geekery.of.all.sorts

Jennifer, Davin and I watched Julie and Julia the other day, just before Christmas. For those of you who don’t know, it’s a sweet movie about a woman who decides to spend a year cooking her way through Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking . The film is about her self-discovery as she blogged her experiences cooking all these recipes, interleaved with biographical sections of how Julia Child wrote the cookbook during the 10 or so years she lived in France. It’s a neat movie, especially if you’re into food. Which I am. I made the comment to Jennifer that I’d never really experienced Julia Child firsthand, either on television or via her books, so I didn’t know much about her. I knew she was a big deal TV chef, probably the first one ever, and that she had a big, high voice, but that was about it. Well, Jenn went and bought me the cookbook for Christmas. Here’s my first status report: I cooked a ham on Christmas day, on Christmas day, on Christmas day…and

I've decided to throw a grenade today. I think I've been taught for too long that the Cross is the whole point of God's plan. I’m taking a stand today and saying salvation by grace through faith is not THE BIG TRUTH of Christianity. That rumbling you hear is Luther and thousands of protestant church fathers rolling over in their graves. Now, before you go siccing Hank Hanegraaff on me for preaching a different gospel, I'm not disavowing the cross, or the gospel, or anything. Jesus died on the cross to save me. His blood paid for my sins. His work on the cross is finished, sufficient, and total. I am saved by grace through faith in the Son of God. Now, what am I trying to do by baiting you this way? The gospel isn't about reconciliation to God. It's natural to think that salvation is the center of God's world, since we're the ones getting saved...but salvation isn't the main thing on God's mind. The gospel is about the Kin

…for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. John 5:19-21 says that Jesus could do nothing by himself. I somehow learned that verse wrong. I’ve quoted it wrong countless times, saying ‘Jesus only did what he saw the Father doing, only said what he heard the Father saying’. What Jesus actually says there, and again in John 5:30, is that he COULD NOT DO ANYTHING ON HIS OWN. Does that strike you as odd? The word used here is ‘ Dunamai ’: to be able, have power whether by virtue of one's own ability and resources, or of a state of mind, or through favourable circumstances, or by permission of law or custom to be able to do something to be capable, strong and powerful Jesus says he’s not capable. Unless the Father does it. ‘Only did’ and ‘could not do’ are totally different to me. This connects well to Philippians 2:5-11. Jesus did not grasp equality with the Father. It seems to indicate that his choice to humble himself and take the form of a servant wasn’t a m

So I went shopping today to find a saxophone for Katy. Now, cheap saxes run about 600 - 6 bills is a lot of dough for the Dad, on any day. But I walk into ye olde pawn shoppe here in town, and play 5 or 6 horns, looking for something that will work good - and I find something interesting. First thing that spots my eye is the case - it's way niftier than the usual brown case that student model horns come it - it's a real case, with natty cloth in an interesting pattern - looks something like this: The cloth on the case is a dead giveaway that we're looking at something that's a few years old. So I crack it open and to my suprise I find a brand of saxophone I've never seen before - The first thing I notice is that the scrollwork ( carving ) and decorations are very ornate - old school, as it were. It appears that this horn was made in Italy, and it has a low serial number - in the 8000s, rather than 20000s. That's a good bet that it's pretty old indeed. So I

The setup: So I’m walking today, clearing my head before the next big thing I had to do. I was praying, telling God I wanted to know Him, wanted to have the Holy Spirit teach me ( John 14:26 ) So I start thinking about the Beatitudes. I grew up having to memorize the Bible at school, so ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven’ is pretty drilled into my head. Some of the others are harder to remember, but the first few are usually right there. So I got a big lightning bolt about the Beatitudes... Right. What's a beatitude? The Beatitudes are found in Matthew 5:1-12, at the top of the sermon on the mount. ( Beatitude means ‘blessedness’, meaning that this list of things is about how to be blessed. ) There are some in the Church that have noticed these verses are important – hey form sort of a contract about how a Kingdom mindset works. The Beatitudes can be seen as the basis of God’s value system. The Beatitudes are a good thing to have i

I found an app for my phone that lets me post to my blog directly. more geek-fu for the darren.

comparison of different descriptions of the Father and Jesus in galatians 1 Galatians 1:1 god the father... Galatians 1:3. Our father Galatians 1:1 father raised jesus from the dead... Galatians 1:3 jesus gave himself according to the will of our father observation Paul could have said 'i am astonished that you are deserting ME'. But instead, he writes '...the one who called you by the grace of jesus christ', which is waaaay longer. What's so important about that identifier that Paul took the trouble?

