Thoughts for the Day

iPhone App Photo Experiments

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 13:48:13 -0500

Tried out some new IPhone Apps on some photos taken with my iPhone

Boston

Photogenie iPhone App

Gingerbread

Polarize iPhone App

Boston

Photoshop Mobile (PS Mobile) iPhone App

Eye on Boston

iPhone App Experiment ColorSplash

Christmas Decorations

iPhone App Experiment TrueHDR

Gazebo in Snow

TrueHDR Experiment with iPhone App

Winter Bench

iPhone App Experiement - PS Mobile

Christmas Decorations with Color

iPhone App Photo Experiment with ColorSplash

IMG_0271

iPhone App Experiment with Polarize

Winter Swing

iPhone App Experiment with Format126

Snowy Swing

iPhone App Experiment with PS Mobile

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REAL Gingerbread House

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 08:44:49 -0500

60,000 pieces of Candy

I think the gumdrop chair might be a little uncomfortable!

Even the snow is cotton candy

Merry Christmas - Ritz Carlton Naples lobby

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Rainy Afternoon Chicken Soup

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 13:57:28 -0500

This is where it starts - pastured raised organic Chickens

Old laying hens, Chicken feet & necks, Water, Veggies and all day - makes a great stock

Freeze lots of stock and then thaw as needed in hot water

Add some diced vegetables

Save bones and scraps for next bone broth or stock making day

Add chicken and veggies to rich chicken stock

Here it is - 30 minutes later. A delicious, organic, rich in gelatin, healing Chicken Soup. With lots left for the rest of the week.

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Mixed up Christmas Cactus

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:46:43 -0500

Blooming in November

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Christian Understanding of Work

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:38:36 -0500

“What is the Christian understanding of work? I should like to put before you two or three propositions arising out of the doctrinal position which I stated at the beginning: namely, that work is the natural exercise and function of man — the creature who is made in the image of his Creator…..The first, stated quite briefly, is that work is not, primarily, a thing one does to live, but the thing one lives to do. It is, or it should be, the full expression of the worker’s faculties, the thing in which he finds spiritual, mental, and bodily satisfaction, and the medium in which he offers himself to God.”

…”We should no longer think of work as something that we hastened to get through in order to enjoy our leisure; we should look on our leisure as the period of changed rhythm that refreshed us for the delightful purpose of getting on with our work.”

…”clamor to be engaged in work that was worth doing, and in which we could take pride.”

Dorothy Sayers, Creed or Chaos? Why Christians Must Choose Either Dogma or Disaster

HT: Alex Chediak

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Awe and Intimacy

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:09:04 -0500

“The gospel means (as Luther said) that we are simul justus et peccator, that is, in Christ we are simultaneously righteous yet sinful. If we have a more antinomian view of salvation, believing that we are all accepted because God is vaguely loving, then we may be existentially aware of God’s love but not of his holiness. There will be no awe. That can lead to the exclusively warm, ‘folksy’ demeanor. If, on the other hand, we have a more legalistic view of salvation, believing that we are accepted because we live and believe everything ‘exactly right,’ then we may be existentially aware of God’s holiness but not of his bounteous mercy. There will be no wonder. That can lead to an overly stiff and dignified manner.

In neither case are the leaders really amazed at grace. Only when there is a profound awareness of the holiness of God and of the costliness of the sacrifice he provided will there be a joyful awe that is at once warm and forceful. Only a joyful yet awe-filled heart- an exuberant decorum- can keep pomp and sentimentality from mimicking the two true poles of biblical worship: awe and intimacy.”

Tim Keller, Worship By the Book, ed. D.A. Carson, pp. 213-214

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Perfect Love, Perfect Justice - Meet at Calvary

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 17:14:43 -0500

But the God of Christianity is a God of both perfect love and perfect justice. The two meet, embrace, coalesce, at Calvary.

R. B. Kuiper, The Bible Tells Us So, p. 107

The Cross is the Tree of Life

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 11:44:33 -0500

He hangs in the place of death, yet thence He gives life. He delivers from death by dying. Life streams out, like rivers of water, from that center, the cross. The cross is the tree of life.

