Nonsensical Ramblings of Mark

Disappointed a few people When friendship reared it's ugly head? Disappointed a few people? Well? Isn't that what friends are for? - PIL, Disappointed I'm brilliantly flawed aren't I?  An imperfection here, a rough edge there. A glance that betrays my heart's true state. A slight yesterday, an oversight last week when a missed opportunity for a conversation or connection was embraced rather than the person I should have had it with. I have and will disappoint more than a few people during the course of my life here. And that is why I need friends. Real friends. Friends that call to my mind those flaws and imperfections that I need to subject to the control of the Spirit. Friends that see my all-too-often half-hearted attempts at repentance and pray for me. Friends that forgive more than they demand payment from me. Yes, friendship with me has an ugliness and beauty that is all its own. My flaws are in full dress bearing their banner in my parade. Overlook

I serve a humble God. It seems kind of strange that a God could be humble especially when so many people misunderstand Him and label Him as either an egoist in the highest order or even rather insecure. But as I read the Bible, and seek to really understand it, I find that God is rather humble and, in imitation of Him, I need to be humble as well. Christianity has, at its core, the humiliation of its God. This is a truth that is trotted out at Christmas and Easter (especially), but it needn't be relegated to those holidays on the church calendar. If I carefully read the Scriptures I see this from Genesis 1 straight through Revelation as it is something that sets my God, the true God, apart from any other. He is patient, meek (power under control) and gentle of heart and in Him I find rest - not a hint cruelty or pride.  I also find in Him the desire to discipline me and orient at least a some of His activities towards my well-being. That He would even pay attention to me is s

I was uploading a bunch of pictures to Flickr today and came across some pictures of miscellaneous stuff in our garage that we have sold on Craigslist. It all went - not a single thing was left and I received my asking price on all but one of the items. That I got my asking price on just about everything is completely strange because, as far as I know, I have not paid the asking price on any item off of Craigslist. At any rate, this is just another example to me of the golden age of information and connectivity that we are living in. After picking up a nice used bike for my oldest son I recalled a story to my boys about a used bike that my dad purchased for me. We were on our way back from visiting my relatives down in Wayland, NY when we just happened to drive by a house with a decent enough used bike for sale. My dad got it for me, we loaded it in the station wagon, and we were on our way again. It was a decent enough bike (just the good side past a piece of junk) and I rode it for

I am reading a book called Apologetics to the Glory of God by Dr. John Frame and, as I read it, I am becoming more aware of the Creator-creature distinction that is at the core of my definition as a man. To say that there is a great gulf that stands between me and God is a misuse of the language. God is absolutely, wholly Other, and, thankfully, he draws near to me through the incarnation of His Son, Jesus. Yet, this gulf brings me peace. There is another that bothers me. The separation that bothers me is the one I choose. My sin hinders my relationship with Him as I assign myself another purpose that is in opposition to the one that I have been given. I call myself sovereign and king rather than giving Him that title. He is not One to take rivals lightly and, thanks be to God, He seeks to drive my sin far from me for the sake of His Name and for my great good. I thought last night about who we would be if we lived forever in our fallen state and it shook me. What if we ate of the

I have blogged about these emotions that often beset us as parents before and have often wondered if my Father feels the same things I do. Yet I wonder anew thinking about my God's heart and whether it bursts.  We parents know the feeling all to well in reference to our children. Last night both of our sons did things that filled their parents' hearts to overflowing. We saw abilities and character in them that we knew were there, but needed to see with our own eyes to confirm our suspicions. The only "wish" I had was that we could have shared the separate experiences together. Our boys made their parents' heart burst and they had no idea they were doing it - they were just being boys. What happened last night compels me to wonder if, when I hit the nail on the head and act in a way that brings honor and glory to Him, if my Dad's heart bursts. Does it fill with the same emotions I had last night when my son produced the game ball that said, "MVP"

