April 25, 2008
We’ll see…
I think I’m going to blog more. I think. In the meantime, read my brother’s Ode to Black Coffee.
March 4, 2008
a not so uncommon dialogue…
The setting: Ched and Zach have been diligently studying the morning away while their wives spend the day shopping. Ched and Zach have just returned from a delightful lunch at Schlotzsky’s. The following dialogue is what ensued:
Ched: So what are you getting ready for this week?
Zach: Three midterms. You?
Ched: PhD entrance exams.
Zach: I see.
Ched: So you want to go to your place and watch an episode of The Office?
Zach: Totally.
February 28, 2008
Life Around the Office (1 of 1537)
I love The Office and I love my office, which happens to share some similarities with the former. Much like Dunder Mifflin, you never really know what could arise on any given day, such as preparing and presiding over a bird funeral (just to clarify, that happened on the show not my office…as of yet) to walking into your boss’ office only to find him listening to “The Power of Love” by Celine Dion (unfortunately, that pertains to my office). Because of the ever-present unpredictability and unrelenting hilarity that occurs within my office, I shall from time to time document particular “episodes” worthy of my three person readership. I guess we’ll see what happens…
October 2, 2007
Quotes Along the Way…
Dr. E. Earle Ellis on the nature of the world in which we live:
Today’s church also lives in a pagan world, a world that in the West has been long influenced by Christianity but for which Christ and his church have often become more a traditional concept than a living influence. It is a world in which the gracious gifts of God – freedom, self-government, material abundance, a peaceful social order – have themselves often become objects of worship (Rom 1:25), and “man is the measure of all things” (Protagoras). Today’s secular society is, then, not all that different from St. Paul’s even if its gods have different names. And it continually exerts its pressure to conform the church to its own interests.
Taken from Pauline Theology:Ministry and Society – pg.157
August 25, 2007
Confessions of a Southern Baptist Seminarian – Part 1
I want my professor’s approval.
Thats the short and easy of it. When I walk into a classroom for the first time, one of my primary hopes is that the professor will approve of my work, that I’ll receive that proverbial pat on the back. As class began for the fall semester this past Friday, my hermeneutics professor began with a call to examine our own motives for engaging in the seminary experience. With that said, it didn’t take long for the tide of conviction to overwhlem me, exposing my motivations as anything but godly. I was brought back to Paul’s words to Timothy in his second letter:
Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.
What should drive my sitting in lecture, my time in study, my time writing the many research papers and book reviews to come isn’t the approval of my professor, but the approval of my God, to whom I am ultimately to give an account, and before whom I live out my days. But thanks be to God that when I am “faithless, he remains faithful.” Thus it is to the grace and mercy of God that I turn to this semester, it is to the cross of my Savior that I cling, as I strive to show myself “as one approved” before the Lord of all.
August 23, 2007
Quotes Along the Way…
John Stott, commenting on Galatians 3:2-5:
This is the difference between them: the law says ‘Do this’; the gospel says ‘Christ has done it all’. The law requires works of human achievement; the gospel requires faith in Christ’s achievement. The law makes demands and bids us obey; the gospel brings promises and bids us believe.
July 25, 2007
Quotes Along the Way…
Until the middle of August, content will remain slim around here as I strive to complete my Old Testament Survey course. After that, I hope to resume posting as well as revamping the blog a bit, as far as links and things of that nature go. For now, my plan is to leave the few (but loved) readers of this blog with some quotes I’ve found along the path of Old Testament studies that I have and am still treading upon. With that said, here is an insightful note from John Sailhamer taken from his work The Pentateuch as Narrative:
When first chosen by God to be the deliverer of his people, Moses had asked, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?” (Ex 3:13). The short answer he was to give them was simply, “I AM has sent me to you” (Ex 3:14). The long answer was the Pentateuch.
UPDATE: Speaking of Sailhamer, Justin Taylor has recently posted a link to an analysis of Sailhamer’s Genesis Unbound written by one of his friends. Definetly worth checking out.
July 22, 2007
Sunday Reflections
At church this morning, our pastor preached a sermon entitled God’s Household Rules:Love Your Wife based on the text of Ephesians 5:25-29. While there was much I took away from this sermon, perhaps the most crucial point made was the call to see marriage with an eternal perspective. The pastor spoke specifically of four areas in which we should view our wives in light of, those being:
1.Loving your wife in light of Christ’s special love for the Church
2.Loving your wife in light of Christ’s work on the Cross
3.Loving your wife with a view to her growth in grace
4.Loving your wife with a view to glorification
As was shown, Paul’s aim within this text is to exhort husbands to love their wives in light of these realities. How easy it is to come to marriage with only temporal concerns in mind, rather than viewing it in the eternal reality Paul calls us to.
During the service, we sang William Cooper’s There is a Fountain, a hymn I’ve become quite fond of this past year. The final stanza reads:
Redeeming love has been my theme/And shall be till I die
My prayer is that the redeeming love of Christ would manifest itself in all of my life…especially in my marriage.
July 4, 2007
A Tale of Two Angry Wives…
Since I’ve already completed one post in Dickensonian fashion, I thought I might as well follow it up with another, mainly as a I stumbled upon a picture whose story needed to be told.
This is a picture of our wives (Ched and myeslf) with Ched sitting in the middle of the table. Now, the obvious question is, “Why is Ched posing with a look of such glee and triumph?” Well, the answer to that question is that at that moment, we had just defeated (or should I say obliterated) our wives in a rousing game of Wahoo! (After a great deal of trash talk from our wives I might add) Ah victory…ah…I’m so getting into trouble for this one…
