "well, I've always been a pretty good person" and they were quite Christ-centered and glorifying, speaking of the troubles that they had been brought out of and the people that had been brought into their lives at the right times. It was really a blessing to hear some of them and I thoroughly enjoyed the time.

And I think I'm going to have to close there and go to sleep.

Brief update

2006-09-09T19:22:00.001-07:00

I'm not sure where I left off, and right now I'm not really caring too much :)

Thursday was busy, I ran around getting various things done, trying to get my homework assignments finished, and getting help for those I couldn't finish. I also dropped by a professor's office and asked if he would be willing to write something for me. In the meantime, I saw some secretaries who had put a fake snake in Chandler's office (he's a new professor, one whom I actually went to his presentation last semester when they were considering him as a candidate). He's terrified of snakes and apparently they were pleased to see quite an animated reaction when he opened the door to his office :D

On Friday I was able to get almost everything done thankfully. There were a few physics problems that I had and I had spoken to one of the professors that I knew and he said that he would be available from 1:30 to 3:30. I got there and he had a girl in his office and two waiting outside. Eventually about 10 girls showed up and 2 or 3 guys and they were having a big help session in his office because all of these girls (education majors) were struggling! I was able to help two students who were waiting outside (there wasn't enough room inside). I hung around for the full two hours and in the last 10 minutes he excused himself and came out to help me for a minute. In the meantime though, I had solved three of my four problems and as he was glancing over the last one, realized that I had an added factor of two that wasn't supposed to be there. So I thought I had solved it and thanked him and went home. But it turns out I didn't get it. Grrr..... I was sure I had it right. I'm going to have to ask someone again because it bugs me.

Let me see, today I finished up all of my homework, wrote a couple of extensive e-mails and got caught up on some correspondance, and went over to the P's house to do some filming. I was supposed to be defeated by Daniel, so after the first initial scene where I invite him in, I went back and doused my hair with water and splashed it on my shirt in various spots to look like I was majorly sweating. Then we went outside and strategized (sort of) and did a short film with Captain Thunderbolt.

And now, away.

It feels like a Monday.....

2006-09-05T18:22:00.001-07:00

Well, I had an 8:30 discussion group I went to this morning. I ended up arriving at 7:30 (to get a parking spot) and spending a little time on the computers.

The discussion went all right, there wasn't a whole lot to talk about aside from three examples our TA had brought, which I was able to solve before she had finished (I "race" because that's a good indication to me whether or not I understand the material). Then I went back to the camper for a short while, worked on various things, and received an e-mail telling me that I should meet with the head of the Electrical Engineering department for the presentation of a check for the scholarship I won recently. They wanted to get a picture and he told me to dress up for it ;)

I trudged down to the building at 11:45, got my mugshot taken while shaking hands and he passed off the check and paper. Then I waited around until my 12:30 class, which went better than it had been (Physics). Afterwards, I marched up to my Calculus instructor's office to get some tips on some problems he had assigned. I am convinced I have one of the best Calculus teachers in the school. His name is Rahuram and he is excellent so far. I was able to work a dozen problems in a matter of minutes after visiting his office.

I'm also convinced I have one of the best Physics TA's in the school, Ben Grossman. I went down to his office hour at 2:30 to work on a couple of problems. He was working with another lady on last week's homework and I hung around for a little while and then went to the MLRC to work on the computer there, using the program "Maple" for some plot fields. I'd never been in there before and it's a pretty nice facility.

I had arranged to meet Jonathan and Jon at 5:00 so I went home at about 4:00 and saw the mail car at the boxes. I waited until she had left and then anxiously peered inside my box, hoping that some of the books I had ordered had finally arrived. Nothing.

So I parked my car and walked over to the owner's house, hoping perhaps she had dropped them off there because they were too big for the mailbox. There were about 8 packages sitting on the porch and every one of them had my name on it. Eureka! I took two trips getting them all over to my camper and eagerly slit open each box. My goodness! It's like having a birthday party all by oneself! I was dying for someone to visit so I could show them all off! I don't know what I'm going to do now though. I can't sacrifice studying time but I am dying to read them all as well. I'm also trying not to compromise like I normally do, by reading a few pages in each :D

Jon and Jonathan and I went out to dinner at Hunan's chinese restaurant. It was pretty empty and I felt bad because I think the new chinese buffet is in a better location and steals a lot of business. I like Hunan's because it seems to be this one family who runs it. It's good as long as you have the buffet, otherwise you might have to wait a while for you food, something gets lost in the translation I think. I'm sorry Liz!

We had a good time discussing various issues, then we headed over to their apartment and watched one of Jonathan's Cross TV tapes, on the new birth. Afterward, I discovered Pilgrim's Progress and eagerly began reading it aloud, Jonathan acting out the scene with Apollyon while I gave fierceness and anger vs. courage and trusting in God's promises into the voices. They said they may ask me to read it on Sundays since I read it a bit faster (perhaps too fast, whenever I get into a battle scene I feel like I have to race through it excitedly). Then I came home. I've got three homeworks to turn in tomorrow, I'll receive two more to do tomorrow, and one that is due Friday. It's going well!