Horatius Bonar, Studies in the Gospel of John, p. 20

Foot of the cross, shrinks us to our true size

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 11:40:29 -0500

Every time we look at the cross Christ seems to say to us, “I am here because of you. It is your sin I am bearing, your curse I am suffering, your debt I am paying, your death I am dying.” Nothing in history or in the universe cuts us down to size like the cross. All of us have inflated views of ourselves, especially in self-righteousness, until we have visited a place called Calvary.. It is there at the foot of the cross, that we shrink to our true size.

J.R.W. Stott, Only One Way, p. 179

Power of the Cross of Christ

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 11:28:28 -0500

And from these two great enemies, the power of the world and the power of self, nothing can deliver us but the Cross of Christ.
Andrew Murray, Aids to Devotion p. 28

Prayer of Covenant with God

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 11:15:22 -0500

I usually don’t make comment on the quotes I post, but in reading this quote I was struck with the thought that ‘this is a prayer’! I’m glad God’s grace covers my inadequacy in prayer and pray that I may learn from saints who have gone before.

“O Blessed Jesus, I come to thee hungry and thirsty, poor and wretched, miserable, blind and naked, a most loathsome polluted wretch, a guilty condemned malefactor, unworthy to wash the feet of the servants of my Lord, much more to be solemnly married to the King of Glory. But such is thine unparalleled love, I do here with all my power accept thee, and do take thee for my Head and Husband, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, for all times, and conditions, to love, honour, and obey thee before all others, and this to the death. I embrace thee in all thine offices. I renounce my own worthiness, and do here avow thee to be the Lord my Righteousness. I renounce my own wisdom, and do here take thee for my only Guide. I renounce my own will, and take thy will for my law.
And since thou has told me that I must suffer if I will reign, I do here covenant with thee to take my lot, as it falls, with thee, and by thy grace assisting to run all hazards with thee, verily supposing that neither life nor death shall part between thee and me.
And because thou has been pleased to give me thy holy laws, as the rule of my life, and the way in which I should walk to thy kingdom, I do here willingly put my neck under the yoke, as the rule of my life, and the way in which I should walk to thy kingdom, I do here willingly put my neck under the yoke, and set my shoulder to thy burden; and subscribing to all thy laws as holy, just and good, I solemnly take them as the rule of my words, thoughts, and actions; promising that though my flesh contradict and rebel, yet I will endeavor to order and govern my whole life to thy direction and will not allow myself to neglect anything that I know to my duty.
Only because through the frailty of my flesh, I am subject to many failings, I am bold humbly to request, that subject to many failings, I am bold humbly to request, that unintentional shortcomings, contrary to the settled bent and resolution of my heart, shall not make void this covenant, for so thou hast said.
Now, Almighty God, Searcher of hearts, thou knowest that I make this covenant with tee this day, without my known guile or reservation beseeching thee, that if thou espiest any flaw or falsehood therein, thou wouldst reveal it to me, and help me to do it aright.
And now, O God the Father, whom I shall be bold from this day forward to look upon as my God and Father, glory be to thee for finding out such a way for the recovery of undone sinners. Glory be to thee, O God the Son, who hast loved me and washed me from my sins in thine own blood, and are now become my Savior and Redeemer. Glory be to thee, O God the Holy Ghost, who by the finger of thine almighty power has turned my heart from sin to God.
O high and holy Jehovah, the Lord God Omnipotent, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, thou art now become my covenant Friend, and I through thine infinite grace am become thy covenant servant. Amen, so be it. And the covenant which I have made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven.”

Joseph Alleine, Alarm to the Unconverted, p. 119, 120

Calvin on Loving the Whole Human Race

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 07:43:32 -0500

“We ought to embrace the whole human race without exception in a single feeling of love; here there is no distinction between barbarian and Greek, worthy and unworthy, friend and enemy, since all should be contemplated in God, not in themselves. When we turn aside from such contemplation, it is no wonder we become entangled in many errors. Therefore, if we rightly direct our love, we must first turn our eyes not to man, the sight of whom would more often engender hate than love, but to God, who bids us extend to all men the love we bear to him, that this may be an unchanging principle: Whatever the character of the man, we must yet love him because we love God.”

Ethics drawn from the Cross

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 14:42:24 -0400

Our ethics must be drawn from the cross and begin and end there. We have not so much to declare what men ought to do, as to preach the good news of what God has done for them.

C. H. Spurgeon, The Mourners Comforter p. 23,24

Church needs people who...

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 14:34:00 -0400

The church needs people who, in listening to their pastor, listen for the message of Christ, and pastors who, in labouring among the people, look for the image of Christ. Only when pastor and people thus keep their eyes on Christ will their mutual relations keep healthy, profitable and pleasing to almighty God.

J.R.W. Stott, Only One Way, p. 119

Perfect Church Service

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 14:24:58 -0400

The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God. But every novelty prevents this. It fixes our attention on this service itself: and thinking about worship is a different thing from worshipping.
A still worse thing may happen. Novelty may fix our attention not even on the service but on the celebrant.

C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, pp. 4,5

Our works do not obligate God

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 07:27:09 -0400

Divine blessings flow from God’s mercy rather than from our merit. Thus we cannot guarantee that His care will flow according to our plans simply because we conform in some degree to biblical standards. Our works do not obligate God to care for us in the way that we think is best. We cannot put God on a leash through our goodness, nor obligate Him to our wishes by our won deeds. God blesses according to the wisdom of His eternal mercy rather than in proportion to our works of earned merit.

Bryan Chapell, Holiness by Grace p. 24

Literary Darwinism, all things Darwin

Wed, 27 May 2009 10:17:00 -0400

“It is all too easy to foresee a future for literary criticism of MRI machines and statistical charts. (Finally, something the rest of the university can relate to!) English departments will turn themselves over to brain scans just as they turned themselves over to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. When that future arrives, what will the classroom look like? Will it be a new gaudy lecture room where Brian Boyd, with one hand on The Origin of Species and the other hand on Consilience, tells you that “We may compare Lear’s rage with the fury of an alpha male chimpanzee deposed from dominance, or note the sudden spike in levels of the stress hormone cortisol in animals that suffer loss in rank”? That really would be the death of humanism, not to mention the English major. Even if literary Darwinism were grounded in real science, it could never replace the subjective encounter with a text that lies at the heart of all reading and should lie at the heart of all pedagogy and all criticism. It is not Theory that has prevented literary studies from becoming a positivistic discipline; it is the nature of literature itself. That interpretation succeeds interpretation in a seemingly endless cycle is not a weakness of criticism but its essential strength. The great works persist because they have the power, in every age, to make us ask the most important questions, which are the ones that have no answers, or rather, that have only personal answers: What are we doing here? What does it feel like to be alive? What should we do with our time on earth?”

From an excellent article in The Nation, Adaptation: On Literary Darwinism by William Deresiewicz. Read the whole article, it touches on all things Darwin: Evolutionary Psycology, Evolutionary Biology, Evolutionary Neurosciece from creativity to human dignity and transcendence.

Education that corrupts moral and civic virtue

Fri, 22 May 2009 23:04:50 -0400

I see everywhere immense institutions where young people are brought up at great expense, learning everything except their duties…. Without knowing how to distinguish error from truth, [your children] will possess the art of making them both unrecognizable to others by specious arguments. But they will not know what the words magnanimity, equity, temperance, humanity, courage are; that sweet name fatherland will never strike their ear; and if they hear of God, it will be less to be awed by him than to be afraid of him.

Rousseau - Discourse on the Arts and Sciences

Idle men of letters

Fri, 22 May 2009 22:56:00 -0400

These vain and futile declaimers go everywhere armed with their deadly paradoxes, undermining the foundations of faith and annihilating virtue. They smile disdainfully at the old-fashioned words of fatherland and religion, and devote their talents and philosophy to destroying and debasing all that is sacred among men.

Rousseau - Discourse on the Arts and Sciences

Holiness a gift of Christ

Sun, 17 May 2009 09:09:25 -0400

Holiness is not a merit by which we can attain communion with God, but a gift of Christ which enables us to cling to him and to follow him.

John Calvin, Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life, p.13