Book Recommendation

I checked on this book at Barnes and Noble the other day and it looks like it comes out in August. The post I link to mentions that had I remembered it. Anyway it looks like an important book.

For me, I'm afraid I'm often more childish than is healthy. I don't think of myself as a grown-up, but rather, as that college kid who lived at "The Ranch" in the sloppy room.

Then I read this the other day: "Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil." (Eph 5:15-16, ESV)

Making the best use of the time - how does one judge that? Clearly, for the Christian, the Bible is the place to get your marching orders, your priotities - God, your family, your soul, those kinds of priorities.

Earlier, Kathy and I had discussions with our 17-year-old son about his use of time and that, get this, he's not a kid anymore, he needed to act more mature. I sure hope I was listening.

The deal is, time is short and we, I, don't have time for childish pursuits.

I Think I'm Over It

OK, I think I'm finally over the '85 World Series.

Time heals all wounds, they say. I say that 22 years, 3 more Cardinal pennants and another World Series championship in St. Louis doesn't hurt, either.

In my post-85 anger and disappointment (we weren't supposed to lose) I tried to like all kinds of other American League teams instead of the Royals. I really did used to like them in the 70's. They had some very good teams then, especially the '77 team, which I think was better than either of the two KC squads to win pennants. And those KC teams, managed exquisitely by Whitey Herzog, were far more enjoyable than the Cardinals of the late 70's. Heity Cruz was a key player - that's all you need to know.

Anyway, we lived in Ft. Worth for a while, so I tried the Rangers. The Bobby Valentine years. Need I say more? By the way, I don't know where Valentine gets his cachet. He has never impressed me as a manager. Later we lived in Northern New York and I followed the Red Sox and the Yankees. Not very loudly, of course. Later it was on to Florida and, yes, I tried to follow the Devil Rays. It can't be done.

So we're back in Missouri and I've made peace with the Royals and tonight the Cards will invade KC for the annual (now) interleague battle with the Royals. Next week the two will hook up in St. Louis.

I can follow them both now, though my heart is firstly with the Cards. It feels good to be home.

Advice for Men and Near-Men

I saw this and thought of you. This is just so very good.
Please take the time to read it all.

Spurs Have Cavs on Ice, Man

I used to live in an apartment basement on Elm Street during the early 80's. After the sun went down during basketball season I could pull in WOAI out of San Antonio on the radio and listen to Spurs games. Those teams featured the incomprable George Gervin whose image graces this post. Nicknamed "The Iceman" he led the Spurs during those NBA days just after the merger.

Anyway, it's a little late - I thought of doing this earlier - but the Spurs, who never did win a title with Gervin, are on the verge of claiming their fourth in the last decade. A dominant team over that span to be sure.

Here's what I think - Spurs sweep. I know, I'm late, they already have a 2-0 lead. Yes well, as of this moment the Cavs are leading game 3 and besides, it's what I really thought all along, just ask the two guys I told.

Missouri Baseball

The tiny picture to the right is a photo of the 1958 Missouri Tigers baseball squad. They were National runners-up in '58, the year of my birth.

I said all that to say 'Congratulations' to the '07 version of Mizzou baseball - they will host a regional beginning Friday. The Tigers come in as a number one seed and will host perennial power Miami along with Kent State and Louisville. The winners of each regional will advance to super regionals with the winners of those tourneys going on to the College World Series in Omaha. Go Tigers!

Piper on the Uncertainty of War

It is difficult to overstate how valuable this article is.

Chivalry, Islamofascist Style

A couple of links I noticed today -

Lose your job over an embrace? A woman can in Pakistan -

Or, forget your veil and get beat up? In Iran you can -

Tell me again why we should not be fighting this?

Know Thy Enemy

Al Mohler is a genius.

I don’t know if he put his two latest blog entries back-to-back by design, but, taken together, they send a jarring message.

Thursday’s entry reviews historian Bernard Lewis’ piece in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal. Boiled down it says the militant Muslims, the jihadists identified two great enemies during the Cold War: the Soviets and the West. The Soviets collapsed and that leaves us.

