Month: April 2005

The Upper Room

Matthew 26:20-35, Mark 14:17-28, Luke 22:14-39, John 13:1-38, 14:1-31
Luke 22:19-20 – Growing up in a Presbyterian church, each time we took communion the pastor would recite these verses or something very similar. Even though my current church doesn’t do this (and we take communion every week), they still ring sing-songy in my ears. They are far too familiar. I wonder how they sounded to the disciples gathered there? Eat this, it’s my body, drink this it’s my blood, poured out for you. What kind of impact did it have on them, or were they still out of touch with what Jesus was teaching about? Reading a couple verses down (Luke 22:24) and it seems as though they were. Still, they must have wondered what he was talking about.
Luke 22:25-27 – As a deacon, am I more like Jesus the servant or the ‘kings of the Gentiles’? Do I expect a place of honor? Do I think that I should have more respect or honor? Instead I should be a servant and nothing more. Give myself to God’s people.
John 13:1-5 – I find Jesus’ confidence here striking. He understood the time had come. He knew that Judas was reeady to betray Him. But he was confident, not in himself but in God. Verse three:

Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God …

He had confidence that God had given Him power, that God was with Him, that He was going to be with God. What did that confidence enable Him to do? Serve. Verse four and five:

… so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.

He had complete trust in God that gave him incredible calm and poise facing a terrible situation. Not only was he ready to face it, but he could put it out of His mind and focus on these men. Men who still had not a clue about what was taking place. It didn’t matter to Jesus though, because of His trust in God. He was confident that God had his back.
John 13:35 – Jesus said that we will be known as His by our love. Not by our doctrine or our church building. Not by our obedience. By our love for one another. Yet we pursue doctrine, theology, obedience and church first over love so often. I marvel sometimes at how people who profess no faith in Jesus show amazing love and compassion while so called believers act so coldly.
John 14:1-7 – I sense a theme here with Jesus’ calm in the earlier verses, his confrontation with Peter just prior to this and now this statement and Thomas’ response. Jesus had complete trust in the Father and His plan, he was telling the disciples to do the same. But they wanted to be in control, to know all that was happening. Peter with his pronouncement of faithfulness and Thomas’ frustration with the unknown. Jesus just says trust me, God and I have it all worked out.
I need to remember this in my wrestling with church stuff. I don’t need the complete plan, a play by play organized layout of how the church should work. I just need to trust that God has it figured out.
Luke 22:35-38 – What’s with the swords?
Matthew 26:30 – Jesus and his disciples singing a Hymn. I would have loved to hear that.

DNRC Newsletter

I have a subscription to Dilbert through Comics.com. It’s free and I get each day’s Dilbert emailed to me. If you want to spend a little money you can get up to 70 different comics emailed for something like $12 a year.
Anyway, part of the deal is you also get added to Dogbert’s New Ruling Class and a subscription to the DNRC monthly Newsletter. It’s an absolute riot most months. Be careful about reading at work unless you want to have to explain why you just spit your coffe all over your monitor. Through your nose.
The best part of the newsletter by far is the Induhvidual Quotes. Whether they’re true quotes or not doesn’t really mattter. Here they are from this month’s issue:

“There’s more than one way to cut the cheese.”
“I know these streets like the back of my head.”
“When push comes to shove, that’s when the dollar meets the road.”
“Tomorrow at this time…it will be Wednesday.”
“I would like a pie-in-the-eye estimate.”
“The smell of indifference was deafening.”
“Oh, that will be a cake in the woods.”
“She’ll chew you up and down, and spit you out like a bad habit.”
“He’s living off the fat of my sweat!”
“I heard that out of the corner of my eye.”
“Even a blind beaver falls off a log once in awhile.”
“I threw down the carrot and he picked it up and ran with it.”
“It’s like a monkey on the back of the elephant in the room.”
“I don’t mean to throw a wrench, I mean a monkey, into the tools.”
“I got under your goat.”
“You heat it until it doubles to about three times its size.”
“When it comes to nut-cutting time, the cream will rise to the top.”
“Is it hot in me or what?”
“Don’t you hate it when you lock your keys out of your car?”
“It’s like watching paint grow.”
“The winds of change aren’t what they used to be.”
“The system is humming like a clam.”
“You need to take the bull by the balls and run with him.”
“Two cats out of the bag are worth more in the nest.”
“Anything worth doing is a lot more difficult than it’s worth.”
“Not to toot my own horse, but……”

Final Week – Tuesday Afternoon and Wednesday

Matthew 26:1-5, 14-19, Mark 14:1-2, 10-16, Luke 21:37-38, 22:1-13, John 12:37-50
Luke 22:9-13 – This is similar to the donkey earlier. If someone came to your home looking for a room for ‘the teacher’ to use, would you just open your home to them? Is the fact that this person did due to the times and culture they lived in or that they knew Jesus and when they said ‘the teacher’ he knew exactly who they were talking about.

HTML Image alignment help

OK, this is driving me crazy. Could someone who knows what they’re doing in HTML tell me how to do this? Take a look at this post. I want to have those two images right aligned and one over the other with the text full justified to the left. I can’t do it. I’ve tried several things, but none have worked, although a couple of them did preview OK in MT.
I know that I could just paste them together into one image (that’s what I did here) but I know there’s got to be a way to do it with two separate JPEG’s.
Can anyone help?

EasyComments 0.2

I’ve had requests (OK, one request) for the code behind my comment formatting buttons and the live preview, so I decided to put it out there for whoever wants it. It’s not a MT plugin, it’s just JavaScript, so I think it will work for any web page with a comment form.
As I said before, I did not write the two JavaScripts themselves, I just hacked them so they’d work together. and gave it a name, EasyComments, which is much catchier than the original name I gave it: ‘Salguod Quicktags With Preview’.
I make no guarantees that these will work for you. I know enough about JavaScript to be dangerous – actually, probably not even that much – so if you have a question, I’m likely to not have an answer. You are on your own and you’ve been warned. 🙂
With all the disclaimers out of the way, download EasyComments 0.2 here.

Lesson to the Teachers

Matthew 25:31-46
I think that this is the only place where God’s judging the people is actually described. The fact that He is the judge is mentioned in several places, but the actual process of judgment is here only. It’s instructive to us in seeing how God will separate the righteous from the wicked and what he will use to judge between the two. It’s not the only passage we should use to determine God’s criteria for judgment, if that’s all there was we wouldn’t need the rest of the Bible.
So how does God divide the sheep from the goats? On the surface it would seem that it was only based on their performance, how good a person they were. But we know from scriptures like Romans 3:23 and Ephesians 2 that none of us are good enough and it only through God’s grace that we are saved. But this passage in Matthew draws a clear line between those who did good and those who did not.
What else can we observe about these two groups?

  • There was a pattern to their behavior – meeting needs or not.
  • Neither group recognized the pattern they were in as applying directly to Jesus. That seems odd to me in reference to the group of the righteous. How could they not understand that to serve others is to serve God?
  • The goats recognized Jesus (called Him Lord) and were shocked that they had missed an opportunity to serve him.

What was the difference between the sheep and the goats? Was it perhaps that the goats were not exposed to any needy people while the sheep had many opportunities to serve? I doubt that was true. No one goes through life without being exposed to needs. Needs are everywhere around us, we are all exposed to them. If they were both exposed to needs, why did one group act and the other did not?
I believe this, as in everything, goes back to the heart. Hebrews 4:12 tells us that the Bible judges our hearts, back in 1 Samuel 16:7 when God chose David to be kin he rejected those who looked good to man because He was focused on the heart and so too here with the sheep and the goats. It wasn’t the actions themselves that lead God to be pleased with the sheep. In fact, the sheep seemed surprised that their actions had such an impact on God (so were the goats!) I believed the difference was in their focus.
The sheep had their focus outward on those around them. They were involved in others lives and that involvement revealed need that they were inspired to meet. I think that the goats were so involved with themselves that they completely missed the needs around them. Their own desires consumed them, crowding out the needs of others, so that they didn’t even see the needs, let alone meet them.
Look around you. What are the needs around you that you are too busy to meet or even see? Look at your family groups. How much time to spend with those people? Are you too busy to get together with them? Are there perhaps needs that you aren’t even aware of because you just haven’t stopped long enough to see?
Jesus came and was known as one who met needs. In fact, once that became known, the crowds flocked to Him and He did not turn them away. The more that came, the more He served. The result was that many saw and praised God. (See Matthew 15:28-31) The only way he was able to meet those needs and have that impact was to turn his focus outward and be willing to see what’s going on in the lives around Him.

Time to Get The Old ‘Bird Out

This weekend is supposed to be 70+ degrees and sunny both days. What a change from last weekend’s driving snow. Being the first real spring weekend, it was time to get the old T’bird out again. That’s my 1960 Thunderbird convertible at the right, ready to take on spring. Well, not quite ready actually. Last fall when I discovered I had a fuel leak that I knew I’d have to take care of before driving it this year. So today I decided to see if it was going to be an easy fix.
After about 60 seconds of engine cranking and accelerator pumping, she roared to life. I was able to pull her out into the driveway but that’s it. The left rear tire (against the wall all winter) had gone completely flat. I wanted to get out and check that fuel leak anyway. Well, this wasn’t gong to be a simple loose fitting. There was gas dribbling rather profusely from all around the fuel pump. So much for top down fun this weekend. I got air in the tire and put her back in the garage to await a replacement pump. Thankfully, it only leaks when running so there’s no danger of burning the house down (I had checked that last fall.)
This is going to be a big year for the old ‘Bird. I’ve got some play money from doing a small design project for a friend that my company wasn’t interested in. Part of that money bought the laptop that I’m typing this on. The rest is going to some 18″ Boyd Codington Smoothy II wheels for the T’bird. You might be able to tell from that picture, but she’s riding on undersize second hand blackwalls (that don’t hold air well). These cars originally came (most of them anyway) with a 2 1/4″ wide whitewall. The small 14″ wheels and the undersize blackwalls have just made the car look wimpy. Not any more. The 18″ diameter polished rims will almost match the diameter of the original wide whites. They’re a nice meaty five spoke wheel that ought to give the ‘Bird the stance it should have.
So I’ve got some measuring to do to see wheel back space I need and how wide I can go and still use the skirts in the back. I also want to make sure I don’t have any rubbing in the front when I turn the wheel. I’m also planning to go through the front suspension while I’m at it and replace the shocks. So I poked my head underneath today just to see what I’m up against and I found a surprise.

