Thought to Ponder Part I

I had a couple of thoughts for y’all to ponder that came from a couple of sermons over the past couple of weeks. So today’s installment is from Jan 13th.

Jeff Bridges has a definition of ungodliness that caught my attention. He stated that ungodliness is living one’s everyday life with little or no thought of God. So based on that definition, our pastor asked us to rate how ungodly we are on a scale of 1-10 stating that everyone is on the spectrum because none of us have “made it.” Most of us aren’t even in the high good numbers because we really don’t tend to regard God daily like we should.

Next we were asked a series of seven questions to ponder:

1. What’s the effect of listening to God’s word on my life? (listening and reading is not enough; we have to put things into practice)
2. How do I make decisions in difficult circumstances? (who or what do I regard first?)
3. How often am I anxious or fearful? (anxiety and fear are temporary athesism; its a reflection on not regarding God or his soverienty)
4. Am I partially or selectively obedient? (Do we define areas of importance for our obedience?)
5. How often am I self sufficient instead of being consciously dependent on God?
6. Am I very aware of what others think of me instead of God? (Whose favor do I seek? Who would I rather be honored by?)
7. Am I letting the Spirit live through me or am I mostly going it alone with only the outward appearance of change?

Tick….Tick….Tick

Well, I made it to 39 weeks and have been having prodromal labor contractions since Sunday. I went to my prenatal yesterday and found out that I was 3cm, 50% effaced and the baby was in a -2 position (translation: nicely lodged in my pelvis). And, yes, the baby is still head down. The CNM said that she doesn’t think I’ll make it another week and would not be surprised if we had this little wiggler by the end of the weekend. So we are apparently almost to the top of the rollercoaster; how exciting.

Matryoshka

I was having a bit of fun this weekend playing around with the Winnie the Pooh song “I’m just a Little Black Rain Cloud.” Here’s what I came up with:

I’m just a little matryoshka,

Wandering closer to a birth date.

I’m just a little matryoshka,

Pay no attention to what I ate.

Everyone knows that matryoshkas,

Never make trouble, no not a bit.

They just waddle around, bellies like mounds,

Searching for someplace to sit.

Matryoshka

Now I know that realy matryoshkas typically have seven or eight little dolls inside of them, but I always thought they were so cute and reminded me of pregnancy. Hope you enjoyed the song.

Mentoring

Adrian Warnock has been doing a “year in review” series, and one of the posts he’s dredged up from last year is an interview he did with Joshua Harris of *I Kissed Dating Goodbye* fame, currently the head pastor at Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, MD. I’ve always held a minor fascination for Joshua Harris, simply because he’s so close to me in both age and outlook, and because the last decade or so has brought a huge amount of change for both of us. When I hear of him, I’m often struck by how easily my life might have gone more like his, which of course leads me to reflection because our stations are currently so different.

The interesting thing is that Josh Harris credits most of his current situation to his mentoring relationship with C. J. Mahaney. As Harris was beginning a career as a public speaker, C.J. Mahaney met him and encouraged him to find a mentor and focus on the local church. Soon afterward, Mahaney became his mentor, and he moved into the Mahaney home. A year or so later, Harris published his first book and was married. In 2004, Josh Harris succeeded C.J. Mahaney as head pastor of Covenant Life Church. It’s a pretty interesting story, and yet it bothers me.

I don’t mean that it bothers me in the “dirt under the carpet” sense. I don’t see a thing wrong in the conduct of these two Christian men, and their relationship has obviously had a powerfully positive force in Josh Harris’ life. I mean it in the sense that the thought of going through a similar experience is entirely unattractive. My whole life I’ve spent thinking that it sure would be helpful if I had found a mentor. Now I’m looking mentorship in the face and I’m glad I missed out. But I’m not quite sure why.

I think it has to do with two things: adversity and independence. I approve of both of them, and Josh Harris’ story, at least in condensed form, seems to lack them. I tend to cut a path right across the grain to get where I’m going, overshoot, then double back again. When I hear the story of someone who has been properly mentored, it seems unpleasantly mellow, and I tend to think that, even if I had found myself in such a situation, I might have made myself unbearable to deal with as I questioned and argued with my mentor’s every recommendation. In short, I might well have avoided mentoring simply by being so unattractive a mentoree.

Which of course begs the question: is there wisdom in my negative reaction, or is it actually evidence of a kind of character flaw?

We’re Back (Sort of)

If we have any readers left, they will be pleased to know that Neumatikos.org has been changed to Neumatikos.net.

Long story short: This has been one incredibly busy half-year. There have been the normal hurdles of moving, taking a new job, joining a new church, and (oh yes) a baby on the way. In addition, taking up a position teaching Latin to 4th-9th graders has been a hugely consuming challenge. Hence, the lack of blogging from me.

In all the hurley-burley, I didn’t notice that our domain registration was about to expire. In my defense, I don’t think I would have noticed otherwise: the notification email was sent to an address that we don’t use anymore. (Then again, that’s not a very good vindication, is it?) After your name expires, you get something like two weeks to re-register and keep your old name. Our two weeks went by and somebody else bought up the name, apparently with the intent of capitalizing on that huge readership we had built up. I hope that works out for her.

We wracked our brains and dot-net instead of dot-org was the best new name we could come up with (sorry folks). After that, what with it being the end of the semester, it took me a month to figure out how to get the .htaccess file to stop redirecting everything from .net back to the .org site. Finally, on Christmas day, I had the spare mind space and got it done.

And here we are. We’ll see about improving the communication. Valerie wants to make some design changes. As far as posting goes… I don’t know what your hopes should be. I have this theory that the more you do a thing, the better you get at it, and that eventually it shouldn’t take up all your time, but that hasn’t really worked out for me yet. Vee shall see.

Pictures

I’m in the process of the long awaited pictures that I’ve taken and haven’t actually been able to put on the website yet. I’ve got some new ones up in the the Occasions and Events folder and will be adding more as my internet decides to be nice. Enjoy.

“Snakes and Snails and Puppy dog Tails…”

…That’s what little boys are made of!”

Actually, it’s more like calcium, protein, water, vitamins and trace minerals, but who’s going to get picky?

Many wonderful blessings have happened in the past few days the first and foremost being that the Lord provided a way for the ultrasound to be approved for this past Friday. Continue reading ““Snakes and Snails and Puppy dog Tails…””