In my morning devotions I was reading Isaiah 35 and was blown away by the beauty of the words.
Jesus quoted some of verse 5 to John's deciples when they asked "Are you really the Messiah we've been waiting for, or should we keep looking for someone else? ^{Matthew 11: 3}"
I found verse 10 especially moving because we sing it or I thought we did. When I looked it up in the song book I found that it was actually Isaiah 51: 11 but the similarities are amazing.
Isaiah 35: 1 - 10

¹ Even the wilderness will rejoice in those days. The desert will blossom with flowers. ² Yes, there will be an abundance of flowers and singing and joy! The deserts will become as green as the mountains of Lebanon, as lovely as Mount Carmel's pastures and the plain of Sharon. There the LORD will display his glory, the splendor of our God. ³ With this news, strengthen those who have tired hands, and encourage those who have weak knees. ⁴ Say to those who are afraid, "Be strong, and do not fear, for your God is coming to destroy your enemies. He is coming to save you." ⁵ And when he comes, he will open the eyes of the blind and unstop the ears of the deaf. ⁶ The lame will leap like a deer, and those who cannot speak will shout and sing! Springs will gush forth in the wilderness, and streams will water the desert. ⁷ The parched ground will become a pool, and springs of water will satisfy the thirsty land. Marsh grass and reeds and rushes will flourish where desert jackals once lived. ⁸ And a main road will go through that once deserted land. It will be named the Highway of Holiness. Evil-hearted people will never travel on it. It will be only for those who walk in God's ways; fools will never walk there. ⁹ Lions will not lurk along its course, and there will be no other dangers. Only the redeemed will follow it. ¹⁰ Those who have been ransomed by the LORD will return to Jerusalem, singing songs of everlasting joy. Sorrow and mourning will disappear, and they will be overcome with joy and gladness.

Isaiah 51: 11

Therefore the redeemed of the LORD shall return, and come with singing unto Zion; and everlasting joy shall be upon their head: they shall obtain gladness and joy; and sorrow and mourning shall flee away.

The Least Likely Soil
Where God is more certain than death
By Philip Yancey

In the soil of this violent, disordered world, an alternate community may take root. It lives in hope of a day of liberation. In the meantime, it aligns itself with another world, planting settlements-in-advance of that coming reign.

- Peace

etan: Stories from the bank... Etan catches an identity theif in the act.

- Peace

CBC News:New Brunswick soprano places second

OSLO - Measha Brueggergosman has placed second in the prestigious Queen Sonya International Music Competition in Norway. The 26-year-old soprano is a native of New Brunswick.

The Oslo event is a tuneup for the Munich International Music Competition, which takes place in September.

Brueggergosman is a graduate of the University of Toronto. In addition to her numerous musical accolades, she has recorded a jazz album with PEI's The Jive Kings.

She will tour Iceland and Finland in October as part of a Canadian Arts Commission recital tour."

I went to church with Mesha's family, her dad taught me Sunday school. I hung out with her older sister from time to time. She was the little sister who we ignored, now she's a big time diva with her wall paper. Small world.

- Peace

War, what is it good for?
I do really wonder what George Bush was thinking when he started the war in Iraq.
A) Weapons of mass destruction? Nope, the NSA, CIA and others knew that the letter tying Iraq to Africa for Uranium was a hoax. (This didn't stop them from using it to coax reluctant senators into voting for the war of course)
B) Ties to Al-Qaeda? Nope, Al-Qaeda are Sheite Muslims, Sodam is a Sunni and even publicly executed Sheite Ayatollahs. They would have put the bullet in him for the Americans but for his direct male line decendency from the prophet.
C) Democracy? Nope, there are painfully few democracies in the Middle East and Iraq does not have the essential ingredient, a large fat middle class for whom democracy would be a bonus.
D) Oil? Maybe, France and Russia were ready to agree to war to remove Sodam if they could keep control of the oil fields in which their companies were working. The US said no and so France and Russia prepared to veto the war.
E) "They tried to kill my daddy!" Well, that's what one of my friends thinks I'm hoping he isn't right.

My heart says that no matter what the reason it's a terrible waste.
The CWRC is starting a program that should help get the basics going but it will be a long time before this thing settles.

Greetings from the Revelstoke visitors center. $2 for 30 min, great deal for net access.

So far:

our portable gas bbq caught fire. We tried wraping the grill with aluminum foil and it over heated. The coating on it caught fire. We were not impressed.

We could see glowing fire from our camping spot, on the Mt. across the river from the KOA.

The National park is closed, so no easy ride down Mt. Revelstoke.

