After much searching, I finally found a German Christian Radio station that plays decent music. I would like to listen to it now and then, in hopes that hearing the language more will help my comprehension of the German language. It’s a little disappointing, though, because about half the music is American – DcTalk, Jars of Clay. At least they’re picking good American songs and none of this Plus One stuff.

J-Star Radio

As of yesterday, Lydia and I have been dating for seven months. After running some errands last night, we went to Mocha’s and played Cribbage and talked until about midnight.

Since I got to bed late and I’ve been staring at a computer screen for 7 hours now, I don’t really have the words to elaborate on my evening or my love for Lydia.

After my post a few days ago about Relient K‘s song, a quick search for the words “Beauty of Grace Relient K” puts me at the top of Google’s result set. As a result, Adam resurrected Sarah B’s phrase and pointed out that I am, once again, ‘google famous.’

By the way, if you’re looking for a good search engine for your site and you don’t use a fancy CMS like Stan‘s PageSite, check out Sphider. While the code isn’t the prettiest thing I’ve ever looked at, we’ve been using it on the MSOE site for a while and it seems to be working pretty well. Ando, the developer, is pretty active with the project and seems to have good plans for its future.

I was browsing through the MusickNetworks a little this evening after removing some of Stan‘s old code and found the following excerpt on my bio page:

I often look at fellow programmers and computer-people (for lack of a better term) and wonder if these people ever do anything besides work on the computer. While I’m sure some would quickly consider me a Computer Geek or Nerd or whatever term they choose to use, I like to think I’m significantly more well-rounded than that. Rather than sitting around all day on the computer, I get out of the house and spend time with friends, read, run, enjoy God’s beautiful creation, study the Bible/get into deep theological discussions, and associate with the female kind.

My favorite part has got to be the “associate with the female kind” bit. Interestingly, my interests haven’t changed since writing that back in November of 2003. Sure, spending time with my absolutely amazing girlfriend, Lydia would be better wording for the last part of it, but I’m really not all that different than I was a year and a half ago.

As I was driving around this afternoon, I heard Relient K‘s song, Be My Escape. As it has in the past, the line that says, “the beauty of grace is that it makes life not fair,” stood out in my mind. While it is true that, as believers, God’s grace results in a sort of unfairness in our favor, as we are undeserving of it, this statement errs in its explanation as to why grace is beautiful. The beauty of grace lies not in the fact that it makes life unfair. Rather, the beauty of God’s grace stems from the act through which He made it available to His sinful creation – Christ’s death on the cross. As Adam quoted John Stott to me a few minutes ago, “it reconciles His love with His righteousness.”

In John 15:13 Jesus says, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends.” If the greatest expression of love is portrayed through a person’s death for someone he considers a friend, how much greater and purer a love is shown through Christ’s death for “children of wrath” (Ephesians 2:3) – the ungodly, the sinners, those who will never acknowledge Him as Lord while on Earth.

After my eloquent dinner of Easy Mac, Star Kist tuna and a pear, I walked to the park down near the lake. Between phone calls from Stan,
I finished reading C.S. Lewis’s The Problem of Pain. Most of his writing I’ve read has been very good and provides a clear explanation of important Scriptural Doctrines, but he seemed to drift slightly from God’s Word in his chapter about animal pain. It appears that science slightly influenced Lewis’s strong stance on the with regards to his interpretation of Genesis. On page 137, he writes,

The origin of animal suffering could be traced, by earlier generations, to the Fall of man – the whole world was infected by the uncreating rebellion of Adam. This is now impossible, for we have good reason to believe that animals existed long before men. Carnivorousness, with all that it entails, is older than humanity.

Last time I checked, Genesis 1:24-31 all occurred on the sixth day of Creation, thus contradicting Lewis’s errant suggestion that “animals existed long before men.” Additionally, if you look simply at Lewis’s choice of words, his assumption makes no sense. First, he said it is impossible that Adam’s rebellion infected the whole world. Then he gives as a reason for that the notion that there is “good reason to believe” animals came before men. My friends, Lewis has no grounds for taking what he feels is a “good reason to believe” and turning it into a suggestion that God’s clear, inerrant Truth is impossible, could not have occurred.

