New blogger updates!!

Here are two more blogs to add to your daily reading.

George Grant now has a blog. As does Jeffrey Meyers.

Rev. Meyers is a pastor in the PCA and is currently working on a book about the Trinity. He has a book on corporate worship coming soon from Canon Press.

Dr. Grant is the author of over 20 books and a great thinker. I became a huge fan of his writing and speaking a couple of years back at the 2001 ACCS Conference in TN.

If you can, pick up his amazing lecture on the importance of collecting and reading great books. Never has one preached to the choir so effectively. ;-)

If you think about it, please pray for the peace and unity at Christ Church of Moscow, Id.

As one whose family has suffered through a ugly and hurtful church split due to a squabble amongst the elders, I can only plead for God's mercy to rest upon the congregation and that fellowship may be maintained through this difficult time.

Reading those charges tied my stomach up in knots as I remembered the letter-writing campaigns one against the other, the name-calling, the impugning of false motives, the elder's wife chasing the pastor's wife into the pastor's study as she loudly berated her in front of the congregation, the knowingly frosty stares, the tongue-clucking. Then the congregational meeting, men and women arguing and weeping, letters of resignation being called for and recieved. And finally the mass exodus, a call for restoration rejected, a splinter group erected and then a time of moving on. It was probably the most painful year of testing I think my faith has ever met.

And yet, looking back now, without a doubt I can say it was for good, for good! My friend Scott and I joked that it was probably five years worth of sanctification packed into one. It made me less willing to villify people and more willing to give those I disagreed with the benefit of the doubt which, as a frothing-at-the-mouth newbie to the Reformed faith at that time, was exactly what I needed. It helped me to learn to live peaceably with those I disagree with and gave me incentive to be more of a peacemaker (which, to my sorrow I admit I was not at the time). It was not what I wanted, but it was exactly what I needed.

Christ be glorified.

Thought this was neat...

From Keith Mathison:

"According to Calvin, each of the two sacraments is related to the believer's union with Christ. Baptism is connected with the believer's initiation into mystical union with Christ. The Lord’s Supper is connected with the believer’s ongoing continuation in this union"

The role of the Eucharist in the life of the church is traced by Calvin to the fact that our communion with Christ is not whole and perfect from the very first, but subject to growth, vicissitudes, impediments...The very nature of the symbolism suggests to Calivin that the Lord's Supper is a matter of nourishing, sustaining, and increasing a communion with Christ to which the word and baptism have initiated us." - Given For You, p. 19

"A great deal of mischief has been done through a rejection of nourishment available to the saints through the sacraments. Often, young people are kept back from the Lord's Supper because they are not yet spiritually strong. This is refusing to give your son bread when he asks for it-and, being to cheap to give him a stone instead, we give him air. When asked why the bread was refused, the reply is that he wasn't strong enough to eat bread. He was too hungry for food. After he grows up and becomes big and strong, then we can give him bread. With a sort of perverse logic, we starve our children to death, and then point to their subsequent deaths as a good reason for not having fed them." - p. 99

Well here's a surprise. Mark Grudzielanek's whining again.

Tis the Season



I think I have some kind of regional record of having 13 of these things in my mouth at one time.

Fear me.

Addendum: sorry about the small picture of the Peeps but the other pics available were too big for my puny 1 MB blog to hold. C'est la vie.

I have to admit the first thing I thought of when I saw this guy was "Oh Capt. Lou Albano, what happened to make you hate America so"?

The second thing I thought of was the aftermath of an "ALL NIGHT KEGGER!!!!"

There are times when I feel frustrated for not being able to lucidly communicate all that’s going on in my head. I tend to see and discuss things in terms of “forest” (big picture) rather than “trees” (details). The problem is you can’t have one without the other. Too often I see myself adhering to and defending a big picture without having a grasp on those details that make it up. So when I try to discuss certain issues (theology comes to mind the quickest), I ramble on and on, going all over the intellectual map while the other person unable or unwilling to follow the rabbit trails just kind of shakes their head and says, “OK, good luck with all that”.

Another downfall of being a forest thinker is that I have all these details bouncing around in my head that I desperately want to put into a bigger context. I have a desire to be consistent in my worldview and beliefs but I’m too lazy to do the work, to examine myself to see if the details all fit together coherently.

Oh and you know that maxim that “whoever knows the least speaks the loudest”? Guilty as charged..

