Sunday Sermon

This morning I had the privilege to preach at the Noelridge Sunday morning services. My text was Exodus 18, entitled “A Father-In-Law’s Lesson” - based on the lesson that Jethro had for Moses. I think it went pretty well, I was excited to have the chance to preach again. For those of you interested, you can download the sermon (mp3, 7.1 MB) or stream it here.

Edit: It sounds like I screwed up the audio; instead of converting it to mono, I managed to just delete one of the tracks. I also need to amplify the whole thing a bit. Maybe tonight. Still, if you can stand just listening to it in one ear, go for it.

I uploaded the new audio just now - converted it to full mono and amplified it so that it is about the right volume. Gotta love Audacity.

Stuff

Life has been crazy this week, keeping me from writing much in the way of a thoughtful post about anything. I will inadequately attempt to make up for this by providing some random bullets from my week.

  • Orlando, here we come. My employer has decided to send me to a “technology forum” put on by a microprocessor company. It appears to me that “technology forum” is code words for “wine and dine the engineers so they’ll buy our product.” It’s the last week in June, and we’re planning that Becky will come along on the trip. She’s just slightly excited.
  • Sermon preparation. I will be in the pulpit Sunday at Noelridge. (I’ll try to remember to post audio next week for the 0.03% of you that are interested.) Secret sneak preview for my few NPC readers: Jethro. You can figure it out from there. Actually, you probably can’t. So you have to come and listen on Sunday. Ha!
  • Jabber servers, MySQL, PHP. Set up a Jabber server on a machine here at work for a project this week. Used Wildfire, it went super-easy. Then learned enough PHP to generate web pages that display a given days’ chat logs by pulling them out of the database. Good times.
  • Arcade Fire. Been listening to their latest album Neon Bible this morning and I like it.
  • “Get the picture.” With some unexpected funds coming in I am hoping to buy a digital SLR camera. I have my eye on a Nikon D70s, hoping to be able to order it next week.

Back home... at least for a day

Got home last night from a quick business trip to Salt Lake City. I haven’t been to SLC since a family trip many years ago. It’s a beautiful place, and the weather was fresh and warming to spring. My co-worker and I spent 2 days in meetings before flying home. All in all, a good, worthwhile trip, uneventful flights, not bad at all. It was sure good to be home and see Becky and the girls again.

Tomorrow morning we’ll be heading out for Wisconsin to see my folks over Easter weekend. It will be good to see them again - it’s only been a few weeks, I guess, but still… the girls change so much in just a few weeks, I’m sure they’ll be amazed.

That’s the basic update from the home front. I’m debating pre-buying (and then downloading) the new Derek Webb album (on Amazon or check it out at www.theringingbell.com) so I can take it along on our drive tomorrow. I’m listening to it streaming right now and it sounds really good. I’m also shopping around for a Digital SLR camera. At the moment I have my eye on a Nikon D70s. I’m hoping in the next few weeks I’ll be able to put in the order.

Well, enough for now.

Entering the Whirlwind

I feel like I’ve been in it for a few days already, but I know there’s still more to come this week.

Friday afternoon I drove four hours to Omaha to see Andy Osenga in concert at a little place called The Foundry. It was a great show, fun to see Andy again and visit. There was a 7:00 Saturday morning elder meeting scheduled at church, so I had to turn around and head back home right after the show. What I did learn from that experience was that the right combination of diet pop, sweet tea, Red Bull, and candy will keep me wide awake on a four-hour drive in the middle of the night. Good to know.

Saturday was the aforementioned meeting and then time at home to catch up a bit - cleaning, spending time with the family, watching some of the Final Four on TV. Also watched a pretty cool SciFi channel miniseries that I’d TiVo’d back in December called The Lost Room. Becky even enjoyed it. Good stuff.

Sunday morning I led music for both services, then we had an afternoon elder meeting, then the church’s annual meeting in the evening. Thank the Lord most of that stuff is done with for now.

