The Burden of Discernment
I was out doing some maintenance on my wife’s car last weekend, and I hear this guy approaching, talking on a cell phone. He pauses from his phone call and goes “Hey man, how you doin?” I sit up from under the car and he starts explaining to me how he needs to get some locksmith to come open his car, but they require $85 up front and he only has $65 cash, essentially asking me for $20. I think about it for a minute, and then think back to all those times I’ve given handouts to people that ask for it, not really being sure what they’re using it for. I decided this time, I would do what I always wish I had done, and actually SEE the money being used. I told him if he called the people and had them come out, to let me know when they got here and I’d make sure he had enough to get his car open. I almost told him what apartment we live in but then realized a phone number would be better. So I gave him my Google Voice number and told him to call me when they arrived. He got on the phone and (I suppose) called the locksmith, and said he’d call me when they arrived.
I never heard from him.
I had suspected that he probably was just angling for $20, but I’ll never know.
This brings up an interesting point. In the Bible we read over and over about meeting the needs of our neighbor and doing so with the love of Christ. The challenge to this is, however, being discerning with our generosity. After I went inside and waited for his call, I wanted nothing more than to be able to help this man out, IF he honestly had the need he explained to me. Those are such great openings to sharing the Gospel. The $20 seemed so insignificant, and I’m thankful it seemed that way. He offered to pay me back the $20 “with interest” but I realized if I gave it to him I probably would not have gotten it back, and I was ok with that.
So, should I have given him the $20? I feel that if I had, I could have been contributing to a problem instead of solving one. Maybe, on the other hand, he was telling exactly the truth and he managed to get $20 from a friend. I will leave it in God’s hands. But I am a little wiser with what it means not only to be loving but to be discerning in how we exercise that love.
Removing files or directories from a Mercurial repository
Hg convert is the ticket.
Enable the convert extension by putting:
[extensions]
hgext.convert=
in your .hgrc file (under your home directory).
Next you have to construct a filemap file like so:
exclude path/to/file
where the path is RELATIVE to the root of your repository. This can be to a file or a directory.
Save it as something like “filemap”.
Use this command:
hg convert –filemap filemap old_repos new_repos
The new repository will no longer contain whatever you exclude.
Unity and Humility
This spoke to me this morning:
“For since there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly, and are you not walking like mere men? For when one says, “I am of Paul,” and another, “I am of Apollos,” are you not mere men?
What then is Apollos? And what is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, even as the Lord gave opportunity to each one. I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth. So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth.”
-1 Corinthians 3:3-7
Rounded corners
Wow, Internet Explorer 9 is finally supporting CSS 3 with rounded corners. Welcome to the 21st century, Microsoft.
Couple good rounded corner resources I’ve run across:
http://davidwalsh.name/css-rounded-corners
http://jonraasch.com/blog/css-rounded-corners-in-all-browsers
Calvinist radical fundamental liberal emergent progressive left right-wing evangelical something ist
It’s always a little off-putting to be lumped into a crowd, especially if other members of that crowd feel very differently than you do about some things. I’ve felt this way a lot recently when every time I read words like “evangelical”, “fundamentalist”, “conservative”, or even “Calvinist”, I think, are they really talking about me?
If you mean “evangelical” as in, wishing for all to come to know Jesus Christ and experience his unending love, grace, and mercy, then absolutely.
If you mean “fundamentalist” as in, taking the words of the Bible as an inspired, inerrant, unchanging, complete Word of God, absolutely. I believe Christ was inerrant, unchanging, and was the fulfillment of the Word.
If you mean “conservative” as in, placing high emphasis on what I believe to be Biblical social and spiritual values, and as a result, holding to political views that characterize those, then absolutely.
If you mean “Calvinist” as in, recognizing the obvious sovereignty of God in drawing us to Him, as opposed to us just tripping over the idea of loving Christ and deciding to adopt it, then absolutely.
