Photomania

Many new pictures from Renaissance Fair and Portland are up. Check em out.

I'm heading down to Durango tomorrow for the summer, which means that computer access will be few and far between until August 15thish. I should be able to post about once a week, so I'll try to stay updated at least with pictures.

I can never gauge how much reading time I'll have at camp, but here's a list of the books I'm bringing with me anyway:

1. The Art of Living and other stories - John Gardner
2. Orthodoxy - Chesterton
3. The Complete Stories - Flannery O'Connor
4. Mere Christianity - C.S. Lewis
5. Principles of War - Jim Wilson
6. Standing on the Promises - Doug Wilson
7. The Moviegoer - Walker Percy
8. The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
9. Great Hymns of the Faith
10. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love - Raymond Carver

I'm registered for this on Saturday. It was fun last year and we had marvelous weather. However, "not in good shape" doesn't do my physical condition justice. "Formless and void" would be more accurate. If the Spirit of God moves about the surface of my muscular atrophy, it might work out all right. Just kidding, it'll be a blast.

Practice Makes You Better

I’ve taken up some space on this here blizog writing about ideas that are fairly new to me. It’s been great to work out kinks in my thinking and theology through writing. It’s also been unexpected. When I got back into writing, I didn’t foresee being able to better understand my own thoughts by writing them out. Something about realizing that another sentient being is going to read this and that it needs to be intelligible really helps me narrow and focus.

That being said, I thought it was time to write about something that I’ve actually thought about more than once or twice. I was visiting a fellow Moscowvite’s blog archives where I found this writer saying she’d once heard something to the effect of our lives here on Earth being practice for heaven. I thought to myself, “Hm. I say that a lot. She may have even heard it from me, I say it so much. I should elaborate on that.”

What first sparked this idea in me was writing a paper a few semesters ago on Francis Schaeffer’s “Pollution and the Death of Man: The Christian View of Ecology.” While I didn’t actually get much from the book, I did start to form this idea of being given little things to watch over in order to prove yourself responsible.

I think the most obvious example of this in Scripture comes from Mark, where Christ says: “He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much; and he who is unrighteous in a very little thing is unrighteous also in much. If therefore you have not been faithful in the use of unrighteous mammon, who will entrust the true riches to you?”

My first thought in response to this was along the lines of “Oh. If we treat something temporal, like the environment, with contempt and laziness, why should we be trusted with eternal things in the next life?” I was basically seeing our life here as a proving ground for “the real thing.”

But as I thought more about it, I started to see smaller levels of the same principle in our lives here and now. Look at childhood for example: Does it really matter how well you score on your 4^th grade math test? Will nations fall and souls perish if you don’t carry the remainder? No. But the common misconception among youth is the idea that “Oh this isn’t important. When things get important, then I’ll be responsible.” Right. After years of practicing sloth, misuse, and neglect, you’ll be able to “be responsible.”

Doug Wilson said in one of his sermons that there are no big choices, since all the little choices we’ve made up to the point of this big one brought us there. I agree with that, but there’s also something to be said for there not being any small choices. Or at least there’s never an excuse for making a choice flippantly, since even if it’s whether you’ll have chocolate or vanilla ice cream for dessert, you form habits of decision making all the time. Thankfully, we’re given more important things to deal with than dessert choices and don’t have to try and impart great importance to things that just aren’t important. We have to choose where we go to college, if we’ll watch that movie, who we’ll marry, how we’ll return good for evil. These are important decisions, that we’ve hopefully practiced for in the years leading up to them.

An example that I’m sure we’ve all heard, but fits here, is a single guy’s preparation for marriage. What does the world tell you about this? Live it up, this is your time, soon enough you’ll be enslaved to The Wife. This is the time to be an idiot.

While I agree that there are aspects of the single life that we should take advantage of, it’s not an excuse to be glib with the choices we make. Not being attached to and responsible for a family does free you up in a certain sense. I think that the misconception, at least that I’ve held for a while, is that we’re freer in every sense until marriage. That “I do” translates to “I do put away any and all of my previous desires, freedoms, and enjoyments.”

I have a great time explaining this idea to kids at camp, how being a meathead now means stacking the deck against yourself in the future. Thankfully I have all kinds of examples from my own life to back this up. I’m constantly amazed at how God weaves our own folly and rebelliousness back into things that are ultimately good.

I don’t see the benefits of preparation for more important matters starting at death. Rather, we’ve given opportunities all throughout our life to practice for things of greater and greater consequence. At death, I hope that I’ve shown myself responsible enough to take on even weightier matters.

Time Spent Worrying Is Time Wasted Not Preparing

And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him. - Hebrews 11:6

Cast your bread on the surface of the waters, for you will find it after many days. - Ecclesiastes 11:1

Do not be anxious then, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'With what shall we clothe ourselves?' For all these things the Gentiles eagerly seek; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not be anxious for tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. - Matthew 6:31-35

For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one also hope for what he sees? And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. - Romans 8:24-25 & 8:28

Fun With Macro

A Black Past

If you leave this story with nothing else, remember this: I was once a much worse person than I am today.

I’m the oldest of three kids in my family. We’re each separated by about four years. While I certainly fulfilled the role of big brother as dominator, I rarely took it upon myself to lead. I think that my brother Jordan, four years my junior, truly felt the full force of this in his left nostril one day in Wisconsin when my parents had trustingly left me in charge of the house.

