Things to do while jobhunting

By Caleb | October 10, 2007

Recently, in between filling in application forms and the like, I’ve been…

  • Doing Su Doku puzzles
  • Writing my novel
  • Pretending to be a student by going to the Freshers’ Fair, turning up at Christian Union events and so on
  • Attempting to understand the entire history of Western thought
  • Playing TimeSplitters
  • Meeting up with friends and moaning about not having a job
  • Making occasional attempts at practising my Chinese
  • Trying to get to grips with The Times crossword. I managed to solve a grand total of five clues yesterday!
  • Watching Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe on YouTube
  • Arguing with atheists on Facebook
  • Using Virgin Media’s On Demand service to watch Babylon 5
  • Reading the BBC Editorial Guidelines and Ofcom Broadcasting Code in the hope I might actually get a job where I’ll need to refer to them
  • Drawing up pointless lists for my blog
Posted in Personal, Uncategorized | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Sermon: Paradise Lost – Genesis 3

By Caleb | October 6, 2007

Here’s the translation of the first half of the sermon I preached in Welsh in the Capel Isa and Capel Soar in Nefyn. We decided to do the same service at both chapels on both the first and second Sunday. Since we wanted to talk about what we were doing at that point in the mission, that meant taking the story from the start (the Fall), and one from midway through (Jesus healing), which worked quite well as a “Before” and “After”. But I’ll put it up on my blog in two parts…

Part One: Paradise Lost
Genesis 3

This year on the beach mission, we are trying to communicate the “big story” of the Bible, starting in Genesis and running all the way through the Old Testament to Jesus, and his life, death and resurrection, and the fact that he will return to judge the world and usher in the new heavens and the new earth.

This morning we’ve just heard two moments from that story, two moments of change – a kind of “before” and “after”. What’s more, the Bible’s story helps us to understand our own lives and understand some of life big’s questions.

Questions such as “Why is there evil and suffering in the world?” An old question, and one that each generation has to struggle with. Different religions and philosophies give different answers. perhaps there things are a punishment for sins in a past life. Or maybe what we call “pain” and “evil” are no more than blind chance in a meaningless universe. But the story of Adam and Eve gives a different answer – what does the Bible say the problem is?

The answer is quite simply us. Some years ago, The Times posed this very question of what is wrong in the world. Christian writer G K Chesterton wrote in with a short and simple reply: “Dear Sir, I am”.

You see, the story of Adam and Eve isn’t just a story about an event that happened once in the past, but also a story that describes what happens in the hearts of each one of us. We’ve all followed in the footsteps of our first father and mother, and turned away from God.

But what exactly is the problem? Why is what Adam and Eve did so serious? One of my university tutors, while lecturing on Paradise Lost, jokes that Adam and Eve were thrown out of the garden from “scrumping”, for stealing apples. On a rather more serious note, author Philip Pullman argues in the His Dark Materials trilogy that the Fall was the first step towards wisdom, and that religion keeps people in a state of ignorance.

To really understand why sin is such a problem, we need to turn our minds to the nature and character of God. We need to seek to fire up our imaginations so we can glimpse something of the burning radiance and glory of God. God who had effortlessly created a marvellous, incredible universe, one that he judged to be “very good”. He gave life to Adam and Eve, entrusted them with the care of this beautiful creation, giving them everything in the Garden to enjoy (with one small exception). Most amazingly of all, God Himself walked with them in the Garden. They had the pleasure and privilege of knowing and serving and delighting in him in this amazing world.

Doesn’t that show you something of the goodness and beauty of God? If we begin to see that, we begin to see that Adam and Eve’s rebellion was far more serious than just scrumping apples. We can see three reasons why their decision to disobey God and eat from the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil was so serious, and why our decisions to disobey God are so serious.

Firstly, sin denies the truthfulness of God.

The snake began his subtle attack by creating doubt about God’s word. “Did God really say…?” (Now we need to be careful to recognise that questions are not in themselves bad – in fact they are very good, important and necessary. But there’s a world of difference between asking “What did God really say?” in order to discover God’s will and obey it, and asking “Did God really say?” in order to deny God’s will and disobey it.) But Eve did not answer indignantly this slight on God’s character by giving all the many reasons they had to trust God, but instead listened to the snake. She was then ready to swallow the snake’s outright lie: “You will not surely die”.

