Hey look! It’s the second Saturday in a row I’ve managed to compile these links! And that’s even without Internet service in my apartment. *pats self on back* In other news, I played guitar for a wedding today, and it was a marvelous opportunity to bless a young couple using something God’s given me. (Plus it’s fun too!) Book Hoarding …. a bit thought-provoking. (Via Challies.) One day the pastor said to himself, “What am I going to do since I don’t have enough shelves to store all my books?” Then he said, “This is what I’ll do: I will take down this old hodge-podge of shelving that I have constructed with boards and bricks and build new shelves, all matching. I’ll make them tall—up to the ceiling in height, so that I can store all my library neatly, attractively and conveniently with some room left over for new purchases. I’ll put them in the main rooms of the house, the basement, and, of course, in shelves covering the walls of my church office. Then I can say to my soul, “Eat chi

Length is the enemy of strength. The delivery of a discourse is like the boiling of an egg; it is remarkably easy to overdo it, and so to spoil it. —Charles Spurgeon

Once in a while—read, about once or twice a week—I’m so tired from whatever work I was doing that day that I feel like doing absolutely nothing, either physically or mentally. What’s the most mind-numbing, still activity there is that does not include napping? Watching movies, of course! One of the ladies in Bible study had a garage sale at her bookstore, where I picked up a VCR player and a TV for fifteen bucks. Sure, the TV has a red cast, but it’s a TV and the VCR works great. Even has an automatic rewind, as I found out last night when I waited a while before stopping the video. And my uncle gave me a small DVD player (like you could get from Family Dollar or something) a few months ago. You have to watch that it doesn’t overheat, but if the movie starts skipping I just put a small bread pan full of ice under it. Does the trick wonderfully. (Same thing can be done with overheating laptops!) Anyways, all that to say, I have a decent setup for watching movies over in the living roo

I re-read Perelandra by C.S. Lewis a few weeks ago, both to get something done on the summer reading program and because I wanted to buy the Space Trilogy , but thought I ought to remind myself why I decided to buy it after the first time I read the books. Conclusion: I am definitely using my gift card on this trilogy. The following quotes will give you a sampling of the reasons I love it so much. ….His journey to Perelandra was not a moral exercise, nor a sham fight. If the issue lay in Maleldil’s hands, Ransom and the Lady were those hands. the fate of a world really depended on how they behaved in the next few hours. the thing was irreducibly, nakedly real. They could, if they chose, decline to save the innocence of this new race, and if they declined its innocence would not be saved. It rested with no other creature in all time or all space. This he saw clearly, though as yet he had no inkling of what he could do. The voluble self protested, wildly, swiftly, like the propelle

Since moving to an apartment sans Internet I’ve not done much online reading lately. To be honest, I haven’t missed it much either. Not that I don’t enjoy it; but it’s not one of those necessary things in life, like peanut butter or clean clothing. That one’s from This Is Indexed . Tim Challies had a fascinating paragraph quoted from Martin Lloyd-Jones. A bit is excerpted here; the rest of the paragraph is at Challies’ blog . Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them, but they start talking to you, they bring back the problem of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you. Now this man’s treatment was this; instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself, ‘Why art thou cast down, O my soul?’ he asks. His soul had been repressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says: ‘Self, listen for a moment, I will speak to you’. Spelling mistakes ‘cost mi

My sister (who goes by Mafia) has occasionally pestered me about updating my blog. “How am I supposed to know what you’re doing?”, she asks, if I don’t? (Try saying asks. Not the easiest word to pronounce, simple as it is.) So. I moved into my new apartment July 1. My new, lovely, perfect apartment with only a leaky window to mar its wonderfulness. That leaky window can let in nearly a gallon of water in the space of forty-five minutes if it’s raining hard enough. Fortunately I’ve figured out how to use two plastic bags, a large rag-towel, and an old ice cream bucket set atop the radiator in the bathroom to catch it all. Maybe I’ll be able to save the laminate wood floor from any further damage (it had already sustained some, due to the previous, rather irresponsible renter). I’m rather proud that yesterday’s rain netted at least half a gallon with the rag-and-bag-and-bucket system, and the towel on the floor (meant to catch any splashes or spills) was only slightly damp. Now, this n