The strangest thing happened to me yesterday. It was so strange that I can't recall it ever happening to me before but it was so real. I was working on transplanting some pachysandra from the back yard to the front and I had been working on it for a while. Well, I am not sure why, but I was quickly losing the energy and the will to do it. I had been working on it for a couple of hours while helping my oldest son with his writing and I was dragging. I was inside waiting to evaluate some prose that he had written when I noticed my youngest son was looking for something to do so I invited him to play catch with me. We played for a bit and both he and I were excited that we found a nice, big catcher's mitt that he was having some success with and that he will be using in the game that he will be catching in soon. Well, after we were done running around and playing catch I got my second wind and some untapped enthusiasm to work on the transplanting a bit more. It stood to figure

My Aunt Helen died on Monday evening in the manner which she said that she had wanted to. When I was told that the time was near there was something inside of me that just knew that I had to see her. It is hard for me to see people that I know and love to be so close to death. There is something so unnatural about it and, yet, so natural as it is my destiny too. I have no idea what I accomplished there. We talked...well, I talked. I talked to her about how kind she always was to me and how much of a pain all of us kids must have been when we invaded her house. I talked about the pool table in the basement and the times we got to play outside in the "country". I talked about how much fun the Thanksgivings and Christmases were when we spent time with her. It was all so overwhelming. Her husband had preceded her in death and this closed a chapter for me but especially for her daughters. I told her that I was going to pray silently for her. I didn't want her to t

The Word is a sword that pierces the heart And its truth is a light that cuts through the dark Of this world. Nations shall rise and nations shall fall But nothing shall stand in the way Of the Word.  - Iona The older I grow and the more I see, the less I am enamored with people's opinions, observations, and reports unless they line up with the Word of God found in the Bible. I know that there are a million different interpretations of problematic passages in the Bible, but, as Mark Twain was fond of saying, "It isn't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me. It is the parts I do understand." There were (are?) so many times in my life that I let my emotions or clouded perspective get in the way of the truth. I speak nothing but lies to myself and sometimes even to others. Those are the times that I am not so much in love with the truth, but in love with myself or in "love" with the other person I am lying to.  B

I, generally, do not post many normal things for my status updates on Facebook. Sometimes my not-so-normal statuses just pop into my head and I get them into cyberspace before they leave my brain. Other times they follow a clear progression. This morning's update was of the latter variety. I had a little bit of my travel coffee cup fall of yesterday so I needed to use some superglue to get it affixed to where it was. I did that this morning and was proud of myself because, well, I didn't get any superglue on my fingers. This is a rare enough occasion that I thought I would herald it on Facebook: "Mark Dudley managed to use superglue this morning without getting any on his fingers." Well, that seemed a bit to ordinary so I thought it would have to make it a bit more unusual in the following manner: "Mark Dudley managed to use superglue this morning without getting any on his fingers. His gums, however..." But then I got nervous. What if my wife reads th

Thankfully I had some time that I could steal on Saturday and Sunday to review the message I was going to give at the jail so I felt very prepared. That is not always the case with me so that was something pretty new. Well, Sunday night rolled around and I experienced a bunch of somethings at the jail that I had not experienced before. When we got into the gym we noticed that there was not a ton of chairs set up in the place. It was a playoff football night so I expected that there would not be as many people there than in previous nights, but the amount of chairs that were set up depressed me a little. Then the prisoners came in and kept coming. We had around 80 people there which is a good size for our service, but I had never seen so many women before in all my years of going to the jail with Northridge. Half of the group were women and it was good to see so many. Well, when I got up to preach on Luke 15 there was no movement in the room at all. Sometimes things get a little row

C.S. Lewis reminds me that I need to think in this manner when it comes to prayer: I prayed, and it happened. In other words I need to report on the bare facts and know that correlation does not imply causation. I can't get all wrapped up in the "Was I the only one praying for this?" or "What if I hadn't prayed....would I have gotten the same result?" I know God has a million reasons for everything that happens, and I know that I was not the only one praying for the service in this circumstance, and that I may never know all of the everything I want to know about last Sunday night but.... We have been studying prayer and I have been confessing that I do not pray anywhere near as often as I should for much of anything. I used to pray quite a bit on my ride into work so I decided to resurrect that last week. I prayed for my boys and wife as they embarked on another day of homeschooling. I prayed for the teaching that I would be delivering that week and for h

