Entries from January 2006 ↓

This will die down soon enough, but I need to thank Mr. T for something. This site has received more traffic than ever in the last few weeks. Why? Because of the “Twenty Facts About Mr. T” meme that’s infected the Web lately. Honestly, about 90% of the Google searches leading to my blog in the last two weeks have been for “facts Mr T”, “facts about Mr T”, “Mr T facts”, or some other variant.

Thank you, Mr. T, and thanks to all of you folks who stumble upon this place just to find out how long and many women it took to birth the sonofagun.

As some of you already know, Microsoft recently announced that the next version of Internet Explorer, IE 7, will use the well-known orange icon Firefox’s default theme uses for RSS and Atom feeds. As a dedicated Firefox user, I’m pretty excited about the atmosphere this creates for further collaboration among broswer developers to create (and abide by) standards for the web.

You can help to establish the new standard by simply using the icon instead of a text “RSS” link or the graphic. If you haven’t already, check out FeedIcons.com. Download. Customize. Use.

Check the bottom of this site for how I’m using it.

(Tags: RSS, RSS icon, RSS icons, feed icon, feed icons, syndication, really simple syndication)

From John Bunyan . . .

Run, John, run, the law commands
But gives us neither feet nor hands,
Far better news the gospel brings:
It bids us fly and gives us wings.

Click here and listen to this sermon by Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle.

All I can say right now is “wow”. This may well be one of the best sermons I’ve ever heard in my life. I’ve never really thought too deeply about either church planting or God’s love for the city, but this sermon has me thoroughly convinced (and I’m less than HALF WAY through it). If there was ever any doubt in my mind about traveling the 15 or 20 minutes to minister and be ministered to in the heart of downtown Columbus instead of one of the closer suburbs, it’s now gone.

Listen, dang it. It’s long (76m 24s!), but so good.

Personal reflection time.

“Derailment” seems to be a recurring theme in my life. Derailment of plans, of dreams, of aspirations. Usually, the train that is my life has found a new track . . . the right track . . . after such an occurance, but inevitably, what immediately follows a derailment is a trainwreck. A huge, messy, bloody trainwreck with the bodies of passengers strewn about.

Sometimes the derailment is my own fault. For instance . . . I was one of “those” kids. One of those who showed a lot of promise during high school . . . high GPA, high SAT scores, an affinity and natural ability for science and mathematics, generally a pretty smart cookie. In college, sudden independence and a deep depression over the then-recent loss of my mom made for poor bedfellows. Laziness took over. Lack of focus and maturity led to leaving school, derailing what could and should have been a spectacular academic career. Since then, I’ve trainwrecked jobs, romantic relationships, friendships, and probably a bunch of things I don’t even know about . . . none of them purposeful or maliciously, but all resulting from sin’s remaining presence in my life.

Other times, derailment has hit me upside the head from elsewhere. A year ago, I lived in Tennessee. I thought that I was finally getting to a place of routine and normality in my life. My marriage was good, my daughter was growing like a weed, I was taking on more responsibilities at my church, I had a good job . . . life was good, or at least calm. Then I was laid off and couldn’t find decent work. Our reserves ran out quickly and we had no choice but to leave. Trainwrecked again.

Now I’m sitting in Ohio, at a place of relative comfort in my life again. We have a house. I have another good job. I have some friends. We’re in a good church. Conditions are ripe for another derailment.

This whole time, though, God has proven faithful to his word and has given beauty for the ashes of my life. I wonder what’s next.

Holy crap, we are MESSED UP!

So after experimenting with a few themes here and there this weekend, I’ve settled (for now) upon Kyle Neath’s Hemingway. It shows excerpts of the most recent two posts on the front page (click the titles for the full post), and archive links below (among other things).

Simple and minimalistic. I like it. Still some tweaking to do, though.

(edit: I realize that the bottom bar looks odd in IE. If you’re using IE, the fix is to stop that foolishness immediately, and use a better browser.)

If your life and love for God have been influenced by John Piper as much as mine have, please keep him in prayer. Dr. Piper, who so often and so biblically teaches believers on how to suffer for Christ, has been diagnosed with prostate cancer. This cancer has a high survivability rate, but please keep him, his family, and his church in prayer, that they would be ever sustained by the knowledge of God’s supremacy in all things, even cancer.

From Dr. Piper’s letter . . .

This news has, of course, been good for me. The most dangerous thing in the world is the sin of self-reliance and the stupor of worldliness. The news of cancer has a wonderfully blasting effect on both. I thank God for that. The times with Christ in these days have been unusually sweet.

Imagine if all believers had such an attitude when bad news came our way.

(Tags: John Piper)

Great little blog post from Anthony Bradley on the growing (and in my view, troubling) trend of churchgoing (read: “Christian”) married couples intentionally going childless for the sake of “financial readiness” or living the American Dream . . . in other words, hedonism.

Even better than the actual post are the comments . . . most are good and serve to further the discussion . . . just a few express outrage at AB’s “judgmentalism” and “arrogance”. Hilarious.

Check it out here.