Vacation
What a wonderful word
I’m sitting in a great little coffee shop in Ainsworth NE. Just had a large, no foam, latte and a wheat cinnamon scone right out of the oven. I know I said I was going to unplug for 10 days but I had to send a file to the office and decided to clean up some email and look at facebook. I can’t help myself. Besides cleaning out the inbox halfway through makes me worry less about the volume of mail when I get back in the office in a week.
I’ve been in Ainsworth with nothing to do for 3 full days and have caught up on sleep but I can’t seem to shut off my brain. There is always something to think about and when I try to get quiet they my mind gets noisy.
I really love being back up here and hanging with old friends and catching up with my brother and his kids. They are so tall! We played music until about midnight last Friday and were going to play again tonight in preparation for New Years eve. I’m going to lead 4 or 5 songs. It should be a lot of fun.
I’m going to try to unplug agian and finish “The Appeal”. I used to love Grisham but the last few have been week. This one is ok but nowhere near the early ones and he has injected politics, I hate that. Just tell the story without taking shots.
Ok done ranting 
, I’ll be back on the 5th. I forgot my power chord so this will probably be the last entry until then.
Bless you all.
Going on vacation
It’s been quite a year. I know I should be doing something like Rush does and leave you with something profound. The truth is I’m beat. I’m ready for 2008 to go away and ready for a new season.
I will be unplugging for about the next 10 days. Going to Nebraska to hang out with family and rest up. Hopefully find a few pheasants, play some music with friends and family, and watch a lot of football. O yes and help my mother in law get rid of all the Christmas candy, cake, cookies etc. etc. etc. She loves me, what can I say?
Thank you for reading and commenting. It makes it a lot more fun.
See you the week of the 5th.
Blessings, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year.
“In the fullness of time…” :
Truth Observed: Del Tackett
Sorry I try to only post a couple things a day at most, but this is too good to pass up. So here it is in total.
“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of woman…” Gal 4:4 (ESV)
“…the fullness of time…” This phrase conveys more than just the notion that God was waiting for the right moment or the perfect opportunity to come along. It conveys that there was a plan…a script…a composition that was now reaching its zenith, its crescendo.
It didn’t just happen.
It didn’t just emerge as a fortunate opportunity in the randomness of time and events.
Jesus didn’t just “burst” onto the scene out of nowhere.
It was planned from the beginning.
All the prophecies foretold it.
All the types foreshadowed it.
All the promises pointed toward it.
It was the “kairos” moment that all history had been preparing for.
The first hint came in the garden—a veiled statement about a “seed” that would come and somehow set everything right. More hints followed, partially hidden and obscured in the language of covenants and promises, ceremonies and feasts, tents and temples and water pouring out of rock. There were miracles and signs, types and shadows, and a law that demanded and required and tutored man to hope and yearn for it.
It was a mysterious story, a metanarrative, a lens of divine revelation that opened ever so slowy, yet steadily. And woven into its fabric, were the host of prophecies, telling us more and more about the coming of this “seed”, this savior, this Messiah. Yet, the whole tapestry remained in the fog of prophetic language—a dancing of shadows on the wall, a wavy reflection on the surface of water that never seemed to become calm enough to make out the exact image.
But, those shadows and reflections held some amazing details about this One who would come. The prophet Isaiah, in a few pages, gives us tantalizing tidbits about Him: that He would not have great outward beauty or form or majesty (53:2); that He would be despised and rejected by men (53:3); that He would be wounded, disfigured, and suffer (52:14, 53:2); that He would bear our grief and sorrow (53:4); that He would be stricken, afflicted, smitten by God (53:4); that His suffering would be for our transgressions, our iniquities (53:5); that His sacrifice would bring us peace and healing (53:5); that He would be our substitutionary atonement (53:6,8); that He would remain silent through all of this suffering (53:7); that He would die (53:8); that His burial would be associated with a rich man (53:9); yet for all of this He would be innocent, without violence, without deceit (53:9); but it would be the will of God to crush Him (53:10), so that His righteousness would be accounted to many (53:11), bearing their sin and making intercession for them (53:12); and yet, in the end, He would be exalted (52:13).
Looking back, it all makes perfect sense; yet as mere shadows and reflections, it was still veiled and hidden.
But the growing weight of it all was like the rising volume of a symphony. No one could doubt the music was getting louder and louder, the tempo increasing, the instruments beginning to join in greater and greater harmony. As if on queue, the prophet Malachi then stands and shouts: “Behold, the day is coming…!” and “Behold, I send my messenger…!” and finally “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord…!”
And then, as the whole thing rushes to its mighty and magnificent crescendo…
…the music stops.
Everything goes dark.
Revelation ceases.
All is silent…
“In the fullness of time…” : Truth Observed
Pursuing Truth
Tozer Devotional: Pursuing Truth,
Another from the amazing A.W. Tozer,
One of the great religious thinkers of this century has pointed out a strange contradiction in the mental attitude of our times–our eager love of knowledge and our universal neglect of truth.
