Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Tuesday Morning Prayer


O You, who is the true Sun of the world, always rising and never going down. Your most wholesome appearing and light nourishes and makes joyful every thing in heaven and on earth:

We ask You to mercifully shine into our hearts so that the night of sin and the darkness of error will be driven away. Make your countenance beam on us so that we will not stumble in Your way or offend You. Let us walk as in the daytime.

Let us be pure and clean from the works of darkness.
Let us abound in all the good works that You have prepared for us to walk in through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Monday, October 30, 2006

Free Hugs

Monday Morning Prayer


O God, our Father, of whom the whole family in heaven and on earth is named:

At the beginning of this day, give our household the grace that will keep us in true Christian fellowship.

Grant each of us Your guidance and influence in all of our labors, pleasures, and trials so that our hearts will be at peace with one another and with You.

Graciously help and prosper us in the doing of our daily duties with a willing and cheerful mind.

Defend us all by Your almighty power from inward evil and from outward harm.

Father may all of this be granted so that at the end of the day we will not be left in sorrow, trouble, or shame. Instead let us have true unity and thankful rest through Your merciful favor and Your forgiving love in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

Sunday, October 29, 2006

Sunday Morning Prayer


O Lord, our Heavenly Father, at the beginning of another week we come to You for help and light.

Grant, we ask You, that we make this a sacred day of rest to Your service. May we consecrate this day to find all peace and strength in You.

Make our hearts beat with devotion so that we may serve You in spirit and in truth. May we live this day laying a good foundation for our coming work.

Be with us in the worship services of Your day so that your saints may join in heart and soul. Be with us so that we may receive the blessing promised to all who sincerely pray to You and faithfully hear Your Word.

This we ask for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Saturday, October 28, 2006

Saturday Morning Prayer


Almighty God, our Father and Preserver:

We give You thanks that by Your goodness You have watched over us during the night and brought us to a new day.

We ask You to strengthen and guard us by Your Spirit so that we may spend this day in Your service and glorify You. May we cause all Your blessings to prove fruitful, and may we only seek the things that are pleasing in Your sight.

Enable us, O Lord, while we labor in this life to always look forward to that heavenly life, which You have promised Your children.

Defend us in soul and body from all harm.

Show Your steadfast love to all men and women and little children according to their need and especially to those whom we love and are in any kind of trouble or distress. We now remember them before You...

Protect our country.
Protect Your Church.
Bless all who do good in the world.
Restrain and convert all who do evil.

And finally – be pleased to cast out of Your remembrance all our past offenses, forgiving them in Your boundless mercy. Purify our hearts so that we may lead a better life through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Potential Theories

I do not remember most of my Lost theories, but I still don't think we've gotten far enough to know which theories are right or wrong (including the writers).

However, here are a few more ideas (none of which are my own) that are worth discussing:

  1. The guy with the tumor on his backbone - could it be Locke? And would removing the tumor put him back in a wheelchair?
  2. Are The Others sterile? Is that why they steal children and need a fertility doctor? And if so, is the reason they separated Jack from Sawyer and Kate that they, not he, is their real interest? Did they put Kate in the cute dress opposite Sawyer so that the two of them would REALLY fall in love and get "at it"?
  3. Does the fertility doctor on the island have any connection to Sun becoming pregnant when she was previously unable too?

Friday, October 27, 2006

Friday Morning Prayer


We praise You, O God, with the morning light, and in the brightness of a new day we bless Your holy name.

For all You have given us –

the gift of life,
making us in Your own image,
allowing us to share as children in Your knowledge and love and in Your work and joy,
we thank you, Heavenly Father.

For all good things in the world,
for food and clothing,
for home and friendship,
for useful tasks and good pleasures,
we thank You, Heavenly Father.

For all spiritual blessings,
for the good example and blessed memory of Your saints,
for the secret influence of Your Spirit,
we thank You, Heavenly Father.

And above all we bless You for the redeeming life and death of Your dear Son, our Savior – Jesus Christ. Amen.

Jumprope

-- By Shel Silverstein

Thursday, October 26, 2006

Worth a thousand words...


Yep, I'm that one. I've always been that one.

Crazy Lost Theory


Could there be two groups of "others?" One on the small island and the one on the main island.

When Desmond is talking to Kelvin in the Season 2 Finale, someone mentions the Northern shore of the island. The other replies with "Going to see the hostiles, then?" If the Hostiles are on the Nothern shore, but the actual others are off to the East on their little island – this would imply that there are two competing factions of others.

