Redeeming Black Friday

A day of collective national insanity. Kelly and Andy were off at 4.30 am to hit Walmart, more to experience the insanity than because they were looking for anything specific. Cherie initially planned not to go because she is on call for Jack (Kristen should have the baby any day now). However, by 5.30 am, the pull was too strong, she called Sue and they are off to enjoy standing in lines talking to people and shopping. I just can't get a handle on that.

Cherie says that it is a great day to meet and talk with people (the shared misery of standing in lines) and who knows where the conversation might lead. It is a chance to be an aroma of life to life to strangers. Pretty cool. Redeeming Black Friday. I like that.

Thanksgiving 2009

Actually, our Thanksgiving meal was yesterday, since I'm on call today and Ben works all day. We had a good time of fellowship and food. My pondering the thanksgiving that I was giving to the Lord this year was done in an email that I sent off to family. I'll try to get a copy of it and paste it in here.

A day at home yesterday. Computer work in the morning. Thanksgiving dinner. Hanging out in the evening and to bed early since I had to get up and get ready early (4 am it turned out to be). Today I'm on short call, so I'll hang around here close to the phone, and if I don't get called in and can get a cell phone signal, I'll go over to Sarah and Jerry's for lunch.

It probably sounds old to every year have, as the supreme "thanks" of Thanksgiving, God in the flesh, Christ, who came, who died on our behalf, who took God's wrath against sinners on himself so that I would not have to pay the penalty for my own sins. But we will still offer it up this year, because it should be always new, always fresh, always unbelievable, always astounding. God's wrath for sin was poured out upon God-in-the-flesh.

19 Nov 2009

Good day off yesterday. Went swimming in the morning, yardage was pretty small because I was working on my strokes. I did go 50m in the fly for the first time ever. The next try it was about 40m...I petered out and had to salvage the lap with freestyle. Met with Paul Lange and some cohorts about insurance, then had lunch with Lambertini. Stopped by Best Buy and then picked up Kelly from school and home. Jack came over and spent the evening with us. He is a lot of fun and extremely articulate. Definitely Irish!

Read an excellent interview with Kirk Cameron in Servant magazine this morning. He's in a difficult, high profile position, and handling it extremely well. I need to pray for him to be faithful!

My favorite quote: Three things are inextricably linked to being a Christian: self-denial, cross-bearing and submission to Christ as king. Kirk Cameron.

18 Nov 2009

Swam this morning, but not very far. My shoulder is bothering me a little when I swim freestyle, so I did not do my normal 500 meter freestyle warmup. Just 150 meters of freestyle/breaststroke. Then I did 2 sets of 4x50 butterfly, back, breast, free. First time I've made 50 meters with my (pathetic) fly. By the time I'd finished the 2 sets I was cooked, muscle-wise. Glad to see I'm in such excellent shape approaching 50! Hahahahahaha.

Meeting with Tim Lambert this morning for lunch and continuing with our book One Heartbeat Away. Then I've got some shopping to do at Best Buy, then pick up Kelly and head home. Days off are so short.

Pondering evolution and special creation some this morning as I drove. Whatever else one says about the issue, stepping back and looking at the world and its diversity and obvious design, and then looking at the claims of evolution, I'm at a loss for words. Did we come from turnips, as Richard Dawkins states in his latest book? Hardly.

SLC

We arrived into SLC at 0200 this morning (15 Nov) which is 0400 EST, which means I was flying a redeye! It wasn't too bad. My FO John Green, and I, had a good discussion on religion/evolution/Christianity on the flight out, so the time went by fairly quickly. John is quite opposed to Christianity and made that very clear. However, I think we were able to clarify some things which might at least point him a little further down the road. For instance, he pointed out that a person like him would not be welcome in church, and that Christians get into their little groups and keep to themselves. He is both correct and incorrect. I think he would be welcome in more churches than he suspects—not that he would be comfortable, but he would be welcome—however, I readily conceded the point about Christians mixing only with themselves. This is too often the case and it is sad and wrong. We should be in our community, mixing with and befriending everyone (to the extent that we can), invading bars and taking them over for Christ, and be willing and able to start relationships with whoever is willing to enter into one. God does not call us to change people and THEN enter into relationship with them. He calls us to enter into relationship and HE will take care of the change. It's so sad that we screw up that part of it and let a lot of people go merrily into eternity and damnation without reaching out to them.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

I had most of the day off in Cleveland since I don't leave until 11 p.m. (to take the Jazz back to SLC. I feel like a FedEx pilot!). Since the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is about a half mile from the hotel I decided to attend. It was a little pricey $22, but pretty cool. Some good audio exhibits, not to mention Michael Jackson's glove and some of the goofy outfits worn by rock stars. Probably my favorite part was U2 in 3d, a pretty long concert that they taped in Argentina. U2 has an admirable social conscience but they mix it up with a lot of syncretistic lyrics. I wouldn't call them Christian in any sense of the word, at least if I understand Bono's lyrics correctly. At any rate, they put on a good show and there were a lot of good shots of the drummer!