Finding $10
We were walking through the mall today and ran across $10, in the form of two $5 bills sitting on the floor. I snatched it up and we started talking about what to do with it. It’s amazing the moral dilemma this presents. $10 could either be a tiny amount of money, or a huge amount of money, depending on whose hands it’s in. On one hand, if someone can afford to be careless enough to drop $10, they can afford to be without it. On the other hand, that could be some little kid’s piggy bank savings. Thus, my wife and I had a somewhat in-depth discussion about what to do with it. There was no apparent “office” at the mall to take it to, we didn’t see anyone drop it, and there’s obviously no way to ID the owner of cash. And just leaving it sitting there in the middle of the floor doesn’t seem like a very good option either. So what do you do?
I also thought about if I had lost the money. I would want someone to truly “wish” they could find me to give it back, but at the same time I wouldn’t want them agonizing over what to do with $10. A much larger sum might be different. So we considered a $10 sum a small enough amount that we would not agonize over it either, but would instead add it to our tithe.
I am not going anywhere with this, political or otherwise, this is my random blog, and this is a random post, which fits with the theme of the blog, and that’s about all I have to say on the subject. I just found it interesting how unintentionally acquiring even $10 of someone else’s money can create such a big dilemma.
A timely quote
“We have abundant reason to present to the Supreme Being our annual oblations of gratitude for a liberal participation in the ordinary blessings of His providence. To the usual subjects of gratitude I can not omit to add one of the 1st importance to our well being and safety; I mean that spirit which has arisen in our country against the menaces and aggression of a foreign nation.” – John Adams, Second State of the Union address, 1798
Storms
Night of some wicked lightning
Looks worse than it is
"Red sky at night, sailors' delight"
As much as it may look like it, that umbrella is not Photoshopped in...
The Gospel in Life
The Bible study I’m a part of has been working through a book called “The Gospel in Life” by Tim Keller. We are only on the second session of the book but already it has challenged me, especially with the latest chapter on idolatry. In the “homework” portion of this chapter, he gives a long list of common aspects of life that are idolized, such as material things, comfort, work, acceptance, appearance, money, power, even religion. One of the many authors he quotes, Richard Keyes, makes the point that anything that leads us away from obeying God has a good potential of becoming an idol.
What’s surprising to me is how easy it is for something meant to glorify God can in itself become an idol. We can get so wrapped up in church involvement that it can keep us from truly obeying God. We can get so hooked on learning the Bible that we don’t obey what’s in it. We can even get so hooked on the idea of family and relationships that it can cause us to place those things before God.
It’s interesting that he put this chapter right after Chapter 1 on the difference between religion, irreligion, and the gospel. The difference being, why we do what we do (or don’t do, as in the case of irreligion). Religion is trying to earn your way into God’s favor, through actions, thoughts, or even by “saying” the right things. The gospel says that our way into God’s favor, and thus our salvation, is already earned through Christ, because we were incapable of earning it for ourselves. I believe trying to earn it is actually insulting to God, as though we have something to offer to match the free gift He already gave us.
Thus the ever-present question is, why do we do what we do?
Dabbling in Debian
Well after using Ubuntu Linux for a while now, I decided to venture into the world of Debian. Not much of a venture, right? Well I’m not so sure. The first thing I noticed was that in VirtualBox the mouse cursor didn’t quite reach into some parts of the screen, such as the menu bar. I also spent a few minutes trying to figure out how to add a user to the sudoers file, since the only user I initially set Debian up to work with was not in the list. ??? All the instructions I found said to start a Terminal as root. Kind of hard when you don’t have root access.
Which leads me to more thoughts about the high amount of security in Linux. Can be a good thing, but if it’s a single-user machine, mostly it’s just a nuisance and keeps you away from your own files and makes it harder to administer your own computer. I’m sure Linux veterans would disagree with my cynicism.
Nick's Blog of Entropy 