28 February, 2021
American Fast
01 November, 2020
A Brokenhearted Ebenezer
The Ebenezer stone was precious, even though it was erected in the middle of a mess.
Samuel (1 Sam 7:10) stands up the Ebenezer stone saying, "Thus far the LORD has helped us." They had just been granted a big deliverance from and victory over the Philistines (after 20 years of failure), and they now have a big chunk of the promised land. They called on the LORD, instead of trying to do it all in their own strength, and he answered. They had "done good", and they had done it by the LORD's mercy.
The moment deserved to be commemorated. Their thankfulness was utterly appropriate. Their worship was timely.
And soon they called for God to let them follow a king instead of him. Soon they chased after idols. Soon they followed Saul into pride. Later they let their idolatry offend God so much the North and then the South were carried into captivity. After such glory and promise, their story continued to be filled to the top and overflowing with shame.
After centuries of loss, after all the pain and shame, they returned from Babylon to Israel. The Ebenezer stone was still standing there.
What were they to make of that stone 500 years later, after 500 years of shame and failure, 500 years of shattered promise?
Did that stone now testify against them? Did it mock them? Did it, 500 years later, tell them "no further will God help you, after all you've done"?
I look back, and my life is filled with forgotten Ebenezers, moments that the LORD delivered me by grace and following moments when I failed all over again. There are many of those places God fought to turn me toward Him, to grow me toward truth, and where he succeeded only to have me find some new way to fail all over again. There are many places I grew toward him and not away, only to fail all over again.
I have hid my face in shame from those pregnant moments all these years. I could not bear to remember the face plant following each of them. I remember where the LORD took my hand and brought me "thus far" only to watch me stumble again from the path.
It helps a little to see each Ebenezer as, rather than a boundary, a mile marker. I can hold my progress "thus far" precious as I remember the markers laid down those sad years ago, and remember mile marker flowed after mile marker. If I can remember each Ebenezer, maybe I can believe there's another left to me, somewhere out there, another place to which the LORD will take further.
Perhaps, God still has a beautiful plan for my life.
11 October, 2020
Me and My House
In Joshua 24, Joshua himself tells the people to choose whether they will worship their old gods, or YHWH, who had loved and saved them. As for him and his house, they would serve the LORD.
The people agree to do the same as Joshua. Joshua responds by saying they think they can, but they cannot. They will fail, because God is a jealous God.
In Sunday School I learned today something of what Joshua meant when he said those words.
No god, before that time, had ever been jealous.
The people of Israel had some history in Babylon, lots of history in Egypt, and a growing history of Canaanite religions in their toolbags. They knew the gods. They were men of the world, and they knew how things worked. What's more, Joshua knew they knew.
Today, if you want your car fixed, you go to a mechanic. If you want your back fixed, you go to a chiropractor. If you are having allergies, you go to CVS and pick up some Benadryl. In each case, you provide the same things: you describe your need, you lay down some money, you go out and do something with the guidance you receive.
In Joshua's day, if you wanted a good crop you offered a part of your dinner to the god of crops. If you wanted children you made a larger offering to the fertility god. If you were headed out to battle you offered something huge to the god of war. The gods of storms, of sun, of rivers were the CVS, the Well Fargo Bank, and the 401k's of their time. You went to the appropriate god, laid down something of value to the god, and went out to do the things the god would bless.
None of those gods was jealous. No more than CVS is mad when you put money in your 401k, or Wells Fargo hates when you visit your mechanic, did Ba'al hate when you offered good things to Astarte. Dealings with the gods were business. The gods had needs and so did the people, so one could scratch their backs and hope they would scratch happily back in the right place. Joshua told the people YHWH was like some giant amazon.com in the sky offering every service, in the midst of the great economy of gods, and if they transacted with any god but YHWH he would destroy them. YHWH was jealous.
Joshua's words were so foreign the people quickly agreed to them without even noticing they had no idea what he was talking about. The Book of Judges reveals just how short the people fell from understanding what they affirmed.
I think we find ourselves in the same situation.
The Holy Spirit has promised to guide us into all truth, but we mingle our ideologies. Confronted with a ballot, we consult the god of capitalism for guidance, the god of socialism, the gods of Wall Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. We hear the multiplied voices of those who decry abortion or gun violence screaming in our ears, and we seek out the right crowd to follow.
Jesus warns us broad is the way and many are those who travel in it.
Today, in this environment, I'm not sure yet I understand Jesus or the guidance of his Holy Spirit any better than those enthused Israelites who knew exactly the right words to shout to Joshua.
13 September, 2020
The Righteous Live Together
17 July, 2020
Battle Flags Cannot Heal
22 June, 2020
Listening to Experiences Not Our Own
25 December, 2019
Le Poignard
Maybe...
Or maybe I'm obsessed with not switching between keyboard and mouse!
