Theological Controversy?

Posted on February 14, 2016 by ehurst

Even mainstream evangelical theologians and Bible scholars recognize that Hebrew culture refers to the heart as the seat of the will, which is then linked to convictions. Before I moved away from evangelical circles, I already understood from my professors that convictions reflect the divine presence of God in your soul, and that they can overrule your reasoning. That much is mainstream already.

My efforts to implement a sense of moral focus based on that teaching is what led me to leave the mainstream church. At some point I realized that God speaks primarily in our convictions, in the sense that if we argue with our convictions, we will find ourselves opposed to God’s work in our lives. Most evangelicals understand that this is territory difficult to explain and often tell you that you must follow your own convictions where they take you, even if it means changing churches. To be honest, most often they say that as mere political wisdom. If you don’t fit where you are, staying will cause trouble. Big shot leaders told me as much personally. I left their ministries out of compassion; I was unwilling to cause trouble.

Over the years since then, I have struggled with legacy of teaching that cannot follow where God wants me to go. It has nothing to do with whether they are wrong, but that it doesn’t fit the calling of God in my life. The question boils down to following my convictions.

But arising from the same basic educational experience was a lot of time in philosophy classes. So I also had a grasp on the intellectual differences between our Western evangelical religious environment versus that of the Old Testament. My philosophy courses offered a frame of reference for analysis, and I was able to dig into cultural anthropology and archeology. Most of that came from genuine evangelical believers, too. The scholarship was a little more obscure, but still a part of the Western evangelical scholarship. Always in the back of my mind I wondered why those scholars didn’t actually walk in their own teaching. If this is what God’s people thought, and this is how God revealed Himself, then why do we build our faith so very far away from it? Why do we cling so tightly to secular philosophical assumptions that are so obviously hostile to the Bible? Why do we not take more seriously the command to be in the world but not of it?

I can’t speak for them, only my own sense of calling. At some point I began taking more seriously the terminology of being led by our hearts, with the caveat that we aren’t referring to Western literary concepts of the heart. In other words, the Bible seems to take almost literally the idea of thinking with the heart, whereas in Western tradition it has always been a figure of speech for something quasi-emotional. The way Western literature uses the image makes it much more similar to the Hebrew concept of “bowels.” Given that Hebrew literature refers to bowels as including human compassion, it would be inaccurate to make “bowels” merely equivalent to Western notions of emotion. The two concepts overlap, but we should assume the Western notion is the one that’s mistaken, an artificial construct. The Hebrew language also makes much of numerous spirits that can infest or bless our lives, so if we dismiss all of that as a figure of speech simply because it would be so in our culture, it is a huge mistake.

Even worse is how so many Western Christians seem to have this unconscious assumption that the Hebrew people of the Old Testament were ignorant simply because they clearly had a different outlook on reality. It always struck me as funny that they ignore how Jesus took seriously that Hebrew stuff, too.

I’m not superior, just telling you how I got here.

And “here” is now the position that ultimate truth is beyond the grasp of our intellect. Hebrew thinking and logic is indicative, not descriptive. It is symbolic, relying on parables to characterize things that the mind could not possibly grasp directly. What we read in Scripture about God’s Person and the Spirit Realm is a characterization, a packaging that allows us to explore our moral obligations. Any intellectual conclusions you reach will of necessity be tentative and personal, our best estimate of what God requires of us individually. When I write about where Satan comes from using Old Testament prophecies, it’s not as if I am declaring facts. This is all parable: language indicative of things we could hardly comprehend with our fallen minds.

That you might read the same Scripture and reach a different characterization does not signify a conflict between us. It simply means God intends each of us to serve Him differently. You will have to come to your own mental grasp so that you can organize and implement the moral imperatives that register in your own soul. So you can write all the theology you like, but theology will never be more than your individual structure applied to things that will ever remain ineffable. The ultimate truth will never yield itself to human reason; human reason must bow to the heart where God speaks. Words don’t “mean things” in Scripture; Pharisaical minds assert that “words mean things.” Such an understanding arose after Hebrew scholars were infected with Greek rationalism. Legalism is the perverted result of Hebrew parabolic writing run through the meat-grinder of human reason.

