After finishing 8 years of school my wife and I have decided to go on a 4 month trip to Europe. We will be spending 1 month in Denmark visiting family, 1 week in Krakow Poland, 1 month in Barcelona, 3 weeks in Paris and finally 3 more weeks in Denmark. I am blogging about the trip so if you want to see what we are up to or just get some interesting perspectives on Europe and things to do check it out.
Posted in Faith
Tuoma Mannermaa comes out of the Finnish Lutheran tradition, which has been heavily influenced by the Eastern Orthodox tradition because of Finland’s close proximity to Russia. In this book Mannermaa focuses on Luther’s distinction between Human love and God’s love.
Mannermaa often uses Luther’s own written material and then expounds on it. In the first chapter this one quote by Luther and further explanation provides an excellent example of this. Luther states, “God’s Love does not find, but creates, that which is lovable to it. Human Love comes into being through that which is lovable to it.” Mannermaa goes on to explain that “God’s Love is directed toward that which is empty and nothing, in order to create something of it and to make it exist in the first place…Human Love by contrast turns itself or is oriented toward that which already ‘is’ something in itself and as such is good and beautiful.” In other words God creates something out of nothing, and that nothing is found in weakness, hate, envy etc. God’s Love is oriented toward that which we find unlovable whereas we can only love that which is beautiful and good to us. On top of that we cannot create out of nothing.
One of the joys of reading this book is that Mannermaa provides a clear and concise explanation. He is not long winded and I found myself highlighting regularly. I always wonder about theologians who feel the need to write massive volumes in which there are only a few memorable quotes. This is not the case with Mannermaa. He gets right to the point in the opening pages and then expounds. It is no wonder that in the intro to this book it states that “It is quite appropriate to talk about a ‘Mannermaa school.’” His ability to explain difficult concepts has captured the attention of many scholars who wish to emulate such an excellent theologian.
If you are interested in a book that takes a look at Love through the lens of justification by faith through grace this is the book for you.
Everyday that I bike to seminary I ride by a big train yard. I decided to ride through it the other day and was checking out the graffiti on the trains. It always amazes me to see this form of art from all over North America right here in Saskatoon. The oldest piece (the name for a well done “piece” of graffiti) was almost 10 years old. It had travelled around for a while. I have always loved watching the trains go by because if you look closely it is like a travelling art gallery. Here’s a few pics that I took. Enjoy
Posted in Anxiety, Depression, Poetry
So you want to know the fastest way to scan a book huh? Well after some serious thought and research I have found what I would consider the quickest way. As you can see on the video below you can be scanning 1 page double sided every 1.5 seconds with the Snapscan S1500M. It cost around $500 Canadian. You can feed approximately 65 pages into the machine at a time and with the odd paper jam which takes all of 10 seconds to fix you are looking at about 15 minutes for a 1000 page book. That means that in an hour you can scan around 4000 pages. That is phenomenal!
Well you knew this was coming. What’s the catch? The catch is that you need to take the binding off the book which some people would consider destroying a book. Destroy literally means putting an end to the existence of something so that seems like a misnomer (wrong word to use). I like to think of it as transformation. You are taking your book and moving it from physical form to digital form. So basically what it comes down to is are you willing to sacrifice your physical book for a digital copy. The books that I decided to digitize are mainly reference books so only need to read parts of them at any given time. This works great. So in the end it is up to you. Here’s a stack of books I scanned while watching TV one evening.
I thought of several ways to get the bindings off and finally one of my friends suggested that I take the books to a print shop. There they had huge shears that simply cut the binding right off leaving the book ready to be scanned. I ended paying about 50 cents a book to get them cut which I thought was a bargain.
While the price of the scanner and the fact that you have to cut your books up looks like a lot think about the alternative. You can buy a flatbed scanner for cheap so you can save your books but you will spend at least 10 seconds a page and you will have to sit there and flip the pages each time. With this system I put in 65 pages and come back a minute and a half late to reload. In fact I am writing this blog while my scanner is doing the work. With a flatbed scanner it would take 11 hours to do 4000 pages if you had the patience to sit there and flip the book every 10 seconds. The question is what is your time worth.
