Researching wedding music

I don't think this version of Canon in D will make the final cut!

Luther's bedtime

Isn't the end of the day sometimes the most exciting part? Phone off, doors locked...just you and a bed. I've only been up a few hours and i'm already looking forward to it! It's an odd thing going to sleep though. People who know more than i do about it have said that when we're in our deepest sleep, when our organs and brain have shut down for the night that we're pretty much as close to death as we'd want to be... When we're asleep we can't defend ourselves, can't react to warning aches and pains.

The Psalmist says 'i lay down and i slept, but i awoke, because you sustained me.' Jesus sustains us while we sleep. But isn't Jesus the infinitely holy One who we've spent our day sinning against in thought and word and deed? How can we sleep easy knowing that what we've just spent our day doing could and should invoke holy, just wrath. As always, Martin Luther as a level headed, Biblical answer...

In the evening when you go to bed, make the sign of the holy cross and say: 'in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.' The standing or kneeling repeat the creed and say the Lord's prayer. If you choose you may also say this little prayer: 'I thank you my heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ your dear Son, that you have graciously kept me this day; and i pray that you would forgive me my sins where i have done wrong and graciously keep me this night. For into your hands i commend myself, my body and my soul, and all things. Let your holy angel be with me that the evil foe may have no power over me. Amen. Then go to sleep at once, and in good cheer.'

If you had to sum up Luther in one sentence it could be worse than 'it's outside of you.' We are simil iustus et peccator, and Luther calls us every night to go to Him outside of us, to go to our righteousness, our substitute, our Savior, and remember that He will keep us though the night, and to sleep well, safe in the palm of His hand.

May Miscellenia

April was a quiet month on the blogging front, for whatever reason, and a month of contrasts at church. Two of our biggest Sundays, 221 on Easter and 330 on Friend Day, and two deaths in the church, one a tragic road accident. I guess you can't be around a church...you can't be around people long before you see the wisdom, the necessity to weep with those who weep, to rejoice with those who rejoice.

This year i've also really been enjoying going through the Bible chronologically. I was a bit sceptical at first, because, after all, that's not how the Bible was written, but i really like it. I'm not sure whether reading longer chunks is more helpful in say, Leviticus than it would be in Romans, but it's definitely helped my understanding of the overall story line of the Bible, so i guess that's a pretty good endorsement. Reading 2 Samuel and 1 Chronicles side by side has proved really useful as well, particularly in appreciating why Chronicles were written. Although i still think i'd put it later in the Bible, who am i to argue.

And for those who know me and are wondering. I was at Adams Park on Saturday. I left North Carolina Thursday evening and got back Sunday afternoon. I had no clear idea of what time it was most of the weekend, but to be there, to see us great promoted with my dad and close friends, to experience the joy of hearing that Bury hadn't won by two goals, that we'd promoted by a goal, and then spill onto the pitch and off, and on again was marvellous. No more awful trips to Grimsby or Macclesfield, no more Tuesday nights at Barnet...hello Charlton, hello Southampton, hello Leeds, hello League One!

Hooray for a well designed Christian book

'Just Do Something' popped through the door the other day. If i was already handing out awards it would be up there in the Best Designed category in 2009:

Spurgeon on Paul's cry: 'bring me the books!

Justin Taylor quoted this long section from Spurgeon's sermon on 2 Timothy 4:13:


We do not know what the books were about, and we can only form some guess as to what the parchments were. Paul had a few books which were left, perhaps wrapped up in the cloak, and Timothy was to be careful to bring them. Even an apostle must read. . . . A man who comes up into the pulpit, professes to take his text on the spot, and talks any quantity of nonsense, is the idol of many. If he will speak without premeditation, or pretend to do so, and never produce what they call a dish of dead men's brains—oh! that is the preacher. How rebuked are they by the apostle!

He is inspired, and yet he wants books!

He has been preaching at least for thirty years, and yet he wants books!

He had seen the Lord, and yet he wants books!

He had had a wider experience than most men, and yet he wants books!

He had been caught up into the third heaven, and had heard things which it was unlawful for a men to utter, yet he wants books!

He had written the major part of the New Testament, and yet he wants books!

The apostle says to Timothy and so he says to every preacher, "Give thyself unto reading." The man who never reads will never be read; he who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men's brains, proves that he has no brains of his own.

Brethren, what is true of ministers is true of all our people. You need to read. Renounce as much as you will all light literature, but study as much as possible sound theological works, especially the Puritanic writers, and expositions of the Bible. We are quite persuaded that the very best way for you to be spending your leisure, is to be either reading or praying. You may get much instruction from books which afterwards you may use as a true weapon in your Lord and Master's service. Paul cries, "Bring the books"—join in the cry.

I'm off the sit in the eighty degree evening heat with CS Lewis

'i wish i could describe Him to ya'

This is probably one of the best presentations of this i've seen:

Letting dead men teach you

Piper blogs about heart devotions and head study:

without a book or a class about what some part of the Bible means and a teacher who is ahead of you, your devotions will probably flatten out at a low level of insight. Year after year you will go over the same biblical ground and find it as perplexing as before. There will be little advance in understanding

Now, for my favourite part of any day...to the books!