Quick Updates

2006-09-05T05:51:00.001-07:00

Monday morning was spent doing a little bit of Calculus homework, Differential Equations homework, and getting everything set up for the coming week (i.e. making sure I had all my homework prepared and ready to turn in and knew what to expect!). I wasn't able to finish everything so I collected that too and plan on asking the assistance of a TA or instructor.

During lunch, I spent a little bit of time watching a Superman episode and listening to the commentary. It was a commentary for The Missing Cape but let me explain a bit.

The commentator was a biographer for the actor (George Reeves) who used to play Superman in the old black and white episodes. He started through, giving history and little interesting bits of information. In the episode itself, a robber stumbles into Clark Kent's apartment, discovers a secret closet, and finds the suit and steals it. The commentator said that he thought it was odd that the suit would be in the closet because doesn't Clark always transform almost immediately into Superman? Insinuating that he has his suit on underneath. I waited for him to continue that thought later but he never mentioned it again. Yet in the episode, Kent mentions that he had been out to get a Physical in compliance with a new policy at the Daily Planet. Obviously he couldn't wear his suit to get a physical, think what would happen if the doc told him to lift up his shirt!

I bet the commentator knew this but just didn't mention it, but I spent about 15 minutes trying to track him down on the Internet, and finally found an e-mail address and sent him a "fair-to-middlin'" sized e-mail describing the incident. I described this to Jonathan and he told me that he'd probably start backing slowly away from the computer saying "yeah, sure kid. You're really weird." or something like that. Hey! It's important to me! I'm vindicating the screenwriter, he actually did do his job in a good way!

JD e-mailed me asking if I could come over and do some filming on Cat Girl that afternoon but then e-mailed pretty quickly after that saying that Daniel couldn't come. Ladies and Gentlemen, the suspense builds, the plot thickens, the story grows. Be prepared to remain at the edge of your seats during the upcoming blockbuster: Cat Girl! Unfortunately right now, most of the footage and story seems to be about GameBoy. JD's working on correcting that.

That evening, the N's had invited me over for hamburgers and I really enjoyed my time. We talked about a large assortment of things, from hunting and fishing to books on marriage vs. singleness, athletics and P.E., Hebrews and 1 Corinthians, etcetera (most of it while tossing a nerf football around the room). There was also an episode of Three Stooges, called Micro Phonies I believe. It was pretty funny too.

Also, even with the extra day, this weekend seemed to be awfully short. Like this post.

Fair thee well

2006-09-02T17:20:00.001-07:00

Okay, let me think back upon the last couple of days where I neglected to make a post. Wednesday evening I went to the Physics help session. I was the only one there for about 10 minutes, then one other girl showed up and eventually we were up to six total (which is a pretty sad turnout). We think there will be more next week as people start to get nervous about the homework. I had been to lecture, spent a bit of time looking at the book, went to lab, listened the entire time at the help session and.... Thursday spent an hour in lecture, two hours directly after that in another one of the discussion sections (where there is a quiz every week) and lastly spent an hour in my own section, for a total of four straight hours in physics, and my discussion leader finally made things begin to click for me! At least in this first chapter we've been studying :( Now I've got to figure out the second one next week.

Friday was a normal day as well, except I discovered a bag of snacks left by my mother. I didn't know they were there though I'd seen the grocery bag and assumed that there was laundry soap in there or something. What a pleasant surprise to vacuum near it and find it was peanut-butter oreos (I didn't even know there was such a thing) and Pringles and Cracker Jacks! Thanks mom!

Friday evening some of the CY and the Yost family volunteered to watch some kids for the Mom's night out, something to do with Stillwater Life Services and the Sunnybrook church (we used their facilities). I arrived about twenty minutes early and took a look around but no one was there. The church doors were open but the hallways were dark. I snuck silently around for a little while, looked at the literature they had on their new study in Genesis (it was very weak in my opinion and very loosely based off of Genesis) and then went back out to the car to read. It was just about six and I was starting to suspect that I had written the date down incorrectly when the Spitler vehicle drove up. Apparently everyone else had been in there for the last ten minutes or so, they came in the other side of the building so I completely missed them.

The volunteers outnumbered the children about 2 to 1 I think. I had hoped there would be lots of kids there and had asked the N's if I could borrow some children's books, which Laura brought for me. I had been eagerly anticipating what I imagined would be a captivated audience of youngsters listening intently to "Green Eggs and Ham" or something like that. Instead, I couldn't even get one young boy interested in hearing me read. And Raychel isn't interested in anything for more than 3.6 seconds (max). So I sadly put the books away after several tries. I read aloud to myself sometimes *sniff*

We played outside on the swingset and slides for quite some time. Johnny started shooting at the boys with dual pistols (make-believe) and would have gotten me had I not had the sense to jump through the end of the monkey bars (a special portal) and made it to Safe-Land, eventually pulling JD in after me. Johnny tried to follow but sadly (for him) guns just disappear in Safe-Land. There was a girl there whom I was chasing toward the slide and she turned and said "Gets away from us", screwing her face up into a snarl. So I said (in a Gollum voice) "No, it's tasty, it's crunchable!" And thereafter she periodically begged me to do it again.