I have often made the case that we value everything but truth. We must be diligent seekers of truth not just knowledge. Tozer says “Facts bear the same relation to truth that a corpse bears to a man.”
Check out the whole thing,
Tozer Devotional :: The Alliance
Another Great Depression?
Thomas Sowell: Townhall.com
This is as must read column by Thomas Sowell, he says in regard to Roosevelt’s “solutions” to the great depression, “It is such a good story that it seems a pity to spoil it with facts. Yet there is something to be said for not repeating the catastrophes of the past”.
the evidence suggests that it was not the “problem” of the financial crisis in 1929 that caused massive unemployment but politicians’ attempted “solutions.” Is that the history that we seem to be ready to repeat?
Click through, read the whole thing, and tell everyone you know that the “new, new deal” is a bad deal, not new, and not the change we can believe in.
Thomas Sowell : Another Great Depression? – Townhall.com
“to you”
A couple of years ago I was reading Luke chapter two in the summer. I usually only read that passage during the Christmas season. As I read through it the words “to you” jumped off the page.
For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.
To really drive home the point, in by Bible the words “to all people” are directly above “to you”.
He is the saviour of the world, He came for all people,
It is all true and it is also true that He came “for you”. Wow,
don’t miss this as you enter into the final days of Christmas. Enjoy all of it. The gifts, being with family, the wonder in the childrens eyes, but don’t miss the fact that He was born,
to you.
A Conservative Vision Statement
An interesting idea what do you think?
I think we are ready to put our Vision Statement down on paper. Here it is:
We believe in an America that lives and works together, with limited government, under God.
Click through and read the whole thing.
American Thinker: A Conservative Vision Statement
Tis the Season for Porn?
Mona Charen at Townhall.com titled here article because of the Pajama Gram ads on Fox. It really is getting ridiculous.
We all know how far the pornification has gotten. A mainstream movie apparently treats the subject as cute and fun (“Zack and Miri Make a Porno”) and it runs at the multiplex next to “Four Christmases” and “Madagascar.” Hotels offer pornographic movies and omit the titles from the final bill. Victoria’s Secret graces every mall — and its windows resemble the red light district of Amsterdam. Viagra and its imitators are hawked ceaselessly. Television, music videos, and supermarket checkout magazines contain the kinds of suggestive words and images that would once have been labeled soft porn.
The Witherspoon Institute has published some statistics that will break your heart. Click through and read the whole story.
Mona Charen : Tis the Season for Porn? – Townhall.com
Dr Dobsons family minute this morning was talking about taking a decade to corrupt our children. Just walk onto a college campus. The foul, suggestive, and disrespectful language is everywhere. Not just from the rough crowd but by everyone. I go to a public events and I can’t believe what I hear. It is increasingly difficult to tell my boys why it’s important to be honorable.
The church has become nearly, if not completely, irrelevant. When we turn our backs and allow this kind of thing to happen because we want to be “set apart” or to “walk in holiness” we have completely missed the point. We must engage the culture, speak the truth in love, and stand up for whatever is true, noble, just, pure, lovely, of good report, virtue, and praiseworthy.
You want something to fight for here’s a good start.
Amen of the day
My friend Chuck over at Big God Adventures has articulated what is in my heart. I need a challenge something to fight for. I think a big reason for the funk I’ve been battling is because I need something to fight for.
Yearning for the Wild
I’ve been thinking about how tame i am. i work in a cool office. live in a great, comfortable house. have heat and ac in house, car and work.
But something in me wants a fight. i want to run with scissors or climb up on the roof or drive in a blinding snowstorm or play tackle football in a mudpit. i need something untamed.
I’ve read Wild at Heart and know that as a man, i need a battle. I’m reading a book on the wild Jesus from the book of Mark. but there’s something deeper than just reading books.
there is a true craving to roar like a man. Any woman reading this probably won’t understand, hopefully the men will. there is something primal that needs to come out. Playing music helps to release that. As a bass player/singer, there is definitely something wild about that rumble of the bass and a good yell or scream.
I think i need some man-time. some camping and hiking, growing a neck beard, finding and cooking your food over a flame. anyone have an empty cabin i could hide away for a few days in? anyone up for some gut-level living? strength, passion, honesty – that’s what i’m looking for.
Big God Adventures: Yearning for the Wild
Bigger Gov’t Is Not Stimulus
Keynesian Economics Is Wrong: Bigger Gov’t Is Not Stimulus:
Dan Mitchell, a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, explains why Keynesian economics hasn’t worked in the past, and won’t work now.
Try as I might I still cannot figure out how to embed video into this thing. If you can explain it to me I would be grateful. Until then here’s the link to you tube.
YouTube – Keynesian Economics Is Wrong: Bigger Gov’t Is Not Stimulus
Hat tip: Michelle Malkin
My Songs