Also, both Benry and Goodwin instisted that their group was "the good guys." This implies that there are bad guys too...

Could Nathan be part of a different group? How many times have we heard "the others" state that they don't kill. They might not have used the word kill, but you get the point. Goodwin kills Nathan with no remorse or anything.

Nathan could be the "hostile" that Kelvin referred to. There are two groups of others on the Island – Ben's group of "goodies" and the "Hostile's"... Nathan was a Hostile and Goodwin knew it, that is why he had to die! The Hostile's are bad!

Just thinking...

Lost Junkies!


Here is a picture and cryptic message from Alvar Hanso!

Alvin's Real Voice

Do you remember Alvin and the Chipmunks? Then you probably know that a recording can be speeded up to make it sound squeaky like Alvin, Simon, Theodore.

But, do you know that if you slow down a Chipmunk recording, you can hear what the actual actors sound like?

Yep, that’s right. Listen (MP3) for yourself!

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Hug O' War

--By Shel Silverstein

Alive and Well?

Alive and well?
An Article by Marty from The Briefing

I recently attended a large pastor’s conference where I was joined by 3,200 evangelical pastors, ministry leaders, seminary students, youth leaders and children’s teachers. It is always encouraging to be with so many people who trust in God’s word to turn people from idols to serve the true and living God. And this is just one out of dozens of similar conferences that gather Bible-believing Christians. Surely this is a wonderful sign of Christianity here in the States.

However, I am not sure what to make of it all. For, statistically speaking, even though Evangelicalism is on the rise here, our culture is pulling away from God faster than ever. Further, Christians—especially evangelicals—have an alarmingly low understanding of Scripture. Is what I see at conferences like these a fair reflection of the state of American Evangelicalism?

My experience of evangelical churches is this: I know a woman who teaches at an evangelical Christian school who rarely reads the Scriptures; I know an evangelical pastor who preaches more from Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life than the Bible; I know an evangelical church that gathers people in small groups to give them tips on healthy eating and coping with job-related stress while paying very little attention to Matthew or Ecclesiastes. And I could go on with similar examples for pages.


How do the two trends I’ve identified above square with one another? I’ve been reading Tom Schreiner’s excellent article on preaching and Biblical theology (PDF). Schreiner reminded me how it is that such a dichotomy can exist. He said, “[C]onservative churches may embrace the inerrancy of Scripture while denying in practice the sufficiency of God’s Word. We may say that Scripture is God’s inerrant Word, while failing to proclaim it seriously from our pulpits”. I would add that churches also fail to practise God’s word seriously in their ministry programs.


This is why there are so many evangelical pastors and churches who have no positive effect on Christianity and Evangelicalism as a whole in America: we assume our beliefs rather than practice them. It is easy to claim to hold to evangelical beliefs; you can post them in the church bulletin, use keywords like “inerrancy” and “justification” in your sermons, browbeat liberals for their opposing views. But it is difficult to actually put into practice the doctrines we hold to so fervently. And so it’s hard to find a church that centres its ministry on God’s word rather than on the culture.


My hunch (based on the fruit of our labours) is that most of our growing evangelical population knows little of what it means to participate in or run a ministry on the idea that God’s word is inerrant. As Schreiner points out, this comes back to our fundamental distrust in the fact that God’s word is actually sufficient. Simply put, our evangelical churches just don’t believe that God’s word alone is capable of producing God-glorifying Christians—assuming that they have reached the point where they think that that is the goal of being Christian.


Many cultural pundits say that Evangelicalism is alive and well in America today. I would agree it is alive, but I remained unconvinced as to how “well” it is.

Monday, October 23, 2006

W.W.L.S. (What Would Luther Say?)

What would Luther say about shepherds of Christ's church?

He must be of a high and great spirit that undertakes to serve the people in body and soul, for he must suffer the utmost danger and unthankfulness. Therefore Christ said to Peter, Simon, etc., “Lovest thou me?” repeating it three times together. Then he said: “Feed my sheep:” as if he would say, “Wilt thou be an upright minister, and a shepherd? then love must only do it, thy love to me; for how else could ye endure unthankfulness, and spend wealth and health, meeting only with persecution and ingratitude?”

Table Talk CXLVII.

Pastors are real fakes!

