Oh the places a typo can take you

Spell check: it’s a great thing when it works. However, it has one massive handicap. I speak, of course, of the English language.

English has roughly a bazillion words in its vocabulary. Maybe more. And like any langauge, it morphs and changes over time. Now, our poor spell checkers try to stay on top of that mess, but sometimes it just doesn’t work out. The only word processor component I have greater sympathy for is the grammar checker. That thing doesn’t have a chance. I mostly ignore it.

Anyway, back to spell check. There’s only so much room in its little electronic brain. Archaic words have to go. Quirky, specialized, out-of-the way words never make it in. And this leads to amusing things.

Trinity Stuff

This less-than-profound title is the most I could muster up for the subject of an email I wrote today.

I’m auditing the class “Existence and Majesty of God” in the NightWatch School of Ministry right now, taught by Wes Martin and Luke Wood. It’s a great class, and today we talked about the Trinity — half of the session was going through the Athanasian Creed and related Scriptures, and the other half was a lot of “What?” “Whoa!” “I don’t know…” and “My brain hurts.”

A friend of mine and I were talking about it some more during the class break, and she basically asked me to email her with what we had discussed. Let me tell you, trying to put words to the doctrine of the Trinity is one of the most intimidating things on earth. Most of the effort of writing is trying desperately to skirt heresy. Things like, “When speaking of the Triune God, should I say ‘He’ or ‘They’?” and “Dare I attempt to postulate what things would be like if God were only one Person, instead of three?” AUGH.

That might explain why it took me an hour to write four paragraphs.

Contending for the Faith: What It Is and Isn’t

I received an email today, forwarded by a friend from a grass-roots-y, activist-y web group. I want to start by saying that I think it is good for Christians to be actively involved in giving voice to the direction of our nation. One of the perks of our present political structure is that we have a bigger open door (in the natural, anyway) to speak into our government than most people through history have ever dreamed. It’s good to care about the state of our country and it’s good to stand for what we believe.

With all that said, this email made me sad.

There’s more than one way to resist grace

We all know about (and hopefully avoid) how disastrous it is to say “no” to the word of God. None of us want to be Jonah (fishbait), or Zacharias (made mute), or that one random prophet who got eaten by a lion for taking supper against the command of God (1Kings 13). The moral of the story is that when God tells you something, you respond with a hearty, ”Yes, Sir!” We all know better than to stamp our little foot and refuse God.

But there’s more than one way to resist grace.

Random Words in Random Places

I was thinking today about how I remember where I was and what I was doing when I learned a certain word. Don’t ask me why I was remembering this; I don’t know. But it got me to thinking of other words where I remember the time and context in which I learned them. It seemed like it would make a worthy blog post. So here they are:

The Demonic Attack Against Women

The Taleban in Pakistan is threatening to blow up local girls’ schools unless parents pull their daughters out of them and the schools shut down. Of course, terrorism is depraved at heart and any manifestation of it is sickening. But to threaten death to scores of children — that’s an abhorrent low. It’s frightening to think that a human being could be brought to the point of justifying the slaughter of little girls.

But one of the reasons this story agitated me so much is the manifestation it betrays of Satan’s vendetta against women. Now I am no feminist. I abhor the idea of “affirmative action” (which is one of the biggest misnomers ever). I don’t walk through life with a chip on my shoulder, assuming that most men are sexist jerks and that the world in general is out to get me and all other women. I am grateful for the amount of liberty and honor that is granted to women by this culture and the vast majority of the people in it.

I qualify all that only because I want you to hear my heart in what I have to say. 

For Friends of IHOP-KC Everywhere

My beautiful mother is creating an email list, looking to connect with other people who are not able to be at IHOP-KC but have a heart for it. If you fit in this category and would like to fellowship online with some other folks in the same situation, check out her post here.

Takeaway Points from onething

In the post-conference aftermath as I’m crashed on my couch and fighting off a cold, I’ve been musing over the past few days. I thought I’d share some of my thoughts with you all. In no particular order, they are: