almanac of captivity

The title is in reference to this post from a few months ago. And to the Sports Illustrated cover story featuring the brightest spot in Giants-land for some time.

Read the article here.

Laura and I are in South Florida, visiting her family.

We are, among other things, eating very well and enjoying the company.

[By the way, Abraham Piper would be proud. Before this bracketed edit, this post was exactly twenty-two words.]

Gas is crazy high. The housing market has dumped itself out. But I still think that the economy is still stable (even if in a slight downturn). I know it’s not any sort of real analysis or measurement–but it seems that when lots of folks still have enough expendable income to drop $5 to $7 on a fancy coffee drink, there probably isn’t a crisis quite yet.

(Unless, of course, those folks are just dumb, or they are putting those beverages on a mountain-high credit card tab. Both real possibilities).

I can’t believe its already been a year. It’s been a great year–the best year of my life.
Thank you, Laura, for your love and your patience and just plain wonderful-ness! You make my life brighter and better. Most importantly, you help to make me more like Jesus. I am looking forward to dozens more days like this ahead, where we can. celebrate our love and life together. By God’s grace, there will be many, many more!

I love you!

Danny

You can drink water out of a cup, a hose, a river, a shatter-proof bottle, or run through a complex filtration and distribution system. But it’s still the water itself that hydrates you. It’s the only thing that does.

You can disseminate the Gospel through tracts, personal conversation, crusades, blogs, cell phones, laptops, or PDAs (as I type this on my BlackBerry). It’s still the Gospel, and only the Gospel, that is God’s power to salvation.

It’s only as good as what you’re conserving.

16 And I will lead the blind
in a way that they do not know,
in paths that they have not known
I will guide them.
I will turn the darkness before them into light,
the rough places into level ground.
These are the things I do,
and I do not forsake them.
17 They are turned back and utterly put to shame,
who trust in carved idols,
who say to metal images,
You are our gods.

Verse 17 shows that there are really two options for all men: the true and living God, or an idol. The result for the second group is clear, here and elsewhere: shamed with shame (as the Hebrew literally reads). What brings this shame is the deliverance of the Lord from verse 16 most immediately, and in the greater context of this passage more generally. When the Lord leads the blind, miraculously creating paths and roads through the impossible terrain ahead, it shames those who worship wood and metal. Why? Because they are turned back. The darkness stays dark and the rough places stay rough, impassable. The mighty hand of Israel’s God shames the foolish worshippers of created things. These folks trust in logs chipped out with a hammer and chisel to blaze their trail. But their gods were the dregs of a previously blazed trail—a chopped down tree. They provide no hope, yet they are still trusted by men. When the need arises for deliverance, then the gods or God of one’s hope proves itself. And it is too late to change. Of course, these (as seen in 41:5-7) are so hardened in their idolatry that they would not change at any rate. They are shamed with shame, because the LORD is God alone, and he works powerfully for his own.
This verse points to the idolatry as rooted in the issue of trust. Trust is directly related to worship (either holy or damnable). To trust something is to call it “god”. Here the parallelism points to this. Trusting in carved idols stands synonymously parallel with saying to an image “You are my god.” And the fundamental issues is trust-worthiness. A carved-out log or a beaten-out piece of metal stands impotent, and so shame with shame must follow. This is a deathly choice, and we must be wary of our tendency toward trust in something that will not save, short-term or long-term. Only the LORD our God is worthy of trust and only he turns darkness into light and the rough places into level paths. Ultimately, in Jesus was the darkness dispelled and the smooth (though narrow) way blazed. He is the trail-blazer of our faith, and the only trust-worthy One in the universe. It all distills down into trust, because everyone trusts in something. Worshipping God as God means trusting God and what he has done in Jesus, realizing that that faithfulness will operate within the nooks and crannies of the tiny parts of our own lives.

From Saturday night until Tuesday evening, Laura and I had the privilage of caring for a precious little girl named Nadia. She brought a lot of joy and laughter into our home. Like a streak of brightness shocks the sky, Nadia was here and we were grateful to see the full brilliance of that brief light. Even if only for a few days.

Check out WikiWalki, a site my good buddy Danny Beardsley designed. It allows users to customize hiking, walking, or even four-wheeling trails using Google Maps.

Eric posted this:

My brothers are right - this kind of news has to be blogged by me, not them. They feel the pressure to not miss anything in translation, but like a game of “telephone”, things can get mis-spoken inadvertently.  

Kent’s blog “The first hurdle has been cleared” is correct in its detail, but I feel the need to clarify a bit. No offense, Kent!  I’ve been covering for you since we were wee lads!

Kent wasn’t in the room, and I was, so I need to convey to you the power this moment had. I felt a pang of pity as this highly intelligent and greatly skilled neurosurgeon struggled to explain why, 15 minutes earlier, he had been explaining the course of action necessary to unlock Connor’s vertebrae, and now he’s trying to explain the unexplainable - he doesn’t need to straighten the vertebrae anymore!

“For some reason”, Connor’s vertebrae are now aligned.  Hallelujah!  ”For some reason”, between the X-ray this morning and the latest, the vertebrae unlocked from each other, moved to the right place, and allowed Connor’s spinal cord to lose it’s S-bend.  Praise the Lord!

The beauty of this moment is that we are familiar with The Reason. Even more, Cherié and I were very specifically praying that Connor’s spine would realign by today, as were many of you. Wow! What an answer to prayer.

As we were standing in the doorway to Connor’s room, praising God for this answer to prayer, we overheard the surgeon speaking to one of the nurses.  We couldn’t hear what he said, but her response was “Well, I guess miracles do happen!

Yes, they do.