Wehner High: Back In Session

First day of my last year of college. Nuts. It was the most unusual of all first days of school. Not in the sense that anything crazy happened (i.e. accidentally going to class buck-naked). It just didn't feel like the typical first day. It's got to be something in the Senior water, or something? At least I got to eat my classic PB&J with a banana for lunch. That kept me sane.

Plain Jane

North of Bryan on highway 6 is a rustic, rundown little town, the kind of place that is beat up but not yet ghetto. The highway turns into the town's "Main Steet," so all travellers heading up to Waco or Dallas (in my case...more on that tomorrow) get to taste this spiffy metropolis. I think it is Calvert, but don't hold me to it. Something about the mood of the place made me pull a quick U-turn, grab my camera out of the trunk, and spend 10 or so minutes snapping away. It was all on a whim. Most of my photos are the results of such whims. I enjoyed that whim.

"Our Lord God made the best gifts most common. The preeminent gift given to all living things is the eye. Small birds have very bright eyes, like little stars, and can see a fly a room length away. But we don't acknowledge such everyday gifts. We are stupid clods. In the future life we'll see them, however..." - Martin Luther, 1533

Childlike Faith

In days yonder, I expressed my love and thanksgiving for the children of my hope group. That still stands, and stronger than ever. I still love 'em, I am still grateful for them, and still to this day they teach me sweet things about our God. For instance: Mark 10:13-16.
Jesus gathers the kiddos into his outstretched arms, and tells the crowd, "Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it." For all the old and wise Pharisees in the crowd, I'm sure that stung a tad bit. Jesus just told them it's not about knowledge, smarts, or social status, it's about a childlike faith from the heart. These kids of my Bible study group (2 of whom are featured) are a real-time illustration of this Bible verse for me. I see their dependence. I see the faith they have in their parents' care and provision. I see the way they love others because their parents love them with the love of Christ. Faith like a child is simple, beautiful, and what the Lord desires. Yet I still catch myself standing in the crowd as a Pharisee, looking down with contempt on those children at Jesus' feet. I become wise in my own eyes. I get too grown up.

*While reading through this passage, the "do not hinder them" part in verse 14 stood out to me like never before. Let that weigh on you for a bit.

Sill-o-wet

I like dragonflies. They eat mosquitos, thereby keeping mosquitoes from eating me. That's the extent of my creative juices today. I just wanted to share this photo with you, but lacked any substantial dragonfly material to go along with it. I apologize.

One In A Zillion

I stumbled upon a remarkable statistic today. According to Sifry's State of the Blogosphere, a new weblog is created every second of every day. Every second! That's 75,000 new blogs getting pumped into the world wide web each day. He also found that the "blogosphere" is 60 times larger than it was 3 short years ago.
Who woulda thunk it? And what does all this mean?
Is our world that narcissistic? Are we that in love with journaling? Do we love technological communication that much? I can't explain it. I could only guess. What are your guesses/thoughts/insights? Go on, click the little link below and tell me (thereby joining the mad frenzy of the weblog revolution).
Bye.

Snap Monkeys

Yesterday was move back into the apartment day. It was also stick my head into a ceiling fan day, unfortunately. I was cleaning up around our kitchen/living/dining room thing and thought it would be a good idea to dust the top of the cabinet (knowing I would find a year's worth of dust bunnies hopping around up there). I stepped up onto the kitchen table, and just as I'm wondering if it will support me, WHABAM! The mach3 fan blade collided with my little bald head. It took me a good couple seconds to figure out what in the world just happened. The fan left a pretty nice souviner on my scalp, but it was quite good enough to earn a field trip to the hospital. I guess everyone at some point in his or her life has to participate in this foolish act. I got mine out of the way, and I plan on never trying again.

Innell Is His Middle Name

J.I. Packer is quite a quotable gentleman:

"While we must always remember that it is our responsibility to proclaim salvation, we must never forget that it is God who saves. It is God who brings men and women under the sound of the gospel, and it is God who brings them to faith in Christ. Our evangelistic work is the instrument that He uses for this purpose, but the power that saves is not the instrument: it is in the hand of the One who uses the instrument. We must not at any stage forget that. For if we forget that it is God's prerogative to give results when the gospel is preached, we shall start to think that it is our responsibility to secure them. And if we forget that only God can give faith, we shall start to think that the making of converts depends, in the last analysis, not on God, but on us, and that the decisive factor is the way in which we evangelize."

"So far from making evangelism pointless, the sovereignty of God in grace is the one thing that prevents evangelism from being pointless. For it creates the possibility - indeed, the certainty - that evangelism will be fruitful. Apart from it, there is not even a possibility of evangelism being fruitful. Were it not for the soverign grace of God, evangelism would be the most futile and useless enterprise that the world has ever seen, and there would be no more complete waste of time under the sun than to preach the Christian gospel."

*photo is another from New Zealand (day #15)