So in order to combat this, I’ve decided to make a learning journal. Basically it will be a collection of articles or thoughts that I read on the internet that I can interact with. Every time I see an article that I think will be worth hanging on to for further use, I’ll print it and put it in my learning journal, read it a couple of times and jot down some basic lessons or objections that I got from it, then read it again every couple of days. Yes this will probably take lots of ink, but I think that eventually it will be better than just bookmarking tons of articles in my favorites folder (as websites have a tendency to go down).

Hopefully this idea will stick. As many of you know, I’m notorious for starting great self-improvement projects then becoming disinterested and dropping it after a couple of weeks. I pray that it’ll stick.

Anyway thanks for sludging through the catharsis…more funny on the way.

Feeling nostalgic for his great theological blogging, I decided to peruse the archives of Mark Horne's late weblog. I came upon this little treat that made me grin while tweaking my conscience about my own shortcomings as a covenantal protecter:

But I do think the argument from Genesis 3 can be made even stronger. She gave the fruit to her husband "with her." That prepositional phrase is shattering and it explains why the Bible says that we all fell "in Adam" not in Eve though she tasted the forbidden fruit first.

He was there the entire time keeping his mouth shut and watching what Eve did. He only ate the fruit after he saw that Eve ate it and remained alive.

Adam is the original abusive husband. He was the one who heard the prohibition (Eve only heard that every tree was available to them; Adam had to teach her what God had said previously). He was the one who should have been engaged with the serpent. But he remained silent and used his wife in an experiment. No doubt if she had died immediately, he would have mentioned to God that he still had 19 ribs left.

"God said, 'I will be your God and you will be my people,' not, 'I will be your Proposition and you will be my systematicians.'" ~ Steve Schlissel

Heh-heh, thanks for the quote Harry.

It just keeps getting better.

Items from the weekend

• For those of you interested in all things Chapa, I’m currently growing back my hair after a brief love affair with my electric razor. The funny thing about my hair (and I’m not sure if this is true about everyone’s hair) is that if you shave it off, it doesn’t grow back evenly.
  
  Case in point, the hair on the sides and back of my head is growing at an alarming rate, while the hair at the front of my head as well as around the part is growing back in patches. If you close your eyes and try to imagine what this may look like, you are left with one of two unsettling images:
  
  1. Mullet
  -OR-
  2. Well...I can't think of a nice way to say it so...THIS!
  
  In fact it was my dear sister who pointed out the latter option to me on Saturday. So I’m not sure what to do at this point. I want my hair to grow back but not at the expense of looking like you know who. Then again the pain will only probably be for a few more weeks and my nicely shaved goatee should fend off any unwanted advances by amorous lesbians.
  
  
• I went to Costco twice in 48 hours. That has to be some kind of personal record of pain endurance for me. The next time someone mentions a trip to Costco, I will find a jar of honey, a shovel and a hill full of fire ants. The kill will be quicker, the pain less severe and I won’t have to actually deal other human beings.
  
  Don’t get me wrong, I love Costco. If I ever need to buy a six pack of canned olives or a 50 lb. bag of sugar, the first thing I do is strap on my flak jacket (well actually the brain-numbing shot of whiskey first, then the jacket) and head out to Costco.
  
  One of the reasons for this amour interdit is the incredibly cheap prices on their meat. Now I looove red meat. I love meat as much as I hate fish, and I think that’s saying a lot. Everytime I gaze upon that meat section I can’t help but think about that scene in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, where Wonka opens the door to the garden and lake made out of candy and the kids’ faces just light up. Standing upon the threshold of the meat aisle, I know their joy. I half expect to see a fey man in a purple suit, top hat and cane leading me up and down the rows, prancing and singing about a world of pure imagination as he gleefully tosses packages of tri-tip and sirloins into my basket. Then my fellow patrons overwhelmed by my delight, join in dancing and singing as we build to a crescendo of Berkleyesque proportions.
  
  O.K. that went too far. At any rate I bought sirloin steaks for grilling and 6 lbs. of ground beef. In the immortal words of Ice Cube, I gotta say it was a good day.
  
  
• Memo to the lady who was sleeping while her 2 year old kid terrorized every living soul on the playground at the mall:
  
  

  WAKE UP!!!

  
  My wife is not your child’s mother and should not have to rescue other kids from the insane clutches of your son. If you are too tired to watch your kid at the playground, please stay home.