Rachel's Mum and i have a different view of some aspects of Church work

'so where are y'all meeting?'

'Bojangles in Vanceboro.'

'urghh, Bojanges, why can't you all play racquetball or something?'

'hey if we can not eat, we will not meet.'

The Weekend

Goodness. I love my job, i love being busy, this weekend has been the daddy...i am ready to go to bed and sleep until people start calling me Rip Van Ed.

First off on friday night we watched the ACC basketball tournament at church. Now a year ago i wouldn't have understood the big deal about college basketball, but the south eastern united states more or less closed down on friday to watch the games. And that was just a regional tournament, the national championships start on tuesday, and from thursday to sunday for the next few weekends there are games for twelve hours a day. We left church just after midnight saturday morning.

Saturday was much the same getting to church about two, watching more of the games, hosting a Bible college choir in the evening before getting home about 830. Then we got a call that one of the older ladies in church was in a very bad way in the hospital, so we headed back to to Greenville, stayed and prayed for a couple of hours, and got back just after midnight sunday morning.

For once it was almost a relief that i'm not teaching on a sunday morning at the moment. I was just about awake enough for sunday school and kids church, but it was a struggle. Then back to the hospital then home for an all too short nap, then back to church, rounding everything off with a 15 minute parent meeting after the service.

I'm bushed right now, but thrilled at everything i'm involved in personally, and we as a church are doing. I'm excited about going to work again tomorrow, preaching on wednesday night, and twice on sunday as Rachel's dad is in Tennessee. I'm also excited about going to bed, very shortly!

DesiringGod.org redesigned

DesiringGod.org has been redesigned, it looks really, really good.

Abraham shares the four major redesign points:

1. Weekly Sermon Featured Front and Center
2. A More Robust Rotating Carousel
3. More Space for the Blog
4. New Place for Latest Resources

I love the new placing the the weeks sermon, its going to make it so much easier to watch online and embed video. And having the blog more prominent makes a lot of sense to...It's a lot more user friendly...

How everything is about footb...the Gospel

I've just started helping out with Rebekah's school football team. It's kinda fun and kinda different. I have to call defenders 'stoppers' and get blank looks when i tell our roving midfielder that 'you're my Steven Gerrard,' but it's good stuff. Two hours of running in eighty degree heat is better to watch than do, i can say that much.

Football is about the biggest participation sport in the States, amongst girls anyway, so a lot of these girls have been playing for years, but a lot for barely weeks (hence we lost our first two games 4-0 and 3-0 because most of our players were essentially terrified of the other team). And although it's a big participation sport, few of the girls have ever actually seen a game played by professionals before. And thats a real problem. Your strikers can talk about what they need to do, but they've got no one to copy, they didn't grow up arguing over who was going to be Alan Shearer in their lunchbreaks. Midfielders can talk about breaking down and building up, but when do they hold back and when do they break into open space? No example seems to equal no intuition.

Without a vision my people perish. Or as the ESV has it, without a prophetic vision, without revelation my people perish. Greenville Knights Girls Soccer will struggle until they study people who've played the game all their life. They need to be told, to see. To taste and see that possession is good. Without a revelation from God, how will Christians live? How will they know how to eat and drink to the glory of God, or even that they should? How will we know how to love, or how to live, or even that we should love, without the Bible. The Bible changes our categories. Just as watching Bobby Moore would help our central defenders, so reading Romans will expand our hearts. And change our hearts.

This is what we need no? This is meat and drink for us. Can my team survive without spending time studying the game they're supposed to be playing? Of course, with a struggle, with regular defeats. And so it is for us. Do we read the Bible to impress God? Of course not, we read it like hungry beggars. Why would we not want to eat? Why would we want to snack on candyfloss when you can have lovely steak?

The parable of the sowers seems to teach us that the way we treat the Word has eternal importance. We'll either bow to it, or by judged as we ignore it. We must stay in the Word ultimately because thats where we meet Jesus, the Captain of our Salvation, we must stay in the Word because it makes us wise unto salvation. And how we need to be wise!

Some random links about Psalms and Wrestling

Somehow i missed this, but Bish has posted twelve minutes of Mike Reeves on the titles of the Psalms. It was really helpful, especially as at the moment i'm near about Psalm 40 and Numbers 26!

Also, Paul has set five of the Psalms to music on his Myspace page. Paul, these are excellent...Jesus is the man!

High school wrestling is weirdly popular in North Carolina, and it seems, in Minnesota. For about four days last week, during the state championship meet the front page of the local paper was full of pictures of sweaty high school types rolling around on a mat. Piper comments on men wrestling girls (because ultimately, in high school, that's what it is), and is at his cutting best.

ESV Study Bible free online

Crossway is pleased to make the ESV Online Study Bible available free--for anyone and everyone--for a limited time through March 31, 2009.

For full access and free trial use of all the Online Study Bible features, users can create a login and password at www.esvstudybible.org/online. Email information will not be shared, nor will there be any obligation to purchase.

Crossway invites you to share this information with others--with the hope that many will benefit from this online resource and further experience the timeless truth of God's Word as a powerful, compelling, life-changing reality.

