Something More Mind Blowing...Maybe

I was doing some research for my "Why do Christians believe that God is triune?" paper, and I stumbled across this. It's kind of an old translation, and it uses some odd word choices and Latin spellings, but I hope it still conveys the message which I read:

Wherefore also we need not the Law as a tutor. Behold, with the Father we speak, and in His presence we stand, being children in malice, and grown strong in all righteousness and soberness. For no longer shall the Law say, Do not commit adultery, to him who has no desire at all for another’s wife; and Thou shalt not kill, to him who has put away from himself all anger and enmity; (and) Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s field or ox or ass, to those who have no care at all for earthly things, but store up the heavenly fruits: nor An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, to him who counts no man his enemy, but all men his neighbors, and therefore cannot stretch out his hand at all for vengeance. It will not require tithes of him who consecrates all his possessions to God, leaving father and mother and all his kindred, and following the Word of God. And there will be no command to remain idle for one day of rest, to him who perpetually keeps sabbath, that is to say, who in the temple of God, which is man’s body, does service to God, and in every hour works righteousness. For I desire mercy, He saith, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. But the wicked that sacrificeth to me a calf is as if he should kill a dog; and that offereth fine flour, as though (he offered) swine’s blood. But whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. And there is none other name of the Lord given under heaven whereby men are saved, save that of God, which is Jesus Christ the Son of God, to which also the demons are subject and evil spirits and all apostate energies.

--St. Irenaeus

Peace, love and joy to you all.

More Crowder News

He's putting together these video-of-the-day clips and posting them to YouTube. Now we all can feel moderately involved. Oh, and see Ted Nugent being Ted Nugent.





Peace, love, and joy to you all.

Just When I Thought I Had a Budget...

Crowder has announced that he's recording again.


Peace, love and joy.

'Heard: The Week (or two) in Quotes

In a flash a heart is slain.
You have to ask in all this pain
Was your heart too soft?
Was your love in vain?

Was your kiss too weak?
Were your eyes too tight?
And much too young to be in love.
Much too young to be in love.

-- Copeland

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

-- Soren Kierkegaard

Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.

-- Thomas Sowell

The desire to take medicine is perhaps the greatest feature which distinguishes man from animals.

--Sir William Osler

'Heard: The Week in Quotes (vol 9)

Only one today, I'm fighting off something flu-like:

[[responding to the question, "What parts of American life do you think would most outrage Jesus?"]]

Our selfishness. Our resort to war when it's not necessary. I think that Jesus would be disappointed in our ignoring the plight of those around us who are suffering and our focus on our own selfish short-term needs. I think he would be appalled, actually.

-- John Edwards

Peace, love, and joy to you all.

A Parable Recast for ORU

There was a man, a student here at ORU, who was out one evening jogging on the outdoor track. As he came by Lake Evelyn on his fifth lap, he was ambushed by a group of gang members who beat him up and took his watch, wallet, and iPod before vanishing into the night. Bloodied and bruised, the student crawled up the sidewalk toward Evelyn Roberts Drive.

Just then, a Head RA was heading back into the dorms. As she drove by the man, her headlights illuminated the now collapsed pile of broken bones and bloody clothes. She knew that he needed help, but she was running late for a meeting with the Dean and her Dorm Director, so she continued on into lower lot. As he vanished from her rear-view mirror, she consoled herself with the notion that since he was a man, she really wasn't supposed to intervene anyway.

Then, a Head Chaplain drove by the man. He, too, was running late, for a meeting to plan his missions trip to Zanzibar. Remembering that one of the chaplains he oversaw was a nursing major, he determined to call him and have him come help the man. But, since it is is so unsafe to use a cell phone while driving, he decided to wait until he had stopped to make the call. When he pulled into his spot, he saw the Head RA, an old friend from one of his sister wings, and they began chatting. By the time the Head Chaplain reached the doors to Towers, he had completely forgotten about the man.

Just then, a baseball player came roaring around the curves on Evelyn Roberts Drive in his Ford pickup. When the player saw the man lying on the side of the road, he was moved with compassion; in his many years of playing baseball, he had suffered many injuries. Though exhausted from a long day of practices, he pulled his truck over, moved some contraband from the passenger seat of his truck, and helped the injured man get in. He called security, drove him to the hospital, and helped him fill out all of the forms he needed to. When the man's RA and chaplain arrived, the baseball player was already gone.

Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers? ... You go, and do likewise.

As a random side note, while I was thinking this through I came to the conclusion that if I was to break my jaw, they'd probably have to not make me shave for a couple of weeks. Hmm....


Peace, love, and joy to you all.

Music Fixed

Hey, so rumor has it that the audio link didn't work, or wasn't working how it should have been. That sounds like me. Sorry, I'm sure it crushed many a hope.

Anywho, I've popped up a different uploaded version of it, so hopefully it'll work for everyone. To go straight there, just click here.


Peace, love and joy to you all.