When not watching the younger kids, Stephen and I competed to see who could jump the furthest off the swingset (we're good examples, I know) and ended up tying I believe. The swings were too low to the ground so I had to keep my legs directly in front of me the whole time. Laura said I belonged on the funny farm.

We went back inside and I started playing with a couple of the younger boys, they had a box of farm animals so I grabbed a farmer, elephant, truck, helicopter, and small horse and let fun ensue :)

One of the boy's cows kept getting stuck (on top of a cliff) so the helicopter man had to rescue him. About six times! Eventually the farmer drove his truck near the cliff so the cow could walk right down when she got stuck. Then he drove her out to the farm where there was lots of nice green grass, went back and got the horse, and the baby horse, and the last trip, a dinosaur jumped in the truck! "I can't take you to the farm, dinosaurs don't belong on farms" said the farmer in a deep voice (then Jesse was horrified to see that the farmer had been a girl the whole time and I hadn't noticed, so she switched him out with a brown-haired boy for me). But the dinosaur insisted so the farmer took him out.
"Goooooodness!" exclaimed the Cow. "I've never seen a dinosaur on the farm before! What do you eat" (rather nervously).
"Oh, I eat um....."
"Dooooo yoooou eat grass?"
"No, I eat.... dirt!" Squeaked the dinosaur
"Oooooh! Well here, help yoooourself, we have plenty of fresh dirt here" said the Cow invitingly."
And then it was time to leave. So they all went home.

Now for today. I spent the time in the morning cleaning up various things and getting all of my paperwork laid out for the next week. I also finished my Statics homework. At 1:00 I went to the fair to see the exhibits. The very first thing I saw when I walked in the door was the scene that Laura had made (I forget what it's called, but it has to do with loops and yarn and hangs on the wall and looks kind of like a rug). It had won first prize. Around the corner was a shield with a red lion emblazened upon it. JD later told me that he thought Betty had done it. I wouldn't be a bit surprised!

I looked around at the photographs, the drawings, and saw that Stephen and JD had both won first place for their self-portrait sculptures of their heads (which I thought looked very good) and Mary showed me her pumpkin. JD took me over to see the robot and then Laura surprised us by popping through the curtain. It turns out that she had an excellent vantage point at the SLS booth and could see anyone at the robotics booth. The robot was impressive (I'd never seen it before) and looked expensive too :) I liked the way the chain drive was supposed to work. Laura said it kept breaking though.

I dropped by and talked to Liz for a short while and then headed back to where everyone else was gathered for the pie-tasting and awards. Abigail won first prize and so did Nathan for his Peanut Butter pie. The lady said that all the pies were good and yet the filling on some was a little "loose" etc. and that you shouldn't fill it so much when you're transporting it but when you're at home it's fine but..... she didn't know if it was a great idea or they had just forgotten to take it out of the freezer until the last minute, but that Peanut Butter pie was excellent and you could just taste the peanut butter all throughout! I think she would have been surprised if she had known who had made it (aside from the fact that he was practically dancing around the room throwing his chest out). And on top of that, he later won Grand Champion for the pie. Man, I've got to get a piece!

JD and I took Mary and Emily to see all the animals. They had some miniature donkeys and a camel! Then we went to see the rabbits. The girls (especially Mary) kept wanting to run on ahead so I had to keep them "handcuffed" in my hands for a little while. We viewed the rabbits (there were only two of them) and lots of poultry. There were some chickens there with little tufts of feathers on their heads like an afro. They looked pretty funny. Some of the pigeons had feathers all over their feet! The geese honked at us and the roosters crowed incessantly as they each tried to claim their dominion over the hens in the cages next to them. We then headed down to the horses. Mary started petting one horse and I was a bit cautious at first. I lifted Emily up to see one and I started rubbing its nose because it was near the bars (I wanted to get Emily comfortable around the big animals) but suddenly the ears went back and he snapped up at my hand. He didn't catch anything but air but I cautioned the girls after that because after several days in a stall, the horses' tempers could be rather short.

Eventually we headed back and Emily and Mary both had the chance to milk the goat (the man helped them, just pinching it and then telling them to squeeze). Wow! Good job, look at all that milk! They had hand sanitizer nearby.

We all went back and I decided to head on home, I'd been there for nearly three hours and was feeling a little tired. I called Jonathan to see if he'd want to go to supper somewhere but I forgot that he was probably out of town (I just got a message). So... that's been my day. Aside from a little reading which I plan on doing.... NOW! So good night.