We need not agree in minds, but in our hearts.

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God Is a Pirate

Posted on February 14, 2016 by ehurst

Intellectual Property guardians would call God a “pirate.”

Open Source: It’s a genuine culture shift that also happens to be global. I’m not referring merely to the process of software development, though it is more pronounced there, but the concept that data should be accessible to any and all without restraint. It’s not a demand that content creators go to great lengths to publish at their own expense, but that they should also make no effort to keep their stuff behind barriers. Let others browse your stuff and decide for themselves what is relevant and worthy of passing on to other folks.

We are up against the root nature of the Fall, the human tendency to control things God didn’t put in our hands. This tendency in turn arises from the fallen instinctive assumption that we are God’s equal in deciding what matters. Human reason is unspeakably arrogant about it’s own capabilities. We are utterly certain we can remake the universe to fit our rational systems.

But when we discover a large number of people who somehow manage to envision an end different from that which grows in our own reason, we have an instinct to seek control over the situation so that the results match our individual vision. To the degree we can persuade others to buy into our vision, we imagine that our reason is somehow “objective” in nature, that there is a quasi-deity that we can call “objective truth” or similar labels. It’s a god made in the image of man’s own intellect. It’s plain old psychological projection, and humans are willing to use whatever leverage they possess to serve that deity.

So by restricting access to their data, they seek to control how it is used. If you don’t join their club — whatever that might mean to them — then you cannot access their knowledge. It becomes a secret. It’s not hard to see how this applies to every official government secrecy system, in that some folks have agreed on a predetermined outcome and hide their data to ensure no one else can use it for other outcomes. They pretend that this serves a valid interest of government, but God said long ago that no secular government is valid in His sight, though He does elect to use some of them much the same way beef produces use cattle. If you aren’t cynical about human governments and the posturing of care for your needs, you don’t understand God’s Word (Luke 22:24-27).

God does not keep secrets; He reveals everything we can handle. The difference here is that God really does know what’s in our best interest. No human government can claim that, because no human government includes Our Creator. Instead, God spends a lot of time dealing with something that typically translates as “mystery” — a word that often includes meanings in our daily use that hinder grasping how God uses it. A word from God is hidden only because something inside us keeps us from getting it. You can allege it’s not different from the “you gotta join our club” type of thinking, but again, the difference is that God is God and humans are not. Whatever it is God has to put out there for us comes from Him and He’s the one who made it all, so if you feel constrained to join His club, at least His is the right club.

But God is all about Open Source in the sense that you only have to learn the language, the means of transmission. That language happens to include a great deal of structure that is alien to folks who read English, for the most part. Sadly, the dominant Western Civilization is flatly hostile to God’s revelation, so we have a lot to overcome. Still, the basic idea behind the Open Source philosophy is consistent with divine revelation.

And it will change things, even if we can hardly guess how. But the die is cast and peaceful promotion of that ethic is godly in that limited sense. We see projects that press this ethic and the gatekeepers call it “piracy.” One man’s pirate is another man’s savior. I say that God is rather pleased with so-called Internet “piracy” in that it is consistent with His divine moral character. What is hidden will be made public, that all things may be revealed to His glory.

So go ahead and take my stuff and use it for your own ends. I practice what I preach and try to make all of my stuff available in formats you can edit to suit your own agenda. If you try to lie about what I’m actually saying, trying to allege I’ve said things I haven’t, it will catch up to you as God sees fit. Steal my ideas and claim you wrote them? I’m not concerned about that; I can always write more and will no doubt do so as long as it’s possible.

I make no apology for “pirating” digitized materials.

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My Soul Is Disturbed

Posted on February 13, 2016 by ehurst

You can ignore this if you don’t have time, but I simply must write something and lighten this massive load on my soul. Yeah, I’ve posted a bunch of stuff for any day of the week, much less a Saturday when readership is typically low, so I realize many of my regulars won’t see this until later, if at all.

For those who’ve read this much: I pray that God Almighty make a fool of me and that I’m completely mistaken. Otherwise, another wave of tribulation is on top of us. That much is in my heart, never mind what my head might know. I’m not depressed, but this is almost like a physical discomfort and tears are brimming in my eyes as my fingers fumble over this fancy keyboard.