Now it’s Monday morning, and I’ll be at work for a few hours before heading home, eating lunch with the family, and then flying out to Salt Lake City for a quick trip for work. I’ll be back home on Wednesday night.

Friday morning I get off work (Good Friday) and so we are taking the girls up to my folks’ place for the weekend. The girls will have fun seeing Grandma and Grandpa again. By the time I get back home on Sunday night, well, I’ll be ready to be home for a while. :-)

Welcome to the Whirlwind. It’s a wild ride.

Name That Tune

[Meme fearlessly stolen from CJ].

Step 1: Put your ipod on random. Step 2: Post the first line from the first 25 songs that play, no matter how embarassing. Step 3: Strike out the songs when someone guesses correctly.

Now, y’all got lucky here and got some easy ones. Bonus points to the person who guesses the artist for #1.

  1. Crown him with many crowns, the Lamb upon the throne
  2. It’s all right, it’s all right, carrier, carrier…
  3. Well I can always tell a liar, and I always know a thief
  4. She turns like the ocean, she tells no emotion
  5. From glass alabaster she poured out the depths of her soul
  6. Part of me, you are part of me I never want to lose
  7. Save yourself, cause the only thing that matters that you get away from the pain and the thought of losing your mind
  8. All your ways and all your thunder got me in a haste running for cover
  9. I started asking some questions about your walk with the Lord
  10. Feel the weight of this passing time all those crazy faces run through my mind
  11. I was thinking the other day, what if cartoons got saved
  12. Another day that I’m runnin’ and I hear somebody pounding on my door
  13. Hard times have fallen on you even when you smile I see the hurt come through
  14. I mount up with waxen wings, high to reach the sun
  15. Once upon a time you dressed so fine
  16. Every tree is green again in the wood out of my back door
  17. You dwell in glory, the heavens are your home
  18. There’s a man goin’ round taking names
  19. In your hands I know he could be a man of peace
  20. I stood on that Cherokee plain and the Cimarron broke free and jumped its banks
  21. It’s a muggy night in Houston
  22. Barbara Manatee, you are the one for me
  23. Hard time here and everywhere you go, times is harder than ever been before
  24. No one serves both God and money
  25. I thought we would always be together, never be apart

Have fun!

A real post

This place has been full of links lately and very short on actual posts. Partly that’s been due to some network difficulties, partly that’s just been due to my own laziness. So finally I’ve got my blog reconfigured so I can get to it all the time, and now it’s time to write something.

Becky was remarking last night on how funny we are with our scheduling. If we have our whole week scheduled full with stuff, we go crazy. It’s just too much. We have to have a couple of nights on the calendar kept open just for us as a family. That being said, when we have nights free on the calendar, we are unlikely to just stay home; more often we’re out doing something as a family. (Maybe this’ll change a little more now that spring is here and there is more outside work to be done?)

Take last night, for instance. We had the night free, so what did we do? Head to Coralville to the mall. Becky needed some summer clothes, so we spent a few hours, found a bunch of stuff for her, ate some supper there, and got home way past the girls’ bedtime. But it was a good night. Now morning has just come a little early. :-)

I’ve got a bunch of travel coming up in the next week. Friday afternoon I’m driving to Omaha to see Andy Osenga play a concert. I’m planning to just drive back after the show, so it’ll be a lot of hours on the road, but still definitely worth it.

Then Monday I’m headed out on a trip for work to Salt Lake City, and will be there until Wednesday night. Then with Friday off (Good Friday), we’re heading up to Wisconsin to visit my folks for Easter weekend. So yeah, it’ll be nice to finally be back home after all that. So far April isn’t booked up too much… dunno how long that’ll last. :-)

Having thus caught up on the trivial business of my life, I’ll sign off.

A Resolution

As I updated my 2007 reading list yesterday, I became convicted about how many novels of dubious quality I’ve read (23 books in 75 days!) and how short my time in the Scripture has been lately. As such, I am making this resolution: for the next month (March 20 - April 20), I am going to restrict my reading to just the Bible. I want to read it in broad pieces, to try to pick up the sweep of the grand story of God’s work.