Finished up and headed back to the room for a nap, but didn't sleep. It's going to be a long night...

14 November 2009

Flew from PHL to CLE with the Utah Jazz tonight. Tough day, but someone had to do it. Sit all day in CLE then we take th Jazz back to SLC tomorrow night.

Nasty day in PHL. Windy and cool and rain. Studied some. Worked out. Took a nap. Normal layover stuff.

11 November 2009

Veteran's Day, 2009. A lot of men and women have served in the military, and they have served well. It is a great thing to honor them on this Veteran's Day in which our men and women are spread out (probably too spread out for our own good) across Iraq and Afghanistan (graveyard of empires). Congratulations, Vets!

Normal day yesterday. Study in the morning and then had lunch with Lambertini. Elder/Deacon meeting that night. We had a good discussion in the Elder meeting on theology and prophecy and the church constitution. No decisions made, but a good discussion. My complaint with our constitution is that we take positions on things that we shouldn't take positions on, like whether Christ is returning pre-mill, post-mill, or amill. Why lay out a position on that? What is important is that we believe that Christ is returning, in person, in body; that should be our hope, the rest is just details and why do we need to lay out details? It's the same with sign gifts. Have they ceased? Not ceased? Partially ceased? Who cares? Why get specific on sign gifts? I could go on, but you get the point.

9 Nov 2009

Church in the morning—skipped Sunday school because Kelly had to work and I didn't want to explain why she wasn't there. Then the 10th annual Laingsburg 5k/10k. I was supposed to run it with Adam Warren (my nephew), but he got grounded, so I ran it by myself. Suffered through the whole thing with my right calf aching and started too fast, so I was sucking wind bad! Finished though, in a disrespectable 25.02! Sore legs and what appears to be a torn calf, other than that, a great run!

Came home and enjoyed the sunshine and warm weather—absolute gorgeous day here yesterday, sunny and near 70, I felt like I was in California! Badger and Kristen and Jack came over and told us the name of #2 son—Kian Thomas. Then everyone left and I watched some football and worked on Logos 4 for most of the evening. Off to swimming this morning.

8 Nov 2009

Not too much interesting to relate. I'm in a block of 6 days off, then I go back on call for awhile. I have a 5k race today which I signed up for to run with my nephew, but then he got grounded so it looks like I'll run it myself. Should be pretty ugly I imagine, at least the weather is nice.

I've been installing Logos 4 for the past week. Interesting experience. It takes a lot of download time and then a lot of time to index your library, but once it gets through that it is blazingly fast on searches and has a lot of cool features. I especially like the feature that searches through my illustrations in all of my resources, very cool. Looking forward to using it a lot.

My wife is sitting next to me trying to break someone's score in Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook. She's too competitive!

1 November 2009

We are officially controlled by Delta today, even though we're not officially Delta yet. The A-320 pilots and control of trips has switched over to being controlled from Atlanta, rather than Minneapolis. This will produce some nice changes (long call reserve is better), and some not nice changes (pay cut for reserves).

I was on call most of the week, although I called in sick for 2 days when I got what turned out to be the 24 hour flu (including blowing chow which I rarely do...fun night). I did not get called in to work. I'm not sure what to expect from being controlled by Delta although there isn't any open time between 2 and 5 November. Might be more sitting around for me. We shall see.

After swimming yesterday, I stopped by the library and then spent most of the rest of the day watching college football, including watching USC get their rear ends kicked by Oregon.

Church today, then maybe a nap, and then church again this evening. Matt off to work early and then I believe he'll go to church as well. Ben to church and then work and then back to college. Kelly spent the night at the Dippolds. Our kids are growing up quickly meaning we're slowly becoming empty-nesters. Slowly.

Praying a lot for Badger and Kristen as the financial situation with Campus Life is a little dicey. It is a good chance to refocus on the fact that God puts us in situations like that in order to get us to depend on him and learn to walk by faith and not by sight. It is not an easy lesson and one that we—as human as we are—are prone to forget.