I have heard it said, "God didn't die for frogs. So he was responding to our value as humans." This turns grace on its head. We are worse off than frogs. They have not sinned. They have not rebelled and treated God with the contempt of being inconsequential in their lives. God did not have to die for frogs. They aren't bad enough. We are. Our debt is so great, only a divine sacrifice could pay it.

There is only one explanation for God's sacrifice for us. It is not us. It is "the riches of his grace" (Ephesians 1:7). It is all free. It is not a response to our worth. It is the overflow of his infinite worth. In fact, that is what divine love is in the end: a passion to enthrall undeserving sinners, at great cost, with what will make us supremely happy forever, namely, his infinite beauty.

- John Piper, Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die

"We are sitcom people serving the God of epic novels."

- Jared Wilson, Your Jesus is Too Safe

Young Singles HomeGroup was really good tonight. Worship time (music provided by iPod) was good, and then we talked about Isaiah 53 and Ephesians 4:17-5:2, continuing from Piper's Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die. Prayer time was good and then . . . two hours of Balderdash!

It's been a long and trying week. I'm tired but I'll go to bed happy tonight.

The college and young singles home group last night was great - a whole lot of them came over (I think we had around 16 to 20 or thereabouts). I love those people! They were talkative, open, we ate, sang, studied, discussed, prayed and played games together. It was a good start.

Jill and I were talking last night, and I remarked that we'll have ups and downs in this thing. Last night was an up, but my goal is to be flexible and persevere through the downs.

I spent the last few hours dragging seventeen years of stuff out of our attic. The garage now looks like a landfill, but the attic is completely cleaned out. Now to start rebuilding . . . the great Garage Renovation of 2010 is in progress. Slow progress, albeit.

No soccer this weekend. Which is a good thing.

I'm almost done with Bloo version 1.32. Will be deploying the 1.31 test version very soon (maybe today). In 2010, I'll be doing a lot more (and more frequent) Bloo releases. This first one is more or less a maintenance release, with a few goodies thrown in. More later.

Soon will get my lesson prepared for tomorrow.

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. - John 6:35

Have a great weekend!

I'm driving Jill's Sebring full time now. Our mechanic pronounced it beyond help a few weeks ago. I'm becoming an expert in working the "feel" of a transmission that doesn't want to shift. Also, the engine sounds like I'm shaking a can full of bolts. So every day's gravy.

Daddy date with Bethany tonight was good. She's awesome. She puts up with a lot too.

Great talk with Molly last night.

I was in a room full of millionaires today. "Room full of millionaires" would make a cool band name.

Lost Premier party tomorrow night at our place!

Cooper lives to have his belly rubbed.

Cooper is our dog, by the way.

I am gearing up to liveblog 24 again tonight. We'll see.

I'm going to weigh 400 pounds.

That is all.

Here's a cool picture of Blake's soccer team, the Dallas Texans - Houston Division Legend '98.



Blake is number 25, in front, giving us his best game face. The cool thing about this picture is that every kid who got a team picture got to be in the front. It's not really a group shot; The photographer took individual pictures of each kid and photoshopped each kid in the front for the shot they purchased. Very nice.

Blake's team played the first day of a soccer tournament today. It was fun, although it was FREEZING out at the fields. His team won the first game 2-0 against Chivas. Blake scored a goal, capitalizing on a great cross from Pablo. Unfortunately, the second game against Tigres was very tough, and they lost 3-0. Tomorrow they face the Houstonians, which is a very, very tough team.

Go Legend!

Update: They tied the Houstonians 2 to 2, which was disappointing (especially since the Houstonians second goal was off a questionable call resulting in a PK) but the boys played their hearts out in the cold and mud. Well done!

Such as they are, for tomorrow (with much help from David Guzik and John Piper): here.

Today I'll finish preparing to teach a Bible study tomorrow, one that I don't deserve to teach.

I almost always feel that way. My words and actions of the past week come back to me (and this isn't false piety - I was a self-indulgent jerk this week at times).

But teach I shall, and I pray God speaks, in spite of me.

Isn't this a beautiful picture?


(click on the image to get a bigger picture}

[H/T the Gospel Driven Church]

Know what this is?



