In Season and Out of Season

One Sunday my wife and I passed a neighbor's house on our way home from church. One of their daughters was standing outside their house doing laundry so we greeted her. Part of the normal series of greetings is asking where the person is coming from (people are nosy!) so she asked us and we replied that we were coming from church.

"What did you learn at church today?" she asked.

We'd never had anybody ask us that. We never dreamed that anybody would. It took us a second or two to respond. I quickly scoured my brain for the most hard-hitting bit of theology I could think of while my wife started off with, "We learned the importance of faith."

I jumped in, almost a bit embarrassed because it was so black-and-white, with, "We learned that if you pray in the name of Jesus, even the miraculous is possible."

"Really?" she asked.

"Yes," I said. "Because Jesus is powerful."

She pondered that for a moment and then we finished our standard greetings and walked off. I really wish I had known what to say next. I think she would have been interested in hearing more but I wasn't sure what to say. Of course as soon as we got home, I realized what I should have done. Many lessons here are taught by stories. The sermon had been full of stories, most of them taken directly from the Bible. The most natural thing in the world would have been to start telling her about the crippled woman in the synagogue, the demon-possessed boy, Lazarus...

My background looks for the hard-and-fast theology that will convince a person once and for all. That doesn't work here. But more importantly, I just wasn't ready to be asked. It seems I expect to spend lots of time and thought and prayer preparing to share my faith with somebody. As I watch my local friends boldly sharing their faith I realize that I need to move past deliberation and just do it. That's the only way it will eventually become natural.

Still Blogging...

Greetings, weary web wanderer!

I know you had once believed my blog to be beleaguered by irreparable... something. Something that starts with a B and makes everything stop working.

But no, it lives on! Thank you for coming back to this once-frequented patch of cyber-forest to relax in the shade of my overly-verbose ponderings.

Why, you ask, am I suddenly writing so many blogs? I think it is pre-paternal angst. Let's stick with that theory for the moment. If I suddenly stop blogging again in a few months, you'll know why. But don't worry, I'll be back again some day!

Verbosity

The other day I was about to walk in the front door when our neighbor's daughter bounced up and asked if I could read her book to her.

I told her, "It's theoretically possible."

She replied, "No, it's in English."

Apparently I have a bit to learn before I'm ready for full-time fatherhood.

Ancestral Religion

I've sometimes heard or read comments from people who feel that Christians have wrecked many people groups throughout the centuries by attempting to replace their traditional religions with Christianity. They say that we have robbed them of their long-developed heritage and culture.

It's fine for non-Christians to say such things. It's logical that they see Christianity as an imposition. But I do find it a bit strange when Christians believe this. Take a look at the Bible. Who is the original ancestor of every person and culture on Earth today? Adam. Adam literally walked with God, at least until he decided to follow the advice of an evil spirit. He later realized what a bad idea that was.

And then there is Noah. Everybody alive today is descended from Noah. He followed God even when nobody around him did. That's why everybody who is alive today is descended from him, and not from any of his contemporaries.

And so, our ancestors followed God. Everyone's ancestors followed the true God. When their children later created other religions, it was in rebellion against the God of their fathers. If Christians march into a village on a far-flung island and proclaim "We bring you news of your God" they are absolutely right, even if the people there have been serving 15 different demons for the past 5,000 years. Their Creator is still their true God and He always will be their true God whether they recognize Him or not. Helping people to see this truth is not robbing them of their heritage; it is returning them to their roots.

My New Hobby

I've been appointed the official furniture-buyer. But in a country where there is no Ikea, Home Depot, or even Wal Mart, furniture buying looks a lot more like furniture designing. Every piece of furniture is made from scratch by local workers. When we need a desk, chair, or cabinet, we have two options:
1. Tell the craftsman that we want a cabinet, and then be happy with whatever he creates.
2. Make extremely detailed plans for the craftsman, then prepare ourselves for a final product that falls within a 10-30% deviation from the original plan, depending on the craftsman.

Most of the time we have fairly specific furniture in our head, so we opt for #2 and pray for the best. The result so far has been a desk that you could stand at, a shelving unit that almost fits in the space it was built for, and an elephant-sized cupboard (okay, baby elephant) that we had to turn on its head to move into place. That last one was mostly my fault, though. I didn't measure the doorway.

Anyway, in order to facilitate this process I started tinkering with Sketchup. It's a lot of fun, not to mention practical. It takes me about as long to make a model on the computer as it would with pencil and paper, but the computer version is 3D and accurate to the milimeter.

So here are some of my recent Sketchup projects:

Queen size bed that turns into a bunk bed

Desk with removable computer shelf and a door rather than drawers because drawers stick in rainy season.

 kitchen shelving

 display case with storage underneath

 the aforementioned "baby elephant"