Nonsensical Ramblings of Mark

A man was showing someone their library. Impressed with the number of books within it the person receiving the tour remarked, "Goodness. That is a large amount of books. Have you read all of them?" The man answered, "Heavens no! Who would want a library filled with books that they have already read." Fast forward to my life today... I was bobbing my head to some early Joe Jackson music when I was visited by one of my co-workers. Upon removing my headphones she asked me if I was enjoying my music. I said "Yes" and then she proceeded to ask me a question and I answered it. What I wanted to say was, "Even if you find very little head movement upon entering my cube please assume every time that I have my headphones on that I am enjoying the music I am listening to."

"Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life?" Luke 12:25 One of the things that God has saved me from this side of heaven is my penchant towards chronic worrying. But, son of dust that I am, I have this nagging tendency to worry about things. It has gotten so much better than it was, but it is still there. Recently I was given the bad news that we were likely to miss a deadline for a software release to a demanding client. Of course, it was a project that I was the leader on so...I worried. But, thanks be to God, only for a moment. When the thoughts of all that could go wrong as a result of us missing this deadline (which we hadn't missed yet) crept into my mind I prayed and planned. Once the planning was done those worrisome thoughts wouldn't go away so, when that happened, I just prayed. Some of the prayers were short along the lines of, "You got this, Lord, right?" while others were a bit more involved. I wasn't so much praying that God...

Armed with a clear sky alert from http://cleardarksky.com  I was convinced that last night would have been a good night to get some astronomy adventures in with the boys and check out a few meteors from the peaking Perseids meteor shower. I set the camera up to capture the spectacle and loaded Stellarium up on the laptop for some sky tours as we waited for the sky to darken. We headed out to Northampton Park west of Rochester to see what we could see. It looked like there were quite a few clouds in the West but the East was looking good so we thought that it would be all right. We drove around a bit trying to find the ski lodge where the star parties are held and, upon finding it, settled in and waited for it to get dark. And clear. It got dark. That's about it as the clouds moved in from West to East and obliterated the view that we were hoping to find upon our arrival. Such is astronomical observations in just about everywhere other than the desert: the clouds we will always have...

Recently we spent a week with my brother and sister in law at their home in Mason, Wisconsin. Where is Mason, Wisconsin you ask? Well, I am still a little unsure, but this comparison between where we live and where they live should give some indication concerning where we were: There is one thing in particular that the map of Mason is devoid of when compared to where we live: buildings. But, there is one thing in particular that the map of Greece lacks that my brother's backyard in Mason had: fresh produce. We had a great time working in the garden watering, weeding and harvesting beets, carrots, broccoli, and especially raspberries. We had a great campfire and even heard coyotes more nights than not doing what they do best. My brother is a pastor with Bethany Baptist Church in Mason and is currently residing on the property that the church owns. It was a pleasure to worship with the church on Sunday and sit under his teaching. He brought out a relationship between grace and faith ...

This side of Genesis chapter 3 (where the Fall of humanity is detailed) I find that I am a creature of God by position and can choose to be His creature by practice. It is the "choice" and "practice" part that bears some meditation and exploration on my part. Now I know that the only rational position for me to take as this creature of God that one of utter dependence upon Him as my Creator. Of course I know that I am dependent upon Him for my food, heartbeat, respiration, metabolism, and a host of other things that I cannot even come close to enumerating. That is the positional creatureliness that I find myself in. What I find in myself is this propensity to take this dependence, this positional creatureliness, and use it as a foundation to build something more than the creature that I am. In other words, I use the dependence that I have on Him (as a matter of fact) and use it to stress my independence from Him. If this all sounds like a bunch of self-frustrating c...