I haven't given you much of an update on Ellie. She definitely is the cutest and happiest baby around! Alright, I might be a little biased, but she truly is such a joy in our lives. Everyday we are so amazed by how much love we have for this child, and how blessed we are to have a healthy, happy baby. She still is not crawling, rolling, or walking... but this is nothing we are concerned about. We know most of this immobility is from her not spending much time on her belly since she screams every time we put her on it. She loves to stand and pull up by grabbing onto our fingers, so we do know she is progressing. She actually has been taking steps while holding onto our hands, so she might just skip the whole crawling phase... that won't bother me! I absolutely love how I can still just sit her on the floor and she will be in the same spot when I leave the room and come back. She also has been saying 'da da' a lot the past month. She has been jabbering here and there, I love it though when she talks and we can't keep her quiet!
Too Busy not to Pray - Bill Hybels - This is a phenomenal book written by a great pastor. The book gives some of the most practical advice on prayer I have ever heard. The book goes through some fundamental truths of the Gospel related to prayer including: What kind of God do we pray to?, why pray?, does prayer really work?, what hampers our prayer? and finally He gives us a great model to follow in our prayer life. The goal of the book is help those how struggle to maintained a disciplined prayer life through encouragement and some very practical advice. Its a great read and I highly suggest it.
The Abolition of Man - C.S. Lewis - This is a very short book by C.S. Lewis but in terms of theological and philosophical truth its weight must be measured in tons. The purpose of the book is to form an argument against the subjective nature of the intellectual culture of his time. What's so great about this book is that it is message is timeless and has never been more applicable than it is today. Lewis makes a convincing argument that the death of objective law and morality will ultimately result in the abolition of man because the man with the most temporal power have the ability to impose his own subjective law on "weaker" individual thus rendering them powerless. One of the most influential books related to apologetics and absolute truth.
East of Eden - John Steinbeck - This is probably my favorite literary work of all time. Its a bit on the long side (600 pages) but its impossible to put down after you read the first 50 pages. East of Eden is a complex and layered retelling of the story of Cain and Able found in Genesis. Though the book has an engaging and well formed plot, I think Steinbeck deserves the most praise for his character development. Throughout the book you notice that he is gradually developing each one of the characters to reveal their true heart. There are no archetypes, each character is thoroughly "normal" and Steinbeck shows each of their motives throughout the story.Yet by the time of his death in 1997, Rudolph was all but forgotten. What happened? In a word, taste—changing taste. By the 1970s, Postmodernism had introduced wit and irony to architecture, neither of which interested the serious Rudolph, whose brand of heroic monumentalism now struck many people—and many potential clients—as bombastic.Suffice it to say that the irony postmodernism brought to style was surly not witty. Postmodernistic style is completely indifferent to questions of consistency, context, or continuity. It self conscientiously splices genres, attitudes and styles without reason. Wit expresses a certain intellect. Therefore, as stated above, postmodernistic style may be ironic in the sense that it produces something with traits that you wouldn't expect but there is nothing witty about those ironic characteristics. Though there are examples of postmodernistic architecture that are extremely impressive, as a general rule they are random, out of context, and simply overbearing. The problem with the quote about Rudolph''s architecture is that it makes no sense.
On the surface this looks a little bleak! Luther seems to be saying Christians will never be making much progress. But of course that wasn't Luther's point at all. He was saying that repentance is the way we make progress in the Christian life. Indeed, pervasive, all-of-life repentance is the best sign that we are growing deeply and rapidly into the character of Jesus.He continues:
But in the gospel the purpose of repentance is to repeatedly tap into the joy of our union with Christ in order to weaken our need to do anything contrary to God’s heart.Be encouraged then, fellow believer. In calling you to daily repentance, the Lord Jesus is not simply giving you good advice. He is saying, "If you are a child of mine, you must continue to repent."
