Christianity,Sunday, May 27, 2007
Sometimes in todays, world, it may not seem like being a Christian can make a difference in a person’s life. Sometimes everyone seems equally American and entrenched in American culture. However, a Gallup poll had confirmed that being a highly committed Christian can make a difference. Here’s a short section out of James Boice’s commentary on Romans 12:1
And Christians are different. A number of years ago the Gallup Poll organization devised a scale to sort out those for whom religion seemed to be important and find out if it made any difference in their lives. America claims to be a very religious country, but the nation is increasingly immoral. Gallup wanted to know if serious religion made a difference for those who considered themselves to be ?highly spiritually motivated? or committed.
He found that 12.5 percent of Americans are in this category, one person in eight. And he found that they really are different, so much so that he called them ?a breed apart.? He found that these people differed from the rest of the population in at least four key areas:
1. They are more satisfied with their lot in life. They are happier. Sixty-eight percent say they are ?very happy? as compared with only 30 percent of those who are uncommitted.
2. Their families are stronger. The divorce rate among this group is far lower than among the less committed.
3. They tend to be more tolerant of persons of different races and religions. This is exactly opposite from what the media suggest when dealing with religion or religious leaders.
4. They are more involved in charitable activities than are their counterparts. A total of 46 percent of the highly spiritually committed say they are presently working among the poor, the infirm, and the elderly, compared to only 36 percent among the moderately committed, 28 percent among the moderately uncommitted, and 22 percent among the highly uncommitted.?
True conversion makes a difference in a person?s life. If there are no differences, there is no genuine conversion. These differences are explained in the remaining chapters of [Romans]. Laws in themselves change little. Changed people change everything. And the only thing that ever really changes people is God himself through the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. If you have been called to faith in Jesus Christ, you are part of a radically changed community, the new humanity. It is your privilege to begin to make changes in our world.
Boice, J. M. (1991-c1995). Romans (1489). Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House.
Jenn and I consider ourselves in the highly committed group and we can identify ourselves with all 4 points above. We are very happy with what God has done in our lives, our local church, family, friends, job and life in general. We don’t see our family ever breaking up. We have good relations with people of different religions in our neighborhood and at my workplace. And we are involved with charitable activities both locally and globally through World Vision and Compassion International.
Before I came to know Christ, I did none of these things and I was a bit lost in life. I cannot take the credit for any of the benefits. God’s design for life is truly the best. Oftentimes the world thinks of religion as foolishness. It’s nice to know that a Gallup poll has shown a bit of truth about the fruits of a highly committed Christian life.
Health,Thursday, May 24, 2007
Recently there was the pet food scare that had us worried about our cats and dogs needing to be put to sleep. Well, it turns out there is also a danger of it getting to our kitchen table because tainted feed is also being used to feed livestock that is destined for kitchen tables around the nation. Even more interesting, is that there are a host of chemicals that are used in America’s Livestock industry that I would rather not avoid. Check out this article at Sustainable Table -> Click Here
Family,Thursday, May 24, 2007
Albert Mohler’s blog brought this book to my attention. I can’t wait until my son is older to do some fun stuff in this book together. Meanwhile, maybe there are some parents out there that want to try some out on their young girls or boys. The age range is 8 and up.
- Click Here for Albert Mohler’s Blog on this Book
- Click Here to see it on Amazon.com
Family,Monday, April 30, 2007
Our neighbors have been getting together on Friday nights for drinks, snacks, and fun. There’s probably a total of 6 or 7 families that have been bringing themselves and their kids to these informal gatherings. They’re usually not anything elaborate. People bring what they want and stay as long as they wish. The first time we were invited to one of these, two of the fathers were playing music. One playing acoustic guitar and harmonic, yes both instruments simultaneously! He would also switch to keyboard at time. And the other was playing electric guitar. After about ten minutes of watching, I mentioned playing trumpet and couldn’t resist going back to my house to get my trumpet. It was a lot of fun playing together. We mainly played popular songs.
Here’s a video that another neighbor had filmed and placed on You Tube. Be warned, I’m a bit out of practice and a little rough around the edges. And keep in mind we had no prior practicing of these songs. It’s completely impromptu but still enough to get some people dancing! Click Here
Announcements,Sunday, April 29, 2007
Over the past several months I’ve really started to use this website more and more to store all sorts of tidbits of information. If you’ve visited the Wiki area of this site, you’ll notice new notes in a variety of places.
Recently, Live Earth farm, the place we get our veggies, has started a Yahoo group and there are people emailing recipes on a regular basis. The problem is, once they email it, it just sites in my email box in a fairly unorganized fashion. I would always have to search through all my email for the recipe. Searching can sometimes take a long time. In addition, there are a bunch of other recipes we find at the food network, southern living, and so on. If I’m around, I usually converted them to PDF and it sits in a folder on my hard drive somewhere. That is also not easy to sort through. So to avoid that mess, I setup an online recipe database.
The thing I like about databases is that once you have the information stored in it, you can display and sort it in nearly any way you want; alphabetical, food type, author, rating, ingredients, date, etc. Just enter the information and the database does the rest of the work. And entering it is extremely easy too. Since most of the recipes we find are already online, it’s simply a matter of copy and paste to enter a new recipe. Now we have access to all our recipes, whether we are in Alabama or California, and we can share it with all our friends and family.
Check out the sidebar on the right and you’ll see a new “Recipes” link. Believe it or not, it was super simple to setup considering the hardest part of all this was getting to know all the features of the Expression Engine software and I still don’t know everything this online software does. Expression Engine software developers continue to add more stuff to it too! As of now, it’s a simple task to setup a new online database. It’s in an infancy stage at this time, but I plan to eventually have more viewing options on the main Recipes page and also provide a way for Jenn and other people to enter recipes. Perhaps later down the line I’ll add a rating system. For now, it simply shows the latest entered Recipes, but you can view them all and search through them using the search box.
I guess by now you’re probably thinking I’ve gone a little too far, or perhaps you are now convinced that I am really a geeky computer engineer! Or you’re asking yourself, does this guy really get excited about this kinda stuff? Hey, it’s okay, I wouldn’t be offended, that’s nothing Jenn hasn’t already told me. For some strange reason she actually loves me for being nerdy 
