End of Semester Hiatus

Our apologies. Papers and Exams have been my life of late. But in between those two things, we have been able to fit in a murder mystery party, a BBQ where we had a slam dunk contest "Monsterball Style" (see picture). I only beat one person out of 15, but I was the guy grillin' so my focus was on the meat, otherwise... Kim and I are driving to Hillsdale, MI tomorrow at 5 am and we will return to Mass May 8. We will also spend sometime in Rogers City, my hometown, and celebrate my brother's college graduation and both of my parent's 50th birthday. So we will hopefully have a lot to say and write. I should mention that Joel left a great link in the comments section of the post below. And just so you know that I have not been slacking, here is a paragraph from my exegesis paper on 1 Tim 3:17 (under the picture), which is about the qualifications for an overseer/pastor (the strange words are actually Greek text, which are not accepted by Blogger and are crudely transliterated: This is the only occurrence of neo,futoj in the New Testament. In the LXX neo,futoj has the meaning of a newly planted plant (Ps 128:3, Job 14:9). tufwqei.j literally means "to wrap in smoke," but "the New Testament always used metaphorically in the passive in the sense of being ‘puffed up’ with pride."1 tou/ diabo,lou, here in the singular with the article, refers specifically to the devil and not to some slanderous person in the church (cf. 2 Tim 2:26).2 tou/ diabo,lou could be either a subjective or an objective genitive. If it is subjective, then it is the devil who is passing judgment on the new convert, but if it is objective, then the convert is coming under the same condemnation that God passed on the devil. More than likely this should be understood as an objective genitive because throughout the Bible it is God who passes judgments, not Satan, who can only accuse us before God. In this case, the prideful new convert will be humbled. The verse should be viewed as a temporal punishment and not necessarily viewed as eternal punishment.

He is Risen!

Mark 16:1 When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus' body. 2 Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb 3 and they asked each other, "Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?" 4 But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. 5 As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed. 6 "Don't be alarmed," he said. "You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him.

Happy Birthday Laura Jane!!!

Our precious little neighbor girl, who has been mentioned in many posts, turned 1 year old yesterday. For those who have visited us and met Laura Jane, you know how cute she is, but with each day and each new developement she gets even more adorable. Currently, she is trying to say "Lukey" and "Kimmy" and we hope to be the first non-family names added to her vocabulary. I (Kim) hate to say it, but I think Lukey might be her favorite of the two of us. I would like to say that he has an unfair advantage because I come home shortly before her bedtime and he has more daytime hours for games of peek-a-boo. However, they had a bonding experience recently when I got stuck at work and Lukey had to babysit. Despite the fact that within 15 minutes she got a bloody lip on the toy box and fell off the couch, when I got there she wouldn't come to me at all and Lukey had to feed her and rock her to sleep. She is a little girl after our own heart as her favorite toys are books, and we can only hope our children have as extensive of a library as she has. She also loves cows and often moos (the cutest thing EVER!!!) Can you tell we're a little infatuated with this little girl??? Her 1st birthday party was a blast (as you can see from the pictures). Surprisingly, she wasn't a fan of her cake, although she dove into it as if she were in a pie eating contest - hands back, head first. She did seem to like the whip cream frosting though. Tell me, how could you not be absolutely in love with this little girl??

Tourney Troubles

For most of us, the NCAA tournament ended a long time ago, at least as far as our brackets are concerned. By far this was my worst year. Out of the 65 people in my tournament group, "Where's Grandma?" I beat only 4 people and one of them was an infant. Congratulations go out to Rev. Matt Schramm who won our pool by 40 points and beat 97.9% of the 3 million entries at ESPN.com. The frustrating thing about this horrific showing on my part is that it will affect how I choose next year. I will remember which teams let me down (You know who you are Iowa and Pitt!) and will punish them with 1st or 2nd round losses when I fill out my 2007 brackets. Can't wait for Selection Sunday '07!

CBD Warehouse Sale

Today was the big CBD (Christian Book Distributors) Warehouse Sale, which is located about 20 mins down the road. The doors opened at 7 am and we were in line behind about 50 people at 5:50 am. Inside the warehouse, they have these bargain tables where books and other items are almost all at least 50% off and many are 75% to 95% off. The areas are divided into numerous sections with the to most popular being the Academic area for seminarians and pastors and the Homeschooling sections for the myriad of homeschool mothers and the children she has forced to come along to carry all the books around. It was quite the scene. In the end I was able to add over $1500 worth of books to my library at the reasonable cost of $260 including two complete commentary sets and two partial sets. I can't wait for the next one in September!