well...

So nobody has posted on here in just about a year and a half. Im pretty sure that means a blog is dead. Nevertheless I wanted to write, and I was seeking relative anonymity, but not like create your own secret blog anonymity. I mean you guys could read this, heck I guess anyone could, but I wonder when the last time anyone checked this was? I probably do semi-annually (does that have a - in it? semi-annually, I think so, I just changed it.) Well right now I am 28 years old, my body is currently in Central African Republic where my job has taken me. It seems like a really exciting cool job, I travel around the world, well really mostly East and Central Africa and meet with people. I don't feel super alive doing it. At this particular moment I can't think of a whole lot that I would feel particularly alive doing. I am dating a girl named Diandra and she is wonderful, but I think that things are about to end. See her family doesn't like me, and she is super close with her family. Particularly her dad doesn't like me. He also happens to be my boss. Apparently he likes me at work, but not with his daughter. I guess I signed up for this when I started dating her. Basically he says I am not good enough for her. I don't have enough class, I don't have enough ambition, and I'm not strong enough. That's what I hear at least, I haven't had the chance to talk to him about it. I know it makes me sound like a pussy, but I just feel pretty defeated, because I know that Diandra can't get past that. We are very different (she isnt black you stereotyping SOB's), but that has worked really well for us. Things haven't been perfect, but I don't know that they are supposed to look perfect. Maybe we are too different. Honestly I don't know what to look for anymore though. I don't know like what to do or where to go. It's gonna be really hard for me to stay at work if this does end. I just feel like if her dad basically ends this because I am not good enough for his daughter, I don't know, it would be hard for me to continue to work for his organization. But all in all it feels dead...

I think I am being a bit dramatic here, I mean I had my doubts about it before all this. Diandra though, she didn't. She was ready to get married, and that's why this feels so crazy. We were talking on the phone yesterday and she was like so discouraged about things everything changed so fast. I'm not ready to be done though. I think things can be great for us. I feel like she adds so much to me, and I think we can be such a fantastic team. I don't know... I don't know about these things...

Anyway my heart is just discouraged. Thats pretty emo to say, but it's just how I feel. I feel like for this relationship to continue it needs to be resurrected. I want it to be resurrected. I mean I guess that's something I believe in, and really I feel like for this to continue it has to be a miracle from God. That would be pretty fly. I think that is what I am going to pray for, a miracle.

Initial thoughts

Go take a look at the Glo Bible from Zondervan. It just came out. Yes, it is only available for Windows at the moment. They are also supposed to be making it mobile next year. I've never used it--and I'm not a huge fan of most of the stuff Zondervan puts out--but it looks pretty sweet.

As for creating a software, I'm not sure if one person could do it all. Granted, I know nothing about creating anything technological--heck, I spend half of my time with middle schoolers boys who haven't even discovered deodorant yet--but what about archaeology, geography, history, theology? You would need someone who knows the Bible forwards and backwards who can link the Old and New Testaments.

Or would it be open-source? And, if so, who would be responsible for checking to make sure the data is accurate (do you have any idea how many theories there are about where the Garden is or what Revelation is all about?). But I do think it would be great if you could have one program that was currently being updated, so that you didn't have to buy something new every few years just to keep up with current trends and discoveries.

This is might be getting a little ahead of things, but I think you would need to charge something in order to maintain things. What if you had a basic version that everyone could use, but then something for 'members only'? Like maybe extra maps, commentary, or the ability to create a study plan?

Bible Software

(after a long absence)... helloooo

C_lates. Remember that crazy idea we had for Bible software a few years ago? And remember how we discovered that other people were already doing it? Yeah.. about that...

While reading this morning, I had the same desire for the same software. So I went looking. It's still not there. Nobody is making the software that I want to use. After working with online software and usability for the last few years, I'm pretty dissatisfied with my options. Here's a couple thoughts I had. Let me know what you think?

Sure, there is very powerful Bible software now. Here are the main issues I have.

1. They simply are not usable. They are built around features, and not usability. Sure, I can do "anything", but the reality is, I can do nothing. There are tons of capabilities, but the software is designed in a way that makes it hard to use (and therefore, I don't use it).
   
2. Platform. The whole idea that I have to buy your software, and then I can only use it in one place (and probably only on windows) is so antiquated. I want to be able to use this wherever and whenever. I currently have 3 computers. I want all my stuff to be accessible from any of them. Plus, what about when I go on vacation? or out of town?
   
3. Price. I'm still REALLY bugged by this one. My idea is to build software that really allows people to experience the Bible in a way they never have before. If that is the case, then this is a life transforming tool. Charging someone $60 (or in some cases $4,600) to be able to access this information is a HUGE barrier to the gospel message. Plus, they are asking me to commit to something before I even get a chance to really use it. That time investment is another barrier.
   
4. Flow. This is how I work. I sit down to read a passage. About 10 minutes later I realize that the passage I read just raised about 25 questions. Where is Caesarea? How far is it from Galilee? Where is that in modern day Israel? Is it IN modern day Israel? How long did it take to walk between the two? Wait, is that the same place that King David...? Thing is, I ignored all those questions because I couldn't easily get the answers. Current software has so many features, that it makes it impossible to actually explore the questions I have, and maintain a normal reading flow.
   

So there are a few issues I have. Here is my one possible solution. It's crazy... maybe? I would like to raise money to cover the cost of developing and designing a FREE online software that is incredibly intuitive to use, and yet very powerful. It would probably take about a year. Maybe more. At the end though, we are able to provide a similar product (but better) as what is being offered now, and it will be available online, to anyone in the world, for free.