2Sides of the Same Coin

Heads: I am the bird who hangs on nothing yet soars.

















Tails: Little, important parts of me die every time I go to Greek.

705Live: I'm Not Skinny

The other day, I sat down with a guitar and a couple of friends and we sang stupid songs. From this, my love for stupid songs that I've written was rekindled. So I came back into my room, sat down, and recorded several tracks I'm calling 705Live. Some of them are silly...some are less silly. But these are all me, and I like them.

This first edition of 705Live features a silly song which only took me three-and-a-half years to write. "I'm Not Skinny" started as the third edition of 5 Good Minutes with Tim Margheim in my earliest adventuring into youth ministry. It's one of my classic pieces, but it's always felt like it was missing a verse to me. Then, earlier this semester, I was inspired to write another verse (I'm pretty sure you'll figure out which one just by listening), finally bringing a sense of wholeness to the work.

Anywho, hope y'all enjoy!



Peace, love, and joy to you all.

The Fear of Silence

One of the traits that's endemic to the little corner of Christianity that I'm tucked into right now, the charima-pentecostal corner, is the emphasis on making noise. We love our God, and we shout and sing and dance and cry out in angelic tongues about it. It's often communicated, overtly or otherwise, that if we're not being loud, we're not loving God, or at least not to the degree which we could be.

If you spend any time at ORU, or many other places with an emphasis on vocal worship, you will certainly hear this verse quoted and or paraphrased on a near weekly basis:

But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.

Psalm 22:3 KJV

In fact, in chapel last Friday, the speaker made a brief mention of the verse, which is what really led to this whole thought. I turned there in my handy dandy NRSV. I had thought that the verse sounded familiar. Here's how that psalm begins

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest.

Psalm 22:1-2 NRSV


The first part is one of the Seven Sayings of Christ on the Cross, which, I think is where I remembered it from. But what really caught my attention is that we have really knocked out the natural tension of these three verses in favor of the simpler, more incantational formula |[us+praise=presence.of.God]|. And so then I was thinking about God's silence.

And then our speaker referenced the story of God appearing to Elijah. Which, I checked, and found:

He said, “Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.

1 Kings 19:11-12 NRSV

Now, I'll be the first to admit that the NRSV reading is by far the minority reading of the text, but it's a legit one. And it carries some interesting implications with it.

Is our difficulty in finding God in silence based in our fear that God is silent sometimes?

I'm not so sure.


Peace, love, and joy to you all.

Wasting Time; Still Learning About Life

That was an example of incorrect usage of a semicolon.

Oh well.

Preparations have begun for Script Frenzy 2007, which is basically the screenwriting version of NaNoWriMo, which I did last November (if you want a copy, I've still got a few pdfs of it here in the store, just e-mail me at tmargheim [at] gmail |dot| com). Anyway, I downloaded this program for writing scripts that are properly formatted (which is important), and I wanted to take it for a spin.

So I started writing something. At first, it was just me basically writing what precisely I was doing, only in properly formatted (which is important) screenplay. But since I'm alone in here, it was difficult to really test out its capabilities for writing dialogue. So I improvised artistically, and tried to remember what I've [apparently] worked so hard to forget, and write down some interconnected flashbacks of circa a year ago properly formatted (which is important).

I got sick of it. Maybe it was remembering, maybe it was the tediousness of my dialogue (which is certainly possible), maybe it was just boring; regardless, the lesson is in closing the software:

INT. DORM ROOM -- NIGHT

TIM sits alone at his computer, finishing his failed attempt at adapting his life into art. He clicks the X.

COMPUTER
Do you want to save your changes?

TIM
(voice over)
No.

He clicks no.

COMPUTER
(beeps)
USE EXTREME CAUTION. You responded that
you do NOT want to save your work.
Are you ABSOLUTELY sure you want to do that?

TIM is slightly stunned. He ponders this choice for a moment.

GIRL
(voice over. the voice is echo-y
and cannot be understood)
No matter ... pain ... remember, ... still ... your life, you know?

TIM sighs.

TIM
(voice over)
The echoes of shadows that never were.

TIM clicks yes. The screen goes blank.

TIM
Peace, love, and joy to you all.

FIN.

'Heard: The Week in Quotes (vol 8)

{{{A special Kierkegaard-free edition!!!}}}

To a nation bent on violence, anyone who claims to be speaking for God's kingdom and who advocates non-violent means as the way to it is making a very deep and dangerous political statement.

-- N.T. Wright

O God, whose glory it is always to have mercy: Be gracious
to all who have gone astray from your ways, and bring them
again with penitent hearts and steadfast faith to embrace and
hold fast the unchangeable truth of your Word, Jesus Christ
your Son; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen

-- Book of Common Prayer, Second Sunday in Lent

The most frightening moment in a man's life is when he realizes that he has somewhere in life lost his grasp of the cloak of the Divine.

--

Peace, love, and joy to you all.