"There are three approaches to ordering at a birthday dinner. I actually didn't know that the first approach was possible until this particular outing. Early in the evening, I noticed Simon's friend Justin, a legendarily frugal graduate student, engage our waiter in an extended colloquy. After dinner, I sidled up to Justin to complain about the exorbitant bill, knowing my outrage would fall on sympathetic ears. Instead, he flashed a wicked grin and revealed that he had "seceded from the check, Jefferson Davis-style." That is, having realized things were getting out of hand, he had worked out an understanding with the waiter whereby he would order on a separate tab that would include only his appetizer, entrée, and beverages. It was a brilliant stroke, though it required Justin's unabashed cheapskatedness, which, like his taste in metaphor, is rare indeed.
On to the more subtle approaches. The first is to order as inexpensively as possible, in an attempt to foster a norm of fiscal conservatism at the table. This strategy is rarely successful. You order a house salad and the chicken and roll the dice that the guy next to you will feel too embarrassed to order an entrée called "steak for two." Such restraint cannot be counted on in a large, salary-diverse group.
The other approach, the one I favor, is to order offensively. Your typical birthday dinner is around 10 guests strong. Given a group of this size, you can safely assume there will not be an itemized accounting of who ordered what come bill-paying time—it requires too much math and is usually adjudged to be not in keeping with the celebratory nature of the event. Armed with this knowledge, the only way to order is with abandon. If I'm going to be subsidizing the sybaritic corporate lawyer at the end of the table (who, I happen to know, wouldn't think of ordering a beer unless it was brewed by a Trappist monk), you'd better believe he's going to be paying for a tract of my baked Alaska.
I developed this system after too many birthday dinners where I went home poor and hungry. This way, at least, you get the food you want. But the victory is pyrrhic. Tradition holds that the birthday boy make a perfunctory swipe at the check before it's whisked from his grasp. In the case of Simon's party, not only was the man of honor off the hook for his portion of the bill, but at the suggestion of a chivalrous spendthrift who I'd have kicked in the shin had the table not been so vast, the group exempted Simon's girlfriend as well, since she'd undertaken the arduous task of sending out the Evite. A check that would have been a hardship split 12 ways now was to be split by 10.
Simon is one of my oldest and dearest friends; I like to think I'd do just about anything for him. But sitting here looking at a charge for $168.51, I find myself wondering how good a friend he really is. $168.51! Do you know how many Uno's individual deep-dish Spinoccolis that would buy? Seventeen. That's two-plus weeks of dinner.
In a way, though, it is I who owe Simon. The piles of jumbo shrimp floating on seas of melted ice; the untouched beds of creamed spinach; the endless rounds of marked-up Beck's Dark—they flash before me now whenever a birthday dinner invitation comes my way, and I can't bring myself to RSVP yes. The excesses of Simon's dinner were what I needed to find the social gumption to swear off such affairs entirely. Throwing a party for your birthday? I'll gladly attend the festivities. Point me to the bowling shoes and buy me a few frames. Cook me dinner—I'll bring the Taboo. Otherwise, see you next year, pal."
Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither store-house nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?
A: I think that most Americans recognize that this is a profoundly difficult issue for the women and families who make these decisions. They don't make them casually. And I trust women to make these decisions in conjunction with their doctors and their families and their clergy. And I think that's where most Americans are. Now, when you describe a specific procedure that accounts for less than 1% of the abortions that take place, then naturally, people get concerned, and I think legitimately so. But the broader issue here is: Do women have the right to make these profoundly difficult decisions? And I trust them to do it. There is a broader issue: Can we move past some of the debates around which we disagree and can we start talking about the things we do agree on? Reducing teen pregnancy; making it less likely for women to find themselves in these circumstances"(www.ontheissues.org)
This logic just doesn't make sense. Can we really trust people to make the right decisions about life and death? If we had this logic, why do we have laws? Why is there a justice system? Could we not handle this a different way... such as making the adoption process easy for a mother?