The Days Roll By.

2006-08-30T18:57:00.000-07:00

Oh bebother and confusticate all this stuff I'm doing. I almost forgot to post!

The sunrise was beautiful this morning, as was the weather. I guess it's cool to be running in, but just walking to class or driving in, or heading to the showers? It's great. It was just perfect.

This morning a cell phone went off in Statics, it's a large class and everyone packs close to the front to hear the teacher. He glared into the audience and growled "I have been authorized by the university to destroy any cell phones that go off during my lectures. Turn them OFF!" There was a stunned silence and then a quiet rustle all around me as everyone made sure their phone was off ;)

I got more homework, turned more in. Worked on problems, read a bit, walked around, went through my Physics lab. I've got solid class time from 7:30 until 2:30, except for an hour break at 9:30. Then I went home for a couple of hours (and found eleven e-mails in my inbox since that morning. Yikes!) and came back to campus for a help session in Physics, the same guy (Chuck) is doing it as last year. I really enjoy him, I'm not sure if he makes the problems easier to solve but he helps get them organized and is very entertaining to listen to. After spending two hours there, I came home, finished up a few things I needed to do, and now I plan on getting a little reading done before I turn in for the night. I'll just save those Circuits problems for tomorrow when I have a large chunk of time (from about 7:30 to 12:30) when I'm not doing anything really. I'll attempt to lug my books to campus.

While I listening to Jeff's lectures on church history today, he mentioned a guy in relation to Alexander Henderson, the Earl of something, I wouldn't know how to spell it but I think it began with a P. Anyway, he showed a picture and made the comment that he looked like Gilligan. I'd really like to see that picture but all I could find was one of Alexander Henderson.

There was also a baby murmuring in the background. I know there were people back in 2001 that I wouldn't know now, but this one sounded remarkably like Calvin. I don't know if he was born yet though. All he said was "Muh-muh-muh" "eh" and "mmmuh".

Let me see, one quote before I shut this thing down.

Spurgeon didn't use methods in the ordinary worship service, but knew that some of his "underlings" used things like the inquiry room in their prayer meetings (they were something like the modern day altar call, only people would go to these special rooms to talk to someone about it after they were "called up.") He says:

'In our revival services, it might be as well to vary our procedure. Sometimes shut up that inquiry-room. I have my fears about that institution if it be used in permanence, and as an inevitable part of the services.
It is a fact that thousands of persons live close to our notable sanctuaries and never dream of entering them. Even curiousity seems to be dulled.
Why is this? Whence this distaste for the ordinary services of the sanctuary? I believe that the answer, in some measure, lies in a direction little suspected. There has been a growing pandering to sensationalism; and, as this wretched appetite increases in fury the more it is gratified, it is at last found to be impossible to meet its demands. Those who have introduced all sorts of attractions into their services have themselves to blame if people forsake their more sober teachings, and demand more and more of the noisy and the singular. Like dram-drinking, the thirst for excitement grows. At first, the fiery spirit may be watered down; but the next draught of it must be stronger, and soon it is required to be overproof. The customary gin-drinker wants something stronger than the pure spirit, deadly though that draught may be. One said, as she tossed off her glass, "Do you call /that/ gin? Why, I know of a place where, for threepence, I can get a drink that will burn your very soul out!" Yes, gin leads on to vitriol; and the sensational leads to the outrageous, if not to the blasphemous. I would condemn no one, but I confess that I feel deeply grieved at some of the inventions of modern mission work.'

I felt those were very good fears to have, especially as I see the fruits of a hundred years of this type of work! Music, for example, is so relied upon that some people say the instrumental piece before the service was more stirring than the sermon, or that "we are waiting to sing those because our pianist doesn't know the piece yet." Truly, people want more and more, especially in our society where the common desire seems to be "feed my eyes, my ears, my senses." Once all of these "exciting new things" become old though, they go on to search for the next biggest thing, the next "purpose-driven church" or something like that. I'm grieved too, to see the results of this mentality that tries to serve people what they want, rather than what they need. To be anxious for "immediate results" when the long-lasting results are absent. It was sad to read of sixty conversions in one night, yet six months from then, not a single one would confess Christ as their Lord and Saviour. Your theology does shape how you act, and that is certain. The fruits of these labours was to sow much seed (and it wasn't even pure seed, it was moldy, rotten seed) on the rocky soil. People spring up quickly and then just as quickly fall away.

Well, now I'm planning on finishing an article online and a pamphlet that was sent to me a long time ago on Bible Versions. It's been interesting so far.

From Spurgeon and more

2006-08-29T19:06:00.000-07:00

Before I forget....
I was listening to episode 43 of the lectures on Church History from the website (no I haven't listened to that many yet, I only started at number 38 because the others are not .mp3 files) and near the end of it, someone asks a question and I am positive it is Clay Finley! It's from October 28th 2001 and he may have been around at that point.