But this time my brain imagines it has supporting evidence that makes it all sensible, too. Maybe you are aware that Deutsche Bank is facing a loss of investor confidence. The bank’s managers complain that this is unjustified and are taking steps to prove they have enough cash on hand to handle normal debt operations. What no one in the mainstream press wants to tell you is that broad investor confidence is more valuable to them than actual cash. What do you suppose would happen if folks simply stopped trusting banks with their money? It’s just a short step from admitting that the entire banking system is just rigged up nonsense resting entirely on common consent of folks like you and me. Lose that and all that money we are told we owe them for things like mortgages and credit cards suddenly becomes a groundless claim that we might refuse to honor. The one thing that makes bankers tremble and lose sleep at night is that folks might one day decide they don’t owe the banks anything.

It’s the same thing that terrifies government officials. What happens when this vast mass of humanity they govern simply stops paying attention to their grave pronouncements? What happens when those governed withdraw their consent to be governed? There aren’t enough cops and troops together to overwhelm the rest of us. They know that, but to make sure we don’t think about it, they shoot up some crazy folks in Oregon and arrest Cliven Bundy in Nevada.

Just a reminder here: I’m not cheering for any side in this mess. It’s all wrong and God is taking it apart in His own way, pouring out His wrath pretty much as depicted in the Book of Revelation. So I’m not thrilled with where this is all going, but I’m hardly thrilled with any part of how we got here, either. I advocate you hunker down and try to stay off the radar of any side. We have some serious work on our hands seeking to exploit this mess for God’s glory. I want you to have a clear mind and brave commitment to carry you through. We can’t afford to exclude anyone when it comes to showing God’s mercy, so don’t get caught up in popular enthusiasm and equally popular hatreds.

But this business of people slowly noticing that it all stands on mass hypnosis of confidence in the system makes the folks who benefit from the system worried. So they need to distract us. Now I am hardly the only idiot to realize most of the noise in the news is aimed at distracting everyone. You may also recall that Turkey has been desperately trying to provoke Russia. Erdogan appears completely wacko. Having already seen that shooting down that Russian bomber didn’t work, he’s now firing artillery, missiles and mortars into Syrian territory. Mostly he’s hitting Kurdish forces who are allied with Syrian government forces. His excuse is that all Kurds are his enemy, but I find it quite odd that he’s bombing a particular batch of Kurdish forces supported by the US. Still, nobody is blind to his ambition to prevent Syria from regaining control of Aleppo. Everyone, including ISIS and the rebel forces being threatened in Aleppo, has been saying all along that if Assad recovers his control over Aleppo, the war is pretty much over in Syria. And Erdogan and friends have already lost a lot of money from Russian assistance to Assad, so they are desperate to keep control over Aleppo through their rebel proxies. At this point, Erdogan is almost ready to officially invade to save his proxy army. And the Saudis have sent warplanes to support this Turkish invasion.

That’s just a bare outline sketch; the deeper you go into the details, the crazier it gets. Again, I’m not cheering anyone on this. I’m not in favor of the Ruskies, NATO, Syrians, ISIS, Turks or anyone else. I will suggest the sanest course is to leave folks alone and stop provoking wars, but you and I both know that ain’t gonna happen. No one in this mess is holy; God is steering events to suit His divine whims. We shall see where He takes things in due course. But God has no team on the field in the sense that any of them are paying attention to what He wants. They all claim He is on their side, but are worshiping gods that don’t exist.

What causes me so much sorrow is knowing what this means for us back here at home. The plutocrats who imagine that they are steering these things have some truly nasty plans that will mean unspeakable sorrow. And they don’t want you making plans to face that sorrow. This shit could come down on us by Monday morning, with bank holidays and who-knows-what kind of idiocy. I’m not predicting that, but asking you to see it as possible. You and I will see other folks go through such horror and sorrow that it runs the risk of shocking us into inaction. Weep and pray for the millions who will face tribulation without a clue. But at the same time, be ready when it comes, whether Monday or March or next year. This system is breaking down and some parts of it will collapse suddenly. There’s no doubt we will get hurt by some of this stuff, but we should already know that God is taking care us. Whatever we lose we don’t really need, and whatever we keep is just tools for His glory. As long as we identify our interests with His, we will be okay. But how many folks do you know with that kind of faith?