I know there are a lot of Bible software type things out there. Do you guys know of any that would meet these requirements? I haven't seen them, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.

Thoughts?

Christmas preparations

I know what you're thinking. It's not even Thanksgiving yet and you're already talking about Christmas! But the title is Christmas preparations. Which means we're just preparing. To be more specific, this is a post about Advent. So there ya go. Be mad at hundreds of years of church tradition, or just get over it.

To be honest, nothing has been posted here in a long long time, and I've been thinking lately that something needs to be said:

Check out this idea for an Advent calendar.

That's all. Just wanted to share a little happiness.

Of Easter

But I can tell you this: that what I believe happened and what in faith and with great joy I proclaim to you here is that he somehow got up, with life in him again, and the glory upon him. And I speak very plainly here, very unfancifully, even though I do not understand well my own language. I was not there to see it any more than I was awake to see the sun rise this morning, but I affirm it as surely as I do that by God's grace the sun did rise this morning because that is why the world is flooded with light.

He got up. He said, "Don't be afraid." Rich man, poor man, child; sick man, dying man; man who cannot believe, scared sick man, lost one. Young man with your life ahead of you. "Don't be afraid."

He said, "Feed my sheep," which is why, like the chief priests and the Pharisees, we try to make that tomb as secure as we can. Because this is what he always says: "Feed my sheep . . . my lambs." And this is what we would make ourselves secure from, knowing the terrible needs of the lambs and our abundance, knowing our own terrible needs.

He said, "Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world."

Anxiety and fear are what we know best in the fantastic century of ours. Wars and rumors of wars. From civilization itself to what seemed the most unalterable values of the past, everything is threatened or already in ruins. We have heard so much tragic news that when the news is good we cannot hear it.

But the proclamation of Easter Day is that all is well. And as a Christian, I say this not with the easy optimism of one who has never known a time when all was not well but as one who has faced the Cross in all its obscenity as well as in all its glory, who has known one way or another what it is like to live separated from God. In the end, his will, not ours is done. Love is the victor. Death is not the end. The end is life. His life and our lives through him, in him. Existence has greater depths of beauty, mystery, and benediction than the wildest visionary has ever dared to dream. Christ our Lord has risen.

- Buechner | "The End is Life" | The Magnificent Defeat

My waiting list

My list of what I'm waiting for is really boiled down into one thing. I am waiting for my life to begin. I have always been curious--even a little anxious--to see what God has planned for my life. I am so thankful to know that my purpose is to minister to youth. But I just wish it would begin already! I know that seminary is a part of this process, I know that I am right where God wants me to be, but I feel like I am in a holding cell. Most of the time I hate school. I love the education I am getting, and I even love the majority of my professors. But I am eager to get out and do what I am being prepared to do. And now that we have friends who are graduating and going off to their places of ministry I want to be doing that too. I want to know where God is going to send us, what the church (or other ministry) will look like, and begin leading a ministry. Gentry and I hope to move back to Florida to be with family and friends, but we know that this may not happen. We are doing our best to be content with wherever it may be that God sends us. But this waiting and not knowing makes me very anxious at times. It is so hard to just wait.

But maybe waiting is a good thing. Maybe contentment is a discipline I need to learn. Waiting on the Lord and resting in his good purposes might not be such a bad thing.

Throw yourself into the wave

"He gave me no assurance. No Fixed Lands. Always one must throw oneself into the wave." -King Tor of Perelandra

C.S. Lewis, in Perelandra, sets forth the notion that Venus (called Perelandra) has human life on it, a new proverbial Eden, pre-fall. The two (green-skinned) humans are given the same opportunity of Adam and Eve, but with a new challenge. You see, Perelandra is a watery planet, with islands that float on top of the waves. A still photograph of the islands would reveal landscapes similar to our own, however this landscape is constantly in flux, in motion, such that any point of land could at one moment be the top of a hill and the next the pit of a valley. Their "forbidden fruit", as it were, was an island that had roots beneath the water, a fixed land. Stability, a place to make a home in and return to, to own and control and find consistency. They were not allowed to sleep overnight on the fixed land.

The story is fascinating, and as this is no book report, I will leave it to you to enjoy the story of your own decision, but I was enamored with the outlook of King Tor, of always throwing yourself into whatever position you happen to find yourself. Whatever God sends your way, to take it on full force.

In "Surprised by Joy", Lewis (I am currently reading a lot of Lewis in hopes of finishing my goal of completing his collected bibliography) says, "Shut your mouth; open your eyes and ears. Take in what is there and give no thought to what might have been there or what is somewhere else."

Later he tells how a friend had shown him how to appreciate equally beauty and sorrow, to, in effect, take fully whatever came. "I learned from him that we should attempt a total surrender to whatever atmosphere was offering itself at the moment; in a squalid town to seek out those very places where its squalor rose to grimness and almost grandeur, on a dismal day to find the most dismal and dripping wood, on a windy day to seek the windiest ridge. There was no Betjemmanic irony about it; only a serious, yet gleeful, determination to rub one's nose in the very quiddity of each thing, to rejoice in its being (so magnificently) what it was."

How often do I get dissatisfied with how things are (and even consider that noble!) and not simply ignore the present joys but refuse them. The inhabitants of Perelandra considered (whether by habit or because they knew nothing else) each piece of fruit the best piece of fruit simply becuase it was the only one being eaten at the present. It could not be compared to fruit from yesterday nor to what fruit that might have been.

I think this is, for me, one of the ways that I would like to 'start living'. To live in such communion that I have no need of assurance or a fixed land, but need only the present and eternal Joy.

To throw myself into each wave.