But God not only tells the truth, he is Truth. He is the ultimate reality which underlies and sustains all that there is. So to deny God’s truthfulness is a terrible, terrible thing. But every time we sin, we call God a liar.

Secondly, sin denies the goodness of God.

For his next trick, the snake denies the goodness of God. He insinuated to Adam and Eve that God was keeping something good from them, that God did not have their best interests at heart.

We believe exactly the same lie whenever we sin. If we really believed God to be good, we would know that following him is always, bar never, the best course of action. We act as if God is out to spoil our fun, even if we never think of our sin quite that crudely.

But not only is God good, God is Goodness. What’s right and good and moral finds its definition in the character and nature of God. Sin is an attack on the person who is Goodness and Morality and Honour and Love and Justice himself.

Thirdly, sin denies the supreme beauty of God.

The second lie was that God does not want to give us good things. But God wants to give us the best thing possible: himself. He made us to enjoy him and glorify him forever. The third reason that sin is so serious is that it elevates something that is not God above God. We choose not-Gods, idols, instead of him.

Despite what Pullman might say, the problem was not that Eve desired wisdom. The Bible says that fruit of the tree was indeed “good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom”. The problem was seeking this outside of the parameters God had set, of desiring the fruit more than desiring God, to love him through obedience to his commands.

God is not only the most supremely beautiful being, he is Beauty itself. Like Goodness and Truth, Beauty is rooted in his very character and being. God deserves our worship supremely, but whenever we sin, we deny him the praise and honour and love he deserves.

So God is the one where goodness, beauty and truth are one. The answer to the age old question of “What is the meaning of Life?” is that he created us to find life and purpose and happiness in following him. But we refuse him day after day, moment after moment. And when we consider the mind-boggling greatness of our God, that’s a terrible, awful thing.

Sin has consequences, and affects every are of our lives:

  • Sin breaks our relationship with God
  • Sin breaks our relationships with other people
  • Sin breaks our relationship with creation
  • Sin breaks our relationship with ourselves

DEATH enters into every area. This is why there is so much brokenness and pain and evil in our world – it all flows from that broken relationship with God. This is the story of Adam and Eve. This is the story that we find ourselves in by nature.

Is this the end? It might give some kind of intellectual answer to why there’s evil, but little comfort and little hope. But there is another story. The Bible doesn’t just give us an intellectual answer, but a personal response.

Next: God’s Kingdom Restored

Posted in Faith, Sermons | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Brown says No

By Caleb | October 6, 2007

Gordon Brown ruled out an early General Election today, ending weeks of speculation. But this game of political chicken, designed to unsettled the Conservative party, has backfired on the Prime Minister, with this decision now seeming like a climbdown.

A November election was never a likely prospect, and only the ephemeral highs of mid-conference polls ever really suggested otherwise. But although the PM refused to comment initially to keep the Tories on their toes, the continued whispering and hyping of the possibility led to it gaining a life of its own. For a few days, perhaps tempted by a strong lead in the polls, Gordon Brown appeared to be genuinely considering an early election.

But by allowing an early election to seem like a genuine possibility for brief time, Gordon Brown backed himself into a no-win situation. Go ahead with the election, and take the riskiest gamble of his political life, with at the very least the danger of a much reduced Labour majority; abandon the idea, and admit the danger now posed by the Conservatives. And for a man desperate to distance himself from the spin of the Blair years, Brown’s tactic of sowing uncertainty smacks of cheap opportunism.

Far from damaging the Tories, the prospect of an impending election instead roused them to raise their political game, laying out more of their policies in their conference, and inspiring David Cameron to an impressive piece of oratory, delivering a 76 minute speech without notes, with some good soundbites for the headlines. I’m not particularly a fan of the Conservative Party, and it’s dubious whether they can turn a moment of seeming promise into long-term credibility, but they have come out of this pretty well.

Anyway, perhaps the last word on the subject on snap elections should go to Bremner, Bird and Fortune: “That’s when the parties lay out all their policies, look at them, and say ‘Snap!'”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

50 years of Space

By Caleb | October 5, 2007

Yesterday marked 50 years of the space-age, half a century since Sputnik became the first human object to be put in orbit around the Earth. What I want to know is where are our day-trips to the Moon? What happened to getting to work by jetpack, or boldly going where no-one has gone before?