The evening was spent with Jon and Jon at Arby's, we talked about various things happening with the small group, lamenting the fact that people don't cherish the doctrines of Grace, and then wandered off into various topics. It ended with Jonathan describing some really weird dreams he had. I thought my dream last night was weird. I dreamed that I found a mint-condition, 1850 Wheat-head penny. Everybody knows they didn't start making those until 1909! And Lincoln wasn't even president yet in 1850! How bizarre of a dream is that?! Well, Jonathan's "normal" dreams trump that apparently.

On with the quotes.

From Murray:

"The superficiality which is attendant upon Arminianism may be traced to the very centre of its system. 'If you believe that everything turns upon the free-will of man' says Spurgeon 'you will naturally have man as its principal figure in your landscape.' This being the case there is inevitably the tendency to regard Divine truth only as a means to gain men, and whatever truth does not appear to us to be effective towards that end, or whatever truth seems an obstacle to the widest possible evangelism, it is consequently liable to be laid aside. The end must be greater than the means. But what is here forgotten is that the ultimate end of the gospel is not the conversion of men but the glory of God.
It is not man's need of salvation which is the supreme thing, and once this is realized, the attitude which thinks 'we must get men converted' and fails to ask whether the means are according to Scripture, is seen in its true light. 'In the church of the present age there is a desire to be doing something for God, but few enquire what He wills them to do. Many things are done for the evangelizing of the people which were never commanded by the great Head of the Church, and cannot be approved of by him.' We know His will only by His Word and, unless truth comes before results, conversions will soon be regarded as more important than the Divine glory. Spurgeon denounced the kind of evangelism in which there is 'a wretched lowering of the truth upon many points in order to afford encouragement to men'; he saw that it would end 'in utter failure' and bring neither glory to God nor lasting blessing to the Church. He deplored the fact that men were being allowed to 'jump into their religion as men do into their morning bath, and then jump out again just as quickly, converted by the dozen, and uncoverted one by one till the dozen has melted away.' In contrast to this sort of thing, he declared solemnly on one occasion, 'I do not wish for success in the ministry, if God does not give it me; and I pray that you who are workers for God, may not wish to have any success except that which comes from God himself in God's own way; for if you could heap up, like the sand of the sea, converts that you have made by odd, unchristian ways, they would be gone like the sand of the sea as soon as another tide comes up.'"

I liked those last few lines a lot. It's often discouraging to me to labour and not "see" any fruits, yet I try to press on knowing that there may be something which I do not see. And what I do is not because I am to gain anything out of it, it's to glorify God. The answer to the first catechism question "Man's chief and highest end is to glorify God and fully to enjoy him forever" really is something I need constant reminder of. The conversion of men is not my chief end. Glorifying God through submissive service to him is what I need to focus on, regardless of the tide the flows against or the disappointments along the way.

Murray:
"It is true that Arminianism has been productive of many 'holiness' meetings and conventions, but this fact, instead of rebutting the charge made above [the charge had to do with "carnal christian" sort of thinking], rather confirms it, because there was no need of special teaching on sanctification until Arminianism began to prevail in evangelism. Calvinism held that the same message which saves men makes them holy, and that a faith which is not bound up with holiness is not saving faith at all. It was because he knew this that Spurgeon took no part in holiness conventions, but had he been called upon to address worldly 'believers' who needed to be sanctified there is no question what he would have to say: 'Those people who have a faith which allows them to think lightly of past sin, have the faith of devils, and not the faith of God's elect.....Such who think sin a trifle and have never sorrowed on account of it, may know that their faith is not genuin. Such men as have a faith which allows them to live carelessly in the present, who say, "Well, I am saved by a simple faith", .... and enjoy the carnal pleasures and the lusts of the flesh, such men are liars; they have not the faith which will save the soul... Oh! if any of you have such faith as this, I pray God to turn it out bag and baggage.'"

And I see that so often today, well, with the conversations that Jonathan has been having with Ross. People who believe that a person can be truly saved, and yet not acknowledge Christ as Lord, regret their sin, or even turn away from it! Have the "best" of both worlds is their message and this sort of garbage is being preached instead of the gospel.

Spurgeon (referring to the Word as the only way):
"'God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth' he says 'that one truth, if it were to come with power from heaven into men's minds, would shiver St Peter's and St Paul's from their topmost cross to their lowest crypt.'"

Spurgeon:
"Long ago I ceased to count heads. Truth is usually in the minority in this evil world. I have faith in the Lord Jesus for myself, a faith burned into me as with a hot iron. I thank God, what I believe I shall believe, even if I believe it alone."

I appreciated the conviction of that, often we do find ourselves in the minority where everyone seems to be opposed to the truth! May God give me that strong conviction to remain firm in the truths of the Bible and to stubbornly resist all manner of error to the very end.

