Today my blog is 500 days old

Unfortunately I missed the one year anniversary of Izaac thinks aloud, so instead I've used Wolfram Alpha to calculate when my blog turned 500 days old. That day is today (and also happens to be the 302nd day of 2010 as well as the day of a 'waning gibbous moon').

Anyway, to celebrate I thought I'd share some tidbits, links and other thingamabobs.

Stats
399 posts have attracted
3.284 people who visited from
30 countries viewing
26,924 pages during
12,924 individual visits spending an average
3 minutes and 7 seconds on the site.

Most referrals to the site (incidentally the first three bloggers I ever read)
1. Mikey
2. Simone (Read Simone's glowing review of my blog)
3. Nathan

Most read posts
1. Reflections on Engage
2. What I learnt from my visit to Hillsong
3. Chicken Little and the AUA

Most disappointed readers
The 33 people who got here through searching google for "Hillsong Church" or "Hillsong Experience".

Random post lights (you decide whether high or low)
iPhone Holy Bible
Moses should be called Drew
Learning styles
Sometimes I talk too much
In your anger do not sin
Choc-ism

MTS: A holy pyramid scheme

I planted

MTS Graduation

Samaritans

Samaria

PC

The Christian Brag-shelf

If I had an editor

On Music
The Quinity
Two page revolution
Come Thou Fount

On Preaching
Before you get up to preach
Note to self
Young preacher feedback translation guide
It's caught
The sermon was too long

Deeper reflection
A history of Cumberland Uni Church through chairs: Intro, 1, 2, 3, 4.
Responding to atheists on campus
Country ministry
Part of my story
Tim Chester at Moore
Congratulations

On Moore College
Prejudice #1
Being left out
Marriage and thermodynamics
Prejudice #2
Junk Mail
Too Christian #1
Goals
Essay guidelines
Hebrew
Affront to Anglicans
Too Christian #2
The Library

Sarah
I blame the wife
Howdy partner
Post conference husband
Suspicious wife smells collar
Just the two of us
Happy Birthday Sarah

Rupert Murdoch owns the Bible

How did I not know this?

The New International Version of the Bible is one of the most popular modern English translations. The NIV is published by Zondervan which was bought out in 1988 by HarperCollins, which is owned by News Corp, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch.

As someone said to me today, people might not be buying newspapers anymore, but they're certainly buying Bibles.

The language of love

It may come as no surprise to you that I worked out Sarah's love language through the book The Five Love Langauges by Gary Chapman. Yet it so often slips my mind. I was asked once while I was being interviewed what my ideal Saturday would look like. I said, 'I'd start off with bacon and eggs followed by a long game of golf...' As I trailed off I remembered that I happened to be married and it was starting to sound a bit selfish so I added. '... and my wife's love language is 'quality time' so she'd come and be my caddy. And as my love language is 'words of affirmation', Sarah would spend the round telling me how good I was.' Problem solved. Love languages spoken.

Another way this language of Sarah is expressed is she likes to do the grocery shopping together. I always say, 'Do you want me to come?' And the answer is always yes. But it's not for me to lift heavy shopping bags or get down tins from high shelves. It's for quality time with one another.

Yet somehow by the time I get into the vegetable aisle, I've forgotten my foremost husbandly duty and I'm off. Give me a job to do. I'll get the tomatoes, you get the carrots and we'll rendezvous near the lettuce. But Sarah keeps reminding me, it's not about getting things done as quickly as possible. It's about getting the shopping done together, even if it takes longer (which, I must add, it most certainly does).

There's not a lot of pragmatism in romance. Or perhaps it's better expressed, there's not a lot of romance in pragmatism. Either way I should know better by now.

Continuous partial attention

Keith Condie used a great phrase in Mission and Ministry 1, which he attributed to Andrew Cameron. The curse of my generation is what Andrew Cameron calls 'continuous partial attention'. We don't know how to listen for long periods of time as we constantly have multiple streams of information input clouding our thoughts.