Quoting:

"Professor Lewis explains that the Jihadists truly believe that their efforts
toppled the Soviet Union. Furthermore, he warns that the Jihadists see the West
as a far weaker enemy than the Soviets. Thus, these radicals see the West as
poised for collapse. All that is needed is the unrelenting push of jihad."

Lewis quotes Osama bin Laden:
“. . . dealing with the pampered and degenerate Americans would be easy.”

Pampered and degenerate? Really? Us? The church – going nation that we are – we are the good guys, aren’t we? God bless America and all that, after all!

Well, consider Mohler’s post from today. It argues that, while, yes, we are moral in a sense, the things we moralize about are nonsense. We are, unfortunately, moralizing about driving SUVs, or eating trans fats, or presenting images of, shocking, I know, images of cigarette smoking.

Mohler quotes Andrew Ferguson:

"our pop culture is shot through with moralism: sulfurous condemnations of
homophobia, smoking, guns, junk food, fur, big cars, and--this is the big
one--judgmentalism. (Our culture) simply will not tolerate intolerance."

While we dither about junk food and fur and big cars, the militant Muslims have a very clear and agreed upon set of values by which to decide moral dilemmas. And this matrix of values informs the Muslim that we are degenerate and must be conquered.

But we know better – we are moral! We know what’s important! Those bad, bad, bad jihadists! They came to our country on 9/11 and totally ignored the No Smoking signs!

Uh Oh

OK, controversial confession time.

I'm a Calvinist. I have been for a few years now. I didn't go looking for it, it found me. (What did you expect me to say?) I'm not militant about it - others hold different views - and there's room for that.

One of the things I have found in this system of belief is tremendous comfort and I point you to this article as an example - here's a snippet, parentheses mine:

"It (unconditional election) is good news because it means no
unbeliever is so bad that they can say in response to our gospel pleading, "I
can’t be elect; I am too evil. I have sinned too long and to deeply." God’s
election is not based on how much we do or don’t sin. It is not based on
anything we do or think or feel or choose. Therefore, the proper response to
that kind of despair is to say, "Who do you think you are to exalt your sin to
the level of God? Who do you think you are to wallow in your despair and make
your sinful will the sovereign of the universe, as if you could decide who is
elect and who is not by the quantity of your sinning?" No! You have no right and
no power to declare yourself beyond God’s election. He and he alone decides who
is elect. And he decides NOT on the basis of your sin or your righteousness, but
on the basis of his inscrutable will alone. You may not play God with your sin.
None of it proves you are not elect. Repent, therefore, and call on the name of
the Lord through Jesus Christ who has died for sinners. For he has said,
"Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.’" To the despairing
soul who feels he has sinned himself out of the possibility of election,
unconditional election is good news."

The whole thing.

Frankly, knowing my heart as I do, had I been sovereign over my eternal soul, I'd have reason to despair. Thankfully, God is sovereign.

How About Some Links, Eh?

Let's go around the Links, shall we?

For the non-golfers, that's a golf links course pictured to the right. So, it's like a pun - golf links and web links.
OK.
Just for the record, I'm a non-golfer 99% of the time.
OK.



From John Piper and desiringgod.org -

"For thoughtful people, how they pray for the soul is governed by how they believe God acts. So, for example, if they believe God changes people's souls so that they make new and right choices, then they will ask God to make those soul-changes through evangelism and nurture. But not everybody is thoughtful about the way they pray. They don't think about what view of God is behind their praying."

Read "How to Pray for the Soul - Yours or Another's"

Be inspired in a different way by Marine First Sergeant Brad Kasal's story -

"Despite multiple recommendations for amputation of his leg, his fighting spirit
won out over all. He "grew" his leg back with multiple surgeries and a long and
terribly painful process that uses a technique called the "Ilizarov frame."
Amazingly, he has since passed the Marine Corps physical fitness test which
includes a three-mile run."

Read the whole thing.

Bernie Miklasz of the Post-Dispatch adopts a middle of the road stance on Barry Bonds. Not too much to disagree with until the last paragraph -

"Many years from now, maybe all of these numbers and records will make
better sense. Maybe we'll know a lot more than we do now. But I can't hate
Bonds. Because if you hate Bonds, then you must also hate Major League Baseball.
He is the No. 1 symbol of his era."