I'd like to introduce my newest dictionary, the Poniard. The poniard is the left-handed dagger of Steno. It was used in place of a shield during polite European swordplay, and was quite the discovery. A poniard was easier to carry when shopping for the Mrs. than even the smallest shield, allowed the user to be offensive, and generally looked cool on a gentleman's hip. Now, just like a dashing Renaissance swordmaster, anyone will be able to sally forth in style while fending off rude emails.
This steno poniard is a left-handed dictionary. Using it, I'm able to type 99% of anything I'd ever type with both hands, but without releasing the mouse at any point. It's perfect for all flavors of editing. With the right hand firmly wielding the mouse I slash the cursor madly wherever I have text to expunge, cut it with the left, click again where it needs pasting, drop it in with the left, and fly bravely into the next grammatical disaster to begin again.
Using nothing but my trusty poniard, I am able to type this paragraph entire (to include arrowing around and adding random punctuation - like! and? 4 no good "reason", or 'cause' if you'd rather. And, yes, the lowly ` and * can be found.) Things like [], {}, and <> are present, of course, as are =, +, ^, and /. I tweaked the number system so 1234567890,10,11,12 are all available through the Nimble Number System and added the traditional punctuation marks with them. Shift-8 gives you a *. I've also built in F 1-12 with any one of shift, control, and alt.
Yes, that paragraph entire was typed using the poniard. My right hand was lazily draped across the back of the couch the entire time. I achieved a stunning 3 words per minute doing so. Needless to say, that's with no muscle memory, since I just finished building it, but I'm beginning to feel the love. A year from now, I'd love to be up to 20 words per minute with it. That's okay, because I intend to use it mostly as an editing enabler.
Things like arrowing around, pasting, deleting, and typing individual letters to make a plural of a lonely word work great with this system. Things like alt-F4 and ctrl-W are breathtakingly easy. It was actually made to ctrl-A, ctrl-C, ctrl-V and does so with STKPWRO/KRO*/SRO*.
You'll recognize the C and the V, and gather adding an O adds the control key to the stroke. The A is the new stroke there, being STKPWR (best read as Z+R). It's always been the vowels that killed any singlehanded system, and not just E and U. Every consonant can be made using the 7 keys of the left fingers. It's the vowels that stubbornly refuse to fit. I've treated the left-hand keyboard as 7 keys plus 4 modifiers (being the #, *, A, and O). Using those 11 keys, I've generated something like 250 strokes. It's a bit tight, but I've tried to impose some order.
The consonants are unchanged. The vowels are all Z-based. Z+R=A, Z+R*=O, Z+H=E, Z+H*=U, Z+HR*=I. Yes, I is a full mash of all finger keys. Adding the traditional steno A-key adds "shift" to the letter. That's how you make a capital letter. Adding O adds "control". Adding AO does not add "shift-control" to the letter, as you might expect, but adds "alt". So, you can add the 3 main modifiers to the keys, but not in combinations like shift-control or alt-control. So far, that's not hurt me. If I deem it necessary, I've got an idea for that, but it will be complex and I'm going to let the stuff I have sink in a bit before I try to go that far.
The action keys, like return, backspace, delete, page up and down, tab, et cetera are all available and use the patterns already proven in the Nimble Single Stroke Commands dictionary. Again, adding shift, control, and alt is done the same way as the letters.
The function keys were a little tricky, but I've gone with the Nimble Number System again, and this time added *. So, hitting a nimble 8+* will give you F8. Add an O to that, and you have control-F8.
And then things get even stickier. Sorry. It's the best I was able to do, and I'm getting quite comfortable with it. The next 16 patterns are all just shape-based.
SKWH: ,.!?
STPR :;/\
SKPH ([{<
STWR "'`*
Make the shape to get the first character in the list. Add A for the second, add O for the third, add AO for the fourth. And then, if you add * to any shape, you get a variation of the plain character. You might get a close bracket or a space-less version of the same punctuation.
Just one more note to make here. I lost two left-hand-only briefs that I cared about. Other's mileage may vary. I lost KPA* to force upper case without a space. At the same time, I needed a way to force lowercase as well, so I put all that on STK. STK forces lower, STK* forces upper case, and STKA* forces a blank space then upper. If you feel more need to keep using KPA than to have X, though, you can just add a KPA* at the end of the dictionary to override the dictionary's default.
# Give the left hand ability to force to "lower", "upper", and "upper with space" commands
values['STK'] = '{^^}'
values['STK*'] = '{^}{-|}'
values['STKA*'] = '{}{-|}'
And then I needed to replace WR for were. I used WE*R. Again, if you don't expect to need the right arrow, you can create an override and get it back.
# Add-ons to make up for briefs we've overwritten
# Replace WR (were)
values['W*ER'] = 'were'
Okay. That about does it for a first introduction. If enough people think this has potential and want documentation I'm sure I can be persuaded. Here's hoping someone else thinks it's a useful idea.
Poniard