It all seemed to go so well: just twelve years from the first satellite to man on the moon. But things seem to have quietened down by now, with the moon programme abandoned, and space no longer having the same excitement and glamour as in the heady days of the space race.

Part of the reason is the end of the Cold War reduced the need for competition between Russia and America. Also, it’s now far more efficient to send a computer to explore our solar system than it is to send humans. Progress has continued, though without the glamour of manned missions.

But now America and Russia are looking to revive their space programmes, with hopes of putting man on Mars within the next couple of decades. China also looks set to get in on the act, and private enterprise could become an increasingly important force in space exploration as the twenty-first century continues.

Is it worth the bother? Well, given the mess that humans have made of planet Earth, we may well be forced to look beyond the circle of our own planet for resources, space and maybe even just plain survival. For the first time in history, we are approaching the point where we may actually be able to do something to avert the possibility of catastophic asteroid impacts, to protect against natural disasters from space.

In the short term, however, there aren’t necessarily any immediately useful benefits. But to be human is to go beyond just the immediately useful. If this weren’t the case, we’d probably still only be hunter-gatherers; very good hunter-gatherers after however many thousands of years of human history, but still doing fundamentally the same thing. The driving force of civilization has been men and women saying words to the effect of “wouldn’t it be cool if…”, to make that leap from not just making the status quo work more smoothly, but into a whole new way of doing things.

On the other hand, according to some estimates, eliminating extreme poverty would cost $60 billion. This might seem a lot of money, but if you consider the billions of dollars a space programme to put man on Mars (which would be an amazing step for humanity, admittedly), or the billions of dollars spent on “defence” by Western governments, then it begins to seem a bit more bargainous.

Why can’t we try and do the two things at the same time? Rather than choosing between sorting our present situation or taking human achievement to new heights, can’t we balance the two?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Review: The Sarah Jane Adventures

By Caleb | October 2, 2007

You wait for one alien invasion to come along, and two come along at once. Although nine months have passed for us since the pilot of The Sarah Jane Adventures back in the New Year, which saw the Doctor’s former companion defeat the Bane, adopt a son and begin to gather a rag-tag crew of preteen sidekicks, the start of the full series of adventures begins only the next day. And guess what, there’s another set of outer space villains with a dastardly plan.

You can only imagine the fights that would break out between different monsters all tripping over each other to rule planet Earth if the Doctor and now Sarah Jane didn’t stop them. “Oi, Bane, what’s with this fizzy drinks lark? We were here first avenging our defeated relatives and stealing all the world’s energy, and then you came along and turned the population into zombies!”, the Slitheen might say. At this rate, alien threats will become a weekly occurance or something…

Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith is at the core of the show, continuing the Doctor’s work fighting for what’s good, here on Earth. It’s great to see her back on our television screens, and you wouldn’t think it was thirty years since she left the TARDIS having been left by the Doctor in Aberdeen.

But in this first story of the regular series, the focus is more on the youngsters, as Maria and Luke start school. No sign of Kelsey, loud-mouthed sidekick from the pilot, so instead we have Clyde, another loud-mouthed sidekick, though one who is marginally obnoxious rather than completely so.

The character moments help make the show stand out, particularly when Maria dispatches one of the Slitheen with a bottle of vinegar (they’re a calcium-based life form, you see?) This act of killing another creature, though in self-defence, is built up as an important moment, and it’s nice to see it not being taken lightly. For the children, particularly Clyde, killing monsters might be just an adventure, but it’s clear that Sarah Jane has a somewhat different perspective on things. I hope that this theme will be developed as the series goes on.

As with Doctor Who, you’ve got to take the science on its own terms, where it works according to the Laws of Drama rather than Laws of Science as they exist in the real world. One goof that I was sad enough to spot was the instant effect that the Slitheen’s energy stealing machine had on the sun. Even if the Slitheen’s energy-stealing gadget worked faster than light by some advanced alien technology, which I’m perfectly happy to grant, it should still have taken around eight minutes for light to reach the Earth after their machine was turned off and the sun turned back on.