I don't know of any other profession in which it is quite as easy to fake it as in ours. By adopting a reverential demeanor, cultivating a stained-glass voice, slipping occasional words like "eschatology" into conversation....not often enough actually to confuse people but enough to keep them aware that our habitual train of thought is a cut above the pew level--we are trusted, without any questions asked, as stewards of the mysteries. Most people...know that we are in fact surrounded by enormous mysteries: birth and death, good and evil, suffering and joy, grace, mercy, forgiveness. It takes only a hint here and a gesture there, an empathetic sigh, or a compassionate touch to convey that we are at home and expert in these deep matters.

Even when in occasional fits of humility and honesty we disclaim sanctity, we are not believed. People have a need to be reassured that someone is in touch with the ultimate things. Their own interior lives are a muddle of shopping lists and good intentions, guilty adulteries (whether fantasized or actual) and episodes of heroic virtue, desires for holiness mixed with greed for self-satisfaction. They hope to do better someday beginning maybe tomorrow or at the latest next week. Meanwhile, they need someone around who can stand in for them, on whom they can project their wishes for a life pleasing to God. If we provide a bare bones outline of pretence, they take it as the real thing and run with it, imputing to us clean hands and pure hearts.

From the introduction of Working the Angles by Eugene Peterson.

Churches - 150 members strong


It just doesn't add up by Peter Hughes of Banksia, Sydney, Australia:

I want you to remember two numbers: 150 and 15. I was reading a book about a guy who was a church planter. His church had grown to about 150 and he decided it was time to plant another church. The problem was that he still had to work a part-time job because there was not enough income coming through the church. This got me thinking.

Most people, it seems, like a church where they know the pastor or minister. Sociologists tell me that this is about 150 people per minister; after that, it becomes too hard. In Sydney Anglican churches, the average giving per adult per week is $15 (actually it’s a bit less but let’s be nice). It costs a church $80,000 per year for a minister after things like superannuation and insurance etc., and let’s say another $20,000 for expenses like building costs (rent or upkeep), printing, insurance and other things.

So, let’s say then that it costs $100,000 a year for a minister to run a church. If people are giving $15 a week, this means you need at least 128 adults to break even. That is not far away from having to think about planting a new church if you want to grow. This means the church can’t afford another staff member until the new church is big enough (and now the first minister is trying look after 256 people across the new and the old churches—people who are frustrated they can’t talk to him).

The solution is either:
  1. choose not to grow our churches, and once we get between 128 and 150, we stop reaching out with the gospel;
  2. increase the average giving per adult to $30 per adult per week; or
  3. be more generous to our ministers and let them spread themselves more thinly. We need to be happy with being in churches with congregations of up to 250.

None of these options are easy. I do not think that #1 is a Christian response. For some people, #2 is simply not an option. Others will find it hard to adjust to #3. But as it stands, it doesn’t seem to add up to me.

Friday, October 20, 2006

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Incredible Power!

This is incredible power. He is ~180 lbs and throwing incredible weight! If you are not absolutely amazed, you don't understand what you are watching.

It make me wonder what Samson was capable of!

Sleeping Beauty

No doubt in this dog's waking hours he is a fine-looking canine, but while sleeping the ugly switch gets flipped. At that point all that is needed is quick action with a camera.

Clergyman

CLERGYMAN, n. A man who undertakes the management of our spiritual affairs as a method of bettering his temporal ones.

--Ambrose Bierce

Eugene Peterson is angry with pastors

American pastors are abandoning their posts, left and right, and at an alarming rate. They are not leaving their churches and getting other jobs. Congregations still pay their salaries. Their names remain on the church stationary and they continue to appear in pulpits on Sundays. But they are abandoning their posts, their calling. They have gone whoring after other gods. What they do with their time under the guise of pastoral ministry hasn't the remotest connection with what the church's pastors have done for most of twenty centuries.

A few of us are angry about it. We are angry because we have been deserted.... It is bitterly disappointing to enter a room full of people whom you have every reason to expect share the quest and commitments of pastoral work and find within ten minutes that they most definitely do not. They talk of images and statistics. They drop names. They discuss influence and status. Matters of God and the soul and Scripture are not grist for their mills.

The pastors of America have metamorphosed into a company of shopkeepers, and the shops they keep are churches. They are preoccupied with shopkeeper's concerns--how to keep the customers happy, how to lure customers away from competitors down the street, how to package the goods so that the customers will lay out more money.


Some of them are very good shopkeepers. They attract a lot of customers, pull in great sums of money, develop splendid reputations. Yet it is still shopkeeping; religious shopkeeping, to be sure, but shopkeeping all the same. The marketing strategies of the fast-food franchise occupy the waking minds of these entrepreneurs; while asleep they dream of the kind of success that will get the attention of journalists.