I've been talking with my oldest daughter about how to read/journal the Bible. Here's some notes from our conversations. Instructions: Take 30 minutes to read and think and write. ( Katy is starting Galatians Ch 1. ) You should have: A bible, pencil, journal, and a dictionary. Goal: As long as you're busy thinking about about what you're reading and writing down what you think, you're using your time well. Use the act of writing to keep your mind focused. Before you start to read: Take a minute to get quiet in your heart. Ask Holy Spirit ( H.S. ) to come and reveal the truth in the Bible to you. ( John 16:13 ) Expect that H.S is going to do what you asked. ( Matthew 7:7-11 ). When you ask, expect to receive. Expect a good gift. Believe He is alive inside you, and ready to teach you. How to read a Bible verse Have pencil and paper ready while you read write down all the important words in the verse For each of those important words, ask yourself: Do I know

So logos.com isn't such a bad site after all... Back when I was on staff at East Hill Church and looking into buying bible software, Logos was the Rolls Royce of the various software options. It had all the bells and whistles, but was also the most expensive. I never looked much further than price... I ran into bible.logos.com the other day, and my first impression is that it works more nicely than biblegateway.com. One of the things I spotted was this continuous scrolling that it uses. Want to read through Galatians? ( I do. ) In biblegateway.com, you'd have to click 'Next chapter' to jump between Galatians 1 and Galatians 2. Want to scroll backward from Romans 1:1ff into Acts 28:31? Biblegateway: no way. Bible.logos.com: No problem. So that's cool - but they also do this other handy thing: http://www.logos.com/reftagger is a service that notices bible references in your website and shows the bible verses on your site. You stick a bit of javascript into you

So this post is a combination of bible-fu and geek-fu. Note: ( relative ) mastery of a specific skill may be referred to as I do above, by suffixing the topic with -fu, as in kung-fu. Example: My kitchen-fu was particularly strong today, as I whipped up a perfect chocolate souffle... The focus of my geek-fu today was bible study. Sometimes it can help to view things from a different angle...I'm starting to talk Bible with my oldest daughter, and was thinking about how to enter into a conversation about Galatians with the greatest ease. And a thought hit me - 'you should tag cloud it'. So without further ado, here's a tag cloud of Galatians, courtesy of the handy dandy TagCrowd online service. I pulled the text of Galatians from bible.logos.com and massaged it a little with my geek-fu before dropping it into TagCrowd to get the following result: abraham (9) bears (3) become (5) believe (4) belong (3) blessed (3) born (6) brothers (8) calls (3)

I’ve been struggling with anxiety of late.  There’s a project that I despair of every getting done with, and of ever getting right.  I’ve spent hours agonizing over it, and have had many ( I say that intentionally – many ) conversations with God asking if the current condition of the project were my fault.  While I can see areas where I could have done things differently, for the most part He doesn’t seem to be worried at all. I was washing dishes yesterday, going back over all the reasons why my project was going to fail.  I was feeling horrible and attempting to repent, or else resigning to myself that I would take whatever consequences might come.  In the middle of all this self abasement, I took a moment to see what Jesus might have to say. I took a moment to slow down sufficiently, so that I could recognize His presence living in me…and instead of hearing him say something to me, I perceived that He was sad.  So I asked Him why. He said to me: “Why are you still carrying t

I haven’t blogged for a long while…missed me?  I know I have. Today’s blog is about exercise.  I don’t exercise much.  But Jenn started Jazz-ercising the other day, and I’d already been thinking about my recent lethargy, and the need to de-lethargificate my life.  ( I’m easily as impressed with my use of the word de-lethargificate as you are.  We’re both in wondrous awe. ) In response to this de-lethargificationariffic urge (!) , I bought a pass to the local pool and decided I’d start swimming again. Swimming is on the short list of things I might actually enjoy doing that involves an elevated heart rate.  ( No, I’m not going to list any other items on that very short list.  You’ll have to go somewhere else on the internet to get that kind of content.  Shame on you. ) The prospect of burnishing my physique presents a big challenge…I’m always telling Katy to ‘Go Hard’ and respond strongly to challenges.  ( Somebody give me a roll of tape for my mouth, please ). Back in my childhoo