The Slitheen’s first appearance in series 1 of Doctor Who was perhaps one of the show’s weaker moments, but to my mind the problem lay in the execution rather than the concept, with scenes that could have combined dark humour with a sinister edge being played solely for cheerful laughs.

Here, the family from Raxacoricofallapatorius are the kind of monster you’d imagine that Roald Dahl might have invented had he ever written for Doctor Who, giggling childishly as they plot the end of the world and sniffily complaining about human children – “the stench of Haribo and chicken nuggets”. I have to feel sorry for any fat teachers though, who will no doubt be coming under suspicion from their pupils of being aliens in disguise.
Made for CBBC, it doesn’t have as many of the additional layers of interest that Doctor Who includes for the older audience, though there are plenty of little Doctor Who references (“For the love of Clom!”) for fans to appreciate. It’s bright, loud and fun, with all the warmth and energy of Doctor Who, just pitched at a younger audience, and held together with some good performances. It’s easily good enough to keep this adult gleefully entertained on a Monday evening!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Contagious – Big Teach 2: Jesus the Living One

By Caleb | October 2, 2007

Continuing typing up my notes of the talks from Contagious 2007: The Resurrection, with the second talk which was given by Jonty Alcock.

2: Jesus the Living Sacrifice (John 20)

“It is finished” cried Jesus on the Cross. But when we see so much evil and suffering in the world, what is finished? Is it finished? And what of the sin in our lives – was Jesus’ death really enough? As Christians, we stake a huge amount on the Cross. But can we be sure that Jesus achieved everything the Bible says he achieved? Anyone can say that “it is finished”, but what if Jesus was mistaken?

Come and examine a cold stone tomb, three days later, where we find the evidence that gives us certainty about all this. The Resurrection is more than just a happy ending – without it, the words “it is finished” are empty and the Cross is meaningless.

Is it finished? Yes – there’s a brand new day
v1 – The first day of the week, and there’s darkness – just like the first day of Creation, when God brought light out of darkness and chaos. Darkness has no chance against light. And here, God is doing the same thing again. This world is a world of darkness, death and evil. Darkness is a thing of fear, loneliness and alienation.

But a new world is dawning, a new first day! Shadows hang around in the reverse twilight before the dawn, but are eventually banished. The Resurrection is not a happy ending, but a happy beginning.

Is it finished? Yes – there’s a pile of linen
John seems to have an odd interest in linen (19 v40, 20 v5-7). The tomb is not in fact empty – there’s a pile of linen. And it’s glorious! To understand why the pile of linen is so amazing, we need to go way back, back to the Garden of Eden.

Adam and Eve walked with God. But once cast out of Eden, the way back was guarded by a flaming swords. For sinners to be in God’s presence is certain death. Later, after God led the Israelites out of Egypt, the Tent of Meeting contained a curtain with two angels on it, guarding the way into the Holy of Holies. On Atonement Day, the sin of the people was dealt with. The priest has to go into the very presence of God, into the presence of his burning holiness. Only the High Priest could enter, if he came in according to God’s rules on God’s terms. He wore a sacred linen tunic and turban. He took off the grand robes, and wore linen, to make atonement. (Leviticus 16 v3-5). The blood of sacrifice was needed for the forgiveness of sins. God’s justice was satisfied. The goat died as a substitute for the people.

After sacrificing, he was to take off the linen garments before coming out of the Holy of Holies. The sign that the people’s sins had been forgiven, that the sacrifice was accepted, was the priest coming out – it is finished! And if it were possible for you to go in, you would see linen garments. It’s resurrection!

Jesus is the true high priest. He sacrificed himself, bearing the wrath for our sin. How do we know? Jesus came out, leaving the linen. The resurrection is crucial for our forgiveness.
Satan’s greatestlie is that we’ve done something that can’t be forgiven. The Resurrection says otherwise – the price is paid, there’s no more to do! A whole new world is ours to enjoy, beginning in the here and now, though the best is yet to come.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Info-Techno Sabbath

By Caleb | September 29, 2007

There’s a good article on Boundless about “unplugging the God of Information Technology“. As someone who compulsively checks their email and Facebook throughout the day, Joe Carter’s observations on the all-pervading place we give technology in our lives struck home with me.