I don’t know how far I’ll get in just a month, but I have a feeling it’ll be a ways. So don’t expect any reading page updates for a while. I don’t think it’ll be a great loss. :-)

Which comes first: committment or vision?

In the midst of a church meeting last night discussing our church’s future plans, a question came up that I imagine we will be wrestling with in future weeks.  I’m not entirely sure what I think the answer is yet, so I’ll post it here to see if any of you have comments.

The question goes something like this: in the context of a church, which comes first?  Do people first have to get “the vision”, and then will respond with committment?  Or rather, do people first need to be committed to serve, and then begin to see the vision of the church ministry?

Still chewing on this one…

Paradise Pens Customer Service: Top Notch

Just thought I’d follow up on my post from last week about my experience with Paradise Pens.

On Tuesday, five days (and only three business days) after making that phone call, I received, via UPS, a replacement fountain pen. It had obviously been opened and tested out to ensure that it was in good shape before sending it to me. Then I noticed the mailing label. While I had bought my original pen in Arlington, VA, they shipped the replacement from their store in Minneapolis at the Mall of America, presumably since it was the closest store to me in Iowa. It impressed me that they would make that extra effort.

Two days later in a separate package I received another envelope with a pre-paid UPS shipping label and a nice handwritten note from the manager of the Arlington store. All I had to do was drop the old pen in the box, apply the label, and drop it off at a local UPS store.

I’ve been using my pen all week and have really been enjoying it. I’m thinking if I ever get another one, I’ll be wanting a fine nib instead of the medium one that this pen has; I like to write in a fairly small script and it’s hard to do with the wider nib. But overall, I am very, very impressed with the customer service I received. I will definitely be visiting Paradise Pens again when I go back to DC in May.

Billboards from God

On my way home from work every day I pass a billboard that frustrates me. It’s a simple message, white text on a black background. It’s designed to look like a written note. The words:

One nation under Me.

--God

Undoubtedly this billboard was purchased by some well-meaning evangelical wanting to make a point about their beliefs that American was a Christian country, should continue to be a Christian country, etc, and remind us about the battle over the Pledge of Allegiance. I don’t want to debate those points at all. Not that I necessarily agree with them exactly, but there are people in my congregation that would wholeheartedly agree with them, and I don’t have time to write a full, thoughtful response to the ideas; nor do I want to offend them by giving a less than thoughtful answer. So let’s leave that particular question alone.

These signs with ‘messages from God’ aren’t something new - they’ve been a staple on billboards for the past several years, and on church signs for many years before that. Even the Life Magazine that came in today’s newspaper had a collection of photos of church signs, including the ever-popular “let’s meet at my house today before the game – God” sign. (As an interesting aside, one church is now using a reverse strategy: messages from Satan.) In general, my attitude is iffy-but-OK with this type of message. Many times they just come across as cheesy (such as the church sign example above), but sometimes they can manage to be thought-provoking instead.

But this particular billboard really bothers me. Why? Because, first of all, it’s not something God ever said. The “One nation, under God” phrase was added to our Pledge of Allegiance by Congress, back in the fifties. I guess it’s become all too common today to put our words in God’s mouth, but this seems pretty flagrant. Second, I’m not sure it’s a message that God would endorse. I don’t think God is worried too much about America becoming a “Christian nation” again. God is much more concerned with people, individuals, coming to Him and being a part of His kingdom. God’s focus is the Church, not the political system or national structure.

My call is that we set our priorities by His priorities. Sure, that’s easy to say, harder to work out. But there are some places where it can be pretty clear. Let’s put our focus on forwarding Christ’s kingdom, not in trying to restore a “Christian nation”. If God wills, our country will come around. If not, well, God knows what He’s doing. My guess it you’re not going to find out about it, though, from a billboard.