My relationship with my brother oftentimes went the course of “I wonder what would happen if _____ happened to someone?” and I often took advantage of my familial superiority to see these wonderings through to action. They usually started with something like, “Jordan, we should try this,” which was met with initial hesitation, returned with general big-brother badgering from me, and usually his submission in the end.

This was around the time that we’d moved to the States from Germany, and many things that every American kid grows up with were still new and amazing to me. Super Soakers for example. I think I’d seen ads on our one American TV station in Germany for them, and of course my little mind was easily molded by advertising into thinking they were the coolest thing since…..ever. So I had a Super Soaker at this point. Not one of the industrial, dislodge a small child from the pool with the blast models, but it would get you wet. For some reason, I enjoyed pressurizing the canister with air while the gun had no water in it, and just shooting streams of air much more than water. I can remember being mesmerized by watching the skin on my hand and arm dimple under the force of a pencil thin tube of air.

The question was burning a hole in me: what would it look like if “one” were to discharge an air stream up “another’s” nose? I imagined cartoon sound effects and general hilarity.

“Jordan, let’s try this. It won’t hurt or anything, it’ll probably just look really really funny. Your nose will get huge and then go back to normal.”

He wasn’t too keen on the idea at first, but I eventually made a convincing case. It didn’t seem to matter to him that he wouldn’t get to see the hilarious results, just experience them. I probably also did something underhanded like pump the gun once or twice then shoot off a puny shot of air with something like “See? How could that hurt?”

I gave the water gun a healthy priming and set the nozzle against his upper lip pointing nasalward.

“Ready?”

He wasn’t, and I knew it, but he gave a slight nod of the head.

I was right about one thing, his nose did burst out to a larger size than it’s ever been. As I pulled the trigger, his eyes widened in direct proportion to his nostril, as if the air going into his nose was bulging them open and outward. After about a second he screamed. Of course it hurt. I can’t believe that I even considered it not hurting.

My first reaction was “Ssssshh! Ssssshhh! It’s ok it’s ok sssshhh!!” I didn’t want to be found out, and the way he was yelling there was a good chance most of the neighborhood would come knock down the door.

I came clean when the folks got home, and I still wonder if I would’ve had Jordan not been in blinding pain. If I’d done something equally stupid, but only involving me with no way of being found out, I wonder if I would have said anything. Jordan, I really am sorry.

Moshots

There are a few pictures from the Motown bash up on flickr. I'm helpless with flash, so I've artsyed some of them up to make them mo-interesting.

Let's Talk About Those Timely Blessings

When we’re told to walk by Faith and not by Sight, it seems that the common interpretation can be visually expressed by a man (full of faith) gathering up his courage and leaping into an abyss. Think Indiana Jones.

What this seems to suggest is that we only look to Faith when our Sight says “uh oh.” By then it’s not much of a decision, is it? The option to even walk by Sight is taken away, and so, we think, ‘I’ll walk by Faith now I guess.’ But there have been times when my Sight has been looking at something good, like a full suspension bridge across the abyss. Then we think it’s a no brainer, take the bridge. But what if Faith is saying something different? How much harder is it to listen to Faith when Sight is treating you so well?

That relates more to my biking adventures this year than it does to what I’m talking about here, which is God’s timing in blessing and grace. Take the past week for example. All things considered, possibly one of the most troubling, trying weeks of my life, though I just want to focus on one of the issues tonight.

On Tuesday, I may have lost my job at the farm for reasons unknown to me. Aside from being a huge financial blessing, it’s a great place to work with great people. But it really is my bread and butter when it comes to paying the bills. The pay is better than anything else I’ve heard of in Moscow, and the hours are flexible. With the summer coming up and me heading to Colorado in three short weeks until August, this isn’t as big of a deal as it would have been in the middle or beginning of the semester.
Timely Blessing #1.

But bills still need to be paid, and I’m looking at about a month without working. About a week before I received my termination letter, my landlords the Birks had asked me if I had any extra time to help do some landscaping at their house for their daughter’s wedding. I said that I really didn’t have the time between two other jobs and school, but that I could come once and maybe find some other people to help them out. I asked a few friends if they could help out, but, like me, everyone’s busy this time of year. I really wanted to help with this, but I couldn’t skip work at the farm and no one else was available. Then I got the letter, and suddenly I had three days a week open to work. They’re paying me $8/hr. Timely Blessing #2

On Thursday I met with Josh Gibbs to chat, and mentioned as we were parting ways this whole situation. He responded with “Oh, my mother in law is looking for some help with some yard work. And she’ll pay you $10/hr." Timely Blessing #3

On Saturday I was working at the Birk’s and spoke with Judy, who owns our house with her husband Tim who wasn’t in town with her. After some small talk about how school was going and how the house was holding up (they always like to joke with me about the fire of ’04), she told me that since Tim usually came over and cleaned all the leaves off of the roof and out of the gutter, that she’d knock $50 off of rent for me if I did it. Timely Blessing #4.

In what I’ve seen in my own life lately, it isn’t so much of leap of Faith, as it is a plodding away, doing what’s right and walking by Faith when those hairy spots interrupt. I don’t typically go looking for places to test my Faith. I usually have plenty of opportunities every day.

On the timeliness of Grace, it tends to come when it’s needed, and not before. This is what I think of when I hear walk by Faith not by Sight. It’s more of a worry-net. When things look bad to the Sight, Faith is there to assure you that Grace is there.

Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord – for we walk by faith, not by sight – we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.

II Corinthians 5:6-8