I don't go in for the hate position, either, but I wouldn't equate hating Bonds with hating Major League Baseball. If they were equal you could turn the sentence around, hating (or loving) MLB means hating (or loving) Bonds. I can't do it. They aren't equal and I think you can feel one way about the man and another about his employer.

Perhaps what Miklasz is driving at is that the men who were given stewardship over MLB have fostered an environment that yields a home run champ whose accomplishments are suspect. And I have no disagreement with that.

Graduation and Promotion

Peter graduated Sunday.

He's the son-in-law to-be. That's my daughter's story, anyway, and she's not inclined, at this juncture, to change her mind.

He graduated from one of the most unique places on earth, College of the Ozarks. It's a school in the Ozark hills where a student may work on campus for tuition and room and board - you can leave school with your degree in hand and not owe a dime. And - bonus - it's Christian in it's worldview.

Sunday we were there to see Peter walk and get his diploma holder - the actual diploma will get mailed later, I suppose.

The ceremony was just what you would expect it to be with all the walking and robing and tasseling and speeching. There was not, however, any 'Pomp and Circumstance'. This disappointed my wife and I don't think that her disappointment was lessened by presence of the bagpipes. Bagpipes are maybe not just what you would expect at graduation. I know I wasn't expecting them. How long do you suppose you can you listen to bagpipes play the same 16 bars repeatedly? Until Sunday I wouldn't have had a decent answer to that question. Now I know I can last long enough for the entire C of O faculty and the Class of 2007 walk into the gym and get a seat. I strongly suspect my limit is not much more than that.

One thing, though, I did not expect and for me, at least, it was the highlight of the afternoon. (Apologies to Peter) C of O has an ROTC program, that much I knew. On Sunday one young man was commissioned into the United States Army as a Second Lieutenant. He was called forward to the platform and he walked there in precise fashion. How is it that a soldier's walk can inspire you? He stood at attention (of course) and his citation and accomplishments were read aloud. His parents and his bride came forward to pin his bars onto his shoulders. Two women, one in the flower of youth, one tempered by middle-age, both tenderly loving the same warrior, decorate him in keeping with his calling.

And everyone in the gym was on their feet. Applauding, naturally.

And yet I was struck by this very fact. It was so natural for us to rise and salute this young man - why do so many not desire to honor these? Why is it seemingly unnatural in some environs? I confess, I do not understand why you wouldn't. I was surprised by the emotion I felt. And glad for it. It is right to honor his work, his desire, his preparation and his courage. You could sense it, though he stood stock still, he appeared to be going as fast as he could into what could be, for all we know, tremendous danger.

I have seen courage like this before. It was in a prison in New York. I was there for a Bible study and on my way out a bell rang. A guard asked me and those I was with to stand aside. I heard radios crackling some indistinct call. And guards, many guards, ran past us headlong into who knew what. What makes a man run into danger? A prison guard, a fireman, a policeman, a soldier. I'm not certain, but I'm grateful that they do.

November '08

Tony Blankley gazes into his crystal ball -

"If it is Rudy and Hillary, and now Bloomberg, we could be looking at a three-way
race between three moderately liberal to leftist New Yorkers running for
president in a right-of-center country with no even moderately conservative
candidate. And should Sen. Obama surprisingly get the Democratic nomination,
then we would substitute for the secret leftist publicly centrist Hillary
Milhous, a completely inexperienced African-American possibly former Muslim,
partially Indonesian-raised, Harvard-trained Kennedyesque candidate.
Therein, lies the three-party freak show that is likely to produce the next
president of the United States during this early period of the Age of Islamist
Terror in which we live. And yet, we live in hope that ours is a providentially
guided country."

Read it all here.

Iran Is Buying Time For . . .

This is the best discussion of the War on Terror I've seen to date.

Money quote:

"But since, to say it again, Ahmadinejad is a revolutionary with unlimited aims
and not a statesman with whom we can “do business,” all this negotiating has had
the same result as Munich had with Hitler. That is, it has bought the Iranians
more time in which they have moved closer and closer to developing nuclear
weapons."

Please read the whole thing.

If You Watch Only One Video This Year

This is the one.