Caleb

I said something today that I have since ralised was not true. I was having breakfast (late enough in the day that it could have been lunch) with a good friend that I have not spent time with in a while and was questioned about how busy work and life in general have been since I have been home. My answer was in the usuall vein of how rediculous things get and how consuming work is.

I believe my answer was unfair to God. It failed to give Him credit for what he was accomplished in that area specifically. One of my prayers while doing work for Him in other parts of the world was that when I got back to Ouray I would be able to continue to continue in His service and not loose focus on things like work.

Since being home I have spent a lot of time in front of a computer screen doing my usual sys-admin and developer type work — fixing a months worth of bugs and fighting the spam fight that every ISP knows they have to budget half of their equipment for — I have done these things. They kind of half to be done. I even like doing them (well not the spam but…).

Saying or even passivly implying that work has taken it’s previous place in my life (or AS my life!) was my lie. I have never before been a witness to such a steady flow of miracles minor and major as in the last month and a half, and the two weeks that I have been home have been a continuation of that. I have seen Christ Jesus reconcile relationships, break down arguments, open hearts, heal bodies, raise up leaders, teach those who seek Him, supply friends when none where to be had, and more that I have probably forgotten because I didn’t give Him the glory first thing. All that — in the last two weeks.

The power of prayer has been clearly evident. Is it an accident that when three of us sat down for an hour and prayed for a friend who had litterally and figurativly shut the door in our faces, that very person comes walking in … and by the end of the night we’ve all had too much fun? Is it an accedent that when I asked God for a sign that I was to continue pursuing a ministry in an area where I was making little headway, that the next day a card arives from someone in another part of the state who was never written me before saying “Thank you for being obedient to God’s call on your life when you are being rejected.”

And speaking of signs, our men’s bible study this morning was studying the story of Gideon. Several of the men did not think that God answers today with signs like He did then and that they have never been given one. And I’m ashamed to say that I was too tired (it was 7 in the morning!) and bashfull to speak out and tell them that I have seen signs that are unquestionably from God in direct answer to prayer that speak specifically to the situations I was facing.

God has been faithfull to me. When I have called on Him, He has answered. He has even allowed me to be used as part of His work — the comming of His Kingdom here on earth. I am greatfull to Him, and pray that I will have the strength to give credit Him with all He does. This means not only not taking the credit myself, but making sure mention is made of His works instead of letting them go un-noticed.

Considering how long I have been away and the places I have seen, the lessons I have learned and the work I have done, posting an a link to Paul Graham’s analysis of the character and culture of great hackers is indeed random. I promise to fill in stories of my adventures over the last month as time and creativity allows.

I love analogies. For some reason they stick with me. Ever since I read CS Lewis’s rant whereby anybody who doesn’t accept Jesus for who he claims to be boils down to a poached egg, I can litterally visualize a poached egg between many people’s shoulders.

Perhaps I take them too far. The other day I was discussing with some friends how we as Christians are to “give God the glory” for the things that we do, and I decided that apache’s mod_rewrite was a fair analogy. For those of you who don’t know much about http redirection, this will not make a whole lot of sense, but there are several flags you can add when urls are re-written. Two of these are \[R] and \[P], redirect and proxy. A proxy rewrite makes it look the content is being served from the requested URL when really it comes from somewhere else. This is a how we look when we take credit for work God has done through us. The redirections method alerts the user to the fact that the resource really lies elsewhere and lets them request it themselves. This is what I believe we need to be doing with the credit due to God.

Tonight I was up at church praying and thinking about a problem I’ve been having, specifically my frustration with working with a team-member. She (codname Susan) and I seem to get along fine, but I haven’t felt like we are quite on the same page all the time.

I was running through other life experiences in my head trying to come up with something that would help me deal with this one and my experiences as an audio engineer came to mind. One of the most troublesome routines in mixing live sound is the getting all the monitor mixes just right. Levels can be just a little bit off and all of a sudden the drummer can’t hear the keyboard player and the guitarist can’t hear the drummer and the lead singer can’t hear the guitar and the keyboardist can’t hear the lead singer. You get the picture — the tone and timing all fall to pieces. If you’ve ever mixed monitors you know how fast that can happen.