Recently, God has really been hitting home to me the importance of rest. He seems to have been repeatedly bringing the topic to my attention, such as in Dan Edelen’s blog post on “Demolishing the Culture of Busyness“, and through some of the team talks on beach mission. Mark Hodgkinson spoke on the last morning of the mission about this, and how important it is to take time to “Be still and know that I am God”, as God says in the Psalms.

When I came back from beach mission, I was in fact planning on starting resting from technology on Sundays back then. But something that seemed oh-so-important at the time came up on a Sunday, and I “needed” that time on the Internet, and I forgot about it.

But this last Wednesday, I was really challenged by the Bible study in my church home group to “remember my first love” for Christ. That time of first love in a relationship is always exhilarating, fuelled by emotions and hope and excitement. There are times in the Christian life where our relationship with Jesus feels like that.

But it’s easy to get caught up in activities, both those that are worthwhile and those that do nothing more than distract, and lose that sense of excitement. Within our secular culture which is so focussed on the material, it’s easy to be distracted from the fact that Jesus is the one who “walks among the lampstands”, who is actively present among his Church. As Jim Elliot prayed, “Lord, deliver me from the dread asbestos of other things”.

One of the biggest distractions for me is modern technology. Working on something, be it writing my novel or spending time wrestling with God in prayer or in his word, is often tough. One of the effects of our Fall is that work is cursed and often frustrating. Our relationship with God is damaged, and although believers are united to him in Christ, we still often feel that distance. So how easy it is to just turn on the television, log on to the Internet or start playing video games. Even those things that do have a real practical use, such as email, become a way for me to avoid doing hard things.

So what I plan to do is to build in some time each week where I just turn these things off, where I liberate myself from the ubiquity of technology. Specifically, I’m not going to use the Internet or play any computer games on a Sunday. Someone once described Sabbath as “building a Cathedral in time”. I’m sure I’ll find it an effort and a pain to begin with, but the reason I’m doing it is that I think it could become a real blessing, and help me draw nearer to God.

Anyway, I’ll see how it goes, and I’ll try and report back in a few weeks time!

Posted in Digital, Faith, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Not so fresh!

By Caleb | September 28, 2007

Freshers’ Week is in full swing at Cardiff University, so it feels very strange to no longer be a student, especially since I haven’t got a job yet and so still have that pre-beginning of term feeling. Since I’ve got a lot of free time in between sending off job applications, I helped out with the Christian Union welcome events for International students last week, which was tiring but fun, and have been along to a couple of the CU’s Freshers events, and along to the Freshers’ Fair in the Students’ Union yesterday.

Every Freshers’ Week up until now, there have been some people present who had been around throughout my whole time at university, since I was a young and innocent first year. But at the CU Pub Quiz on Monday, I realised that I was the oldest person there, and that everyone else there were people I’d seen arrive. It was an odd moment, one small but significant watershed realisation. I’m no longer a student, and now I’m moving on from student life, albeit slowly at the moment! That brings with it very mixed feelings of both loss and excitement about the future.

But I’m still around, and can still enjoy the company of students, and be involved in studentdom to some extent. One of the things I want to do now is find ways in which I can contribute to the life of my church, Mack, and I think that encouraging and supporting the students is probably one good way that I’ll be able to do that. This afternoon, some of the Mack students are getting together to discuss what the church does for the students and what the students can do for the church, so I’m hoping that will produce some really good ideas.

Posted in Personal, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Homo narrativus and Pratchett

By Caleb | September 26, 2007

The latest edition of Discworld Monthly popped into my email inbox recently. One of the letters included various quotes from Terry Pratchett on stories and narrative, which are very interesting:

  • “Narrativium is powerful stuff. We have always had a drive to paint stories on to the universe. When humans first looked at the stars, which are great flaming suns an unimaginable distance away, they saw in amongst them giant bulls, dragons, and local heroes”
  • “Humans think in stories. Classically at least science itself has been the discovery of ‘stories'”
  • “Science takes on the aura of magic because the design of a civilization proceeds by a type of narrative imperative it makes a coherent story”
  • “Storytelling is the opposite of reductionism; 26 letters and some rules of grammar are no story at all”
  • “Concepts like gods, truth and soul appear to exist only in so far as humans consider them to do so… But they work some magic for us. They add narrativium to our culture. They bring pain, hope, despair, and comfort. They wind up our elastic. Good or bad, they’ve made us into people”
  • “Humans add narrativium to their world. They insist in interpreting the universe as if it’s telling a story. This leads them to focus on facts that fit the story, while ignoring those that don’t”

