Friday, April 11, 2003

Last night in Hebrew class, I was talking with a few classmates about how cool it would be to have Hebrew Bible mp3s. So today, on a whim, I typed in "Hebrew bible mp3," and, guess what? I found some. How cool is that?! If your interested, you can find them and lots more at Audio Treasure. Nifty!
I realize I've been away from the blog for a few days. Things are kinda busy around here. Lots of homework. Two surveys running on campus. Daylight savings time--blech! Anyhow, I have nothing profound to say. But on the mundane end, I brought food for our Friday break, and I gotta tell ya, the papaya was awesome. Sometimes I am just amazed that God made such good stuff. Yum!

Tuesday, April 08, 2003

Some food for thought from Bruderhof

“The people who hanged Christ never, to do them justice, accused him of being a bore - on the contrary; they thought him too dynamic to be safe. It has been left for later generations to muffle up that shattering personality and surround him with an atmosphere of tedium. We have very efficiently pared the claws of the Lion of Judah, certified him "meek and mild," and recommended him as a fitting household pet for pale curates and pious old ladies.

“To those who knew him, however, he in no way suggested a milk-and-water person; they objected to him as a dangerous firebrand. True, he was tender to the unfortunate, patient with honest inquirers and humble before Heaven; but he insulted respectable clergymen by calling them hypocrites; he referred to King Herod as "that fox"; he went to parties in disreputable company and was looked upon as a "gluttonous man and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners"; he assaulted indignant tradesmen and threw them and their belongings out of the Temple; he drove a coach-and-horses through a number of sacrosanct and hoary regulations; he cured diseases by any means that came handy, with a shocking casualness in the matter of other people's pigs and property; he showed no proper deference for wealth or social position; when confronted with neat dialectical traps, he displayed a paradoxical humor that affronted serious-minded people, and he retorted by asking disagreeably searching questions that could not be answered by rule of thumb. He was emphatically not a dull man in his human lifetime, and if he was God, there can be nothing dull about God either.”

Excerpted from The Greatest Drama, by Dorothy Sayers. Give the whole article a read!

A quick read through the Old Testament books of history and the Revelation will clear up any misconceived idea that God is a boring Herman Milquetoast. Let's get that bit of nearly heretical misconception out of our minds, eh.

Monday, April 07, 2003

It was my birthday yesterday (and, no, I'm not looking for gifts, but, hey, if you insist, I have a wish list on amazon.com :). Anyhow, I am in the early stages of my fifth decade (the one that comes after 40) and I feel like I should have some sort of summary................hmmmmm ..........................................still thinking........................I guess it's just this: sometimes life is awesome; sometimes it is awful; most of the time it is inbetween--nothing to write home about--except this: through it all, good, bad, grey, God is here and God is good. I was reading Colossians 3:1-4 this morning and was struck by the phrase "the things above." We're supposed to keep seeking things above and set our minds on things above. I don't know that I've fulfilled my dreams or had the impact on the world that I planned to have, but I will say, although I have a long way to go, I know that I seek things above more frequently now than I did in my twenties or thirties. And that is a good thing.
So, I'm walking to campus today, and right there in the middle of the sidewalk is a red potato. An actual, grows in the ground potato. I'm not sure why, but it seemed really funny.