It's a computer hard drive from 1956, used in the IBM 305 RAMAC computer.

The hard drive weighed over a ton and stored a whopping 5 megabytes.

I don't want an iPad.

(even though everyone else I know is going batty over it).

Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I am has sent me to you.’”

- Exodus 3:13-14

I'm starting a teaching series in College and Young Singles this weekend on the seven "I Am" statements of Jesus in the book of John. I can't wait and I hope it goes well. I'm going to start with the passage above, as an introduction, with it's surrounding context.

There's so much here. So much. Two things jump out at me on just a cursory re-reading of this passage.

1. The people of Israel are truly without a shepherd. They feel abandoned, and they have no foundation, They don't really know the God of their fathers very well. Moses is concerned, and he needs a name.

Does that speak to you? How alone are you in the universe when God is such a stranger to you? But even in their loneliness and desperation the Hebrews have cried out to the God they barely knew, and He has heard them.

2. In answer to the "What's your name?" question, God answers "I am who I am". I don't have anything very profound to say here, other than just to say that God is cool. And I don't mean cool in the acid-washed, frosted tips, ipod buds in your ears, shirt untucked, tat with a gotee way. I mean it in the "when I read that, my jaw drops and I say 'wow . . . that's cool'" way. God said "I AM", because what better way is there to describe the eternal, omnipotent, omnipresent, creator-God, the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End? He is. And because He is, we are.

And the sooner we acknowledge that, the better.

I'm looking forward to this.

I find the show 24 strangely compelling. I live-blogged tonight's episode over at Thinklings if you're interested.

NASA's Puffin, the stealthy, personal, tilt-rotor aircraft.



Now that's cool.

What a great day in the College and Young Singles class! We had more singles there than I can remember in a long, long time. The worship by Molly and Zach was very good, and Charles did a tremendous job finishing up his two-part teaching on stewardship, ending with our stewardship of the Gospel.

It was a really good morning. Very encouraging. We also announced the starting up of HomeGroups in early February.

It was a good end to a pretty challenging and tiring weekend. I think I'll cap it off with some time spent organizing the attic (that's the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of fun, right?) :-)

And, after that, time to get ready for a challenging and tiring week. There are lots of big doings at work and I'm in the middle of some of them. Whew.

Oh, I almost forgot. Congratulations Colts!

. . . but far too often I do.

And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness.

Drat . . .

I am in the midst of the Great Garage Renovation of 2010 (a slow-going process, but a process nonetheless). Currently I'm in phase one, which is the "throw everything I don't need away" phase.

I have trouble throwing books away, but I've been forced to throw some away, while doing my best to keep the gems. But there were two I had no trouble throwing away today.

The first was Widow of the South by Robert Hicks. I read this one a year or two ago; being a Civil War enthusiast, I thought it looked intriguing. Instead it was just . . . well, extremely anachronistic. I have no doubt most of the historical details were true, but the attitudes and thoughts of the characters were post-modern and strange to what I know of 1860s thought. I tossed that one in the trash with no problem.

The other one was a fatherhood book I never read. Not that I probably didn't need to, but the introduction to the book was a long dissertation about why fathers would rather not be in the delivery room when their kids are born. What the? Being with Jill as she delivered our four children was among the greatest privileges of my life.

That is all.

Blake and I are watching the Chronicles of Narnia. We just watched the scene where Father Christmas comes upon the children and the Beavers in the wood beyond the frozen field.

I'm such a sap . . . I found myself misting up as Lucy looked with joy upon the bringer of gifts. Redemption came upon them suddenly, and in that moment they were granted the tools they needed to persevere. A dagger, a bow, a sword, a horn to bring help, a healing elixir.

That spoke to me.

The reason why we must hope in God is chiefly the fact that we belong to him, as effect belongs to cause. God does nothing in vain, but always acts for a definite purpose . . .

— St. Thomas Aquinas

I love hope.

[H/T The Anchoress]

Nastasya Filippovna turned with curiosity to Myshkin.

"Is that true?" she asked.

It's true," whispered Myshkin.

"Will you take me as I am, with nothing?"

"I will, Nastasya Filippovna."

- Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot