RIP

We are gathered here today to mourn the loss of some very important members of our family. To the front tree/bush (Stumpy) you provided many a play club and I know you are much happier to not be a confused bush/stump anymore.
To the back dead tree (aka Hammock Holder), thank you for leaving enough of you left so that we can keep enjoying the hammock.
They are survived by Big Boy who continues to keep our A/C costs down and the Black Sheep (a tree that's attacking our telephone pole and serves no purpose other than oxygen production).

Know you will remembered fondly by those little children who counted you shady and useful.

Rest in...wood chips.

Lectures are Fun!

This last week has been hands-down what I look for in a summer...I've done nothing! The kids and I have barely left the house. What have we been doing?
Well...

-I've been reading outdoors and indoors and anywhere in between.
-listened to a plethora of podcasts and lectures (I'm listening to lectures from Reformed Theological Seminary)
-I've played guitar.
-The kids have played with their friends in our yard, our house, the neighbors yard and the neighbor's house.

They've had their moments of being bored, but it doesn't take too long (if I ignore the whining) for them to figure it out.

It's a good thing I've had time to read and listen since I'm teaching my Wednesday group on the subject of canonization of the scriptures. It's an infinately fascinating subject. Amazing how God planned the Word out and has kept it as He wants it for the last 1900 years!

FIFA Baby!

I don't know if any of you watch soccer...but I came to enjoy it beause of my husband who played soccer through his college years. I still don't understand a lot of the rules or formations, but I can now appreciate a clean, skilled match.

All that to say, did you watch the US vs Brazil today?! What a game! Why can't we play like this all the time?!

DCLA 2009

If your teens are in LA this week for the DCLA conference tell them to wave at the security team. My hubby's the serious looking one with the beard!

Terminology Overdrive

Is it just me or do we seem to be moving hyperquick through definative words these days? I was struck by this with some religious terminology today. In the early 2000s there was a lot of talk about the seeker-friendly movement and now it seems that this term may be applied to a movement called the emergent church...not sure what the term was before seeker friendly, but it seems like a good applicable word ought to be a part of the common vernacular for more than a decade.

We seem to have national word fads on a yearly basis and I for one cannot keep up...how in the world are you supposed to be conversant and educated if you have to research a new term for a movement every year. Though, I guess in reality, when it comes to philosophy and theology, many of the movements could be called by any number of terms since the time of Christ.

I recommend researching this term "emergent" church. There's also the "emerging" church which is somewhat different...but if you want to be up on the conversation it may behoove you to do the legwork.

Anyone have thoughts on the emergent or emerging movements? I'd love to hear them.

Your Average Ho-Hum Day?

The first part of my day today was highly unusual and enjoyable. My friend Jess (whom I first met when we were babies in the church nursery) was in town with her hubby. They stayed at our house last night and we spent this morning catching up on life. I haven't seen her much since I moved here after high school. I love her steady and deep character and her sense of humor that reminds me so much of my husband.

The latter part of my day had an all-too-familiar hectic hour in it.

It's rent day.

We're short again.

This means I need to try and turn in the rent check in just before the office closes so that hopefully they won't try to cash it until Monday...at which time we'll (God willing) have it covered.

The added white knuckle aspect to driving the 20 minutes to the office today was that the car I was driving had an indecipherable amount of gas...all I could tell is that it was close to empty.

But, God's hand was on us and we made back into Golden before the low fuel light turned on.

That latter part...that's typical. So, I wait with hope to see how God displays Himself in providing for our needs this week.

Quotes of the Day

" I fear there are some who preach with the view of amusing men, and as long as people can be gathered in crowds, and their ears can be tickled, and they can retire pleased with what they have heard, the orator is content, and folds his hands, and goes back self-satisfied. But Paul did not lay himself out to please the public and collect the crowd. If he did not save them he felt that it was of no avail to interest them. Unless the truth had pierced their hearts, affected their lives, and made new men of them, Paul would have gone home crying, 'Who hath believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?'...
Now observe, brethren, if I, or you, or any of us, or all of us, shall have spent our lives merely in amusing men, educating men, or moralizing men, when we shall come to give our account at the last great day we shall be in a very sorry condition, and we shall have but a very sorry record to render; for of what avail will it be to a man to be educated when he comes to be damned? Of what service will it be to him to have been amused when the trumpet sounds, and heaven and earth are shaking, and the pit opens wide her jaws of fire and swallows up the soul unsaved? Of what avail even to have moralized a man if still he is on the left hand of the judge, and if still, 'Depart, ye cursed,' shall be his portion?'
-C.H. Spurgeon (great preacher of the nineteenth century)

"The pragmatic philosophy...asks no embarrassing questions about the wisdom of what we are doing or even about the morality of it. It accepts our chosen ends as right and good and casts about for efficient means and ways to get them accomplished. When it discovers something that works it soon finds a text to justify it, 'consecrates' it to the Lord and plunges ahead. Next a magazine article is written about it, then a book, and finally the inventor is granted an honorary degree. After that any question about the scripturalness of things or even the moral validity of them is completely swept away. You cannot argue with success. The method works; ergo, it must be good."
-quoted in John MacArthur's "Ashamed of the Gospel"