partsofspeaking

I have been insanely busy, juggling many balls at work, home, church, community, and personal. Here's an update and commentary. 1. I spent Friday night and all Saturday in training to be a disaster relief worker, specifically in mass feeding. It was enlightening in two ways: to see the extent of the work the Southern Baptist Convention does in disaster relief (it provides the food for the American Red Cross and Salvation Army), and what I learned about food preparation and storage. I hope I can actually be involved in a disaster relief effort sometime--my work schedule is prison-like, but on the other hand I hope not--it means there is a disaster, and that's the last thing we need. The SBC responds to hurricanes, floods, fires, tornadoes, and even to 9/11-type events. Statistically speaking, there will be another of these soon. Perhaps if there is something close by I can go. 2. My son and I went bowling. It is our "tradition" when he comes home. We bowle...

Today a friend, her daughter, and I traveled to Atlanta to see the King Tut exhibit. I thoroughly recommend it. It has everything but the mummy and golden sarcophagus--something of a disappointment, but the remainder was fascinating. How indebted we are to the scholars and archaeologists of the past 200 years who have brought these finds to us. I am thankful for a bit of warm weather but tired of it now and would like to go back to winter. Way too warm here. I am thankful for a week off, that my son will be home tomorrow night for his spring break, that he got home safe from his trip to Washington, D.C., and for a secure job. College teachers don't make much but we hold on to our jobs.

Who is God? What is He like? (the very pronoun says something—personal and revealed as father, male) How we answer these questions defines everything in our lives. Isaiah’s key name for God is the “Holy One of Israel.” The central identity of God as defined in Isaiah and really in the whole Bible is holiness. Like the Israelites, we have lost this attribute to replace it with a tolerant, kind, loving, laissez faire God who, like that cloying song “was there all the time, waiting patiently in line.” The Israelites had lost sight of Him by thinking of Him as either a local deity, as a part of their ethnic identity that had to be placated but not really worshipped wholeheartedly and solely, or as a deity that wouldn ’t bring the judgment for their syncretism . (I love that word.) So we have to come to grips with the holiness of God, even if it makes us feel a little less warm and fuzzy for a while. Fortunately or unfortunately, we are not capable of contemplating God’s holiness c...

Any one who reads this blog knows I am a big fan of LOST. I have watched it faithfully this season. It continues to amaze and astound me--and confuse.