Seasons

Yard work isn’t my favorite task; it’s one of those things that gets done because it needs to be done, not because I really want to do it. But there is something increasingly pleasant about the pattern of life as I see it develop year after year. This will be our third autumn in this house, and so the third season of cold afternoons raking until dark, brisk Saturdays cleaning out gutters, and warm cups of tea waiting for me back in the house. When the raking gets long I will take comfort in the knowledge that in just a few weeks all the leaves will have fallen, the bags will have been collected, and all that will remain in this year’s outdoor maintenance is to prepare the snowblower for its season of work.

They say time speeds up as you get older, and I can understand why they say so. Children have a particular way of making time fly. Wasn’t it just yesterday that little girl was born? Today she sits up on her own, sports two teeth, and grabs everything in sight. Wasn’t it just recently I graduated from college? And yet the new grads at work this year look like mere children. When did I get old? What I am starting to see, though, is the joy in the patterns of life across the years.

Laura is old enough to attend Sunday School this fall, and she came up a few weeks ago chattering “day, night. day, night”. She’s learned about all the other things God created, too, but she has been stuck on “day, night”. At night when we pray I’ve been reinforcing to her that we’re praying to God who made day and night, sun, moon and stars (also favorites of hers!), and who made her. At her young age, I’m sure “day, night” seems like a long time; but even now she can start to learn the patterns that God has so beautifully designed for us. And before too long she’ll be out helping rake the leaves, mow the grass, and shovel the snow.

Writing this suddenly I feel old. I can take some short-lived comfort in the knowledge that my 30th birthday is still nearly 5 months off, but I know that it will come all too soon. (Some of my readers will say that 30 isn’t old - humor me for a minute.) I can be content, though, in knowing that the God who designs and upholds the days, seasons, and years has designed them for me, and me for them. And I can enjoy living them and passing the lessons of life on to my little girls. God is good.

Best-laid plans... don't always work out.

Last night I was headed to bed at a relatively early hour, and as I prepared to go to sleep I decided I’d get up and run this morning. I haven’t run much lately, and I need to. This morning was going to be relatively warm, good for running.

Then the Bears staged an amazing comeback and won the football game. I had to keep watching. The game ended at 11 PM, I figured I’d still be OK.

Then Laura woke up at 3 AM. And again at 4:30 AM. She pitched a fit when I told her she had to go back to sleep. I left her in her crib. At 5:00 she was back awake. So I brought her into our bed. She was awake until 5:30 when I finally got up to get ready for work. By 6:20 when I was leaving the house she was finally sleeping. Hopefully she sleeps in a while.

Needless to say, I didn’t get any running done this morning. And I think I’ll be finding something to drink with caffine in it here very soon now.

Children are an amazing blessing. But that doesn’t mean they won’t keep you up at night one way or another. :-)

Thank goodness for the weekend!

It’s managed to be a busy week, but now the weekend is upon us. Finally!

This afternoon Becky and I are headed to the MAC to play some racquetball, then we’ll go (with the girls) out for supper and down to the coffeehouse to hear Billy Heller - first time in a long time to hear him!

Nothing really scheduled for Saturday. Sunday is church and then possibly a babysitter and a date with Becky! Gotta love the weekend.

Gotta run...

I got out for a run yesterday afternoon - probably the first time in 2 weeks that I’ve run. It feels good to be a little bit sore this morning. It’s going to be hard to get too motivated to run these next few days - it’s gonna be cold and windy. But we just got a membership to the MAC (a local gym) so I’ll be using it instead.

Within the next month they should have the satellite MAC complete and open; it’s going to be only about a mile from home. And my good friend and former associate pastor John Wilbur will be co-managing it. Excellent. They are also bragging about individual 19" LCD TVs on every treadmill and elliptical. Almost sounds like overkill… almost.

I guess my 5K race running is done for the fall; the only ones remaining around here are on Sunday mornings. Grrrr. I’ll have to keep busy on the treadmills over the winter and then I’ll be ready for some spring races. I could get into this running stuff.

The Interweb is Fun!

So yesterday after church I posted a recording of Andrew and me singing a song in church.

Talking to Andrew later in the afternoon, apparently shortly after lunch he gets a call from his girlfriend in Portland. She says “hi, how ya doin, have you heard this song before?” And then he recognizes the song she’s playing him… yep, it’s that song we did just hours before. He was dumbfounded. “We just sang that song in church this morning,” he spluttered. Then he realized. I had already posted it on my blog, she had already read it, and she was calling to let him know. Too cool.

Oh, and Heather, if you read this, leave a comment or something to say hi. :-)

Goodbye FeedLounge, Hello, Google Reader!

I’ve been using FeedLounge for several months now (ever since they came out of beta!) as my online feed reader. It has, without a doubt, the nicest UI (user interface, for my non-geek readers) of any feed reader, online or off, that I’ve ever come across. At the time I signed up, none of the other online feed readers were much good; Bloglines was the best of the bunch, but still not great. So I ponied up my $5/month and felt like it was an OK deal.

The convergence fo a few events have caused my thinking to change in the past week. First, I ran across the new and improved Google Reader. And boy, is it improved. There are still a few little things I wish it had (like choosing your sort order - I like to read from oldest to newest), but for the most part, it does everything I want a feed reader to do. Second, FeedLounge has been through a couple of frustrating hiccups this week, two separate issues causing multi-hour downtimes. Third, I’d like to save the $5/month. So, I dumped my OPML file from FeedLounge, imported it into Google Reader, and I’m good to go. I cancelled my FeedLounge subscription this morning.

