My wife and I got married in December and having resisted the urge to get a home phone so far. We been living off cell phones which in seemed like a better idea because we were both stuck in contracts and we didn’t want to be for three phones for two people.This has been our thinking for the last five months but now two things have shaken our once impeccable reason.
- My cell phone contract is going to expire in a month.
- We’ve now had one too many giant cell phone bills do to a “few” extra minutes.
So we’ve reluctantly decided to get a phone line. We looked into Vonage and our local cable (cogeco) and phone companies (bell) VoIP services but we either couldn’t get a local phone number (Vonage) or the companies were charging too much to make it worth while.So last week I ordered a phone line from Bell and a cable internet from Cogeco. They haven’t called me back yet to confirm installation but I’m sure it will be any day now…[UPDATE]The latest news is I saw an add from Cogeco for VoIP that is significantly less then the price I saw when I was researching so I’m going to make a call today about that.[MORE UPDATES]The better price is only if you are subscribing to digital cable TV too. Bell here I come. Vonage come to my area![YET ANOTHER UPDATE]After a tip from my friend Aaron, I cancelled my Bell phone service before it ever arrived and signed up with Primus.ca. It’s going to be about $20 a month and it has all the call features! Sounds good to me.Once I receive the stuff and have it all set up I’ll post again and let you know how it works.
Sobering statistics and helpful tips on Ministry Burnout from Mark Driscoll. Check out Death by Ministry | TheResurgence
I’m slowly working my way through Henri Nouwen’s The Return of the Prodigal Son and so far, this book is changing me. I’m reading it devotionally- a page or two at a time - and really trying to let the depth of Nouwen’s insights settle in me.
In my reading today I came across this passage:
Here lies the core of my spiritual struggle: the struggle against self-rejection, self-contempt, and self-loathing. It is a very fierce battle because the world and its demons conspire to make me think about myself as worthless, useless and negligible. Many consumerist economies stay afloat by manipulating the the low self-esteem of their consumers and by creating spiritual expectations through material means. As long as I am kept “small”, I can easily be seduced to buy things, meet people, or go places that promise a radical change in self-concept even though they are totally incapable of bringing this about. But every time I allow myself to be this manipulated or seduced, I will have still more reasons for putting myself down and seeing myself as the unwanted child. (107)
I’ve been there. I think we all have. When we think that more stuff or more people can satisfy the spiritual needs of my life. I have a friend that, as we speak, has succumbed to this very issue so fully that is incapable of finding any comfort in the knowledge that He is Christ’s beloved child.
So how do I avoid following the same path? Nouwen find’s his worth when he looks, “through God’s eyes at my lost self and discover God’s joy at my coming home, then my life may become less anguished and more trusting”. (107)
The truth that I am God’s child and that he loves me and pursues me is one truth that has the potential to change me so deeply yet, at times, it seems so hard for the truth to find a deep resting place in my heart.
Want to find out more about Henri Nouwen?
Henri Nouwen on Wikipedia
See who’s blogging about Henri Nouwen via Tenchnorati
The Holy Inefficiency Of Henri Nouwen by Philip Yancy
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about God’s view of the oppressed. During my reading today I came across Psalm 12:5,
“Because of the oppression of the weak and the groaning of the needy, I will now arise” says the Lord. “I will protect from those who malign them.”
I’m sure I’ve read that verse and many others like it before, but it really struck me today how passionately God stands with the oppressed and marginalized and how closely he identifies with them.
Just a bit later, God describes “evildoers” as “those who devour my people as men eat bread” and those who “do not call on the Lord” (Psalm 14:4). He even goes onto say in verse 6 that, “evildoers frustrate the plans of the poor, but the Lord is their refuge”. To top it all off, the psalmist identifies the poor from verse 6 as “[the Lord's] people” whom he plans to restore (verse 7).
I guess the big question is, “do I stand with God for the oppressed?” Do I frustrate the plans of the poor or do I rise up, with God, in their defence?
Lord, help me to find your heart and truth in these matters and make them my own.
The one sentence you need to hear, “Even though i believe in doctrines, I hope I never become a mean Christian.” Read the rest of My Doctrinal Statement Can Beat Up Your Doctrinal Statement at Vintage Faith.
“I’m willing to die for it” versus “The Bible is Inerrant”: How Best to Speak About the Authority of Scriptures in our Times
David Fitch writes an interesting article on the inerrancy of scripture in our postmodern context. I’ll give you a quote or two to whet your appetite:
…inerrancy is an accommodation to another source of authority that inherently subordinates Scripture to its authority. This other source of authority is the modernist cultural norms of modern science and derivatives thereof. In so doing, the inerrancy strategy places the authority of Scripture beneath (under) the authority of modern science. In this way, inerrancy diminishes the authority of Scripture.
So, in essence, David is saying that the inerrancy debate of the past one hundred years places science in a position of authority over scripture and therefor scripture becomes subject to the authority of science.
He goes on to say that,
The inerrancy approach teaches us to see the Bible as a set of propositions to be analyzed for their correspondence one to one to an external reality… But the fact is, the Bible is an alive and real Story, a Story that is true, that is not a dead scientific textbook of facts. We must either redefine “inerrancy” or do something to remove Scripture from the deadness of modernist rationalities that “inerrancy” is a part of. Emphasis Mine
What do you think? Does the inerrancy of scripture debate actually diminish scriptures authority?
From The Great Giveaway.
Over the last day, I’ve updated some elements of the site to try and make it a bit more usable and hopefully, better looking.
- I’ve shrunk the sidebar by styling my flickr photo’s into a 2×2 grid and I’ve shrunk and styled my Del.icio.us links by using a smaller font and creating a CSS table.
- I’ve also moved the flickr, del.icio.us, and technoriti information off the sub-pages.
- Finally, I added a related posts sidebar item to the permalink pages. This is not so important right now, but will be helpful as the post volume grows.
Thanks to House of K2 I finally figured out how to add the tag icons that Ultimate Tag Warrior places in single posts on the main blog page as well. Nice and consistent.
I thought this was a joke… but I went the website, read some material and I think they are serious. Check out this video from a group advocating global warming.