The Baptist Union, which was leaving it's initial Calvinistic stance (which Spurgeon lamented) was becoming merely a gathering place for churches who had the common doctrine of "believer's baptism" and there were those who denied the deity of Christ! Those who opposed Spurgeon said that they were united under common belief's, that Spurgeon held to his Calvinistic ways and wouldn't consider others as Christians. Spurgeon says:
"Every Union, unless it is a mere fiction, must be based upon certain principles. How can we unite except upon some great common truths? And the doctrine of baptism by immersion is not sufficient for a ground-work. Surely, to be a Baptist is not everything. If I disagree with a man on ninety-nine points, but happen to be one with him in baptism, this can never furnish such ground of unity as I have with another with whom I believe in ninety-nine points, and only happen to differ upon one ordinance..."

I appreciate this statement because that's how I feel sometimes. People become united on a distinctive doctrine but forget the essentials, or treat them as non-essentials.

Spurgeon (preaching):
"We believe in God's covenant. That is a strange, uncouth word to some people's ears. We have friends about who have never heard it; and if their pastors were asked why they never preached about the covenant, they would reply, "Covenant! that is a Scotch thing, is it not? Something to do with the Puritans, and men of that ilk? They are all dead no; at least, nearly all; there are just a few of them left, like fossils of the olden time; they cling to this obsolete form of religion, but there are so few of them that they will soon be quite extinct!"
So they say brethren; but we shall see; and meanwhile, we poor fossils do believe in the covenant; we are almost as absurd as David, who said, "He hath made me with an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure." He who understands the covenant has reached the very core and marrow of the Gospel; but how few do care about it nowadays!"

And that has been my experience too. I hear about F.B.'s classes and how the Puritans and Calvinists are supposed to be dead, extinct, old fossils. Nobody thinks like that anymore! Nobody really believes the doctrine of election and all those old things about the covenant and the doctrins of grace! We preach Christ! So they say brethren, but we shall see. There is such a general ignorance in every field of Christianity, from history to theology to ecclesiology and more! I confess much ignorance on my own part, but I try to learn. Sadly, many don't even want that and instead are insistant that this "new way" (which is really just the old heresies reborn) is the true way. If we see further than our predecessors, it is because we stand on the shoulders of giants, not because we are wiser than they.

Spurgeon:
We admire a man who was firm in the faith, say four hundred years ago... but such a man today is a nuisance, and must be put down. Call him a narrow-minded bigot, or give him a worse name if you can think of one. Yet imagine that in those ages past, Luther, Zwingle, Calvin, and their compeers had said, 'The world is out of order; but if we try to set it right we shall only make a great row, and get ourselves into disgrace. Let us go to our chambers, put on our night-caps, and sleep over the bad times, and perhaps when we wake up things will have grown better.' Such conduct on their part would have entailed upon us a heritage of error. Age after age would have gone down into the infernal deeps, and the petiferous bogs of error would have swallowed all. These men loved the faith and the name of Jesus too well to see them trampled on...
It is today as it was in the Reformers' days. Decision is needed. Here is the day for the man, where is the man for the day? We who have had the gospel passed to us by martyr hands dare not trifle with it, nor sit by and hear it denied by traitors, who pretend to love it, but inwardly abhor every line of it ... Look you, sirs, there are ages yet to come. If the Lord does not speedily appear, there will come another generation, and another, and all these generations will be tainted and injured if we are not faithful to God and to His truth today. We have come to a turning-point in the road. If we turn to the right, mayhap our children and our children's children will go that way; but if we turn to the left, generations yet unborn will curse our names for having been unfaithful to God and to His Word."

Again, something that strikes hard with me. This is another reason why I want to fight so hard, not merely against unbelievers, but against those who call themselves believers and yet are undermining the Christian world! Christ's kingdom will stand but I am saddened by those who are destroying it and yet claim to be helping it. This age, as all others, calls for men and women who are firm in their beliefs and will speak up and go against the tide, not afraid of the opposition but always looking to their Lord and King to lead them onward to the victory.

This next one's a good one so 'listen up smart.'

Murray:
It is a common argument that the PUritan stress upon total submission to the Word of God, along with its sense of accountability to 'obey even in the jots and titles, at all hazards', has a disruptive and dividing tendency. To Spurgeon the truth of the matter was far otherwise. Disunity, he argued, is not caused by a too thorough attachment to Scripture, but by the intrusion and toleration of beliefs and practices which are the products of human wisdom alone: the Lord's 'will is in the Scriptures: and if we searched them more and more, and were determined, irrespective of anything that may have been done by the church, or the world, or by government, or by anybody else, that we would all follow our Lord's will, we should come to closer union. We are divided because we do not study the Lord's will as we should.' This is not to deny that men even in their best state are subject to prejudice and fallibility in their interpretation of the Word. But though human weakness makes our obedience to Scripture imperfect, it in no ways excuses the necessity of such total committal, nor does the record of human infirmity as it appears in the Church history invalidate the great truth that spiritual unity and prosperity cannot be attained along any path except that of submission to the Word of God. 'The statues of the Lord are right ... in keeping of them there is great reward.' (Psalm 19. 8-11)"

I have heard many people shout that doctrine divides! That is why they water down everything until no one really knows what they believe, all they know is that they believe it and you had better not challenge whatever that belief is! Don't set yourself up as a judge over me! Don't judge others lest you be judged! I believe in God, you believe in God, we just interpret the Bible differently. No, you believe what you do regardless of what the Bible says. Oh! if only we were united in holding the Bible as our authority of life, how every other doctrine would fall into place! What a blessed fellowship that would bring! That is why we must be so adamant about the Bible being the only rule of faith and obedience.

