Wisdom is knowing what to do next, skill is knowing how to do it, and virtue is doing it.

- David Starr (teuxdeux.com)

Great mind discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

Pain is weakness leaving the body

- Paul Cho

“A man who leads such a life will oppose fortitude to the assaults of the passions, since he partakes of the requirements of life only as far as is necessary he is in no way softened by the luxuries of the body and is an utter stranger to revelry and laziness as well as to boastful conceit. He touches the earth but lightly with the tip of his toes for he is not engulfed by the pleasurable enjoyments in its life but is above all deceit that comes by the senses. And so even although in the flesh he strives after the immaterial life, he counts the possession of virtues the only riches, familiarity with God the only nobility. His only privilege and power is the mastery of self, so as not to be a slave to human passions, he is saddened if his life in this material world is prolonged like those who are seasick he hastens to reach the port.”

- Gregory of Nisa, as heard from John MacArhtur’s sermon: “The Priority of Prayer“

How radically different my life would be, if only I lived according to this reality.

To be a stranger to revelry and laziness, and to acquaint myself with striving. To be nauseous of the delights of this world, and to hunger for the ones in the next.

I was baptized today. In middle of my speech, my tears almost fall down. I was so nerves before the ceremony; however, while I was giving a lecture, my nerves were all gone. Instead of it, I felt happiness all over my heart. During this half year, I started with an atheist to a Christian. I believe in God deeply. All these changes are given by God. Thank you~ God.

Sam

Thank you God, indeed. The gospel is truly  the power to save, both in the bay area and in Taipei. What a joy to witness the same baptism, same testimony, and same amazing love of our God our Father. May we continue to share this with our friends at home and abroad.

Therefore the Levites had to slaughter the Passover lamb for everyone who was not clean, to consecrate it to the LORD.  For a majority of the people, many of them from Ephraim, Manasseh, Issachar, and Zebulun, had not cleansed themselves, yet they ate the Passover otherwise than as prescribed.  For Hezekiah had prayed for them, saying, “May the good LORD pardon everyone who sets his heart to seek God, the LORD, the God of his fathers, even though not according to the sanctuary’s rules of cleanness.”  And the LORD heard Hezekiah and healed the people.  And the people of Israel who were present at Jerusalem kept the Feast of Unleavened Bread seven days with great gladness, and the Levites and the priests praised the LORD day by day, singing with all their might to the Lord…Then the whole assembly agreed together to keep the feast for another seven days…So there was great joy in Jerusalem, for since the time of Solomon the son of David king of Israel there had been nothing like this in Jerusalem.”

1 Chronicles 30:17-27

I found this passage surprising on a number of levels:

1.  Israelites from the Northern Kingdom actually came to Jerusalem.  When you read through Israel’s history during the period of the Kings, you know that the Northern Kingdom was especially apostate.  Yet after King Hezekiah sent a letter summoning all of Israel to partake in the Passover, many come with a heart of repentance.

2.  So here they are, eating even though they are ceremonially unclean.  I don’t know the details, but I am sure there countless rules as to how to properly take the Passover or even attend any religious gathering for that matter.  This must have been absolutely shocking for those who knew the law.  But here they were, ceremonially unclean men and women partaking in the same meal.

3.  But they did because Hezekiah had prayed for them.  And this is perhaps most shocking of all – God, who prescribed the very laws in the first place, listens to Hezekiah and heals them apart from the law.

They came with a “heart to seek God” and the Lord amazingly pardoned them.  Perhaps there have been times when we’ve  lived as practical atheist.  Back-slided, like the Israelites who were in utter apostasy.  Then truth comes and summoned us to repentance.  When we are given that offer, we are broken and are fully aware of how unclean we are.  Yet we want God again, so we make our pilgrimage.

Oh and what a joy it would have been to hear from the King himself, “You are HEALED! Apart from any work of the law!”  The joy would be great indeed.  So great, in fact, that the nation of Israel took the liberty to extend the celebration for another week.  There is something especially sweet about re-dedicating one’s life to the Lord.

David Brooks, the popular New York Times columnist, makes a similar point.  “I had thought that the magic of the information age was that it allowed us to know more,” he writes, “but then I realized the magic of the information age is that it allows us to know less.  It provides us with external cognitive servants – silicon memory systems, collaborative online filters, consumer preference algorithms and networked knowledge.  We can burden these servants and liberate ourselves.”

The Shallows, pg. 180-181

The computer, I began to sense, was more than just a simple tool that did what you told it to do.  It was a machine that, in subtle but unmistakable ways, exerted an influence over you.  The more I used it, the more it altered the way I worked…

Sometime in 2007, a serpent of doubt slithered into my info-paradise.  I began to notice that the Net was exerting a much stronger and broader influence over me than my old stand-alone PC ever had.  It wasn’t that I was spending so much time staring into a computer screen.  It wasn’t just that so many of my habits and routines were changing as I became more accustomed to and dependent on the sites and services of the Net.  The very way my brain worked seemed to be changing.  It was then I began worrying about my inability to pay attention to one thing for more than a couple of minutes.  At first I’d figured that the problem was a symptom of middle-age mind rot.  But my brain, I realized, wasn’t just drifting.  It was hungry.  It was demanding to be fed the way the Net fed it – and the more it was fed, the hungrier it became.  Even when I was away from my computer, I yearned to check e-mail, click links, do some Googling.  I wanted to be connected.  Just as Microsoft Word had turned me into a flesh-and-blood word processor, the Internet, I sensed, was turning me into something like a high-speed data-processing machine, a human HAL.

I missed my old brain.

-  Nicholas Carr,  The Shallows:  Chapter 1

Follow my efforts at life (essentially) without internet.

Could the father of lies
Be telling the truth
Of God to me tonight?
If the penalty of sin is death
Then death is mine
I hear him saying cursed are the ones
Who can’t abide
He’s right
Alleluia he’s right!

Oh the devil’s singing over me
An age old song
That I am cursed and gone astray
Singing the first verse so conveniently
He’s forgotten the refrain…

Jesus saves.

-  Shane and Shane, Embracing Accusations