A British writer “who specialises in Islamist extremism” is refusing to cooperate with authorities who want him to turn over his notes and sources for an upcoming book on a suspected terrorist. I gather the writer and his legal team want to expose the truth, but not in connection with police. I’m not sure I understand the rationale here.
That Grand Old Flag
For a bit more on Memorial Day, let’s wave that flag.
“One must be wrong.”
“The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong. God can not be for, and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God’s purpose is something different from the purpose of either party–and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose. I am almost ready to say this is probably true–that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By his mere quiet power on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began. And having begun, He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds.”
–Abraham Lincoln (unsigned, undated document, possibly from Sept., 1862)
No Time to Waste
I have been absent during the past two weeks, and it was not planned ahead of time. I’m still not back in a close-to-normal routine today, but to be honest, I don’t want to go back to what used to feel normal. I want renewal, revival, growth. I want old things to wither and new things to take root. Maybe I should design a new face for the blog.
But about my absence–my father-in-law died suddenly early Monday, May 12. My sister-in-law, who is a great nurse practitioner, called us to pray while he was still having chest pains, and then afterwards to tell us he had passed away. We were praying the Lord would have mercy, and He did, just not the way we anticipated.
I’m glad I heard all of the tributes he received from friends and supporters at his funeral at Briarwood Presbyterian (PCA). He was the administrator for Partners in Asian Missions, so he had thousands of friends around the world. Hearing their praise and prayers repeatedly stirred me. I’m thankful to be in his family.
Of course, that week was harder on my good wife than it was on me, but the Lord has not left us to grieve alone. He has been with us as we walked through the valley of the shadow of death. Surely goodness and mercy . . . surely goodness and mercy . . .
Added to this trial, we’ve had a couple material disappointments. A week ago Friday, I decided to finish off the homemade ice cream and found it melted in the freezer. Our six-year-old refrigerator had short-circuited. We finally got a replacement delivered today, so we’ve been the week without a fridge. And when I returned from work last Thursday, we discovered our glass exterior door (the one outside our front door) had shattered. At first, we thought of vandals, but we have learned it was an accident.
So, I’ve been out of the office blogwise. I appreciate your prayers and even for taking the time to read this post. Let me pass on a message from my other sister-in-law, who is a great homemaker in America’s northern-most state, about her dad and the influence he has had on us.
No Time To Waste – My Father’s Life
Susanna Biederman
Sunday, May 18, 2008 at 10:16am
For those of you who don’t know already, my dad died and went to be with Jesus on May 12. I went to Alabama and Texas to be with my family for the funeral and burial. It was very comforting to hear what my dad’s closest friends had to say about him. But I think my cousin, Becca, put into words better than anyone else. Here is what she wrote…
My uncle, Jerry Sharpe, passed away earlier this week. Well, actually, to be truthful, for some unknown reason, God decided that it was time Jerry joined Him in Heaven and took him. It was a sudden heart attack, a surprise to all of his family.
Uncle Jerry was an amazing man. He leaves behind a legacy as a husband, a father, an uncle, a brother-in-law, a grandfather, a pastor…. I will miss getting his updates and prayer letters from his travels throughout Asia where he worked with national pastors. I will miss having him at those times when our extended family gets together to celebrate life in some way – whether Christmas or anniversaries or birthdays or summer vacations.
I find myself grieving for my cousins who are now without him, for Jean, his new wife that I haven’t even met, for my mother who treasured him as a brother-in-law. And I find myself grieving for myself; I will miss him. In some ways, he influenced my willingness to come to Asia. He challenged me in some way every time I had a conversation with him – challenged me not to settle for anything less than being sold out for Christ. And I don’t think he even realized that was what he was doing. He just did it.
So this week, as I’ve been grieving and pondering his life and influence, and wishing I could be with my family for the funeral, I’ve also been reminded how short our lives are. We don’t have much time – we really don’t! We don’t have time to focus on the little things that distract us from living for the big picture. We don’t have time to waste on the big things of this world that distract us from the little things that matter. We don’t have time to not pour out ourselves into the relationships that God puts in our lives. We don’t have time to not risk everything in order to go and make disciples of all nations. We don’t have time to not fix our eyes on Jesus and run after Him in passionate pursuit. We don’t have time to not live out our lives fully, wholeheartedly, completely devoted to pursuing God and His purposes for us. We don’t have time to not be on fire for Him. We just don’t have the time to not make our lives count.
One woman’s blessing…
Oh dear. I meant to mention this earlier, and it slipped my Teflon mind: I met a reader of this blog at church last Sunday. A lady who was visiting with one of our families introduced herself, and said she was a reader. She also mentioned that her daughter also read it—in Ankara, Turkey. Nice to meet you, Reader, and I hope I wasn’t too distant and avoidant with you.
Man, do I love saying “I told you so.” I am, at bottom (and at top), a petty and vindictive sort, as you’ve doubtless gathered by now.
Via Townhall.com, there’s this article from The London Daily Mail, in which Rebecca Walker (no relation) tells the story of her unhappy relationship with her mother, feminist author Alice Walker (also no relation. To me. Obviously a relation to her daughter). She tells of being raised by a woman who considered her a bother, a burden, and an interruption in her important work.