“Do not be afraid.” (Matthew 10:31a)
In the book Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada, we encounter a group of people living in Nazi Germany during WW II. Fear abounds in the German population as death hangs over their heads at every moment. It is out of this situation that Otto and Anna Quangel, the main characters, end up on death row for distributing anti Nazi post cards. As they sit on death row waiting for their inevitable death they contemplates how
There are people sentenced to death who have been waiting for fully a year, who every night go to bed and don’t know whether they will be rudely awakened by the executioner; any night, any hour – while they are chewing their food, while they are sorting peas, while they are slopping out – at any moment the door might open, a hand beckon, a voice say, “All right! It’s time!”
What is it like to live with the knowledge that while you are sitting at home watching TV, while you sleeping in your bed, while you are at work, a hand might beckon, a voice might say, “All right! It’s time!”?
These words send shivers down my spine. To be constantly aware that any given moment could be your last. This is still the case for people today. Just recently at a Pakistani electronics manufacturer people where heading into work for the morning when a suicide bomber blew himself up at the security gate, killing two security guards and five other workers. In countries where suicide bombs are a threat, a voice might say, “All right! It’s time!” while you are walking to work.
Even for us, whether we acknowledge it or not, there is a constant threat of death, whether it is a tragic head on collision or an artery getting clogged and cutting off oxygen to our brain. No matter what we do, death is hanging over our heads at every moment, we are just not reminded of it so frequently.
But for Anna Quangel, sitting on death row was a constant reminder, so constant in fact that it was all she thought about. But one day she had a visit from her friend Judge Fromm. He gave her a vile of poison and the comforting words “Don’t be afraid, child, there’s nothing to be afraid of.”
The vile of poison gave Anna control over when she would die, it freed her from wondering if the next moment was her time to die. But the words of comfort “Don’t be afraid, child, there’s nothing to be afraid of,” freed her from the need to be in control, allowed her to live each moment without a fear of what the future would bring.
She eventually decided to throw the vile of poison out the cell window, to throw away the control she had been given, to rest in the words “Don’t be afraid, child, there is nothing to be afraid of.” These words gave her a freedom that no vile of poison could give, the freedom to live in the now without a fear of the future.
These comforting words echo Jesus’ words to his disciples, to us, to Anna, “Do not be afraid.” And they are comforting because the one who stands behind them, God, is trustworthy. We can trust that if God says “Do not be afraid,” we do not need to be afraid. We, along with all those who are facing death, can rest in the knowledge that not even death will separate us from the love of God.
Having spent the last two times in Las Vegas on the infamous Strip, with all its mega hotels and huge casinos, I decided to go for a more down to earth version (if that is truly possible in Las Vegas) by staying at the Golden Nugget in the old downtown part known as Freemont Street. This is where it all started and so why not go there. Recently they have overhauled this section of the city to breath new life into what was fast becoming a place of the past. It seems like it has worked fairly well. One of the ways in which they have done this is by adding a four block cover over Freemont Street. Every 1 hour of so after dark this canopy lights up with millions of little lights, a variable sky of lights.
As I gazed at this canopy which obscured my view of the sky, I couldn’t help remember that only the night before I had been at Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah looking up at the stars as they lit up the canopy of the sky. That night in Bryce Canyon I could see a thick band of what looked like dust cresting across the sky. The park ranger had explained to my parents earlier that this was the Milky Way streaking across the sky, the result of millions of stars closely packed together.
Flare in the Milky Way over Utah
But what he also explained afterwards was disturbing. At this point in time only 40% of the world is able to see what I saw just the other night because light pollution had virtually blotted out the stars from our view.
With that in mind I saw the Freemont light show with new eyes. Here, in a city that has a spotlight so bright that it can be seen from outer space, a city that pollutes the sky with so much light that when I looked out the hotel window the only stars I saw were the ones displayed on the adjacent billboard, they had gone so far as to create their own night sky out of little LED’s.
As if destroying the absolutely awe inspiring night sky wasn’t enough we feel the need to replace it with a tacky light show. We love to pretend to be God but we sure are lousy at it.
Tagged bryce canyon, freemont street, las vegas, milky way, sky, utah
As I drove through the desert of Nevada this afternoon Las Vegas appeared like a mirage in the distance. It seemed so out of place in this hot and barren land, in a place where nothing but rocks, cacti and a few hardy animals survive. But nonetheless here it was, with the spire of Stratosphere jutting prominently into the sky.