The biblical fact is that there are no successful churches. There are, instead, communities of sinners, gathered before God week after week in towns and villages all over the world. The Holy Spirit gathers them and does his work in them. In these communities of sinners, one of the sinners is called pastor and given a designated responsibility in the community. The pastor's responsibility is to keep the community attentive to God. It is this responsibility that is being abandoned in spades.


From the introduction of Working the Angles written by Eugene Peterson.

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

The Little Boy and the Old Man

The Little Boy and the Old Man by Shel Silverstein

Said the little boy, "Sometimes I drop my spoon."
Said the old man, "I do that too."
The little boy whispered, "I wet my pants."
"I do that too," laughed the little old man.
Said the little boy, "I often cry."
The old man nodded, "So do I."
"But worst of all," said the boy, "it seems
Grown-ups don't pay attention to me."
And he felt the warmth of a wrinkled old hand.
"I know what you mean," said the little old man.

The Wondrous Masterpieces of the Fourth Day



An actually picture of Saturn that is so beautiful - it doesn't look real.

In the shadow of Saturn, unexpected wonders appear. The robotic Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn recently drifted in giant planet's shadow for about 12 hours and looked back toward the eclipsed Sun. Cassini saw a view unlike any other. First, the night side of Saturn is seen to be partly lit by light reflected from its own majestic ring system. Next, the rings themselves appear dark when silhouetted against Saturn, but quite bright when viewed away from Saturn and slightly scattering sunlight, in the above exaggerated color image. Saturn's rings light up so much that new rings were discovered, although they are hard to see in the above image. Visible in spectacular detail, however, is Saturn's E ring, the ring created by the newly discovered ice-fountains of the moon Enceladus, and the outermost ring visible above. Far in the distance, visible on the image left just above the bright main rings, is the almost ignorable pale blue dot of Earth.

THE LINK


PS - Check this out!

Monday, October 16, 2006

The Inner Life of Cells or The Matrix? You decide!



Here is a very cool computerized "music video" for you to take a look at. I don't have a lot of info about it except that it was made at Harvard and that it contains a lot of computerized video of the inner workings of cells and macromolecules. If nothing else it is an amazing example of the intersection of art and science. Sit back and enjoy.

BioVisions

(You should probably have a high speed connection for this one - and you'll need the Flash player to view it)

Here is an unofficial explanation of the video by someone named Andrew Sobala.

Sunday, October 15, 2006

Ahh...That's fresh!

Real Beauty

An ad from the Dove Real Beauty campaign, highlighting the difficulty of looking like a model. Other Dove videos on the subject of young girls’ self-esteem and our warped expectations of beauty can be found here and here.

Saturday, October 14, 2006

What does your writing say about you?


Dr. Gerard Ackerman does handwriting analysis. I want to know your results if you take the test.

The TUL Pens Graphological Initiative - CHECK IT OUT HERE

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Face Recognition Software


MyHeritage’s face recognition engine can automatically detect faces, "learn" about it, and even match it to a database of faces it has previously seen.

In the demo, you can upload your own photo and see which celebrity you most resemble.

THE LINK

PS - Tell me who your celebrity look-a-like is!

Isn't free speech for everyone


...even Minutemen speaking at Columbia University?

PS - If you watch this, make sure you watch the whole thing. The commentary at the end is interesting.

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Where the Sidewalk Ends


Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.

Monday, October 09, 2006

W.W.A.B.S. (What Would Ambrose Bierce Say?)

What would Ambrose Bierce say about logic?

LOGIC, n. The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding. The basic of logic is the syllogism, consisting of a major and a minor premise and a conclusion — thus:


Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly as one man.

Minor Premise: One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds; therefore—

Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second.

This may be called the syllogism arithmetical, in which, by combining logic and mathematics, we obtain a double certainty and are twice blessed.

5000 Years in 90 Seconds

Who has controlled the Middle East over the course of history? Pretty much everyone. Egyptians, Turks, Jews, Romans, Arabs, Greeks, Persians, Europeans...the list goes on. Who will control the Middle East today? That is a much bigger question.

Click here to see 5000 years of history in 90 seconds.

Friday, October 06, 2006

Give me a break!