What have I done? Who have I hurt? Who has left me? Who have I left? Where am I now that, if someone told me I'd be where I am, that I would not have believed them? The easy answer is "here", but where is my heart? What is true about me that is taking me farther from God and closer to destruction? Is this the life that I have always wanted? Am I beyond hope? Is my past so littered with sin and regrets that I can't see anything but a future full of what my past is? Am I useful to anyone anymore? Does anyone listen to me anymore? I have no strength apart from Him. I have no wisdom except His. I am done doing my own thing - because there is nothing good that can come from me groping my way along the wall in the dark. I have nothing but the voice that He has given to me and one, single, word: "Help." And on the other side there He is with gifts that I don't deserve and a love that withholds that which I do. There He is with the breath that will regener

Well, day fifteen isn't really day fifteen as we started all of this on December 5, 2013 and it is now January 12, 2014, but I guess it is just the number of days that I bothered writing anything on the blog and/or you bothered reading it. Thanks for going on this journey with us and the tons of encouragement you gave us. It meant a lot to us to be able to share this with you and to receive so much positive feedback from all of you. So...here are the proverbial before and after pictures: Before: After: It is all pretty dramatic and we are thrilled that it turned out the way it did. We are still in the midst of finding a place for everything (you should have seen how much stuff I put "just out of sight"), but we are much closer than we were even this morning. Thanks, God, for seeing this through for us. Help us to always know you are out for our good even when we cannot see your hand or sense your good pleasure.

Day fourteen found the guys putting in more than a full day's worth of work as they wanted to set the stage to finish up the next day. We actually had to leave one of them to his work while we went to share dinner with friends of ours (thanks Carlos and Jill!) and hang out with their new daughter Kirsten. Here is where we are now: This is the new hanging microwave. It is high up, but we are tall. This is the tile on the window wall. This is a close up of the tile and the accent with cardboard spacers. See all of those black squares? When we bought them at the Home Depot they were all brown squares. We then went to a tile place and bought one square foot of accent tile that had 144 one inch black squares, cut those all apart, and then replaced the brown squares the with black ones. Surprisingly it did not take us too long to do and we are happy with the result. The under cabinet lighting was also installed. We went with an LED ribbon that is hardwired into two switc

Well, January 7th seemed like such a long time away when they announced that they would come to install the countertops then, but just like every other day, it eventually gets here and things that should be happening actually happened. The wood brace on the right is holding the undermount sink in place until the silicone cures. This used to be a desk. I like the cabinet more. This is our island with the lights on the ceiling reflecting off of it. Even though we purchased our quartz countertops at Lowes they were installed by Rocky Mountain Granite and Marble  in Webster, NY. We would not hesitate to use them again and, if you purchase your contertops at Lowes like we did, I would suggest asking for them to complete the job if you can. They were so good to us that I would not even bother taking your chances on someone else. So there they are. Our house smells like silicone but that will be gone soon enough. Our contractor is more than ready to get back to work here on T

We received the final cabinets on Friday so, naturally, our dutiful contractor was on the job today getting them in and ready for the counter top installation on Tuesday the 7th. Here is what things look like so far: The range wall - the plug is for the microwave The fridge wall - the new fridge is still in the garage The 12 inch base cabinet to left of range - ready for counters  So the way the schedule is looking this week it looks like the counters will go in on Tuesday and the contractors will finish up over Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. So, if all goes according to plan, we will be completely done by this Friday. We have the tile picked out and the under cabinet lighting will be coming on Monday. Here we go. This should be it and way ahead of my end-of-January expectation of completion - thanks be to God.

We received word today that the cabinets we ordered from the alternative supplier are assembled, wrapped, and ready for us to pick up. I did not expect them to be in so soon as we had just placed our order for them on December 20 and, well, there were a couple of major holidays in between that time and today. There is a boatload of snow on the ground today and the roads are exceedingly bad (I just received a notice that a major route I take home is closed due to an accident) so it looks like I will have to pick them up tomorrow.  Our contractor is available on Saturday to put them in and it looks like we will have at least the base cabinet we have been waiting for in for the countertop installation on January 7. This is very good news as I think we have caused more than enough inconvenience for our contractors up to this point. It looks like I will have some updated pictures for days 12 and 13 pretty soon. This is starting to get a lot more real. At any rate we have been able t