Posts from — March 2003

I just saw this on Jon’s blog:

I recently received a letter from Chalcedon Christian Church in Franklin, TN, about their upcomming conference on leadership. They sent the letter to attendees of the 2003 AAPC, and requested help passing the word.

Date: Saturday, May 10 (8am to 5pm)
Speakers: Steve Wilkins, Andrew Sandlin, George Grant, and Steve Morriss
Cost: $25 for individuals or families; scholarships available
Contact: Perry Coghlan, pastor – pc2@perrycoghlan.com

You know the part in My Big Fat Greek Wedding where they spit on him? If you don’t, it’s pretty funny. Apparently it is a Greek custom to spit on a person, or at least pretend to, as a blessing on them. Well, my landlord is Greek. And his mother lives at the end of our street. She sometimes walks along the street and talks to who ever happens to be out. Last week, Megan was out with Ashley, our four month old. Well, this lady comes up and is talking to Megan, and Ashley begins to fuss. And so she spits on her! No kidding! Actually, she didn’t really spit anything out. Just went through the motions. Pretty funny.

Thursday and Friday I spent up in Annapolis, Maryland. I attended an eastcoast CRE meeting. Four churches were represented. Us, All Saints Presbyterian Church (Lancaster, PA), Christ Church (Cary, NC) and the hosting church, Christ Reformed Evangelical Church in Annapolis. It was a great time. Each of the four pastors gave a talk, and then we closed the time with a panel discussion on worship. Being able to meet these men, and spend more than just a few minutes with them, was very nice. We actually got to know one another a little bit. It makes me look forward to the next CRE east meeting, whenever that might be.

Sometimes I’m the only one who doesn’t get the joke. Other times, though, I make a joke, and I’m the only one that gets it.

ha.

I just took this test which I got from Rick. Normally I don’t post the results of these things I take, but this one so weirded me out that I have to post it.

what decade does your personality live in?

quiz brought to you by lady interference, ltd

How it got that I’ll never know.

I thought this thing with google was supposed to make blogger better. Since the announcement I’ve had more problems than I had the whole two and a half years before it.

Or at least it feels that way.

Very often I find calvinistic or reformed people saying there is absolutly no reason why God would love them. But this simply isn’t true. I think what they mean, of course, is that there is no reason in them that would make God love them. That they don’t merit God’s favor. But this isn’t what they are saying, and the difference is drastic. And I’m afraid many people don’t really recognize what the difference is.

There are reasons that God has chosen the elect. We don’t know them, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there. To say that there is no reason why God would love us means it is random selection. God is sitting up in heaven, saying eeny meany miny moe. God would random at best, and chaotic at worst. But this is not the case. God has very good reasons for choosing who He has chosen, but they are in His secret things, and He has chosen not to reveal them to us. Our election is grounded in the wisdom of God, and we ought to take comfort in that.

The Presbyterian Doctrine of Children in the Covenant by Lewis B. Schenck is being published by P&R, due out this summer.

No longer do you have to spend $30 to get a copy.

Also on the horizon, The Case for Covenantal Infant Baptism, edited by Gregg Strawbridge. I’ve been looking forward to this since I learned about it last summer.

New blog alert. At least, it’s fairly new, and definitely new to me. I just found out about Kelly’s blog, The BadgerMum today. Go check it out!

this really is fascinating…

We tend to think that “unleavened bread” means bread that hasn’t risen, but that isn’t necessarily the case.

God did not prohibit Israel from using yeast. What was prohibited was leaven.

The leaven in question was a bit of dough from the previous batch. The dough would be allowed to ferment (thereby producing yeast) and the fermented dough (leaven) would be added to the new batch of dough to make the bread rise. This is still how you make sourdough bread.

But God wanted Israel to make a complete break from Egypt. Therefore, she wasn’t allowed to use any of the old leaven — the stuff from the previous lump — in the new bread. That’s also Paul’s point in 1 Cor. 5: you’re a new loaf, so get rid of the old leaven.

Unless you’re making sourdough bread, you don’t use leaven today. That is, you don’t use any of the previous dough. Instead, you start afresh (though you do use yeast to make it rise). Therefore, biblically speaking, all of our risen bread (with the exception of sourdough) is unleavened bread and is appropriate for both Passover and the Lord’s Supper.
by: John on 2003-03-11 02:56:45

Taken from dawn, who got it from the comments of Gideon Strauss’ post here (March 10), where John wrote it. (whew)

Here is a little movie I put together not too long ago. It’s bad quality, but it’s from a cheap digital camera, so that’s expected. I was just learning how to use the software when I made it…

Geneva Jump

I was just looking into the Amazon.com Associate Program, and I see that you can’t get referrals for your own click-throughs. If that’s the case, I don’t think I’d ever earn anything.

Plus, you can’t “promote discrimination based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation, or age”, which I prefer having the freedom to do on my site, even if it is blasphemy against the god of modernity, tolerance.

Instead, I’ll just point all my amazon links to a friend or other deserving party’s associate account (not that they’ll likely earn anything from my site… but just in case). Post yours and I’ll add it to a link at some point.

p.s. Learn how to beautify amazon links from Emeth.

My older daughter, Geneva, is in transition to a bed. Actually, she is in a bed. Saturday night was her first night in her bed, and she hasn’t slept in the crib since then. Because we already had a frame for a full size bed, we just got a boxspring and mattress to use for her, instead of getting a little toddler bed. This way, we have a guest bed if anyone happens to come visit us. They no longer have to sleep on one of the couches (although, I have taken some very nice naps on each of those couches… they sleep well).

I am halfway expecting Geneva to fall off the bed. She knows how to get down when she wants to get down, and soon she’ll be able to get up (we need to get a little step stool for her). We have bedrails on the bed, so she should be okay while she sleeps, but she likes to stand up and walk around on the bed when she isn’t. This, coupled with her desire to spin around and around until she falls over may present a problem for us. For her, rather. For her cute little head as it crashes onto the floor.