Hurrah!

My fake suprise birthday day

Today i was kidnapped for my birthday. Rachel picked me up from work early this morning and we headed to Raleigh to the North Carolina museum of art. We had a great time, it was nice to just be near stuff that was older than post world war II. I discovered a love for 19th century American art, but not so much for medieval European art...too much gold leaf, not enough perspective. I could stare at ancient Greek art all day.

Then we headed to Southpointe Mall in Durham, and headed to Barnes and Noble. While Rachel drank a girly coffee and ate my slice of cheesecake i headed off to be depressed by the Christianity section. I hid some of the bad books behind good books...there weren't enough good books to go round, obviously, but at least Joel Osteen's smile is now hidden behind some tastefully covered copies of Piper's 'Taste and See.' They didn't have any Carson anywhere...isn't that awful? I managed to pick up 'How then shall we live' and 'the weight of glory' though, so it wasn't a total write off.

Then to the Angus Barn, a steak restaurant par excellence in Raleigh. And there, at a table hidden around a corner was my Dad...my actual dad! I had no idea! It was amazing. As split second moments go it was one of the best of my life...i cried a bit and then we sat down to an evening of paternal stories and high end steak...perfect!

Ireland's Worst Driver

Somethings are so funny that you can't even make them up...check out the story of Ireland's worst driver!

Matt, Challies and Scripture

Former housemate and long time Pro Evo adversary Matt has a linked to a great clip from John Piper about memorizing scripture here.

On the same note Challies is reminding his readers of his scripture memorizing email programme, which i've just signed up for...

I'd pay good money for a CD of Brian Blessed reading the KJV

As long as he did it in the style of the King from Blackadder I of course:

Pete Dray on the personification of Bible translations.

Also, if you're as cool as i am, you'll be fascinated to listen to the audio of flight 1549 leading up to it's safe landing in the Hudson River.

And in exciting iPod news, all the audio from the four previous New Attitude conferences are now online.

Switchover

The reminders have been running on TV for as long as i can remember. 'only X days till the digital tv switchover...are you ready?' All over America the analogue TV signal is being turned off and replaced by digital or satellite. This is all the make room for more channels or bandwidth or something else i don't really understand. Anyway, everyone has had a long time to either switch to cable/satellite or get a digital converter for their TV.

But about four or five million people haven't, and so congress has voted not only to delay the switchover by four months, but also to give $40 to everyone who hasn't yet bought a converter box. Now there are a world of issues here, and the right wing media have gone off the scale over it. Twice today i turned the radio on, about four hours apart, and this was the subject. Their point of course is that 1) It's crazy for government money to be spent on people's Tvs, where does that stop? What if i want a digital radio? Or a sit down lawn mower? Isn't America supposed to be a capitalist free market? 2) Obama knows the power of TV and wants to make sure that every traditional Democrat voter can afford to listen to the liberal 'news' about how he's saving their country. (news over here is essentially headlines and comment, it makes me long for Huw Davies and Fiona Bruce) and 3) when did TV become an essential. Can people not service without watching American Idol or whatever else.

There are dozens of political issues here, but there's also a spiritual one i think. Increasingly our culture is built on entertainment. TiVo and Sky + mean we never need to miss a TV show, Wii Fit means that we never need to leave our house to go to the gym, we can achieve our dreams of sporting glory on a PS3, digital TV means there's always another channel to flick to, even if there's nothing to watch on any of them. One package offers 250 channels. 250! Get a huge flat screen and your good to go.

We weren't built to be entertained. Our minds were made to think of the glory of Christ, our hearts were made for deep joy in worship, our bodies were made to serve and glorify Christ. We weren't created to sit on the couch, we were created to worship, with sharp minds and grateful hearts. Where will another Edwards or Whitefield or Simeon or Judson come from if our free time is devoted to watching tv. How will we worship or preach on sunday morning if all our evenings are devoted to television. I'm not advocating Christians getting rid of Tvs (although, given this is the fundamentalist belt, i'd bet i'm not too far from someone who is) i like watching House and 24 and essentially anything involving a ball and thousands of screaming spectators. TV, even 250 channel digital TV isn't evil, but it is invasive, and it can stop our hearts reaching deeply for Christ. And thats not worth all the government money you can spend...

A ledge

Sometimes reading the Bible is like a mighty soul satisfying feast, verse after verse, chapter after filling chapter making us glad in our savior.

Sometimes a single verse is like a sturdy ledge on a sheer cliff face:

And everyone who has left houses, or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands or Reading Family Church, or UCCF, or lunches with their family, or time with friends, or afternoons at football, for my names sake, will receive a hundredfold, and will inherit eternal life

Matthew 19:29 (Ed's Special Version)

Two (more) blogs i've just discovered

On this, so far, very productive snow day i've spent a good amount of time browsing two blogs i've just found. The first, leithart.com is a veritable mine of Biblical articles. Including this excellent one on Matthew and pretty much all his stuff on Genesis. Plus, he has an excellent beard!

Also, give your iPod a birthday, and check out the faith by hearing audio blog. Especially their best audio of 2008 post. Excellent stuff.