This magnetic ‘key locker’ was tucked up underneath the right front wheel near the bumper. It was wrapped in electrical tape to keep the water out and there was a sponge inside with the keys soaked in something like Navel Jelly. Someone was trying to keep these keys from rusting. I got this car from my grandfather in 2000. He bought it in California in 1978. Based on the care put into stashing this key locker, I’d bet it wasn’t my grandfather who put it there. Nothing against grandpa, but he wasn’t that kind of a detail oriented guy. If that’s the case, then that means this key locker has been under there for nearly 30 years. Inside was three keys, including one of the original Ford logo keys, not very warn. Pretty cool.

Quick link test

I’ve installed a plugin called Quicklink that creates links automatically from keywords in posts. But I’m not exactly sure how to use some of the options and there’s no real documentation for them, particularly the ‘global search and replace’ option.
Anywho, I’ve added a quick link for VirusDoc’s blog, without the global search and replace checked. Let’s see if it works:
EDIT: (I removed all the broken links to VirusDoc’s blog. 🙁 )

Discourse on Future

Matthew 24:1-51, 25:1-46, Mark 13:1-37, Luke 21:5-36
Mark 13:10 – I can remember lessons about “once we reach all the nations …” then Jesus can come back. I’m not so sure about latching on to one verse and making doctrine about it.
Matthew 24:12 – This one little verse has much to say to us. I think that there is much ‘wickedness’ in our lives. Not in the sense that we normally think of wickedness, but in selfishness and laziness. We are so wrapped up in ourselves that our love for others grows cold. We are too busy with our own lives, our own hobbies, our own work and activities that we don’t have time to spend with others. Even the time we do spend is typically shallow, we don’t talk openly, frankly and pointedly about our lives.
Mark 13:12-13 – This verse (and others like it) was often used in the ICOC to dismiss our critics. We should have paid more attention to them and perhaps we could have learned from them. However, the message of Jesus divides. On some level we should expect conflict and criticism. We should pay attention to what they’re saying, but not spend our lives trying to appease them.
Matthew 25:14-30 – There is an expectation of performance in God’s kingdom. We are saved by grace, but that doesn’t mean there is not an expectation.
Matthew 25;31-46 – I love the Keith Green song (MP3 clip here) about this passage. He points out in that song that the differnce between the sheep and the goats is “what they did or did not do.” Perhaps more accurately, the difference is what they did or did not see or how they did or did not care. For if they saw, surely they would have cared and if they cared, surely they would have acted.

I fixed it! I think …

At the right is my Sony Clie in the process of getting it’s digitizer replaced. That’s the old digitizer in the upper part of the picture, the front case at the left, the rear case at the upper right and the working bits in the middle.
You might remember, that my Clie TJ27 got run over after my belt clip broke and it landed in the snow back in January. Or you might have a life and not be concerned about my trivial personal problems. Anyway, it was a little crushed, the digitizer was shattered but it still powered up just fine. I found I could order a new digitizer for about $40 from pdaparts.com. So I bought one and one for my old Clie S320 that also had acroken screen.
Changing the digitizer is a little tricky because it’s glued to the LCD. You need to use an X-acto knife to pry them apart. On the older one the whole processs took about an hour. A few screws, pry the old digitizer off adn stick the new one on. The connectors are a bit tricky, but in the end it powered up just fine. My wife wil put it to good use. (I had thought I’d Ebay it to recoup the cost of the two digitzers, but oh well.)
The newer one was a bit harder. First of all, half of the screws were these funky triwing security screws. I guess Sony thought there was something dangerous inside. Probably didn’t want folks trying to change their batteries. A coworker had bought a new case for his son’s Gameboy and it came with a little triwing screwdriver that he let me borrow. Once I got the case apart, the real fun began. In the old one, the LCD and digitizer were held in with one screw, in the new one it’s glued down. In the old one the connectors were completely exposed once you removed that screw, in the new one the connectors were sandwiched between the metal frame and a PC board and because of the way all the connectors are laid out, you can’t completely expose them. In the old one there was only the metal frame holding the LCD/digitizer assembly, in the new one the LCD/digitizer frame is tucked down inside another metal frame. The old one was merely cracked, the new one was shattered in dozens of little shards that were hard to get cleaned out.
Anyway, I know this is all very exciting. The bottom line is that it was more challenging that I anticipated, but I managed to get it all put back together. Unfortunately, since it’s been almost 3 months, the battery is dead and the charger is at work so I don’t even know if it works yet. I’ll let you know in the morning, well, later this morning.

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