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A week ago I was teaching our youth group from 1 Peter 2:1-3, in which Peter tells us to put aside (among other things) malice.
I told the teens that having malice in your heart is like being fitted with the wrong prescription eyeglasses. Nothing looks right to you, and you never see things as they really are. People who are filled with bitterness and malice never see the world as it really is; they see it in the way that best feeds their bitterness, and allows their malice to fester.
Today I saw a perfect example of...
As a child growing up on a small farm, there were many chores I disliked. Shoveling out the barn, weeding the garden, feeding chickens, and the pig...
But there was one thing I disliked more than all the others. One yearly event that I dreaded. Haying.
That was one of the hottest, sweatiest jobs imaginable. Whether I was in the hayloft throwing and stacking bales, or out in the fields putting bales onto the trailer (yes, we did it the old fashioned way...for us a "thrower" had two legs, two arms, and very tired muscles), haying was a miserable job....
Solid, liquid, or gas? Which are you? Everything around us is in one of those three states. What exactly does it mean to be a solid, or a liquid, or a gas? Good question.
A solid is a sample of matter that retains its shape and density when not confined.
A liquid is a sample of matter that conforms to the shape of a container in which it is held, and which acquires a defined surface in the presence of gravity.
A gas is a sample of matter that conforms to the shape of a container in which it is held and acquires a uniform density inside the container, even in the presence of gravity and regardless of the amount of substance in the container.
If we were to compare the people of this world to molecules, I think most would be in liquid state. Free to float about, held in place only by external forces, but never really bound together.
This is what our world is now, but I think that we are moving toward becoming gaseous. Our society has become more and more mobile as technology increases, and people talk about easy transportation and Internet as things...
In the 1600s (aproximately 1688) Christopher Wren, a well-known architect, was commissioned by the Windsor town councillors to build the Windsor Guildhall -- a picture of which is shown below.
As you can see from the picture, the ground floor of this building is completely open, with the main part of the building being supported by eighteen pillars around the edge. This open space was designed to be used as a public market.
When the town councillors saw what Wren intended to do, they (in their infinite architectural wisdom) protested to the great architect that his design would never work. Eighteen pillars would not be enough to support the weight of the building, and the whole thing would collapse.
Christopher Wren insisted that his design was solid and safe, and an argument ensued. The upshot of it all was, Christopher Wren agreed to add four more columns into his design. These four columns were interior columns, and can be seen in the picture below.
But Christopher Wren had the last laugh; when he designed the four inner pillars, he deliberately designed them to be two inches too short; the tops of the columns do not even touch the beams of the ceiling....
Have you ever seen an underground home? That was one of the most fascinating things I saw when I was in North Africa: dwellings which were essentially nothing more than caves dug into the hillside. This is not an uncommon thing, near the edges of the Sahara Desert; in the daytime it gets very hot, and at night it gets very cold, so an underground dwelling helps to soften both extremes, staying cooler in the day and warmer at night.
I remember visiting one of these underground homes when I was taking a three-day "tour" of the country. The tour group...
It's funny the things you remember from your childhood -- often it's not the big events that stick in your memory, but the small, silly little things. I remember breakfast time. Specifically, I remember the Battle of the Toast.
You see, every morning my mom would toast up and butter a big old stack of toast and put it on the breakfast table. Right in the middle of the table. I had two older brothers, and the Battle of the Toast was a war to see who would get the most toast for breakfast. It was a silly thing;...
When I was in college, I knew a young man who had a very interesting childhood, a young man who loved to tell stories about all the odd adventures and misadventures he'd had while growing up.
I remember, when I first knew him, sitting in the cafeteria eating supper and listening him telling the most fascinating stories. I remember thinking to myself, "How in the world does one person have so many strange things happen to them?" And I remember thinking, from time to time, either "Why couldn't my childhood have been this interesting?" or "I sure am glad my...
Monday night I was babysitting Daniel. We had a good time; we played together, and watched part of Revenge of the Sith. Daniel showed off his lightsaber moves (I think the force is with him!).
I brought my laptop and puttered on some work stuff while the movie was on. But while I was trying to work, the cat just wouldn't leave me alone. That foolish thing was climbing all over me. On my shoulders, in my lap, rubbing up against my arm, practically sitting on my laptop...
A very affectionate cat. If you pet this cat, you'll have...
When I was a kid, our house had a kitchen and a dining room, and there was a wall, with a doorway, between the two.
That wall is no longer there. At some point while I was growing up, my parents decided they'd had enough of that wall. They wanted to have one large, wide open room, instead of two smaller rooms.
So dad took a sledgehammer to the wall and knocked it out. Of course, when they built the house in the first place, they knew that someday they might want to get rid of that wall, so they...
This past summer we took the teens in the youth group to Popham Beach for a day. This is one of our "yearly" outings; we've done it every summer for quite a few years now. We spend the day playing in the water and playing on the beach (ultimate frisbee, beach volleyball, etc.).
My nephew Daniel went with us this past summer, and at one point he wanted to go down near the water and build a sand castle (I guess he wasn't interested in playing volleyball). So he brought his buckets and his shovels, and I went with him...