Peter -n- Melodye

FORGIVENESS.  It's at the heart of the Good News.  It's a topic we love to talk *about*.  And yet it's so hard to practice in reality. Forgiveness is not the same as overlooking a fault.  To overlook something is to choose in your mind to say it's just not a big deal -- "s'ka problem!"  Forgiving, on the other hand, means it *is* a big deal and I *am* hurt, but... Ah, that beautiful word, "but"... In many cases conflict comes as a result of a misunderstanding ("Oh, is *that* what you meant?! I thought you meant ...").  When that is the case then when we have corrected the understanding then the issue is over.  No forgiveness is necessary. But when real offense has occurred, when real hurt has been inflicted ... that's when real forgiveness becomes necessary. And being "proven" right or wrong in a given conflict largely becomes a side issue at that point...  Once God breaks past my pride then whether I am...

A few years back I was looking all over the place for some kind of mind-mapping tool to help me in brainstorming and organizing my thoughts. I wanted something intuitive, powerful, flexible, and free. I found nothing that met all of those requirements. Today I was preparing for a sermon and once again thought how nice it would be to not be dependent on something as rigid as an outline in MS Word. I did a quick search and came up with a few options but never got beyond the first one. Freemind is great! Here's what I've put together in just a few minutes... My creativity is much better. I'm FREE! :-)

I have always thought MS Word was a highly dependable piece of software. I've delved fairly deeply into lots of different features and have found some surprises, but nothing that I would classify as a significant bug. Until now. I was helping my wife with a cookbook as a fundraiser for our school. I had collected all the recipes from various people using a web-form (wikiforms via pmwiki) and then exported them to CSV. First MS problem, but Excel rather than Word. Excel refuses to handle multi-line values in CSV as far as I can tell. I used the same data and imported it into OpenOffice Calc and it came in without a hitch. Saved into Excel format and I had the data I wanted. Not overly pleased with M$ at this point, but importing and exporting can be fickle so I'm OK with that. We'll mark them down to a B, but it's with a comforting smile... Now I want to set up a form and merge my data into it. Each recipe includes horizontal lines, lines with right-alignment and...

I am trying to get my head around an idea ... and hoping that writing will help. Feel free to ignore this post... :-) One of the missionaries on our team is interested in starting a small factory to make metal products and sell them in the marketplace. He is a bold evangelist, deeply & internally motivated to make a difference for the Kingdom ... and yet he wants to devote roughly half his "work week" to closing himself into a basement workshop and making inanimate widgets. (Bias noted -- that's why I'm writing the entry! If I didn't have the bias I would just go with it...) So we've asked somebody from outside to come in, a business consultant. This guy has lots of experience and study and wisdom from using the marketplace to make a difference for the kingdom. He's telling me that there is great benefit to being involved in the marketplace, even when it's not needed from a political standpoint, because the depth of relationship that can be r...

Just before Christmas my eldest, Christopher, played one of his songs as a special music number in church. In the spirit of doing my job as his agent I thought I'd put it here on my blog again... (The visual resolution is pretty low, but it's the music we were after -- I thought he did an amazing job!) With no further ado, here is ... [drum roll] CHRISTOPHER!

The whole world should be going crazy about how great my boys played piano at their recent piano recital. Since that's not happening I assume I'm not doing a good enough job getting the word out. So in addition to facebook and youtube I'll try my blog: Christopher - 3 songs Joshua #1 Joshua #2 Jonathan #1 Jonathan #2 Agents need not apply. We're waiting until they finish Juliards before they launch their professional career...

You might remember that the first Christians were called "followers of the Way" (Acts 9:2; 18:25-26). They had found the Way of Life and had given themselves over to it . They lived together, ate together, fought together, celebrated together. They were intimate allies; it was a fellowship of the heart. How wonderful it would be if we could find the samae. How dangerous it will be if we do not. John Eldredge, Waking the Dead, page 183. Emphasis mine. Does anybody else wonder if there's not something bigger, more alive...? I don't think God made me for this level of ... whatever. Life abundant -- what does it mean? Whatever it is, I'm hungry for it, starving for it. Oh, God, answer this prayer of my heart!