A simple experiment in making friends (and thus a community): Let’s gather for a potluck dinner on the second and fourth Thursday evenings of each month.
Open to anyone living in Houserville, Bathgate Springs, Clover Highlands—anyone at all, really, but intended for folks for whom, say, Spring Creek Park is a walkable destination.
“What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured” (Kurt Vonnegut).
This write-up of mine describing the Houserville Social Club on the potluck sign-up sheet on SignUp Genius and the accompanying Vonnegut quote has taken on increasing value in my life recently. As if it really is my mission. Maybe it’s Robin Williams’ death and the admissions of depression that are being published everywhere in its wake that has helped galvanize it.
After an evening with the Houserville Social Club that included a LifeFlight helicopter takeoff, new friends Janine & Kimberly joining us at the table, Wengyi signing up for the email list, a game of cups (frickets) played heartily with Carla, Lara, and the kids, then more dowel/disc/cup fun with just the kids, I find further peace in my current station. I am a:
lover of God,
husband,
father,
brother,
son,
dilettante,
DiamondBack Truck Covers desk jockey,
church member,
neighbor,
community organizer,
someday adopter of children in need,
helper of the cause of the Gospel in the Maldives,
prayer warrior,
and patient, skilled, act-ive lover of anyone who happens to be around me at any time, regardless of socioeconomic class, IQ, or other human differentiator.
The list above is enough of an identity and set of pursuits to satisfy this hungry-for-meaning soul. I need do no other “great” things. If I fulfill my roles above with all my might (the specific, mutable ones subject to Your...
“…nor do we know what to do, but our eyes are on You” (Jehoshaphat in 2 Chronicles 20:12). My, what a timely verse to pass on to Eric, who lost his job and has to decide what to do, and what a fine motto for any time like that.
“And seeing the man who had been healed standing with them, they had nothing to say in reply“ (Acts 4:14). Miracles silence Your opponents. That’s what makes their dearth so curious.
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” is merely a more rhetorical way of saying, “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
Nevertheless, I do question whether incredulity toward an ancient miracle-claim is reason to withhold eternal life from those You love. If doubting Thomas gets a pass—[with a rebuke](John 20:24-29), I readily admit—why not the rest of us?
I’ve written it before: I am going to live my ordinary life in an extraordinary way: Rejoicing always, praying without ceasing, giving thanks in all circumstances, in humility of mind regarding those around me as more important than myself, loving You with all my heart, mind, soul and strength in my quotidian. I guarantee the non-quotidian will follow from there.
Singings lessons didn’t feel as good this week as they did last week. But I’m taking it in stride: As with Carla and local governance, I still have so much to learn about singing.
Tom Lundin, Dan Sharda, and I trotted over to the ballfield at Spring Creek Park to toss a disc this evening during a Shardas-are-here! shindig at our house that also included Stacy Tibbets. In the end, we ended up playing a game in which Jori Sharda tossed the disc long-distance to all three of us and we fought for it. What happy, sweaty exercise it was! And now that I think about it, the fun bears some relation in my mind to my recent hypothesis that physical affection between heterosexual men in Western societies such as our own will rebound once homosexual men no longer face stigma.
Good news for folks like me who sometimes worry whether Jesus’ instructions to the rich young ruler to sell 100% of what he owned and distribute it to the poor might be required of you to inherit eternal life per Luke 18:18-27: In the very next chapter, Jesus said Zaccheus was saved upon pledging just half.
I understand why trust is a virtue, particularly trust in the almighty creator. I don’t understand by it has to be just so blind, nor do I understand why it is the virtue on which salvation from death depends.
Given how tired we are recently because of our over-engagement, I’m going to set an idealistic guideline for how many evenings a week I will make prescheduled plans for: No more than four. Time to start practicing my N word: no.
He’s Indonesian, Japanese, American, now Dutch.
Jimmy Hutasoit, we will miss you very much.
May you find a church with other folks who really really care.
Above it all, we pray, may you find Jesus Christ o’er there.
Since Licona will be using plausibility “as the most important criterion” (p.113), his chapter entitled “The Historian and Miracles,” which comes up next, had better be good.
He also says that since to hypothesize a real resurrection of Jesus is to hypothesize a singular event, you can’t apply Bayes’ theorem because you can’t asses the prior probability of a unique event (p. 120). But what if your hypothesis is that the report of Jesus’ resurrection is false? Couldn’t you assess the prior probability of a resurrection report’s falsehood by looking at other the veracity of other resurrection reports?
To a skeptic materialist, ’tis no bad news to hear that God will annihilate him for his disbelief, because on that we already agree: To a materialist, annihilation is what happens to us at death anyway.
While walking with God through a nearby neighborhood in the wake of a few spats this morning with wife about housekeeping, it finally clicked: The housekeeping and homemaking is her work. It may even be helpful to compare the house to my computer and desktop workspace. Before I do any of the following again, it would be best to consider how it would make me feel if anyone came to my computer or desktop workspace and did the same:
Leave items in places they shouldn’t be
Move items that are not mine
Change settings without asking
Argue forcefully about the proper place or protocol for something
Religious faith is a virtue only in that it constitutes trust and trustworthiness, the former of which is virtuous only if there is Someone worth trusting. So it’s no wonder atheists question its virtue.