Oh, God has all kinds of tricks up His sleeve and we will see some awesome surprises. Can you imagine? Just this afternoon Supreme Court Justice Scalia died; take a moment to imagine the political mess this makes for the US. He’s one of the stickiest of the five Conservatives against the four Liberals on the Supreme Court. Both sides are misguided and obnoxious as far as I am concerned, but just think of the political instability this creates. It’s just one more major battlefield opened up in our political wars, and it will almost certainly wait for the new President to appoint Scalia’s successor. It now becomes a campaign issue — yeah, we need more of that.

So there’s a part of me that worries about you, my dear flock. I worry that some of you aren’t ready for this. I’ll run myself ragged helping you if you need it, but your suffering and sorrow is the big thing on my shoulders right now. God help us.

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Psalm 88

Posted on February 13, 2016 by ehurst

The psalm is addressed to the Sons of Korah, but attributed to Heman, son of Zerah, son of Judah by Tamar his daughter-in-law (1 Chronicles 2:3-6). That’s a mouthful and it requires you remember the sad stories of Judah’s sin regarding Tamar (Genesis 38). As such, this represents truly ancient wisdom, as Solomon is compared against the legendary wisdom of this psalmist (1 Kings 4:31) among others.

The Ancient Near Eastern wise men were not witch doctors, but their brand of deep wisdom is surely different from anything commonly found in Western society. Genuine Hebrew mystical awareness recognizes multiple levels of moral consideration in our human existence. This psalm is a contemplation; it is not meant to assert answers but to ask wise questions. It serves to indicate territory for exploration. What you find is between you and God. The contemplation covers only one of the many levels for moral consideration. If you take the language literally, you would conclude these are ignorant savages who don’t really know God. You would also miss the point completely, because from such is the source of our knowledge of God. To these Hebrew wise men He revealed Himself most clearly, so we best guard against the folly of literalism when reading Hebrew mystical poetry.

If we are to conquer our human frailties by faith, we must first explore those weaknesses. There are plenty of songs that celebrate the victory of faith; this one delves into the human experience of depression, the place you have to visit before you can meet God face to face. It is Job without the errors. It is the deepest, darkest sorrow and shows that our Creator understands how it feels and offers no condemnation for those who confront their valleys of death. If you need an answer, it’s hidden in the call on God. That in itself is victory, but this psalm has no happy ending because it addresses itself to human nature, not divine redemption.

Heman begins in the right place, calling out to God. If there is any bright spot in this vale of sorrow, it is the shining light of God’s revelation of redemption. So he calls on God to hear this outpouring of sorrow over his own weakness. Instead of bluntly confessing his sin, he is more artful in simply acknowledging that he is as good as dead. Nothing here pretends that he deserves any better, only that it’s something he could never survive on his own.

Indeed, he emphasizes what it’s like to see death as a near neighbor. This is the death of someone who has not yet found the assurance of salvation. This is a very common dramatic figure of speech based on a whole range of literary symbols that arose far back in ancient Mesopotamia. And while those far ancient folk might have actually believed some of this more literally, it takes its place in Hebrew poetry as a familiar expression, a mere image of death while still in sin. Heman echoes more than once the image of having no friends, because in genuine depression you are unable to see beyond your own sorrow and imagine that anyone else knows what it’s like. Instead, death is closer than any human friend, and death is no friend.

Thus, he makes it sound as if death is not welcome at all. If someone dies in their sin, they have lost that one last chance to engage even the mere ritual of praise and worship. Once into the shadows of death, the miracles of God mean nothing to those who failed to find mercy. The soul’s doom is sealed. Again, nothing here is intended as literal, but as imagery of the sorrow of dying without a vivid connection of the heart to God.