I agree that telling stories to make sense of the world around us is a defining feature of what it means to be human. If there’s one thing that really sets us apart from the animals, that makes us in the image of God, it’s our capability for language and all that flows from that – storytelling, abstractions like truth and the soul and so on, which allow for art and science and culture and relationships. We are homo narrativus, storytelling man.

But unlike Pratchett, I don’t believe that we just paint meaning onto a meaningless universe. We are made in the image of the logos, the Author of Life. The Christian God is a storytelling God. The gift of language is a gift from God that connects us to the realm of ideas. Goodness, Beauty and Truth are not just necessary inventions, but realities that are somehow spiritual and transcendent, as well as immanent in the world around us.

One of philosophy’s perennial questions is that of the relationship between the upper and lower stories, between nature and grace. Francis Schaeffer summarises each of them as follows:

Grace, the higher: God the Creator; heaven and heavenly things; the unseen and its influence on the earth; unity, or universals or absolutes which give existence and morals meaning.Nature, the lower: the created; earth and earthly things; the visible and what happens normally in the cause-and-effect universe; what man does on the earth; diversity, or individual things, the particulars, or the individual acts of man.

For Pratchett, only the lower is real, while the higher is just invented and projected on the universe by human beings. If you start at the bottom, with the particulars and with man as the measure of all things, as both modernity and postmodernity do, then you do indeed end up with a meaningless universe, where we are just part of a cosmic machine. Again, Schaeffer puts it well: “We can think of it as the individual things, the particulars, gradually and increasingly becoming everything and this devouring all meaning until meaning disappears”.

But the conviction of Christianity is that meaning has meaning, and we don’t have to start with the lower. For us within the realm of nature, of the particulars, to have answers about the realm of grace, of the universals, we need something or someone from the realm of grace to communicate truth to us. Biblical Christianity is based on the conviction that God reveals himself in Jesus Christ, recorded in Scripture. We are able to receive true knowledge about the meaning of life and of the universals. We don’t have to make up our own story to explain the universe, because its maker tells us the true story, and it’s a story that we can be part of.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Happiness

By Caleb | September 9, 2007

No work yet. I went to an “evaluation day” with a sales and marketing company based in Cardiff city centre on Wednesday, but quickly decided it wasn’t for me. If I was to do direct marketing, it would have to be selling stuff I actually believed was worth selling, rather than trying to convince people how much better their lives would be if they bought Sky television and watched it all day. And I really wouldn’t be at home in an organisation where the main thing they use to motivate you is simply money and raw hedonism. It’s good that you can progress quickly in their business if you work hard. But I disagree completely with the boss’s attitude that making loads of money so that you can have loads of stuff is “what it’s all about”. So I got up and left.

It made me realise that I’m really not bothered about being rich. Being able to make ends meet without worry, yes, that’s pretty nice. Beyond that, I’m honestly not fussed, which probably means I won’t make as much money, because that’s not my aim in life. But that’s fine, I’ve got better things to aim for.

No work yet, and that can get rather dispiriting at times. Filling in forms, waiting to hear from different companies, sometimes hearing nothing, sometimes being rejected… it’s not a lot of fun. But the other night, I came home knowing just how happy I am. A friend had persuaded me to come and play some badminton with a group of friends. I wasn’t as awful as I feared I’d be on my first go; we had fun and enjoyed it. After some shopping we went back to their house; we ordered pizza, some others came round to visit. A moth flew in, and their oh-so-cute kitten chased it enthusiastically to our laughter and amusement.

Bidding them goodnight, I slipped off back home to read some other of my friends’ novels-in-progress over a mug of hot chocolate ready of a writers’ get-together in the morning. I knew what happiness is, not found in money, but in the glow of friendship and laughter and hope, and most of all in delighting in God and thanking him for all these good gifts.

Posted in Personal, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 1 Comment