I picture Susan and I in a band together, both trying to play the same song. I think she’s got the lead instrument and I’ve got some accompanement part. Unfortunatly I don’t have Susan in my monitors unless I stop playing to listen. Whenever I play I can no longer hear what she’s doing and I feel like I’ve incorrectly taken over the lead. Perhaps she can hear me and make herself blend correctly, but even if that’s the case, the role is backwards.

What’s with people seeing everything backwards?

I still hear people talking about ThePassion and picking up on the Jews’ hatred for Jesus and what they did to Him and immitating those ideas in their own attitues towards the Jews or Jesus or the film.

Why don’t they notice Jesus’ love for the Jews and what he did for them and immitate that?

The following is taken from the website of my cousin Peter Maclennan. I included it here because I’m to lazy write something today and thought it was a good testimony to share around.

Who am I and why should you care?

No one and you shouldn’t.

I spent last week in California at the 3rd semi-annual Maclennan Family Reunion. Check out the Pictures.

For those who thought life was fair, observe how some people get paid too much to do too little, and they want to hire more people to do it!

There is a violin playing softly in the background. If I listen I can still hear it. It’s during an interlude in a song on some album I have. During the quiet, a little boy’s voice comes on, reciting his line slowing, one phrase at a time. “Until you have found something worth dying for, you are not really living.”

I watched The Last Samurai tonight, and that statement is all I could think of. Why were these people living? What are they accomplishing by dying? Was there another way to get their point across?

In their case I do not know. It was interesting to watch the cultures and how they were portrayed; how the people of the samurai believe that the only honorable thing to do when shamed was to take their own life.

Sad. Sad that so many die without knowing that they can live. Sad that so many die not being sure of why they lived. There is nothing wrong with dying, but to die for a lie?

That is not just a thing of the past. People die for lies that they believe are true all the time. Even worse, people kill themselves on behalf of a lie; yesterday afternoon there was one in Baghdad that made the news doing just that.

The disciples of Jesus died too. They were killed on account of their belief; a belief in Jesus Christ as the risen Lord. The fact that they were willing to die for what they believed does not make it true, but it’s intesting to think about the opportunity they had. The opportunity to walk with Jesus, day in and day out. To walk with him along the road, to listen to Him teach. To be there when he was killed. To see Him again when he was alive. Think about it — these guys were there, and if anybody had an opportunity to know that Jesus was a hoax it was these guys. If anybody would have known that he wasn’t alive, that he didn’t actually conquor death, it was them.

All but one of the twelve that walked with Jesus were separately killed for their belief in what they had seen. As I saw tonight in The Last Samurai, people will die for something they believe is true. Will people die for something they know is false?

And have I found something worth dying for? I believe I have, and it’s Jesus Christ. I believe that I live so that His Kingdom will become known here on earth, and yes, I believe I will die for that. Now, the question is how do I live for that?

This is not a weblog entry. Instead it’s a scratchpad of things I pulled out of the book PassionAndPurity while preparing for an upcomming youth group talk. And no, they really don’t have much to do with the talk, they are more background for me so that I remember where I am comming from and why.

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Does God want everything?

Until the will and the affections are brought under teh authority of Christ, we ahve not begun to understand, let alone accept, Hid Lordship. The Cross, as it enteres the love life, will reveal the heart’s truth.

Jesus and five thousand — took what they had before he gave everything.

The snake’s reasoning – what you want shouldn’t be overruled by god’s plan – you know better what you want – you don’t deserve the best – God is stingy.

Backwards logic – how can I find out what God wants me to do if I don’t now what I want to do –

Love what God commands and desire what He promies.

Difference between duty and desire caused by a heart not set on obidience.

Does God notice? (job)

While purity before marriage consists in holding ourselves from one another in obedience to God, purity after mirrage consists in giving ourselves to and for each other in obedience to God.

I got up at six this morning and went to the church to cleanup the youth room before people started showing up. Somehow in moving the little fiberboard partitions around I managed to pull a muscle in my back and in less time that it takes to sneeze I was on the floor. It was late afternoon before I was able to walk again, and even now the process of moving anywhere is painful.