essay

Light

Posted on

I’m not sure why, exactly, but I’ve had this hymn on my mind a lot lately.

Lead, Kindly Light

by John Newton

Lead, kindly light, amid th’ encircling gloom,
Lead Thou me on;
The night is dark and I am far from home;
Lead Thou me on;
Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me.

I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou
Should lead me on;
I loved to choose and see my path; but now
Lead Thou me on!
I loved the garish day, and spite of fears,
Pride ruled my will. Remember not past years!

So long Thy Power hast blest me, sure it still
Will lead me on;
O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone,
And with the morn those angel faces smile
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile! End mark

Closest book meme

Posted on

I’ve been tagged for one o’ them crazy memes. This one involves:

  • Grabbing the nearest book.
  • Turning to page 123.
  • Quoting the fifth sentence on the page.

I’m sitting in the front room near a bookshelf full of books. Strictly speaking, there are four books that are nearly equidistant from me, so I’m going to quote the requested passage from all four of them.

From Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible:

Thus the correspondence was to be first settled by a sensible appearance of the divine glory, which was afterwards to be carried on more silently by the ministry of Moses.

From the Reformed Expository Commentary on Galatians by Philip Graham Ryken:

Even though he did not use these precise words, Paul obviously believed that the Bible is infallible and inerrant from beginning to end.

From Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology:

Because there is some common knowledge of right and wrong, Christians can often find much consensus with non-Christians in matters of civil law, community standards, basic ethics for business and professional activity, and acceptable patterns of conduct in ordinary life.

And the wildcard in the bunch, from Richard Lyman Bushman’s Rough Stone Rolling:

The revelation on the millennial gathering brought all the routine activities of everyday life into question. End mark

Adventures in waking up, day 627

Posted on

woddfellow2 said:

Did the plan to “take over the world” fail?

In a manner of speaking, yes. I’ve been following your blog, and I almost mentioned in my earlier post that you’re having your own adventures in waking up. It sounds like you’re doing well, so I hope you can keep it up!

I believe the last time I blogged about this was day 21, and if memory serves I stopped on day 30-some-odd. I spent about a month off, after which I made a valiant second attempt (I vaguely remember blogging about the second attempt, but can’t seem to find it now), which lasted again about a month, and now, of course, it’s been over a year.

I really miss having that extra hour or so in the mornings to get things done, so I’d really like to get back in the swing of it. I’m not going to get cocky about it this time, though. I was getting up at 5:20 am back then, but this time around I’m going to do 6:00 am at the earliest.

This morning when I woke up to feed the cat, I honestly thought about staying up, but decided to crawl back into bed anyway. Tonight I’m purposely leaving tomorrow’s lunch unprepared so I’ll have to get up and do that. Hopefully that will be enough motivation. Wish me luck! End mark

Twenty-three

Posted on

My doctor said I have the arteries of a 23-year-old. The rest of me is 28, for those keeping score.

Let me back up. I went in for a routine physical two months ago. At a follow-up appointment a few weeks later, in going over my blood work, the doctor mentioned that my bad cholesterol (LDL) was high, but that this may not be much of a concern because my good cholesterol (HDL) was also high. He wanted more information before giving me a clean bill of health, so he ordered something called an IMT scan. This week we got the results of that scan back, and this is where he came to his “arteries of a 23-year-old” conclusion.

Continue reading ›

NPR miscellany #4

Posted on

NPR Logo

I’ve been using LibraryThing to catalog my books since September 2005. All Things Considered on NPR recently featured LibraryThing in a story called “Web Sites Let Bibliophiles Share Books Virtually” (listen).

I especially love the intro to this story:

You know that you’re a bibliophile if you check out peoples’ bookshelves when you visit their homes, if you never pass a used bookstore without going in, or if you have a giant wishlist on Amazon.com.

That fits me to a tee. If it fits you, you owe it to yourself to check out LibraryThing! End mark

(hat tip: The LibraryThing Blog)

Deep

Posted on

The lyrics of this song struck me as particularly beautiful last night:

How Deep the Father’s Love For Us

by Stuart Townend

How deep the Father’s love for us,
How vast beyond all measure
That He should give His only Son
To make a wretch His treasure

How great the pain of searing loss,
The Father turns His face away
As wounds which mar the chosen One,
Bring many sons to glory

Behold the Man upon a cross,
My sin upon His shoulders
Ashamed I hear my mocking voice,
Call out among the scoffers

It was my sin that held Him there
Until it was accomplished
His dying breath has brought me life
I know that it is finished

I will not boast in anything
No gifts, no power, no wisdom
But I will boast in Jesus Christ
His death and resurrection

Why should I gain from His reward?
I cannot give an answer
But this I know with all my heart
His wounds have paid my ransom End mark

Coveting

Posted on

Okay, so I just checked out screenshots and Quicktime movies of xScope (hat tip: Stopdesign), and I’m really wishing I had a Mac right about now.

Apple Macbook (white)

Other reasons I want a Mac include (but are certainly not limited to): Coda, Quicksilver, and VMWare Fusion or Parallels Desktop—no need to toss any of my Windows software! Add to this the simply stunning hardware and UI (visually and intuitively) not to mention the fact that Apple is widely known for their general designer-friendlyness (be they of the web, graphic, or video kind), and I’m really salivating.

Sony Vaio (wenge)

Except, I’m torn. I also love Ubuntu. I love the idea of free (as in freedom) software and am in particular agreement with Mark Pilgrim about proprietary file formats, and Mac is honestly no different from PC in this regard. Plus, I recently found the perfect machine to run Ubuntu. The price is right, the specs are more than enough, and the color and texture make me think Ubuntu would be right at home. From a hardware standpoint, I could see myself enjoying this computer as much as I would enjoy a Macbook.

I’ve been coveting laptops for a couple years now, and it may be another year before I finally get me one, but I’m dreading having to make the final decision between Apple and Ubuntu. What should I do? End mark

Solitaire

Posted on

I’ve been a fan of Solitaire card games ever since I was a kid. Klondike is my old favorite, of course, but FreeCell quickly became my game of choice after I learned to play it about five years ago.

I’ve had on my Treo for some time now a collection of 50 Solitaire games called Smallware Solebon, but only recently stumbled across two of them, Eight Off and Beleaguered Castle, that have really struck my fancy. Both games are variants of FreeCell (or perhaps FreeCell is a variant of one of them?1), but each has its own twist that makes it fun to play.

Continue reading ›

  1. I just learned from Wikipedia that Eight Off may be the earliest form of the game, from which variants like Baker’s Game and FreeCell are descended. [↩]

Letter from a Birmingham Jail

Posted on

I’ve mentioned before on this blog that every year my church, Southeast Baptist, has a combined evening service with our sister church, New Pilgrim Baptist, the Sunday before Martin Luther King Day. The two churches take turns hosting the service, with whichever Pastor is visiting providing the sermon. In addition to special music and preaching, they always have someone prepare a 10-15 minute tribute to Reverend King. This year’s tribute made mention of King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, which was interesting to me, since the Desiring God Blog also quoted a section from that letter earlier this week.

Continue reading ›