No man lives unto himself. Either directly or indirectly, you are deeply influencing somebody else. If you are a carelessly living Christian, there may be persons who will use your careless life as a shield, a hiding place for his own much more serious iniquity. Or there may be those who kneel at night and say, "God, make me like brother So-and-so, make me like Mrs. So-and-so." It can be both ways, for deeds have consequences and are the result of choices, whether they are impulsive choices or carefully thought out choices. In the Bible, a wise man is not necessarily an educated man or one of high cultural level, although he could be. A wise man is a man who acts with an eye to consequences. He thinks, "What will the result of this be?" Then he acts in a way that will bring him consequences he will not have to be ashamed of or afraid of in the day to come. --Paragraphs excerpted from "The Dangers of a Shallow Faith," A. W. Tozer I'm not dead, bu...

Y que uds. tengan un buenísimo día de celebrar el nacimiento de nuestro Señor y Salvador, Jesucristo. Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,   for he has visited and redeemed his people and has raised up a horn of salvation for us   in the house of his servant David, as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, that we should be saved from our enemies   and from the hand of all who hate us; to show the mercy promised to our fathers   and to remember his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our father Abraham, to grant us   that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear,   in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;   for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people   in the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God,   whereby the sunrise shal...

So, someone I know made an interesting statement tonight: "Nobody at this college is good at communication. Except if they talk about Jesus. Then they'll talk without stopping." Or something like that, anyway. I don't remember the exact turn of phrase. The unfortunate thing is, she's completely right. On multiple occasions, administration has failed to properly notify students or staff or faculty about important information/changes. Sometimes they do eventually straighten things out (after the damage has been done), but other times it's just glossed over. The bad thing is that it makes plenty of Christian students disillusioned about Christianity in general, because this institution is so identified with the religion that when the institution fails at something, the religion also gets the blame. So, yeah, this college needs to get a lot better at communication. If we can talk about Jesus so much, I should certainly hope we can talk about other things t...

That quote is from the philosophy department chair at my college. (Remember, it's a Christian college, so they can talk about God and all that.) I thought of it as I read a thought-provoking post over at Stuff Christians Like--one about how Christians tend to think people would always choose the right, logical choice, if they knew the consequences of the wrong, illogical choices , when in fact that's quite definitely not realistic. He makes a good point, and he makes it better than I could. Go read it. I'm not exactly sure why I thought of the quote as I read the blog post. But they must have something in common....

Well maybe I'm not. Maybe it's just a good desire that I have. Meek went on to say that reducing our hunches and desires to a “calling” saves us the trouble of thinking, drawing on Scriptural principles, and wise understanding of the world, and absolves us of responsibility when things don’t work out well. (on World Mag Blog)

I have thought, before, that to translate a song would be a wonderful experience, even a way to worship God with my Spanish talent. And now I know. I've loved this song for years: And I thought to myself, this past Friday, that it would be a great song to translate into Spanish. So I made my best effort to produce a Spanish lyric faithful to both the original song and to the Biblical passage from whence the English song came; and in addition to that, I tried to make the lyric sound good, to sound like it was supposed to be that way originally (instead of being a translation clumsily fitted to the original tune). So, I looked up the verses in two different Spanish translations (the NVI and the RV-1995 ) to try to write the lyric as close to the Bible verse phrasing/words as possible. Then I wrote a version, and didn't like it at all. (I still have it, however, in my e-mail.) I re-wrote most of it as various ideas, words and phrases, came to me.... and here is what I ...

I decided this month that I'd do all my devotional Bible readings from my Spanish Bible. I figured, hey, I've been to Central America, I'm practically fluent, and I should be able to understand the Spanish translation quickly enough that I don't lose the meaning of the passages I'm reading. So I'm doing that. And boy, is it wonderful. Verses that I'd instantly recognize, even be able to recite, in English regain a freshness when I read them in Spanish. (Today's verses were from Romans 8:28-39, which of course includes the whole part about neither death nor life nor anything else being able to separate us from God's love.) Sometimes I also realize something completely new about a passage I've read before, simply because of little language differences (such as, I can tell the difference between a singular "you" and a plural "you" at a glance with Spanish). This is pretty awesome. It's like singing in Spanish, only better...

