It’s probably in bad taste to criticize these things, but I’ll venture forward nonetheless. I learned today the Christian ghetto has what I assume to be a “safe” source for online video, GodTube. If you can’t get enough of alternatives to popular ideas or songs, look no further than this little site. (via World) *Those Mac vs. PC parodies depress me.*

The Bible on DVD–don’t want to read to your family yourself? Have this DVD read the Bible to the whole family with just a bit of ambient nature sounds and some dialog voices. Take a look at the demonstration stream. It’s so . . . multimedia. Whatever happened to reading aloud for yourself?

It’s probably in bad taste to criticize these things, but I’ll venture forward nonetheless. I learned today the Christian ghetto has what I assume to be a “safe” source for online video, GodTube. If you can’t get enough of alternatives to popular ideas or songs, look no further than this little site. (via World) *Those Mac vs. PC parodies depress me.*

The Bible on DVD–don’t want to read to your family yourself? Have this DVD read the Bible to the whole family with just a bit of ambient nature sounds and some dialog voices. Take a look at the demonstration stream. It’s so . . . multimedia. Whatever happened to reading aloud for yourself?

“Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.”

from Luke 24 ESV

Amy points out a long essay with links on Tom Bombadil (by way of Frank Wilson)

I was cited as a reliable source today over at Gene Edward Veith’s Cranach blog. I think this is good. Dr. Veith is now on his way to acquiring that high level of credibility he’s been striving for.

It looks like I’ve got a renter. The story (I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn) is rather weird.

Last night I got a call. It turned out to be a transcription call (or whatever they call it). That’s the kind of call you get from a deaf person. They type out a message which is read to you by the operator. Then the operator transcribes your reply so the caller can read it.

This caller was a businessman from Columbia, South Carolina, calling from Thailand (I’m not making this up). He was contacting me on behalf of his son, who is coming to study for a Master’s Degree somewhere in these parts. They (or he) saw my ad in the local Christian paper (probably on the web site, I would guess) and they want the room.

Sight unseen.

And they’ll pay an entire year’s rent in advance.

Hard to turn down an offer like that.

Around bedtime I got to thinking, “You know, this is suspicious. I get a call from a guy in the far east, whose voice I don’t get to hear. He offers me a sizable amount of money. I’ll bet this is a scam. I bet he’s going to end up asking for my bank account number.” (Which would be a joke on him. Hardly worth the cost of the phone call.)

But I checked my e-mail again and there was a message saying he’s sending a cashier’s check.

I can’t figure out a way for that to be bad.

Hope I get along with my new tenant.

When I get to meet him.

I think I know why it took this long to get a renter. This past Monday I sent an e-mail to the relatives in Norway, saying I wouldn’t be able to come to visit this year. I think if I’d had a renter, I might have opted to make the trip. And I think God doesn’t want me to do that in 2007. For reasons of His own.

His ways are above ours.

Have a blessed Maundy Thursday, friends.

Update: Commenter Susan warns me that this offer shows earmarks of a classic e-mail scam, and on checking I see that it does look suspicious. The main difference is the original contact by phone in my case. Security experts warn that one should never accept payment from a renter who contacts you by e-mail and does not examine the property first. I am going to take this very cautiously. Thanks to Susan for the heads-up.

Well, it was a short summer.

(That’s a Minnesota joke. We like to use it in spring, when an early mild spell is followed by a return of cold weather and snow. Which is what happened today. It snowed on us, although the stuff melted when it hit ground. I expect the snow predicted for tonight will be waiting for us in the morning though.)

Just to bring you up to date on my personal life, which I know is why you come to this blog, I actually had a guy over to look at my room to rent on Sunday. What amazed me was that I’d made a special prayer that morning for the Lord to send me a renter. Then I got a call of inquiry before I left for church.

What spoils the story somewhat is that I suspect the guy won’t take the room. If I’m any judge of people (and I’m not), I don’t think he was much interested in what’s on offer here. But we’ll see.

Today counts as a good day, all in all. I banked my tax refund (smaller than I’d hoped, but welcome) and the Spectator ran my piece. I feel almost like a person today.

I close with the following quotation, which I found in a devotional book this morning. You probably won’t be surprised to learn that I like this one a lot:

What an amazing, what a blessed disproportion between the evil we do, and the evil we are capable of doing, and now seem sometimes on the very verge of doing! If my soul has grown tares, when it was full of the seeds of nightshade, how happy ought I to be! And that the tares have not wholly strangled the wheat, what a wonder it is! We ought to thank God daily for the sins we have not committed.

(Frederick W. Faber, 1815-1863)

Alibris.com, a great network of used and rare bookstores, takes reader reviews now, and they are holding a contest to encourage customers to write their opinions.

Moka.com is launching mBooks, “inspiration, innovation, and education via SMS text-Messages or email.” This appears to be similar to the daily emails I get from delanceyplace.com, an excerpt of the day service.

This is a good week to ask this question. Are you comfortable at rest? Do you feel you have too much to do to stop for several minutes to be quiet, watch the grass grow, listen to the rain?

This “horror story” looks to be both an answer to prayer and call for intercession. May God save Mexico, her children, and Ms. Ribeiro.

It only got up to about fifty today, with cloudy skies, and tonight it’ll rain. It might turn to snow.

See, I told you. The stab isn’t coming in March as I predicted, I grant you, but Madame March just handed the shiv off to Lady April. Lady April is just as villainous as Madame March, and the more dangerous because we trust her more.

In case you were wondering what happened with the police cordon I reported on Friday, it was indeed a serious business. And it ended in tragedy. Though not as awful a tragedy as it might have been.

According to news reports, a man named David Dahlen, previously incarcerated for bank robbery in California, walked into the Four Seasons Mall US Bank in Plymouth, Minnesota (which is next door to my dentist’s office, as it happens) with a gun. It’s unclear whether he left with the money he wanted or not, but he fled the bank and entered a house in the neighborhood. He forced the woman who lived there to leave at gunpoint. She called the police, and they sealed off the area. And waited.

While they waited, trying to contact him, he called his family. Then he put the gun to his chest and shot himself. After some hours the police entered the house and found the body.

It’s a sign of the depravity of our times that a story like that seems almost sweet. Here was a guy with a gun, on the run. The standard procedure for someone in that situation, in recent years, has been to take hostages or just shoot down innocent bystanders.

Robbing a bank is a bad thing. Pointing a gun at innocent people is a bad thing. I don’t want to be misunderstood on that. And I consider suicide a mortal sin.

But this guy had the chance to end his life like a Tarantino movie, and instead he chose to go out like someone in a Bret Harte story. In my book, that wins him a few sympathy points.

How many times have I heard of a hostage or sniper situation in the last few years and thought, “If you want to kill yourself, just kill yourself—don’t murder people who want to live”?

May the Lord have mercy on David Dahlen.