So Heman continues his weeping, crying and calling out for redemption from God. He expresses lavishly how it seems to a man under conviction for his sinful fallen nature. This is the moment of walking into that Flaming Sword to the East of Eden. Will it carve off his sin, or will he be consumed fully? The psalm ends without a resolution for the simple reason that, unless the Lord redeem you in His mercy, there’s nothing left to say.

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Rant Mode: Injustice

Posted on February 13, 2016 by ehurst

Just because I don’t talk much about my battles and wounds, it doesn’t mean I have no scars.

It’s the height of arrogance to assume that someone who hasn’t lived with your limitations is unable to sense your sorrows. Jesus said, “If the world hates you, you know that it hated me first” (John 15:18). Let’s talk about the injustice He faced — we weren’t there with Him, except to help nail Him to the Cross. Our particular sorrows don’t justify crucifying anyone else. He rose and still lives today at the right hand of the Father, and His appreciation for doing good to those who hate you is all the reward we need. Walking justly is its own reward.

If you get close enough to me, I will surely do something stupid and hurt you. Don’t fall into a pity party and assume I delight in causing you pain. Don’t assume that I am somehow refusing some duty to improve simply because my sins are different from yours. “Remove the log in your own eye first” (Matthew 7:1-6). The point here is not that you might actually remove that log, but that you must acknowledge it’s there before anything can change. You have to embrace the enormity of your own sin. Yes, you nailed Jesus to the Cross, and so did I. Let’s stop hammering each other and try to find a path to repentance.

Some of you may recall I’ve used the term “quantum moral reasoning” as a means to drawing attention to the multiple levels of consideration we must maintain at all times. The biggest problem is first recognizing that there are multiple levels. How often have you heard or read arguments that confuse the levels? No, we don’t have a discrete list of those levels; that’s just cultic nonsense that leads to pushing religion back into the cerebral reasoning.

The urge to correct injustice is certainly holy. The urge to defend your God-given domain is also holy, but not if you confuse the boundaries of your domain. Check this out: the word “responsibility” arises from the concept of duty to respond. The “us versus them” is not inherently wrong, but you will rarely encounter someone who understands why God wired that into us. Have you not noticed how the Law of Moses does differentiate between serious threats to human existence versus those that simply require a little nudge to improve? That there are plenty of unpleasant things we are obliged to bear simply because they aren’t for us to fix? And let’s not forget that plenty of capital sin under Moses could be forgiven by the victim and the perpetrator go free. You do have a faculty for knowing when God intends you to forgive.

People are the most important concern in this world of existence. This world can’t be saved. It’s slated for destruction — that terminology is mere characterization, but it points us to the truth. The point is that you will see justice in this life, but only if you see it in the mirror. Nobody owes you anything, least of all God. You are precious only because of some whim of choice arising from His incomprehensible compassion. Even when you have to pull the trigger, it can’t be hatred that paints the target. You have to invest a lot of your human time into deep consideration of such things before they come. Who are you? What did God call you to do and how does He want it done? Your heart knows, so move your awareness into your heart and start bouncing things off your convictions. Don’t run with any tribe until you know for certain that’s where God called you, and then act as an individual voice of compassion. Let no man tell you how God works in your soul.

Justice is not a science and it’s even higher than art. Divine justice is in a class of endeavor all its own. Only an active heart consciousness works on that level. Learn to let a little rain run off your back because God calls you to invest your energy in more important things. By the same token, never assume that physical violence is forbidden in all cases for everyone. Don’t set limits on how God speaks to others. Step away and stop condemning things that aren’t a part of your calling. Respond when your heart knows it falls into your domain, not when it simply pisses you off.

Don’t turn one injustice into yet another simply because you can’t be bothered to swallow some more sorrow.

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Tech Updates Mid-February 2016

Posted on February 12, 2016 by ehurst

I think I got DNSMasq working as intended. All I really wanted was an internal name caching server to speed DNS queries. I could have gone the route of Bind9 but that’s just a little heavyweight for mere name-caching. So now stuff is loading in my browsers a little quicker than before.

Speaking of browsers, I’m pleased with what I see in the Vivaldi browser project. I don’t care for the hype on their website, but I do like the strong effort to bring back some of the better features in the old Opera browser and it runs on 32-bit, unlike the new Opera browser. But Vivaldi is in Beta, so it’s a little rough around the edges. Still, all the extensions from Chrome install and work just fine.

