Scott Stilson

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“Where God closes His holy mouth, I will desist from inquiry.”

— John Calvin

Now there’s a thought.

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Hanging out with people is the only way to save the poor in spirit. Do I remember the two wall-to-wall days I spent with Uncle Chris? What a joy, and it touched his soul. It’s the only way—at least, the only way conceivable for me—for people like him and César to make their way out of moral and circumstantial poverty. But what am I to do? If I were a single man, I think I’d keep my job at DiamondBack and take it with me as I went on medium-term mission trips to live with César in Callao and with anyone I met who was a pariah, and I would hang out with them.

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My journal app’s daily prompt is prompting me to describe my cooking skills. I can:

Grilling is something I know the movements for but have no deep knowledge of (so don’t ask me to grill your chicken).

Baking is a foreign land. I leave exploring it to Carla.

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I’m sorry, posterity. I feel no urge to journal these days. And that’s despite many interesting things happening these days, including:

By 10:15 at night, I find little interest or strength for journaling.

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I have spent thought and lament the past several evenings trying to understand what exactly Jesus accomplished by dying on the Cross and, more acutely, how He accomplished it. And as if prompted by my worries, one of my favorite bloggers wrote a piece called, “Why Did Jesus Have to Die?” In it he provides the most comprehensive list of understandings of the Atonement I’ve ever seen in one place before.

And none of them are striking to me as it.

Still, there’s enough there to go on, I guess. And more important, I believe Jesus is the promised Jewish Messiah and the living lord of all. And I am going to follow Him.

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Calvin and Hobbes discuss how conversations often focus on TV and movies rather than real-life interactions, leading to Calvin lamenting about not having a TV in his room.

This is how I feel.

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Here is a list of things from today that were gratifying, and which, therefore, because by some strange extension You are the giver of all good things, I thank You, God:

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I am a flexitarian, or a reducetarian, or a pollo-pescetarian. But I also think I’ll keep hunting deer.

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A person is standing on a wooden platform high above a forest floor covered in brown leaves, next to a tree.

Quick brainstorm of everything that I enjoyed about today:

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Doubt baby review:

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I think we could resolve some problems if we simply renamed the secular holiday, so that there’s the Christian holiday, “Christmas,” and the secular, gift-giving holiday, “Festivus”.

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If, when I’m old, you were to ask me to tell you one thing about my life as it was today, I predict I’d tell you that today I worked on DiamondBack’s new website from the living room of the house of Carla’s Aunt Laurel (actually her cousin once removed). I made my own tea and found some penne and pasta sauce that I made for myself for lunch. It was pleasant.

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Scott: Are any of my accents good?
Éa: Well, I don’t like them, so I don’t know.

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I am less self-disciplined, less loving, and less diligent whenever Carla leaves.

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I’m in no mood to journal: I feel disappointed in myself today for underaccomplishing, mostly because I didn’t make time to exercise today and haven’t managed to wheel back to get any post-launch work done on Frank’s website.

But Ethan and I had a stimulating conversation about how to live our lives following Jesus while we watched Sullivan and Everley take swim lessons and Éa and Anthem clamber around the bleachers. Unfortunately, it makes me want to get Carla to quit her jobs so we can more readily foster children.

Being a Christian family man can be confusing (see 1 Corinthians 7:32–35).

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I set up my sit-stand desk this afternoon, courtesy of DiamondBack Truck Covers and Varidesk. Here’s to my long-term physical health. Now to get a standing mat.

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Carla has been peevish recently. But so have I. It’s a cycle. I realized one way to break the cycle is to drop my expectation that anyone, including my wife and kids, act perfectly lovingly all the time. I don’t, so why should I expect them to?

I’ll go further: When a demand is made of me or a disagreement voiced, let my first instinct be to satisfy the demand or come to accord quickly and happily. Obviously, I won’t be a pushover, but I will be a volunteer, a happy second-miler.

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For this reason we don’t lose heart. Even if our outer humanity is decaying, our inner humanity is being renewed day by day. This slight momentary trouble of ours is working to produce a weight of glory, passing and surpassing everything, lasting forever; for we don’t look at the things that can be seen, but at the things that can’t be seen. After all, the things you can see are here today and gone tomorrow; but the things you can’t see are everlasting (2 Corinthians 4:16-18, KNT).

We look at the things that can’t be seen. That’s a religious paradox strict empiricist might choke on. But besides being poetic, it’s true, and whether the objects of our gaze are real or not, our hope in them has real sustaining power.

It’s also leads to a thought we as believers ought to remember: We are, in the end, talking about Someone invisible. Why balk at the idea that some folks don’t believe?

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With apologies to philosophers and neuroscientists who believe there is no such thing as free will, we humans are the only (or perhaps one of just a few) species capable of choosing what we consume and how. We have a huge responsibility.

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Here’s an approachable, thorough article about easy measures you can take to extend the battery life of your iPhone between charges, courtesy of former Apple employee David Payette.

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As this first day of my sprint toward getting a minimum viable website up for Frank and PolyGreen America ends, I am reminded that hobbies are happiest when they are not only enjoyable, but also seen as a form of generosity. In the case of web-development-on-the-side-that-disturbs-my-schedule-equilibirum, the enjoyment is possible only when I view it as such.

So Lord, let me renew that vantage on this work—and all work, really.

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I have started in earnest on marking up Frank’s website. And once again, I ask myself: Why do I do this?

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Auto-generated description: A smiling child is standing near a bunk bed, holding a string attached to a small, cube-shaped object covered in paper and tape.

I am proud of my engineering-minded boy, this being an invention of his for transferring goods from his bunk to Éa’s and back, constructed of old box staples, string left over from the driveway sealers, paper, and electrical tape.

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If, when I’m old, you were to ask me to tell you one thing about my life as it was today, I predict I’d tell you it was a day all four of us attended Clearwater Conservancy’s annual meeting at Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Gray’s Woods. Pure Cane Sugar provided background music. We enjoyed grilled shrimp, baked squash, couscous, apple cider, and more. Betsy Whitman got to know me and vice versa a little after the business part of the meeting was done. But I pick this gathering as my thing to share from today because I came home feeling a shade lonely and jealous of Carla.

Why? Because our lives are structured in a way that facilitates her enjoying hours of leisure.

To be clear, I’m not saying she doesn’t pull her weight around the house. I’m really just saying she gets to be more social—both in a pure sense and in a project- or cause-oriented sense—than I, by a long shot. I’ve spent the whole week without having really touched or talked with anyone other than my three favorites.

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The important thing is not to obsess.