This, as Murray said, is a fitting quote to conclude a record of Spurgeon's labours:
"'We love our brethren for Jesu' sake, but He is the chief among ten thousand, and the altogether lovely. We could not live without Him. To enjoy His company is bliss to us: for Him to hide His face from us is our midnight of sorrow ... Oh, for the power to live, to die, to labour, to suffer as unto Him, and unto Him alone! ... If a deed done for Christ should bring you into disesteem, and threaten to deprive you of usefulness, do it none the less. I count my own character, popularity, and usefulness to be as the small dust of the balance compared with fidelity to the Lord Jesus. It is the devil's logic which says "You see I cannot come out and avow the truth because I have a sphere of usefulness which I hold by temporizing with what I fear may be false." O sirs, what have we to do with consequences? Let the heavens fall, but let the good man be obedient to his Master, and loyal to his truth. O man of God, be just and fear not! The consequences are with God, and not with thee. IF thous hast done a good work unto Christ, though it should seem to thy poor bleared eyes as if great evil has come of it, yet hast thou done it, Christ has accepted it, and He will note it down, and in thy conscience He will smile thee His approval."

That means a lot to me as I try to carry on with my labours. May I try harder for I don't try nearly enough. Amen.

I apologize if I've mis-typed anything here. I was going rather quickly and haven't had time to go back and check it all. I hope it was as edifying and encouraging to you as it was to me.

Updates everywhere!

2006-08-29T16:16:00.000-07:00

All right, after a "brief" *cough cough* sojourn, I return to take mastery of my blog. Maybe.

Friday night, as described on F.B.'s blog, I went to Shakespeare in the Park. I had been anticipating it for several weeks and then a day or two before it was to be, was offered a ride by the N's, for which I was thankful. I wasn't sure how I was going to get down there, the W's had said that others from Stillwater might be going but I had no idea who.

Rachel (Evelyn's friend) and Alan's mother were there as well. Once we got there, the W's and P's showed up, Jon and Jon were already waiting for us. The play itself was enjoyable, except for some interpretations, physical innuendos and the like. It was "The Taming of the Shrew" yet they had a different twist on it. It was set in a western town, cowboys and all. I'm really not very good at describing it, but it was enjoyable. My favourite actor was an older gentleman who played the father and came in near the end. He seemed to be a Shakespearean actor and you could just see his experience. My second favourite was Tranio (I think) who played a fussy, prissy little butler-type man. He walked briskly around, always seeming to be nervous about something.

Saturday I worked on some homework and in the afternoon I went over to the P's house for some filming on the upcoming blockbuster: Catgirl. As I was approaching the house, I saw what appeared to be a backhoe that had hit a water line. Then they had turned on a hydrant further on down the street to bleed off the pressure so water was gushing onto the road. A guy pulled past (twice) to wash both sides of his truck.

We started the filming and JD got some good scenes in I think. I just sent him some music for the movie today.

I could have done a blog post that day but I chose to watch an episode of the old black and white Superman instead :D

Sunday was very good. Pastor preached on 2 Cor 4, about the treasure in clay jars. It was a good reminder to me not to think to highly of myself on the one hand because I am just a clay jar and any value I have is because of what Christ has put inside, not me. On the other hand it was a good reminder (in the passage) that we may be beaten, but never defeated! It was an encouraging message and I was thankful for it. That, in conjunction with the communion service and the fellowship we had, made it a very uplifting and strengthening day.

In the evening we finished up Hebrews 12. There was one quote from Brown that I really liked and it was something to the effect of the priestly system being like a scaffolding surrounding a bridge or a building. When the building is being erected, that scaffold serves a very good purpose. When the building is finished, it is no longer needed (like the Levitical system). I appreciated that analogy.

Monday was decent day, though very long, I was on campus from 7:30 in the morning until 3:30 in the afternoon. And I FAILED my freshman composition exam. Well, it's not as bad as that, I may be able to get a re-grade (I spoke to the lady again today). I did fine on the multiple choice part, but when it comes to essay writing, apparently the computer doesn't agree with what I write. Whether that's technical problems of mine or the computer's I don't know. It seems odd to me that they would rely on a computer program to grade essays. They can't follow logic or humour or sarcasm or poetic expression at all.