The Mozilla Project itself and their Firefox browser is compromising too much with advertisers. They’ve decided to take money from the floundering Yahoo and made some anti-user choices because of it. Defaults are going to annoy anyone privacy conscious and will be increasingly difficult to change. Good features are being outright removed. So your best bet is Seamonkey or Pale Moon because they do not depend on advertiser dollars. Seamonkey is currently a little easier to update when the time comes, but Pale Moon has a nice set of features that includes removing Firefox junk that nobody wants. Most of the add-ons work, too. If you run Debian, Iceweasel is still safe.

I find it almost funny that the older Opera series (12.16) is a much smarter mail client than anything else I’ve used recently. For example, it pulls IMAP from Gmail faster than Thunderbird, Seamonkey, Evolution, etc. For Windows you can download a current version of Opera Mail that is essentially the free standing version of the same client. There are some limitations (still no support for in-line encryption) but it works for my needs. The older browser functions okay, but chokes on some of the heavy JScript sites.

I messed up something on the FTP server, as I found when someone actually tried to use the guest account. You have to understand that once you enable that service on a Linksys router, the guest account is almost wide open; the default password is “guest.” You can’t delete the account, but you can assign a more secure password. However, I forgot to assign a folder on the external hard drive as the properly designated shared files folder. That seems to work now (thanks for your patience, Benjamin).

Here’s a frightening thought: I may actually figure out what I’m doing one of these days.

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Apocalypse Now

Posted on February 11, 2016 by ehurst

John’s Apocalypse is still relevant because it always was.

I’m working over the text of my Bible study book on John’s Revelation. Instead of merely reformatting it as with some of the other books, I’m rereading my text against that of the Bible to ensure it more closely tracks where I am now, not where I was then.

If anything, John’s writing is even more relevant to me personally than before. I say that as one who rejects completely the goofy Dispensational beliefs so common among mainstream Western evangelical Christians today. The Book of Revelation isn’t primarily addressed to some final End Times prophesy and I’m utterly certain we aren’t in any End Times scenario anyway. This is most certainly a time of tribulation, and John saw a great deal of tribulation headed for his flock. He most certainly addressed their rising sorrow and suffering, but not as most of Western Christianity assumes.

John was a true Hebrew-Christian Mystic and wrote a profoundly mystical and symbolic book meant to draw us into the moral spiritual realm above our material human existence. That is the place where we find sufficient grasp on the ultimate truth of God’s divine personal character to discern how He does business in this fallen realm of existence.

This makes the content utterly timeless, reaching across the threshold of time-space awareness into Eternity with Hebrew symbolism. Our human minds are lost immediately, as evidenced by our total inability to think in terms without time-space limitations. So our human minds belong here inside this time-space bubble, but our hearts were made to operate on the imponderable truths of Eternity. John addressed the heart-mind level of awareness.

The symbolism invites us to explore moral reality, an awareness of God’s moral character as expressed in Creation. He calls us to leave behind this land of shadows and deceptions of apparent reality. We are compelled to operate in this Shadowlands with an inescapable connection to our senses and reason, but we don’t rely on those faculties to guide us to what is good and right. Moral truth comes down into the brain from the heart-mind awareness, the only part of us capable of hearing God’s voice.

So you can read the moralistic preaching of commentators who represent the elitist banking plutocrats and fear the typical reactions of humanity when they find out they’ve been had. Or you can learn to evaluate how there is plenty of blame to go around because human instinct ignores the heart-mind awareness. You can learn from John’s Apocalypse that this world is doomed and not worth saving, but that we are here to reflect divine glory. Yes, there will be unrest, a shredding of social norms that didn’t fit God’s moral reality in the first place. One evil system will be replaced by another evil system. We are just along for the ride and have no real commitment to what happens here.

We are called to live according to that otherworldly focus John promotes in his writing. Learn to recognize the handiwork and footprints of angelic messengers in Creation, pouring out God’s wrath on human systems that run in cycles.

