CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE – This e-mail transmission, and any documents, files or previous e-mail messages attached to it may contain information that is confidential or legally privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, or a person responsible for delivering it to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that you must not read this transmission and that any disclosure, copying, printing, distribution or use of any of the information contained in or attached to this transmission is STRICTLY PROHIBITED. If you have received this transmission in error, please immediately notify the sender by telephone or return e-mail and delete the original transmission and its attachments without reading or saving in any manner. Thank you.

Please note:

1. This disclaimer comes at the END of the message, after I’ve already read it.

2. It tells me that if I am not the intended recipient, I am prohibited from reading it.

What does this tell you about the intelligence level of the average spammer? Genii?? I think not!

P. S. I plan to get to some serious blogging soon. I know it’s been a bit light lately.

BREAKING NEWS: The epicenter of the quake has been pinpointed to a graveyard outside of DC, where all our Founding Fathers just rolled over in their graves due to current leadership in Washington.

A friend of mine posted this on Facebook, I  thought it was funny, so am passing it along.

Today, Wayne Gretzky, unarguably the greatest hockey player ever, turns 50 years old. I remember watching him play pro hockey when he was just a teenager. He sure was fun to watch. And I know exactly where I was when THE TRADE came down. I’ll never forget that day. That night my wife and I stayed up till midnight listening to a sports talk radio show. We were traumatized! (Well, maybe that is a little overstated!)

I’m just going to give you a few links here, then make a point. Just notice, however, that in Canada, Wayne’s 50th is big news.

• Our local paper has a photo gallery (we don’t have a pro hockey team, but Wayne’s first training camp as an LA King was here).
• The Toronto Globe and Mail, sort of a national paper for Canada, has a story.
• Of course, The Sports Network, one of our Canadian sports channels, has multiple stories, but this is the big headline one for the day.
• Not to be outdone, Sportsnet, our other sports channel has their own versions. Here is a column by Mark Spector.
• And the National Post, our other national newspaper, has numerous articles, including this one on THE TRADE.

Now, what to make of all this?

Do we not, in our society, make gods of men (and a few women) whose only contribution to our society is fleeting entertainment?

Do we not, by so doing, make these gods because of the emotional highs we get from their performances?

Shouldn’t we, as Christians, put fences around our hearts and guard where we place our affections?

“My name is Don…

“I am a blogger…”

This was due to Dr. Bob’s noted antipathy for blogs.

My wife has typically shared his view and can’t imagine what I find so compelling about my blog. Until today! She found a use for ‘blog’…

She scored 38 points with it AGAINST ME in Scrabble tonight! The Nerve!!!

I still won, though… I got most of the good letters, and we really boxed ourselves in, couldn’t get into the upper left quadrant at all.

For those scoring at home, she stuck blog on underneath OR to make ORB, the DO came later.

It was a great way to spend a Sunday evening. My wife made a tremendous effort with mostly vowels the whole night. She tends to be a better positional player than me, I’m always looking for the big plays, especially the seven letter words.

Obesity levels have risen dramatically in research animals and others living close to humans, suggesting environmental factors are encouraging everyone to gain weight, according to new findings in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

You can read the whole thing here (free subscription might be required).

So… it isn’t that you eat too much.

Or that you are a lazy couch potato.

It’s the environment. Naturally. I knew that.

I’ve just been scanning in some photos my mom took back when I was a shadow of my present self. I am glad to know that I can blame it all on the environment.

And I thought all my Yankee friends might feel better after their Thanks-gorging to know this.

You’re welcome.

But really, what is Dave trying to say in his post? This is what I am getting:

1. I get the part that Biblical truth is timeless. I think that is what Dave means by ‘this’.
2. I get the part that the way we use the timeless principles to address real life issues is called applications. I think this is what Dave means by ‘that’.
3. As we progress in the discussion of ‘this’ and ‘that’, it seems that Dave is saying that applications are relative, dependant on the context of the times. Does that mean that applications change over time? Could we have some examples?
4. There appear to be different categories of relationship between ‘this’ and ‘that’.
1. First, there is potential for disagreement among Christians because not everyone sees the connection between ‘this’ and ‘that’ in the same way. (And as long as we agree on the ‘this’ we need to give latitude to others on the ‘that’.)
2. Next, there is a possibility that ‘that’ could lead to a violation of ‘this’. While we should be concerned about the possibility, as long as we agree on ‘this’, we should still give latitude over differences in ‘that’.
5. When ‘that’ is elevated to the same level as ‘this’, trouble occurs, unless ‘that’ equals ‘this’, but not all agree and as long as ‘that’ doesn’t equal ‘this’, we should allow one another latitude in ‘that’.
6. If differences over ‘that’ lead to questions about motives, we err and do not the truth. Instead, differences over ‘that’ should result in ‘open, constructive debate’. (Dialogue, anyone?)
7. The key is to start talking about the Scriptures – the ‘this’. We’ll get so in harmony over ‘this’, ‘that’ will be irrelevant. Your ‘that’ is different from my ‘that’? No problem, bro, we’re in sync on ‘this’, fill your boots!

Is ‘that’ all clear? Maybe I should have said, is ‘this’ all clear? What is ‘this’, anyway? Should we be in agreement about ‘this’? How do I know? I could have been talking about ‘that’ all along while someone else is talking about ‘this’.

‘This’ is extremely confusing. (But be careful how you explain it to me, you wouldn’t want to get into the motives thing, you know.)

P.S. Please take this in a light-hearted spirit. I think I get what Dave is saying, but, wow, trying to wade through all the ‘this’es and ‘that’s is getting to me!

“Conservatives were contemptuous of [his] pulpit pyrotechnics, dubious of the validity of the sudden conversions he achieved, and sure that the church would degrade itself by diluting its message and making religion ‘easy’ for the common man.”

So… who is the preacher I mask by ‘[his]’ and when is the historical setting?

No Googling!

But what else can you do for a hockey fix in the middle of summer?

HT: From the Rink

“Somebody told me one time that you know you are getting old when you know all the answers but nobody asks you the questions.”