This is my third time to Las Vegas and each time it has been very thought provoking. The difference between this time and the other two was that now I was arriving by car whereas the other two times I came in by plane. And not only was I arrive by car but that same day and the seven days prior I had spent my time driving through Arches, Grand Escalante, Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park. I had witnessed first hand the amazing power of water as it flowed over sandstone for millions of years and carved out strange and wonderful shapes. I had floated down the Colorado River that cut through the desert so deep that it exposed rock over 2 billion years old. I saw the heavens light up before my eyes 8000 feet above the sea with shooting stars. And here I was, nearing the end of my journey, moving towards a city made by humans.
This stark contrast couldn’t help but bring about a comparison between God’s creation and our creation. While some might say that anything we create is God’s creation there are some subtle differences.
First, when we create something we say, “Look at what I have created,” for indeed we have created it. When we look at nature, and by that I mean the forces that we, at this point, have little or no control over, we say, “Look what God has created.” Our own creations often point to ourselves while nature has a tendency to point towards God.
Second, we only have a finite amount of time to create. As I visited Salt Lake City on the first leg of my journey through Utah I saw the first and most important Mormon Temple, built in the late 1900’s. The Salt Lake Temple took forty years to build; half a life time and probably a persons full working career. And while the temple is a masterpiece I found myself being overwhelmed to a much greater degree once I reached Bryce Canyon. Here the Hoodoos had taken hundreds of millions of years to be created by the shifting of earth and water. Here I found nature pointing to the incomprehensible amount of time that God has and as a consequence the finitude of his creation, especially humans, and all their attempts at grandeur.
Perhaps my inability to comprehend the complexity of God creating the Hoodoos was what led me to be so awe struck by them. Nature cannot help but point to God, for we have no control over it, we can take no credit, we are but dust.
This leads me to a second and perhaps less interesting point, yet it is one I have thought extensively about. If God is so intricately linked to nature, that is if we see who God is in nature, then wouldn’t God would also decay, fall apart, break down, die. Indeed God does all those things in Jesus. For in Jesus Christ, God decayed in death on the cross, God broke apart into little pieces and died. But like so many of the amazing creations that I saw, it was in the decay that new life was created, something more amazing than we could ever imagine was accomplished.
But less I begin to sound like a Buddhist, who would say that each part of nature is a drop taken from the pool of water that is God, that is to say God is nature, I have to clarify that nature is not synonymous with God, they are not one in the same. For while the creation reveals attributes of the creator, it is limited in what it can reveal. To make God and nature synonymous would limit God by basing our understanding of God on that which we could see and understand. If this was true, then it would only be a matter of time before we understood the secrets of nature, and therefore God, and as appealing as that may sound God is far beyond what we could ever hope to understand. God is not an object to be studied but a subject, a living God that acts in ways that often seem out of sorts and surprising to us. No, God is not synonymous with nature, but we can definitely look to nature as a revelation, just not the revelation. Jesus truly reveals who God is.
It is always interesting that whenever I put up a blog post I want to see how many people have looked at it. It seems like each of the social media components has a way of measuring how many people are looking at the things that we post. Facebook is measured by the amount of friends you have, Twitter is measured by the amount of followers you have and Blogging is measured by the amount of hits you have. The more people that are looking the more successful any of these forms of communication are perceived to be. And in turn the more satisfied we are with that part of lives (yes, it’s scary but these components are a part of our lives). Like anything we derive a part of our identity from what we invest ourselves in. And when we do well at a piece of our lives its gives us a sense of accomplishment, helps boost our self image.
It is not surprising that many of the words used to evaluate our success on social media are social words. We are evaluated by how many “friends” we have on Facebook. We are social people and so having friends is part of who we are. No explanation needed. None of us like to be alone.
Yet the word follower is another thing all together. A follower is someone who is devoted to a particular person. A follower is being led by the person in front of them. Followers are needed for leaders, bosses and even dictators to exist. There is a sense of responsibility that comes with having followers but also a sense of power. The word evokes some deep seeded desires including the desire to be in control of others.
Perhaps the least socially linked word is “hits” on a blog. The only other use of the word “hits” that I could think of was from Cypress Hills rap song Hits from the Bong (honestly I never inhaled 
. In this way the word “hits” has been taken and applied to a totally different context. And yet I still look eagerly at my hits each time I log onto my blog to see who is interested in what I have written. If people are reading my blog then they are interested in a piece of me. I think that no matter if you measure success by friends, followers or hits there is always an egotistical part of us that relishes or even needs to be acknowledged for who we are, however that affirmation comes.
Posted in Culture, Social Media
Tagged blog, blogging, facebook, identity, posts, Social Media, twitter
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