I’m using windfalls to purchase stuff I believe will help me bring Him glory. There is a certain limited worldly savvy at work in my choices, limited mostly by whatever I can best perceive as God’s plans at that moment. It’s not about the stuff; it’s about His glory. And while my human instincts might feel jerked around, as if God were toying with me for His own amusement, my heart knows that having this nice stuff just for a short time is itself evidence of His divine mercy and compassion. He provides for the missions to which He calls us, and takes away things that hinder.

The Apocalypse isn’t a mere point in history, but the revelation of God’s own nature portrayed against human fallen nature.

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Meta: Two Pieces Up

Posted on February 11, 2016 by ehurst

I’ve updated one booklet to the newer HTML format: Biblical Law: Divine Justice is now one single webpage (no longer available). I’ve also folded together a couple of previous articles on logic into one: Logic Games: Doctrine of the Fall. I’ll try to work on some more today, so this post may be updated.

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Cycling: Hard Ride to Edmond

Posted on February 10, 2016 by ehurst

3400S-I35SvcRdEdomondIt wasn’t my intent, but turning this into a hard training ride was about all that was left. We had a south wind and rising temperatures today. I took advantage of it and rode north to Lake Arcadia on Midwest Boulevard. I got to Memorial Road in really good time, turned left and hit it almost head-on because it was actually more like a SSW wind. So I crossed the bridge-dam and turned right along I-35 Service Road. Low and behold was this little gem sitting near the road (image upper left). It’s an ancient water tower in front of an equally ancient cabin and barn.

BoysRanchTownEdmondUp and around the corner to the right is the Boys Ranch Town. That’s a Southern Baptist thing; it’s been moved once or twice over the decades. When I was in college it was still north of Downtown OKC around NW63rd and Pennsylvania Avenue. That location is now a billion-dollar business park called “Waterford.” The current facility is huge, with at least a half-dozen very large homes. They fit right in out here with the mansions; I assure you the palatial samples of conspicuous consumption got downright tiresome.

ParkClosed1And while the terrain was hilly and a good workout, the experience itself kind of went downhill, so to speak.ParkClosed2 The first park was new and still under construction. I straightened up the banner on the gate so it was readable. The second one said I had to pay cash just to come in the gate and look around. I’ve never thought highly of Edmond’s City government, so this offers no real surprise.

ColtraneNnrNE122ndOKCSo I simply reversed course westward on Edmond’s SE 15th (same as OKC’s NE 164th) and rode to Coltrane. That’s the same as Sunnylane Road farther south, but it changes around the point where it crosses the North Canadian. Anyway, the perspective on this little camera disguises what a monster hill that was looking back down toward the turnpike. Most of this was familiar terrain from previous rides and I just kept my head down and my legs cranking. By now the headwind from the south was stiff and I had to shed some clothing, but I made it back in decent time. It was about 35 miles.

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Rejoice: Prayers Answered

Posted on February 10, 2016 by ehurst

New neighbors next door are Christian people; a different flavor but decent folks. I prayed for their welcome and welfare. A couple weeks later their car got creamed in an intersection — just an inch behind the driver’s door. The other driver fully admitted the fault. But then they were turned away for a replacement vehicle by a couple of local car dealers. So I prayed again. Week later they had a new car that they could afford.

You already know about the prayer requests regarding the new workstation and router. Got what I really wanted and started learning about networking protocols, etc. I’m about there, and I trust God the DD-WRT Project will offer a good firmware package soon.

We got a decent tax refund this year. Our apartment maintenance had to scrounge for appliances before we moved in here. They are awful pieces of original equipment from the 1970s, just barely usable. So I prayed we could get new ones with the tax refund. I also prayed we could stay below a certain budget line and have enough left over to pay off my wife’s smartphone. Tonight we found said new appliances in our price range and they will be delivered Saturday.

Oh, and pastor now has to learn how to use his iPhone 5S that Sprint gave us free today.

And if God wants to take it all back from us tomorrow, it’s His in the first place. We had hoped these things could be useful to keep the ministry going here. We give Him glory for meeting our requests and it’s even frightening how these and other prayers have been granted. Let me pray for you, too.

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