As Keith said this, I at that very moment in time had a page of half written Hebrew verb paradigms on the desk next to my computer. If I were to stop memorising Hebrew and put down my pen, with a swipe of my fingers I could navigate away from my lecture notes and had at my fingertips access to iTunes, my Gmail account, my Facebook account, my Google Reader, my Greek vocab program, and my calendar (in different spaces on my MacBook).

I was focusing on way too many things. Keith also gave a quite forceful rebuke about the way we use the internet during lectures as an abuse of the free wi-fi. The room fell silent, the constant hum of typing ceased bar a few people quickly minimising their internet windows (whilst I quickly logged onto Facebook to quote Keith saying "Get off Facebook"). And everyone in that room who owned a computer felt a little bit guilty inside.

Personally I would like to see my idea implemented where on the second projecter screen in our lecture room, at five minute intervals a random computer screen from someone in the class gets flashed onto the projector for five seconds. As well as a good proportion of lecture notes, you'd get a fair dose of Facebook, smh.com, Bejeweled, Robot Unicorn Attack, some weird double tetris game I've seen, and one guy has been known to play Street Fighter.

I've been praying lately of a morning that I would be able to concentrate in class and stay focused, but the temptation is strong and the accessibility of distraction is unhelpful. Apart from logging out of all my accounts so that it's not as easy to just 'quickly check', apart from that the best method I've found yet is having Sarah elbow me in the ribs when she sees me about to wander.

Enjoying...

Enjoying my Friday morning spankings from John Woodhouse.

It is entirely appropriate that each week our college principal sets the agenda from the Scriptures. As soon as the 1 Timothy talks go online I'll post the links. I don't think the name Mark Driscoll has been mentioned once, but it's clear his visit in 2008 is in the background to a lot of the application, as John has been preaching through 1 Timothy for Expositors.

Conjunction-itis

Wife rebukes are the worst. I know I can't hide, because she sees everything. I know she's right, because she knows me. And yet rather than responding with the appropriate shame and humility, I arch my back in defiance. If she really understood the situation, she would see I was right.

But here I am, a couple of weeks down the track again and I can see she was spot on. This was the comment:

I don't think you're being very godly in the way you respond to assessment feedback at college.

Grr. It's frustrating that Sarah sees through my feigned humility on getting a good mark. It's infuriating the way Sarah looks straight past my polite questioning of a poor result as I pour scorn on the markers credibility, and she sees my hurt pride. And yet there I am again, grumbling about this, that or the other, living and dying by the distinction or lack thereof.

A few months ago, I finished my Old Testament essay and needed to cut about 300 words to get back to the word limit (including the +10%). To achieve this I just started at the beginning trying to delete as many individual words as possible. When that wasn't enough I went and deleted paragraphs. Then I went back to try and delete entire sentences. Another word count had me back looking for individual words again.

Basically, in desperation, I deleted the majority of my conjunctions. In hindsight, an essay without conjunctions would in fact come across as a series of moderately related ideas. I should have known the marker would notice their absence.

General Comments: 

Thanks for your essay. You have clearly worked hard at grappling with some of the major issues that the topic raises, particularly in terms of an Evangelical approach to the creation accounts. You also made some astute observations in terms of the assumptions that many scholars bring to the text of Genesis, and did a good job of critiquing them. These are important analytical and critical skills to develop, so well done!

Suggestions for improvement:

In terms of suggestions for improvement, I have a few. First, at points your writing style became a little stilted, particularly near the beginning of the essay. There were several sentences and paragraphs which came across as discrete, unconnected units of thought. In written communication, it’s important to provide the reader with verbal cues to help follow the flow of thought, by use of conjunctions and conceptual links between sentences.  Otherwise, it makes it hard to really ‘get’ what you are communicating. 

Amen to that brother. The reason there was no conjunctions was that I deleted them all. I assumed, in my ignorance that simply putting the ideas in close enough proximity to each other you would see their obvious connection. The relationship of concepts was expressed spatially rather than verbally.