You see, my mum taught me that children enslave women. I grew up believing that children are millstones around your neck, and the idea that motherhood can make you blissfully happy is a complete fairytale.
In fact, having a child has been the most rewarding experience of my life. Far from ‘enslaving’ me, three-and-a-half-year-old Tenzin has opened my world. My only regret is that I discovered the joys of motherhood so late – I have been trying for a second child for two years, but so far with no luck.
Rebecca Walker doesn’t appear to be a Christian, and you’ll find some statements in the article that you probably won’t agree with if you are one. But the basic argument is one a lot of us have been trying to make for years: That radical feminism has done far more harm to women (and to everybody around those women) than any good it’s done.
Have a wonderful Memorial Day holiday!
Memoir of a ghost
I had a disturbing experience today, in the men’s room.
(If ever there were an opening sentence calculated to send most of our readers running from their computers, doing their Edvard Munch “Scream” imitations, that ought to be it.)
But honestly, this post isn’t about the natural functions of the human body. It is about plumbing, but the brass-and-chrome kind.
I called our maintenance guy yesterday, to let him know that the automatic flush devices in the men’s room had stopped working. I’m sure you’ve encountered such things. An electric eye senses when someone comes close and then goes away, and at that point it triggers a flush. The electric eyes here had stopped working.
So the maintenance guy came to look today. He passed his hand over one of the electric eyes.
The device flushed.
He tried the others. He found that sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn’t. They definitely need maintenance.
But the thing is, he was able to trigger the electric eyes some of the time.
I tried it again. Nothing.
It was as if I were a walking phantasm, a shadow being, a monstrous thing of mist compounded.
I was a little afraid to check the mirror, for fear I’d have no reflection. (But I did. It was OK.)
Still, it was a troubling experience.
Then I thought, “Maybe I should make lemonade from this. If I’m invisible to electric eyes, I might have a brilliant future as a jewel thief.”
The Caspian no-see
Continuing my one-man, hate-filled vendetta against the new Prince Caspian movie, I’ll link to a couple blog reviews today.
Christopher Cowan of The Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood has posted two pieces on the movie—here and here. His reservations are much the same as mine. Except for being more coherent, better developed, and properly researched, of course.
Gene Edward Veith at Cranach was disappointed with the movie, for a different reason.
Everything I read tells me that this is probably a pretty good flick, one which I’d enjoy under other circumstances.
But as an adaptation of Prince Caspian, it appears to be deeply flawed.
I’m sad about that.
An excerpt:
From Owen Parry’s Call Each River Jordan: Chapter One (a passage describing the Battle of Shiloh):
Set down like this, all reeks of sense and knowledge. But I was not a thinking man that day. In battle, men survive who learn to act. Thinkers perish, or, at best, they fail. They hesitate, and die. No, I had not the selfhood ink pretends, but was a beast trained by a master’s hand. Forever a creature of the regiment I was, though I had long hoped elsewise. I was, again, the boy in the scarlet coat, streaming with the gore of Chillianwala, and grinning at the slaughter and the triumph. That was Britannia’s legacy to me, brought to my new land as a fateful cargo.
I was not myself upon that field, see. Not the Abel Jones I had constructed across the years I wore no uniform. Not the man I prayed that I might be as I approached the age of thirty-four. Not the loving husband and father, the dutiful Methodist clerk. I fell down. And Jones the Killer rose up like a ghost, bloody as the Kashmir Gate at Delhi.
But let that bide.
Just to be clear, I don’t believe in karma
It seems to me that one of the problems with believing in Karma (not that I’m seriously considering it) would be that most of us are prone to think we’ve earned less of the bad stuff, and deserved more of the good stuff, than is actually the case.
To choose an example entirely at random, take me. This was The Weekend of the Set-up Crew for me. As you know if you’ve been following my bellyaching, my church meets in a gymnasium, and we have five teams that rotate rolling out the tarps and setting up chairs, stage, sound system, etc. It usually only involves one hour on Saturday and another hour after church on Sunday morning.
This weekend was not my team’s turn. But a call went out that most of this week’s team had conflicts (crafty villains that they were), and could somebody help? So I agreed, despite my abhorrence for both physical work and the society of my fellow man. I then learned that this weekend would involve three hours. First there’d be the routine Saturday set-up. Then on Sunday, instead of tearing down after church, we’d have to move some stuff around and set up risers, because our school was having its graduation ceremony that night. And then we’d have to come in Sunday night, after the ceremony, to do the actual tear-down.
It’s with considerable self-complacency that I inform you that not one of the regular team was present for all three sessions. Only one, lone volunteer did that—Your Arrogant Servant.
In my mind, I’m paddling in the deep end of an Olympic-size pool of good karma.
Let me tell you—any enterprise that depends on the energy and industry of Lars Walker for its success is in a bad way. Any crew whose most reliable physical laborer is Lars Walker is clearly suffering from malaise, decomposition and decline.
It hope it’s not a portent of my church’s future.
Your Performance May Vary
Had any trouble pulling out this blog lately? The vast technical team that keeps this blog running is working on a potential problem, but they want to hear about your experience good or bad. I guess they don’t want to take Lars and my word for it. I’d ask who pays the bills around here, but that would just escalate the tension. So, has BwB been slow on your end?