Lord Jesus, I come to Thee for spiritual preparation. Lay Thy hand upon me. Anoint me with the oil of the New Testament prophet. Forbid that I should become a religious scribe and thus lose my prophetic calling. Save me from the curse that lies dark across the face of the modern clergy, the curse of compromise, of imitation, of professionalism. Save me from the error of judging a church by its size, its popularity or the amount of its yearly offerings. Help me to remember that I am a prophet — not a promoter, not a religious manager, but a prophet. Let me never become a slave to crowds. Heal my soul of carnal ambitions and deliver me from the itch for publicity. Save me from bondage to things. Let me not waste my days puttering around the house. Lay Thy terror upon me, O God, and drive me to the place of prayer where I may wrestle with principalities and powers and the rulers of the darkness of this world. Deliver me from overeating and late sleeping. Teach me self-discipline that I may be a good soldier of Jesus Christ.
I accept hard work and small rewards in this life. I ask for no easy place. I shall try to be blind to the little ways that could make my life easier. If others seek the smoother path, I shall try to take the hard way without judging them too harshly. I shall accept opposition and try to take it quietly when it comes. Or if, as sometimes it falleth out to Thy servants, I should have grateful gifts pressed upon me by Thy kindly people, stand by me then and save me from the blight that often follows. Teach me to use whatever I receive in such manner that it will not injure my soul or diminish my spiritual power.
- A.W. Tozer, in prayer for his ordination to Christian ministry, August 18, 1920
Snipshot Snipshot is a website that will let you upload a picture and do a few basic photo-editing tasks (like resize, crop, etc.) right in your browser, with quick multi-step undo, and save the results back to your computer. They provide a sample image you can play with first, if you like. Oh, and it’s free.
So the next time you take pictures with your 5 megapixel camera (which, by the way, means REALLY BIG in terms of file size as well as picture size — all those bits have to go somewhere) and you want to email them all to your extended family and friends, and you don’t have something handy like F-Spot or Picasa installed, take a few minutes at Snipshot and size them down a bit.
Simple Machines Forum (SMF)
This is a little more on the geek-specific side, but I’ve recently started running a private online forum for some adoptive families and have been quite pleased with the Simple Machines Forum software. I was trying to get something set up quickly, and it was available as a quick-install package with my hosting provider, so I figured I’d check it out. It has become, in my mind, another example of solid, quality software put out by the open source community. To be sure, their license is open source more in spirit than in technicality — they pull back from the open re-distribution aspects of typical OSS licenses but you’re more than welcome to tinker with their code. But as a team they function just the same as other OSS projects, and I’m quite impressed with the result.
Two links to share this afternoon, speciously connected by yours truly on the topic of poison (really I just happened to read them both and thought they were worth sharing). The first is actually part 4 in an ongoing series by Dr. Bob called “Moving the Ancient Boundaries”, on “the erosion of moral, cultural, and ethical boundaries in modern society.” I need to go back and read parts 1-3, but if part 4 is any indication it will be well worth my time. This man not only has excellent insight and analysis but a keen ability to express them in writing. Go read The Assault on Religious Authority.
The second is much lighter. Antique Mommy tells an amusing tale or two of those parenting moments that convince us that CPS will be showing up any minute. The comments that follow are just as good as the main post. Go check it out, and feel better about your own parenting skills.
What’s so striking to me is not the production quality of the video mashup, which is very good, but rather how much this furthers the trend begun by blogs, where everyday people suddenly have a voice, and a potentially powerful one at that. This is the promise of the Internet, coming of age in ways both promising and perilous. Anyone can say anything they want (true or otherwise) and have an audience, and I believe the impact on this election cycle is going to be remembered and talked about for the next 20 years the way Apple’s “1984″ ad has been for the last 20. Howard Fineman gets it:
The candidates dont really control it anymore. It is not something they do; it is something that is done to them. They have to learn to ride the beast like a Fremen riding a sandworm in Dune. If they master it, they can speed across the desert; oblivion awaits the unskilled.
We are in the middle of a fundamental shift in the way the world works, and it’s not all going to be pretty.
Just came across a list of ground rules some guy came up with (I’m guessing the result of direct experience) for anyone on either side of a debate on Christianity. This should be required reading for anyone considering stepping in the ring…
Greg Kouki of Stand to Reason writes a pretty compelling response both to James Cameron’s Discovery Channel piece about the “Lost Tomb of Jesus” and to believers who immediately got their teeth a-gnashing at the very suggestion:
Look, if the Bible says it and you believe it, that might settle it for you, but it doesnt settle it for millions who might be interested in your ideas and are waiting to hear a thoughtful response to what appears on the surface to be a fair challenge. [...] There are good reasons to doubt the conclusions of this documentary, but no one will ever know them if Christians pull up the drawbridge and bellow from the parapet.
Greg goes on to list several critical responses to the show’s thesis (if you can call it that). Well worth a read.
Fascinating review over at Implications (from the Trinity Forum) of a book suggesting that before the influences of Buddhism, Christianity, or Islam, ancient China had an understanding of (and respect for) a monotheistic, sustaining creator God with moral attributes strikingly similar to Israel’s Yahweh, in direct contradiction to the general assumption that Christianity is solely a western religion. Check it out.
If you’ve been wondering what’s been happening with Vedat, the Serbian boy we brought over for surgery on his back, check here for the latest. God is faithful, and there is no doubt in my mind he has plans for this boy!
May 30, 2007 at 10:00am
by joel 