Now I know Geof will have some comment to post here; he’s been using FeedLounge since the very beginning, maybe even before that; heck, he even had a version of it named in his honor! And I can’t fault him for sticking with it; it’s a great product. But market forces really do work; given the choice of a lower-priced, similar-and-acceptable functionality product, I’ll make the switch.

Gracious Words

In reply to the “controversy” of John Piper’s comments regarding Mark Driscoll at the DG2006 conference, Driscoll has graciously posted an email interaction between him and Dr. Piper. A brief quote:

As far as your comments regarding me, I welcome them but must confess that maybe telling me them before they get sent out to cyber world like fresh meat to feed all my critics would be preferable. Either way, I love, respect, and appreciate you very much and have an open ear for any counsel or criticism from you. Perhaps some day I can take a few minutes to tell you my life story as it may help to explain a bit of who I am and make our friendship even simpler. It was a tremendous honor to be in the company of men I have learned much from over the years and made the celebration of 10 years in ministry all the more memorable. This past weekend was one of the highlights of my life. So, thank you very much and I pray you get some rest after the conference.

Praise God for gracious servants who are willing to openly share their lives with us. Blessings on both Dr. Piper and Pastor Driscoll.

DG2006: The Audio is Up

One of the things the DG folks do right: all the audio from the Desiring God 2006 National Conference is available, online, for free, today. That’s right, no waiting 2 months for an expensive tape set. You can download it this morning.

http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/EventMessages/ByDate/

DG2006: Piper rebukes Driscoll's "cleverness"

I am sad that this is the moment that most sticks in my mind from the Desiring God 2006 National Conference, but it’s still rankling me, so I’ll post about it here and see if it generates any discussion.

Josh Harris has posted the best summary of Piper’s comments thus far. Note that all this was said after Driscoll had left to catch his flight back to Seattle. Josh narrates:

Piper began by explaining how he thinks about who he hangs out with and how he decides who to invite to speak. “I have a litmus paper and its called theology,” he said. He referenced a point Driscoll had made in his talk about the importance of holding certain unchanging truths in our left hand that are the non-negotiables of the faith, while being willing to contextualize and differ on secondary issues and stylistically (these are “right hand” issues). Driscoll had listed nine issues we need to contend for, including the authority of God’s word, the sovereignty of God, Penal Substitutionary Atonement, the exclusivity of Christ, and gender roles, to name a few.

So Piper said, “If he [Driscoll] has those nine things in his left hand, I’m not even going to look at his right hand.” The audience clapped loudly for this. Then Piper went on to share that he does have some differences with Driscoll on some so-called “right hand” issues of style, which he feels free to share with Driscoll. He went on to share a specific one, noting that Driscoll would get to see this on video. (This was the moment I was glad I wasn’t Mark!)

As if he were speaking to Mark, he said (and I paraphrase), “A pastor cannot be clever and show Christ as glorious. Mark Driscoll, you’re clever. You have an amazing ability to turn a phrase and make statements that draw people back week after week. But it’s dangerous. So many pastors will see you and try to imitate you and then try to watch all the movies and TV shows so they can try to be like you.” In essence, Piper was bringing correction to certain aspects of Driscoll’s style and delivery, while stating that they agreed on the most important issues of doctrine.

Now Josh is very charitable in his evaluation of these remarks: “I felt in his statement not just a correction for Driscoll, but for me and every other young preacher learning to proclaim the good news of the glorious savior. Thank God we get to learn from guys like Piper. Thank God they’re talking to us. I’d rather be corrected by John Piper than cooed over by someone else.” But they rubbed me the wrong way. And yes, I’m aware of the irony of posting critical comments about someone’s critical comments.

Two things. First of all, Piper contradicts himself. First he says that as long as the doctrine is sound, I’m not going to look at the “right hand”. But then he goes on to look at, evaluate, and rebuke the right hand. Decide which it is, brother.

Second, I think Piper should’ve stopped after the first part of the statement. Affirm the guy, say you’ll stand with him if he’s right on doctrine, then stop. If Piper felt a public rebuke was necessary, he should’ve done it in the context of a discussion where Driscoll was present and able to respond. But to rebuke Driscoll after he had left, and on matters of style, not of content, to me seems to have been the wrong move. It only served to highlight the discomfortable divide that still remains between the “old guard” and Driscoll. And as Piper himself said in the first part of the statement, we need to contend for doctrine, and then let the other stuff go. I think he should have followed his own advice.

Update: Adrian Warnock reports. Michael Spencer discusses.

Desiring God 2006 National Conference

I got home about 2:30 this morning from two days in Minneapolis at the Desiring God 06 National Conference. Richard and I got up there Friday afternoon, and after a tasty dinner at Brit’s Pub, we perused the massive book sale before heading in for session one.

I’ll just thumbnail the conference in this post, then if I’m motivated I may post more in depth in future posts. If you want to get a good summary of the conference speakers, go to challies.com. Amazing how much info he’s got on there.

The opening night speaker was David Wells; he’s a professor at a seminary in Massachussets, a charming older British gent who spoke on The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World. Good stuff.

After the opening session I walked 8 blocks or so over to Block E to meet several folks from the dot net. It was fun to get to meet these people face to face; Erik and Rhea, Mike and Rachel (and little 3-week old Emma), Rae and Amy, and Jamie.

Saturday morning brought a continued quality slate of speakers: Voddie Baucham, Tim Keller, Mark Driscoll, and Don Carson. They were very good, excellent, best of the conference, and somewhat academic, but still thoughtful, respectively.

We took off right after Don Carson spoke in the evening and high-tailed it back to Iowa. Richard still had to be at church for Sunday morning; I got my brother Andrew to lead music for me so I could sleep in. Thanks bub!