From my devotional e-mail today: This morning let us hear the Lord Jesus speak to each one of us: "I will help thee." "It is but a small thing for Me, thy God, to help thee. Consider what I have done already. What! Not help thee? Why, I bought thee with My blood. What! not help thee? I have died for thee; and if I have done the greater, will I not do the less? Help thee! It is the least thing I will ever do for thee; I have done more, and will do more. Before the world began I chose thee. I made the covenant for thee. I laid aside My glory and became a man for thee; I gave up My life for thee; and if I did all this, I will surely help thee now. In helping thee, I am giving thee what I have bought for thee already. If thou hadst need of a thousand times as much help, I would give it thee; thou requirest little compared with what I am ready to give. 'Tis much for thee to need, but it is nothing for me to bestow. 'Help thee?' Fear not! If there were an ant at...

I visited my cousins this weekend, and with them I went to their church. The pastor preached on a Christmas theme, in keeping with the season (of course), and his particular sermon was about the wise men who came to visit Jesus. He noted that those magi from the east, whatever their number, were probably from the Persian area. Now, the interesting thing about that is that Daniel of the Old Testament spent his days as an adviser to the King... in Persia. Also, his prophecy of the coming of the Messiah was one that contained a specific timeline. ( Daniel 9:24-26 ) Since Daniel was one of the "wise men" of Persia, and a great one at that, it wouldn't be surprising if the wise men that followed him made sure to pay attention to his prophecies, especially as the time of the prophecy drew near. The connection is fascinating, isn't it?

Today in chapel, the worship leader for today introduced us to a hymn I'd not heard before, "Thine be the Glory." Apparently, it's second only to Amazing Grace in popularity (or familiarity, shall we say) in England, from where this guy hails. I also discovered another song written by the same duo that wrote "In Christ Alone." I shall soon be learning that one. :)

I've been reading A.W. Tozer again. If you've been reading long enough or paying attention, I love his writing . His book "The Pursuit of God" was wonderful the first time I read through it, and I keep drawing insights from that each time I read it again. However, this book I'm in is a collection of Tozer's 52 best chapters (which still makes for a little paperback, since his chapters are fairly short). I've read this before too. It has excerpts from "Pursuit of God" in addition to ten other books he wrote (I think there are eleven in total, anyway). Thing is, when I read Tozer I have to stop and think a lot, and pray, and read my Bible in the meantime. So I've been on several long bus rides since I started this and I'm still in chapter 11 or something. It amuses me that I started this blog, what, three years ago, with posts about Tozer. But his writing is really something. I recommend "Pursuit of God" especially.

... I always have lots of things planned to do. I don't normally get around to doing them quite when I meant to, though. Anyways. One of those things was to update my link list on the side there. Honestly, if there were a way I could conveniently link my Google Reader list to my blog sidebar, that would be great. But there is not. However I can give you examples... I have several folders. The ones I actually read are "Geekish" (yes, that's the name), "Christianity and life" (for which I couldn't come up with a better name), "Language" and "Friend blogs". "Geekish" sample: Futurity.org which basically collects fascinating scientific breakthroughs/studies for those who don't think the newspaper covers it enough. "Christianity and life" sample: Pyromaniacs , run mainly by a man named Phil Johnson. Fascinating theological discussions, and Spurgeon readings on top of that! "Language" sample: OK, so I love...

Today's sermon was about the letter to the Philadelphia church, in the beginning of the book of Revelation. A few fascinating things I learned: --Philadelphia wasn't really that big a deal... just a little city that had only one thing going for it: It was at the crossroads of the East and Rome, so it had a lot of trade routes running through, and thus was a kind of communications hub. Not a real financial or religious center like Ephesus or Corinth. --It was on a fault line, and a HUGE earthquake (the biggest in recorded history, I think) levelled it in AD 17. --It got rebuilt after that, but then every time the residents felt another tremor, they all ran for their lives out of the city. --Eventually, the only thing that survived earthquakes and the passage of time has been the big ol' pillars from the pagan temples there. And, in light of all that, this verse has particular meaning: "Him who overcomes I will make a pillar in the temple of my God. Never again will he...