Just because something isn't a sin doesn't mean it isn't tacky and stupid! The following is a "teaching aid" for congregations -


Fire Bible

When was the last time your class saw how "HOT" God's Word is? Open this authentic looking "bible" and begin to share the scripture for the day as real flames are seen coming from your "bible". This full size book comes with a battery operated ignition system. All you supply are the batteries, lighter fluid and composure as your class gets excited. (special note: Fed-Ex shipping is available if you absolutely have to have the Fire Bible for this Sunday!)

Only $44.95!

Thursday, October 05, 2006

Seminary Dropouts

Hell hath no fury like a former seminarian. From Hollywood superstars to adulterous dilettantes, several seminary dropouts have managed to find success in the secular world. But they’ve also strayed from the Christian path - whether it was for the teachings of L. Ron Hubbard or simply to reign terror over a Communist nation. Here’s a sampling of the finest in almost-clergy.

1. Tom Cruise (1962 - )

In 1976, a deeply religious child named Thomas Cruise Mapother IV enrolled in a Franciscan seminary in New Jersey. Within five years, he’d ditched the church, dropped the Mapother, and landed a part in Endless Love. And in spite of his diminutive height (5 feet 7 inches) the man who might have been a priest became one of Hollywood’s top leading men. Around 1986, though, he abandoned Catholicism altogether, embracing the Church of Scientology, which he once credited with helping him overcome dyslexia. Wildly popular with celebrities, Scientology is the path of choice to "clarity" for everyone from John Travolta to the guy who played Parker Lewis in Parker Lewis Can’t Lose. Incidentally, Scientology does have ministers - but while Cruise remains an active member and apologist for the group, he has yet to seek ordination.

2. Casanova (1725 - 1798)

Everyone’s favorite 18th-century libertine began his scandalous escapades at the seminary of St. Cyprion, from which he was expelled under cloudy circumstances (we’re guessing he slept with someone). And as you well know, his post seminary life was as ungodly as it gets. By the age of 30 he was sentenced to prison for engaging in "magic," but he escaped after only a year to Paris. There, he made a fortune by introducing the lottery to France. But before settling down to write his ribald, self-aggrandizing autobiography, Casanova was expelled from more European countries than most of us ever visit. Along the way, he slept with tons of women, dueled with many of their husbands, and generally sinned his was to the top of European culture, befriending such figures as Madame du Pompadour and Jean-Jacques Rousseau along the way.



3. Joseph Stalin (1879 - 1953)

Lasting longer than the vast majority of divinity school dropouts, noted mass murderer Joseph Stalin studied at the Georgian Orthodox seminary in Tiflis (now Tbilisi) for five years, between 1894 and 1899. He left the seminary either because of poor health (his mom’s story) or revolutionary activity (Stalin’s story). Either way, Stalin clearly didn’t take much of what he learned to heart (assuming he had one). After he became the Soviet leader in 1922, he was responsible for the deaths of thousands of religious leaders, and Stalin did more than any other premier to eliminate the role of Christianity in Soviet life. But his seminary wasn’t exactly a study in Christian love, either. Prior to Stalin’s arrival, a rector was murdered there - possibly by unruly seminarians.

4. Michael Moore (1954 - )

Controversial documentary filmmaker Michael Moore began studying at a seminary in his hometown of Flint, Michigan, as an eight grader in 1967. Brought up a devout Catholic, Moore aspired to a career as a priest, but he left the seminary the next year for thoroughly secular reasons. When the Detroit Tigers made it to the World Series in 1968, the seminary refused to let him watch the games - so he quit. Before his successful filmmaking career, in fact, Moore was something of a serial dropout. He dropped out of the University of Michigan because he arrived at the school one morning and couldn’t find a parking place, and he once got a job at an automobile factory in Flint - but called in sick on his first day and never returned.


5. Al Gore (1948 - )

Believe it or not, the winner of the popular vote in the U.S. presidential election of 2000 was actually a devoutly religious divinity school dropout. It’s true! Al Gore graduated from Harvard cum laude in 1969 (although he earned several Cs and a D during his time in Cambridge), but he’d always been interested in theology, so he decided to continue his studies. It’s no wonder, then that he enrolled in Vanderbilt’s prestigious divinity school, where, over the course of three semesters, he failed five of his eight classes! Gore’s allies claimed that the birth of his first child and his duties as a reporter at the Tennessean newspaper kept him from his studies. For the record, though, Gore also later dropped out of Vanderbilt’s law school (in 1976), but this time for a truly higher purpose - to run for Congress.

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Hematoma anyone?


Let's see...How many ways can you think of bruising your buddy's butt? This guy can think of 1...2...3...

LOL...This cracks me up.