Anyways, I was grumbling again about how the marker should have seen past the difficulty of expression and instead engaged more with the concepts I raised, when Sarah thought it was time for a word from the wise: stop being a cry baby and be a little gracious.

Wife rebukes are the worst.

Complaints

It's good to have a soft response when you receive a rebuke. I like to think I've improved in this area as I've matured and hard defensiveness is no longer my default position. So anyway, handball at Moore College is another step closer to being banned after complaints from college resident(s) that we were making too much noise. Personally, I also think we are too loud at times (though it's not PC to mention the third year ping pong players or the second year cricketers), so the rebuke/guilt announcement was mostly appreciated.

But I got me to thinking, what does it take to make someone complain? I'm just not a complainer so I don't understand the psychological impetus which causes someone to actually make that step of firing off an email, or picking up the phone to vent their spleen. Is there a genetic predisposition to bemoaning? Because I'm just not the type to ring the landlord because the tap is dripping, or ask someone to stop talking too loud in the library.

Now while it's good to react softly to genuine complaints, on peripheral matters I generally take criticism with a grain of salt. This is because for every person that thinks the music was too soft, there's another person who appreciates the volume. The theory of ignoring most complaints was solidified for me at a camp I directed where I received three complaints that the mattresses were too soft, and another three complaints that the mattresses were too hard. From what I could ascertain, the mattresses were identical.

Third Eagle Takes Flight Again

Now, most people in blogland should by now have come across It's Prophesied (The End Times Anthem) by William Tapley aka The Third Eagle of the Apocalypse aka The Co-Prophet of the End Times. If you haven't yet incorporated it into your regular Sunday gatherings then you are missing out on some rich theological insight for your congregation.

The Third Eagle has recently uploaded his latest single "Doom & Gloom", which I have embedded for your viewing pleasure below. As my friend Toby quipped,

It takes a special kind of talent to rhyme 'p0rnography' with 'your God angry'!

But do you realise, for all the derision that you are directing at the Third Eagle right now, this is pretty much how I imagine the majority of non-believers view Christians for their belief in a resurrected messiah.

H/T St Eutychus

Congratulations

Some good friends from college had a little baby boy today, and Sarah and I are overjoyed for them. Seeing each other five days a week means we feel as if we've shared a big part of the journey to parenthood with our friends. Sarah had noticed the couple wasn't at college and so was getting her phone out to message them  to check all was okay, and there was the message. Good news of great joy. Another recipient of the SMS got up to make the announcement to our year group during the break in the lecture. More excited chatter and a smattering of applause.

It really is a joyous thing to share as a community in the gift of new life that God gives. We often get these happy event announcements - engagements, weddings, pregnancies, babies. It is right and good that we share these joys with one another.

But reflecting on Sarah and my own situation as we battle with the repercussions of infertility issues, I realised again how no announcements are made for those who are struggling in their situation in which God has placed them. No one ever makes an announcement about those who mourn singleness. There are no public prayers, no announcements, no parties, no cards, no presents, no balloons. We as Christians believe very firmly in the family. We put family first, as it were. We use the language of family to describe our gatherings. Yet for those with relationships other than the picket fence parents, kids and a cuddly dog, the potential risk is we appear to place family first, and everyone else second.

I can't offer a solution to this issue. I'm not even sure it's a massive problem. But to those single Christians who read this blog, let me just say on the record, and in public - good on you. Thank you for expressing your faithfulness to Jesus by trusting in his plan for your life, even when that doesn't line up with what you'd hoped. Congratulations for remaining sexually pure in a society which makes sexual fulfillment outside of God's plan easy to achieve. Blessed are you for not pursuing relationships that appear desirable to end singleness (if that is your desire) but choose not to take that path for its potential negative impact on your Christianity. I praise God for his gift and graces he has given you to persevere in him for this season of your life, no matter how long its duration. I don't have balloons, or a card. I don't think there is a traditional gift for a life of faithfulness. But know that for all the times we fail to notice, God does.