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. ²By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, ³and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world.

1 John 4:1-3 NKJV

I do not post this quote from John in order to suggest that C.S. Lewis is a false prophet or is from the Devil. Rather, I encourage you to test everything you read with what the Bible teaches, as it is God’s Word that is a foundation for our lives, He is our rock and fortress. Men distort God’s word, desiring to have their ears tickled (2 Timothy 4:3-4), while God’s Truths are everlasting (c.f. Psalm 119:160).

Hey everbody…I’m getting married.

Just kidding. The way my friends are running off and getting married, it feels like I should be. Last night, Stan showed me the beginnings of his and Sara’s wedding information page. Then, this morning, I got an email from Brie stating that her and Kevin’s wedding is just a couple months away, October 9 of this year.

Stan complained to me over the weekend that I fell off the face of the earth, or at least as far as my posting goes. I tried to use the excuse that girls will do that to you. Stan, being the young engaged man he is didn’t complain, but I don’t know that my explanation was completely accurate.

You see, going to an engineering school takes out some of that ability to write creatively…when you sit and write huge lab reports about why you used accumulator x as opposed to y (CS-280 final exam), you just don’t have any energy when it’s all done and over with to write anything else. Granted, that doesn’t mean I don’t wish I could do it more frequently. I even told my mom this weekend that I miss doing some of the writing I did in high school and in some of the gen-ed classes here at MSOE. But, I’m finding that after spending 8 hours working on MSOE‘s web site that I enjoy getting outdoors, away from the computer. Just a note – I did enjoy getting outdoors before I took this job – ask Lydia if you don’t believe me. The pale skin – that’s just a result of a lot of 45 SPF sunscreen and not wanting to look like a raisin.

Anyway…last Thursday, I took my last final and headed on home for a long weekend before coming back to school to work in the Marketing Department as a Student Web Assistant. I spent a fair amount of time catching up with my mom and dad … funny I have to put it that way. I guess I just don’t talk to them a whole lot and there’s a lot that goes on while I’m gone that I need to get off my chest. Some of it, too, was just basic business – stuff related to my dad’s web site and it’s rank on Google. Just a side note – a few days after I posted about the Torsion Spring Replacement page, it went up to 1 or 2 on Google, depending on keywords used.

Friday afternoon, I rode the train into Oak Park, where Stan picked me up. He, too, is working for his school this summer doing similar work to mine. We spent a few hours moving his belongings from his old room to his nice, air conditioned summer room. After grabbing some dinner from Portillo’s, we finished off the moving and hung out, snacking on Drumsticks, hot dogs, and Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper while messing around on the computer. I failed to bring any type of bedding, thinking Stan would be prepared for any and everything, so I got to sleep on his tiny couch with the quilt Sara made for him covering my gangly arms and legs. We arose early so we could get back home in time for Stan to get to his doctor’s appointment.

Okay … so I originally had written more, but a bug in BlogSCL caused some of it to get deleted. I don’t really feel like re-writing the rest of what I had to say. After all, it wasn’t that much anyway, so don’t worry about it too much.

I know I haven’t posted in a while, so I’m sorry for all who are wondering what has happened to me. I guess you could just say I bit the little worm on the end of the fishing lure women put out and I’m hooked. That sounds really dumb, but I’m too tired to care. In more normal terms, Lydia is a wonderful woman and she makes this already busy year even busier.

Anyway, the reason for my writing is to inform my interested audience that I just put up a page on my dad’s site for Torsion Spring Replacement that explains how to replace garage door torsion springs. Really, I’m just putting these links more to add exposure to Google, but if you’re into that type of thing, that’s great.

Thursday I’m done with finals, but I won’t be home for the summer. I’m living in Milwaukee, working for the marketing department at my school, doing web site stuff.

By the way…I wrote an article a few weeks ago saying I had 6 unused Gmail invites. A few days later, they gave me 50 and it seems that shortly after using one, they put me back at 50. But, I think most my friends now have a Gmail account. If you don’t, let me know and I’ll hook you up!