This past Sunday I got to go with my family to meet a gaggle of just-returning missionaries from all over the world, at an amazing opportunity at my church district's campground. A pretty simple setup--a giant world map, on canvas maybe (it was something pretty sturdy), laid out all over the grass next to the tabernacle at camp, and with band instruments set up next to it. The amazing part was being able to hear so many stories/prayer requests from so many parts of the world at one time. The missionaries were stationed on the map (that's why it was so big), in the vicinity of where they minister on the real globe. Anyone who wanted could come up and talk to the missionaries--several folks from my church made the trip. And these missionaries were from all over, though we got to talk to just people from Africa and South America (there wasn't time to visit with everyone). We heard some encouraging stories about breakthroughs in West Africa, changes in South America, and s...

You know those essay questions that you get for various job or scholarship or internship applications? The ones that ask you where you see yourself in five, ten, twenty years? I hate those. This is why. I have come to see that I am always wrong about what I’ll be doing “five years from now.” Maybe once upon a time I thought there was something I knew for sure I was going to do "when I grew up." Something in particular--I was going to live in my old hometown, or I was going to work at a newspaper every summer, or whatever. How silly that is, when the world itself goes on without consulting your every whim. What makes us think we could know enough of future circumstances to be able to plan for them? Only God knows our plans. Us here on earth--we can hardly tell what will happen next month, let alone in five years. When I was just a little girl I asked my mother, what will I be Will I be pretty, will I be rich Here's what she said to me. Que Sera, Sera, Whatever will b...

I was meandering through YouTube today, looking at some Michael Card. ...Matthew was mindful Of taking the tax, Pressing the people to pay Hearing the call, He responded in faith Followed the Light and the Way Leaving the people So puzzled he found, The greed in his heart Was no longer around and It's hard to imagine The freedom we find From the things We leave behind...

From my devotional today: "Lord, help me to glorify Thee; I am poor, help me to glorify Thee by contentment; I am sick, help me to give Thee honour by patience; I have talents, help me to extol Thee by spending them for Thee; I have time, Lord, help me to redeem it, that I may serve thee; I have a heart to feel, Lord, let that heart feel no love but Thine, and glow with no flame but affection for Thee; I have a head to think, Lord, help me to think of Thee and for Thee; Thou hast put me in this world for something, Lord, show me what that is, and help me to work out my life-purpose: I cannot do much, but as the widow put in her two mites, which were all her living, so, Lord, I cast my time and eternity too into Thy treasury; I am all Thine; take me, and enable me to glorify Thee now, in all that I say, in all that I do, and with all that I have." --Charles Spurgeon

In Luke 14, Jesus says (among other things)... Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, 'This man began to build and was not able to finish.' That made me think of a tower in Akron . A televangelist started a huge building project, but fell into financial troubles, and to this day an unfinished tower stands in the middle of the old shopping area.

I did finish "War and Peace" before classes started.... but what can one say about such a long, classic, amazing book? The characters... I could understand all their emotions, so well that I felt like they had been my own at some point. That's how well Tolstoy wrote the characters. And it was fascinating to recognize a predestination-type worldview... over and over, in his essay portions, he said that one man was not the cause of a change in the course of history; one man could never be that cause. The millions of men that make decisions, and the millions more that carry out those decisions (or, just as often, ignore them completely) are, in Tolstoy's world, merely instruments of an inexorable path that history itself lays out, as if history were a being, moving men's hearts and beasts as it wills. Last night I and several friends participated in a campus version of "Family Feud." I never felt so ridiculous in my life, but it was great fun. This im...

So the chaplain this year--he's new--has been going through a sort of series on the ways Christians grow closer to God. Prayer, confession, the sacraments, reading the Bible, and so on. This week he's talking about meditation; and today, after a stripped-down version of the praise songs (i.e. just one singer/guitarist as opposed to a whole band plus several singers), he talked a bit more about meditating and letting God speak through the still whisper, then let us all either sit there and practice meditating, or leave early. (Like twenty-five minutes early.) I brought my journal and meditated some. 'Twas nice to just sit for awhile and think, you know?