On the plus side:

We (Wayne and I) did get to go biking in the provincial demonstation forest, had a great ride.

It rained last nigt so the air is much clearer.

- Peace

Dispatches from Outland remarks on an article about a sponge

So many of these biologists would be quick to tell you that all these amazing things--like this sponge--are just the results of blind chance (a.k.a. evolution). At the same time, they can't help but use words like engineered and designed.

I noticed the same trend. Good call.

- Peace

Q & A in Church

Why is it we don't have Question and Answer sessions at the end of a sermon? Every other speaker / presentation format I can think of has them, even large events with hundreds of people have Q & A. So why not in Church? Just wondering.

- Peace

If you played any of the old point and click adventure puzzle games of the late 80's early 90's such as Space Quest then Samorost will feel like a tripy flash back. It's a short Shockwave game with fun puzzels and lush graphics. Time well wasted.

- Peace

Shane has a post on how it can be hard to take a compliment. So I won't say it's a good post, I'll just say me too.

- Peace

Famous Players needs to get a clue

Read: CalgaryMovies.com - Accurate Showtimes Initiative.

Famous Players should be happy that a site like CalgaryMovies.com is out there for movie fans and work with them to bring as much bussiness as possible to their theaters. Instead they make getting good movie information harder for their customers by not sharing information with CalgaryMovies.com.

I know they have their own site, but it's not as good as CalgaryMovies.com for the same reasons that Amazon is a better site than DelRey. DelRey is a fine site, but they only list DelRey books. Imagine how foolish DelRey would look if they refused to share information with Amazon in 2003.

Makes you wonder what Famous Players CEO Robb Chase is getting paid for.

- Peace

Slag : "Verb. To verbally put down someone or something. E.g.'If you are going to persistently slag off your friends you soon won't have any left to upset.'"

A dictionary of slang - "S" - Slang and colloquialisms of the UK.


When I was at c-stone 2003 I said something like "and he was totaly slagging him for ..." My American friend stoped and asked "slag? Canadian slang or internet?" I didn't know. Checked with a fellow Cunuck and she could define slag, so it seems to be Canadian. And then there's the above page from the UK. So gentle readers before reading this post would you have known what slagging was? Please let me know in the comments.

- Peace

A great post form LT: Emerging from Postmodernism

Today our faith rests upon human wisdom disguised as Christ. Call it theology or religion or whatever. We have yet to realize our deception even though it should be readily apparent that we reflect very little of what the apostles describe.

For me I feel I need to leave the human wisdom behind and seek God. I want to have my faith in the power of God, not in my wisdom or the wisdom of others. I only have an idea of what this looks like. I know that I will be glad to leave behind the postmodern label. Using a label that is defined a hundred different ways and is ultimately no philosophy at all, just a reaction to a dying one, seems silly to me now.

You need to read the entire post.

- Peace

The Infamous Exploding Whale - Video

Wow, that's so simpson-esque it's scary.

- Peace

On Sunday I preached my first, and who knows maybe my last sermon. Our pastors were on vaction and I got asked to fill in. I used open office to do a web export of my images and notes. I don't write out an entire presentation, I just use points and talk around that. I'm used to talking for about an hour at a shot, so I found aiming for 15 - 20 minures quite hard. At the end of my sermon I felt like I should have been just getting started. My church was quite kind, I got lots of positive feed back. Having Mike there ment alot to me. And Yes I'm going to copy right hell for lifting all those images via Google.

Please take a monment and consider God as Artist.

- Peace

lightning kills blog - ouch.

- Peace

Links for Leighton
(Mike and I spent a great weekend with LT at his cabin talking about Life, the Universe and Everything, I promised LT a bunch of links)

Post Moderen Programers

Agile Development and test first design

jEdit

Larry Wall on /. - read question seven.

The new Battlestar Galactica and negitve fan reaction.

Five Iron Frenzy - songs that speak to the history of Native Amricans
The Day We Killed (Crazy Horse)
Old West
Banner Year

Gahndi thrown out of Chruch. The quote I remember was "That poor man thought he was ushering one Indian our of church, when realy he was helping ushrer England our of India". I can't find the source. However on pages 174 and 175 of Soul Survivor, Yancey tells that Gandhi was turned away form a church in South Africa because of his skin colour, he quotes E. Stanley Jones

Racialism has many sins to bear, but perhaps its worst sin was the obscuring of Christ in the hour when one of the greatest souls born of a woman was making his decision.

I'd highly recomend Jones Gandhi: Portrayal of a Friend.

