the intersection of life and grace

Those of you who read these posts via RSS or email may not notice the side column section titled “Others’ View”.  It contains items from blogs I regularly read that I find interesting or challenging, and I share them through my Google Reader’s shared items function.  You can visit the site, or subscribe to that RSS here, or Google users can connect with me to see my shared items in their own GReader.

Moments ago I shared an item called “The Pope’s Comments About Gays and Lesbians” from Andrew Marin’s blog Love is An Orientation.  I recently had the opportunity to spend some time with Andy, he’s the real deal.  A Bible-believing, passion-driven human who can’t stand the injustice he sees perpetrated by Christians against one small segment of the population who are same-sex attracted.  I can’t wait to read Andy’s book, coming from IVP in April 2009, and also called Love is An Orientation.  I think it’s a HUGE, much needed, paradigm shift in the “no, my way” “no, my way” conversation (can you even call it a conversation?) that rages in the Church.

Please go read the post.  I’d love to hear your thoughts.  Click here… go read it!

When I was growing up the Christmas tree – a real one – was procured the weekend before Christmas and stayed outside until Christmas Eve.  In it would come, it would be placed into the tree stand and watered (and watered, and watered). And that’s how it would stay… an evergreen in a stand in front of the living room’s picture window.  The decorations, you see, were part of the Christmas morning surprise.

I really don’t know how my parents managed to do that.  I know that there were toys to assemble and packages to wrap.  Add all the decorations, including the single-strand-at-a-time tinsel placement and I just don’t think they slept!

In our little corner of the family, we’ve settled into getting the tree done in time for Christmas (bonus, right?), but usually not a lot ahead of time.  In my “perfect” scenario, the tree gets decorated on this day, the 4th Sunday of Advent, a symbolic last official act of readiness for Christmas to come.  This year it worked!

Enjoy these photos of the tree and a few of the many, many ornaments (nearly half didn’t even make it onto the tree because I got tired of finding spots for them!).  I collect nativities, and some of them are ornaments.

(as before, click to see a larger version of the photo, click a second time to see the full-sized version)

This video blew me away. It’s an episode of “Penn says”, the podcast of Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller, in which he tells about an encounter with a man after a show, and that man’s gift of bible to Penn.  A kick in the guts quote:

I don’t respect people who don’t proselytize I don’t respect that at all. if you believe that there’s a heaven and hell, and people could be going to hell, or not getting eternal life, or whatever, and you think well it’s not really worth telling this because it would be socially awkward…how much do you have to hate someone to believe that everlasting life was possible, and not tell them that?

Watch the whole video below.

HT to Mark, Chris

Much of the Capital Region has no electric power this morning and is experiencing falling trees, bad roads and more due to about 24 hours of freezing rain that continues mixed with a bit of snow as I write.  I stepped outside my house moments ago (yes, in my pjs and slippers) to capture a glimpse of the iced over landscape.

You can click on the thumbnail to see a larger version. [edit - it appears the wp gallery feature makes you click twice to get to the full-size pic... apologies]

Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

One of the beautiful realities of life in the seasons of the church is the opportunity to renew our understanding, our commitment, to the way of Jesus.  During this second week of Advent, I have been reading through the prophets who called God’s people back to him and foretold the coming of Christ.

Of course, the prophets spoke as they were led, not fully knowing how God’s word would be fulfilled; not fully knowing the time or place of that fulfillment; not fully knowing the implications of the words they spoke with boldness, in obedience.  So it is with us as we return to the prophet’s words for assurance that our obedience in speaking God’s Word boldly will lead where God intends, via a route and to a destination which only God can know now.  Yet, we are called to heed the words of the prophets, to set aside our sins and seek a life with our Coming Savior – we are called to return to the Way.

2 minutes that will change your day for the better, even if you’ve seen it already.

This military mom can’t get enough of that sweet little face when she sees her daddy. Use it as a moment to remember all the military families, and other service families of police, firefighters and emergency medical personnel, who routinely spend holidays and special days apart.

Today marks the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  One of the amazing things about the internet, to me, has been the ability for people in all sorts of circumstances to communicate them to the world.

I am mindful that what I’m doing right now – typing my thoughts for a blog post – is a life-threatening activity in some countries!  Remember how vital it was that local bloggers got the word out about the situation in Burma? Those courageous individuals alerted the world to the abusive government’s actions, and that information spread far and wide, focusing world attention on the issues there.  In response, the government there began to tightly control access to the internet and prosecute those individuals who would dare to oppose the government policies.  BBC news recently reported that one blogger in Burma was sentenced to 20 years in jail for posting a political cartoon! [click here to read that report]

There are far too many examples of abuses of human rights taking place around the world – from the billions of dollars behind the global problem of trafficking young girls and women for sexual abuses, to the government sponsored violence in places like Sudan, and far too much more – there is a movement to refocus the attention of every government on the tenets of the UDHR by having them printed in passports, a government document common to all nations, thereby representing their assent to the document.  There is an online petition you can sign to support that effort – click here to go to the petition page.

I learned about this campaign via @HumanRightsDay on twitter.  They also have a website you can visit to learn more at www.onedayforhumanrights.com.

In the midst of the New York State budget mess, brought to us by the credit crisis-fueled melt down on Wall Street, the State University system made the decision to raise tuition in the middle of the budget year.  The leaves every student facing a larger bill this winter, even while the institutions themselves are cutting back on services to make ends meet.

One UAlbany student chose to handle his shortfall in a rather creative way:

The e-mail solicitation looked like yet another cyberhoax. It wasn’t.

There really is a Nicholas Szwaba — a bitter University at Albany biology major with a $310 budget gap, courtesy of the State University of New York’s mid-year tuition hike.

But instead of forking it over, the 21-year-old from Staten Island fired up his PayPal account. He e-mailed more than 5,000 people this week, many of them UAlbany faculty and staff, asking each for $5 toward the increase.

And the total reward for his entrepreneurship? Not one cent.

Read the rest of the story here.

For the record, I agree with Nicholas Szwaba – it’s unfair to raise tuition mid-year.  In fact, it may be a breach of the agreement made with each student at the outset of the academic year, upon which their financial aid and attendant borrowing was based.

I was going through my email tonight and discovered that a project I wrote for the fine folks at Simply Youth Ministry, for the quarterly Simply All Access program, is now available as a stand alone 4-week small group bible study!  Pretty exciting!

From the description:

It’s no secret that we live in a fast-paced world. And with technology constantly improving, chances are fast-paced living will kick into overdrive. In this 4-week small group study, you’ll help your students examine the problems that stem from busyness, then discover how a life with Jesus can help you avoid burnout.

You can get more information, and a sample lesson from the Busyness series, here.

My computer ate my regularly scheduled plan today.  It started making an odd little click when the browser was loading a page, which could be a processor problem (or might be nothing much).  So, I decided to do a regular back-up of my data and then clone my hard drive using some highly recommended software called SuperDuper! The clone would allow me to turn an external drive into a bootable copy of my laptop’s hard drive and be able use my files and applications from another computer should mine need repairs.  And, I made a reservation for tomorrow at the Genius Bar.

All that took a bit longer than I anticipated, so, today’s blog post didn’t get finished (along with a few other tasks for the day)!  I’ll wrap that post up later, and you’ll see it tomorrow.  In the meantime, the post below called Theology, Socially has had a generous number of views, and very few comments.  So, go throw a couple of pennies into the comments section there!