Tuesday was another simple day. I went to campus at 7:00 and spent my time on the computer doing various things (buying books by Charles Hodge and A.A. Hodge mainly) and then went to my 8:30 discussion. It was over before 9:00 and then I had until 12:30 to work on Statics and Calculus homework (I lugged both of my books around just for that purpose). I finished up everything, even the extra practice homework though.

The lecture was somewhat confusing. I'm not sure if we are supposed to memorize these complicated equations or not. The teacher derived several equations from integrals and substituted other ones and then came up with a "simple" equation for finding the charge at any point in a magnetic field. I'm going to have to look into this further because I was honestly scratching my head when looking at the lecture notes.

Afterwards I ran up to the fifth floor in Math Science to speak to my Calculus instructor, briefly asking him about two of the practice problems (which were very simple, all he had to do was point me in the right direction). I stopped off at Alan's office on the way up and told him about the books I'd bought and then discussed briefly what happens to an infant when he or she dies, I had mentioned it to Liz and him a while back. Then I headed home, where I was contacted by Jonathan who asked if I wanted to meet him at Arby's this evening. So I accepted and I need to be going shortly (about 6 minutes actually). So I won't have time for quotes in this post. There are some excellent ones that I want to share, perhaps I'll get to them later this evening. So much time and so little to do!

Wait. Strike that. Reverse it. Thank you.

Brief Blog

2006-08-28T19:39:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't updated for a couple of days, it seems that every evening has been busy. Tonight, unexpectedly, Jonathan popped in and said that his small group was meeting in twenty minutes and wanted to know if I would like to come. I jumped up and grabbed my Bible and we left.

The evening went well. There were 9 people there total, which was smaller than however many had signed up. Yet not everyone was notified of this too (because of communication problems) so that's understandable. Everyone introduced themselves, gave their major and hometown, stated whether they liked Cream Soda (Jon and Jonathan's new fad) and whether or not they liked HomeStarRunner.com and then shared a "fun fact" or "embarrassing story." All the essentials in other words.

Jonathan then introduced what his hope was for the small group and told everyone that if they disagreed with what was said, that he was begging them to come to him and discuss it instead of simply leaving and going somewhere else. Because people could always just do that. Then we read through First and Second Peter and prayed around the room for various things. It was interesting getting to know everyone. Julianna (Jonathan's partner) reminded me a lot of F.B. in the way she looked and even her voice, though she talked a lot more. She definitely has a knack for keeping conversations going with a group of people there, always asking little questions and trying to make people feel comfortable. I could see what I thought were a few worried looks on her face from time to time though!

The girls stayed around talking about how hard it is for their girlfriends at seminary to find a guy to date, and how so and so is dating so and so. Rot and rubbish. I went outside to play basketball with Jon, though I'm not a basketball player by any means! The video of GameBoy is actually somewhat accurate. No acting required for the part.

Then Jonathan and Jon and myself went to play ping-pong. I played Jon for two games. The first I didn't win, he lost (there is an important distinction) and the second one was a lot closer. Then Josh (the third, silent roommate) came down and played for a little while. It was funny, he was in his room the entire time the Bible study went on and I had no idea he was even in the house!

Jonathan played Josh and barely beat him. Then I played one game with Jonathan and got away with 21 to 14 I think. He wanted a rematch but I said I had to get home. It was late (9:20) and I just got home at about 9:30. So I'm going to have to cash in for the night and write about Friday, Saturday, and Sunday some other time :(

I've got some quotes stored up to share as well and I'm looking forward to posting those.

Not much to (or at) State.

2006-08-24T18:47:00.000-07:00

Today was fairly uneventful. I spent the morning working on some of my Circuits homework, then went to my Physics class. I had a two hour span in between that and my Physics discussion period so I dropped by and talked to one of my old professors. I also went down into the basement to do some more homework (as much as I had with me) and then laid down on the couch. I was the only one in the entire basement of ES, the computer lab hasn't been opened yet this semester. I was feeling very drowsy so I laid down while listening to a sermon but was getting to the point where I was just about to doze off, so I stopped listening, turned out the lights to the student lounge, and took a short (20 minute) nap.

Then I spent a bit of time reading and checking up on things at the computer lab, printing out new material and homework assignments (there seems to be a bunch of them!) and things like that. My Physics discussion ended early (because there wasn't a whole lot to discuss this week I imagine) and I came home.

The most exciting thing that happened today was I bought some new RAM for my laptop. I was pushing the upper limit all the time. Most people don't know how I've got by this long with only 256. I bought a stick of 512 (I had to do a bit of research to find out which one I needed first) and installed it. Unfortunately because the way my motherboard is set up (the same with older laptops) I can't have both my old 256 board and the new 512 in there at the same time or else my computer won't start up. So I just have to waste the old one I guess. I was hoping for 768MB of memory too!

Then I worked on my Calculus homework, as much as the class has gone through and then I started writing this. The day hasn't been filled with that much reading so I don't have any snippets to share tonight unfortunately. And this is an incredibly short post too! Oh well, I guess we're allowed that every once in a while eh? Good night :)