Spontaneous Generation in Exploring Emergence is a good example of the type of hype that has been tied to the idea of emerging systems in the past.

For the life of me I can't find the article on the improtance of dynamic elements in a system and how we tend to focus on the static because it's easier to capture. I gues I didn't blog it, my bad.

- Peace

Jakob Nielson has a good rant against Information Pollution:

Information pollution is a worldwide scourge that afflicts not just travelers but everyone. In the United States, for example, you can't buy a lawnmower without a label saying that you're not supposed to mow your feet.

He also links to a 2001 article by design guru Tog: Good Lawyers, Bad Products

The automotive GPS lawyers weren't satisfied with making drivers curse the car company and the GPS manufacturer every time they have to clear the same legal message they've cleared a thousand time before. No, in their fanatic pursuit of zero liability, they've set up the ideal conditions to actually kill people.

A really great time:
I had just an awsome time with Dave and LT.
You would think the idea of a retreat to discuss "the church in a post-modern context" would not be the most exciting thing you could do for 4 days.
But it was just great.
We had many discussions some arguments. Large quantities of hyperbole and cliches were thrown about. And even an opinion or two changed.
I wanted to say thank you to both Dave and Layton for being such awsome brothers in Christ.
You guys really show Jesus in such an honest way it just makes folks want to say "I want to come too"

From the pseudo random links dept:

10 points of office etiquette...
Confessions of an Obnoxious Christian

and cause the perma link is broken, a quote ...

Email forwards are the fruitcake of the Internet.
Most people throw it away,
Some keep it, but never open it,
And a few reuse it to pretend they care.

from Whisper the Muse Alive, Aug 7 post.

- Peace

Load the Jump Program, The Wart Hog Jump.

- Peace

Had a great time on the weekend:

Friday

• picked up Mike in Edmonton
  
• listened to great music, with Mike in the Element, it's all about the journey.
  
• missed our turn in North Batleford and had to ask directions
  
• one kid thought the Element looked like a Mini cooper. Other than the fact the the Element is over twice as large I guess he had a point.
  
• Arrived in Chitik Lake, realized it is much larger than I had thought. We wandered around looking for post modern Christians.
  
• Asked one man wearing a large wooden cross if he would describe himself as a pre, mid or post modern Christian. He considered him self to be a present day Christian. Clearly not one Christians we were looking for.
  
• The genral store had a map of Chitik listing all the names of the cabin owners, we found Tebey.
  
• I guess I forgot to tell LT we were coming, oops. I did tell him we were interested, but didn't confirm, my bad.
  
• as reported by LT we geeked out.
  
• I slept in the Element, there was tons of space at the cabin, but I wanted to try it. It was quite comfy.
  

Saturday

• LT made a breakfast of bacon and eggs, mmmm bacon.
  
• Not even going to try to list all the things we talked about, but I do owe LT a set of links, that will be a seprate post. LT has posted some of our best sound bites.
  
• cooked up some steak, potatoes, veggie kabobs, salad and it was good.
  
• we watched Zoolander, very funny.Three geeks in a cabin watched a movie on male models, make of it what you will.
  

Sunday

• went to hear Jordon preach at spirit wood.
  
• Met a guy named Jeff, who had also been to c-stone 2003 and is writing a rap musical. What are the odd of the that happening in a small town church?
  
• Went our for lunch. The fish was amazing, second only to the Atlantic salmon I had beside the Miramichi river on a fishing trip when I was a kid. LT and Jordon agree the food was amazing..
  
• got to meet a real mini Cooper
  
• Wendy does bear some resemblance to Halle Berry, but that's being kind to Halle. The pics on Wendy's blog don't do her justice.
  
• I got to show off the Element, but I can't keep up with Jordon in his Caravan on gravel roads.
  

Monday

• left at just before 9:00 am
  
• picked up an older gentelmen, quite well dressed, who's car had broken down. Gave him a lift to the next town.
  
• asked cops in Notrth Batelford for directions to Tim Horttons, you wouldn't believe the look they gave us.
  
• Picked up a couple of hitch hikers, we the comented that we had good karma headed our way, Mike explained that we were more Christian than Karmatic. They said that what goes around comes around, I agreeded saying the Christian translation is "because he first loved us". It's all a reaction to being loved.
  
• Mike, Carrol and I saw X2 at the cheap theater. I bid Mike goodbye and headed home.
  

LT was a fantastic host, we had a great time. Here's hopping we can make it next year.

- Peace
Dave

PS The essence of hope is vision....

Mike and I are headed out to the Emerging Camping Trip. I'm taking Mike, so I won't be the oldest guy there.

- Peace