The home is filled with dangers, and I want to take some time this Friday afternoon to warn you about a ticking missile in your home (if you live in a home). I would recommend not sleeping or working or blogging directly above your hot water heater. Our Mythbusting friends will show you why. A reminder from TSS.
PS – Your heater probably has a pressure valve to prevent this (a tube that runs down to the concrete).
In light of the tragedy in Omaha, Erik Raymond (AKA “The Irish Calvinist” and pastor at Omaha Bible Church), offers some eternal perspective:
It is my prayer that through a tragedy like this Christians would cling harder to the grace that they are given to behold and believe in Christ, and in this clinging we might ever increase in our savoring of his sufficiency.
And if you are not a Christian, I pray that God would use such a tragedy to cause you to look away from yourself for hope, see your sin, and find Christ to be infinitely precious and beautiful to your sin-ladened conscience. It is in this looking away from yourself and looking unto Christ that you find hope; hope in his sufficiency and in his glorious defeat of death through his death and resurrection.
Read Erik’s entire post here.
Hello TSS readers! A very lengthy Thanksgiving weekend comes to a close today as my family and I travel home. It was a wonderful time with friends and family back in Nebraska.
I want to bring to your attention a recent and ongoing debate over a critical question — Why does God act? I want to look at this debate in fuller detail (especially the way Jonathan Edwards develops this theme).
For now, here is the recent debate over whether it’s right to say that God acts for His own glory or not. It’s all worth reading …
Ben Witherington (11.20.07) “Let me be clear that of course the Bible says it is our obligation to love, praise, and worship God, but this is a very different matter from the suggestion that God worships himself, is deeply worried about whether he has enough glory or not, and his deepest motivation for doing anything on earth is so that he can up his own glory quotient, or magnify and praise himself.”
Denny Burk responds (11.21.07)
John Piper responds (11.24.07)
Sam Storms responds (11.26.07)
This has become a personal favorite worship song. The studio recording of this song can download through iTunes for a buck.
Stephen Newell is the Associate Pastor of Louisville Baptist Deaf Church and a blogger. Currently his blog features a series documenting his successful Blank Bible project. The series is titled, The Blank Bible Chronicles, and Stephen took some nice photos of the entire process. I encourage you to check it out.
Patterned after the TSS Blank Bible series, he did a great job following our instructions with precision (note the gender stereotype undermined here).
Nice work on your Blank ESV, Stephen!
This morning I am overwhelmed with appreciation for my wife. Over the past week she has written some very helpful posts, giving you married male TSS readers a way to soften the year-end book budget surprise that’s coming when your wife compiles the final expenditures (you can’t say we didn’t warn you!).
I am blessed to have such a multi-skilled wife. Even with three small kids clawing and tugging at their mommy throughout the day like she was a rock climbing wall, and under normal online demands as a respected blogger in her own field, Karalee graciously added one more task into her busy schedule and served me for the past week by freeing me from TSS blog duties. And for that I say, “Thank you, precious!”
That’s what I call her – “my precious” (and sometimes in a less-than-romantic Gollum voice. Pray for me). For all your valuable help this past week I say, “Thank you, precious!” And to use a bit of proverbial elitism: “Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all” (Pro. 31:29).
Your charm, wit, and blogging skill I’ve come to love was evident in every post. And so it was no surprise to see the TSS blog authority on Technorati peaked to its highest point ever during the past week! Maybe – as was pointed out by a friend – I should just let you do your thing and stay out of the way. That would be great for the stats, but most unreasonable and impractical (I cannot cook, for one).
Ahoy! I’m docked and anchored and back. You’re stuck with me. So sit back and together we’ll watch the TSS blog stats drop back to reality.
Tony
Tony Reinke 