"From my mother's womb you have been my God."

Yet you are he who took me from the womb;
you made me trust you at my mother’s breasts.
On you was I cast from my birth,
and from my mother’s womb you have been my God. - Psalm 22:9, 10 (ESV)

Today I went with my wife to her first prenatal doctor's appointment. We got to listen to the little one's heartbeat for the very first time. It was beating precisely in double-time with the mother's (our baby's already got rhythm!). It was very eye-opening, opening the door wide into parenthood, making the experience much more tangible and real. We are very excited and grateful for the amazing gift that the Lord has given us!

Butte County Lightnight Fires Update

I know Chico is a small community and I'm grossly limiting my readership by focusing on what's going on here in the North Valley, but this is a pretty huge deal. These fires are the state's #1 priority right now. Probably there are people all over the world who have never heard of this town who are finding out about Butte County because of news reports on these fires.

So there's some hillbilly holed up in Concow who's shooting at any firefighters or police who come near his property. Firefighters can't use their bulldozers to clear brush because this guy's shooting at them. Crazy loon. Some rednecks just need to go to jail.

P.S. Stay inside. This means you, too, my lovely pregnant wife! I know our nieces are rowdy, but I don't want everybody getting respiratory illnesses!

Butte County Lightnight Fire Complex - Stay Inside!

According to KPAY,

10:00 AM Update: Air Quality Officials say Chico currently has the worst air in the state. Officials yesterday forecast air quality at over 200…today they are forecasting air quality at 250. Gail Williams with Butte County Air Quality says it’s the highest level ever. She says the air is unhealthy for everybody, and suggests staying indoors and limiting physical activity.

Make sure you keep the windows shut, and set the a/c in your car to recirculate instead of vent...

Challies: Betraying God in Worship

Tim Challies has just written a great article on the importance of
meaning the words we sing when we worship the Lord with hymns and song.

http://www.challies.com/archives/christian-living/feelings-of-affection.php

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The Sovereignty of God and the Humboldt Fire

Because of the temporal and geographical proximity of the event, and the tight-knit community where we live, last Sunday (June 15), Pastor Patrick took a break from the Matthew series to bring a special message about the Sovereignty of God, in order to help our members, attendees, and podcast listeners to be able to provide an answer to people who ask, "How could God allow something like this?" Here is a brief summary of the sermon.

In Luke 13, when some Jews told Jesus about some catastrophic events, they were coming with a mindset that said if bad things like this happen to you, it's probably a result of your sin. But when Jesus replied, he said, "If you do not repent, you will likewise perish." Similarly, on 9/11, some "Christian" preachers claimed that it was God's wrath against the businesses residing within the Twin Towers. But Jesus indicates in Luke 13 that all who survive or are spared from such events, remain only by God's mercy, and not because of their own lack of sin.

The parable of the fig tree in Luke 13, coming directly after this discourse, speaks of providing additional time for the tree to bear fruit. It is a picture of God's grace in forbearance. Every person who remains after a catastrophe is given an additional opportunity to repent.

God is sovereign over every home destroyed, every blade of grass set ablaze. But why is there suffering? First, it is because of sin. No one is an innocent victim. Lamentations 3 says, "Why should a living man complain about the punishment of his sins?" Second, suffering serves God's purpose (cf. Genesis 50:20). Third, to bring about salvation (Acts 4:24-28). If there was no suffering, we would not have the atonement of the Cross. Fourth, suffering exists to glorify God (John 9).

For believers, suffering shows us our weakness (1 Cor. 7). It makes our hearts more upright (James 5:7-11) by forcing us to be dependent on God. It also conforms us to Christ (Philippians 3:7-12), who was well-acquainted with grief. Do you want Christ more than anything else, even your own comfort? Your life? Finally, suffering is destructive to sin. It is the discipline of God (Hebrews 12), his refining fire.

No matter what, God is good, and he is in control, so trust him. If you are a Christian, nothing will separate you from the love of God in Christ (Romans 8:31-39).

Download the sermon audio
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My First Father's Day

Our beautiful, romantic new bed/ding

Never thought I'd be sleeping on a pink pillow. Marriage will do that
to a man...

My wife is a poet

My lovely wife, Christina, is a gifted poet. Here is a link to a poem she recently posted on her own blog at howvast.blogspot.com.

My family loves me!

Happy Firefox Download Day!

Today is download day for Firefox 3, the latest version of Mozilla's awesome web browser.

For those of you who don't know, Internet Exploder is rather unstable and prone to exploits, so when I have to help friends or family fix their computers after such a malicious attack by spammers or hackers, I always recommend that they stop using IE and make the switch to the more secure Firefox. As Tim Challies put so well, "If you are still using Internet Explorer, well, it's time to upgrade!."

Today Mozilla is trying to set a world record for most downloads in a single day, so get yourself over to www.spreadfirefox.com and get yourself a free copy!

Sent from my iPhone

Jason & Jessie

Jason and Jessie are getting married right now!

Okay, so it's still going...

This is the view of the Humboldt Fire from Lupine Ave.

Contained!

This is all that's left of the fire. View from Eaton and Floral. The whole city is filled with smoke, though. It reminds me of southern California.

Five Months

I am now taking a moment to reflect on something that makes this day very special.

Today marks five wonderful months of marriage for me and my beautiful wife. I gave her a card, but those always seem inadequate: the pre-packaged nature of the business forces them to write to the proverbial middle.

Christina, you mean so very much to me. More than I could ever say. The rest of my life will be spent as a humble learner under your tutelage as I learn how to dwell with you with understanding, until every look, every sigh, every motion, every word from me becomes not an annoyance, but a joy.

You are beautiful, my Love. Your eyes are doves. You have captivated my heart, my sister, my bride; you have captivated my heart with one glance of your eyes. Your love is better than wine.

Humboldt Fire Video

markmnorcal has some excellent footage of the fire in Paradise.



(I can't vouch for the soundtrack. Some of you older citizens may want to turn down the volume.)

The 2008 Humbolt Fire

This is the view looking south from the front door at work.

The fire has been going for over 24 hours. Yesterday the wind was blowing South, but judging by this cloud, it's blowing west now, towards the city. KPAY has a link to a Google Maps page depicting the burn zone and evacuation areas. There are a lot of people from work who live in Paradise, so this is more than an inconvenience for them and their families.

Foundations of Grace

Friends have been telling me about Steven J. Lawson's book Foundations of Grace for a very long time, and I finally got it, although I must admit I'm still in John MacArthur's (wonderful) introduction. Foundations of Grace is Volume 1 of a planned 5-volume set, and the first one covers the period of time coinciding with the lives of the men whose stories are told in the Old and New Testaments.

Steven J. Lawson also has mp3s of his sermons on his website. This mp3 series goes along with the subjects of his book series, one of the purposes of which is to show that the Doctrines of Grace have been the orthodox theological understanding throughout the history of God's covenant people.

(Note: I had intended to provide a link to these mp3s sooner, but their site was down for several days.)

My awesome wife...

I LOVE finding love notes in my lunch box!

How do you rate as a 1930s-era spouse?

My lovely wife Christina found this on Paul's blog and suggested I take it. Here's my score:

149 As a 1930s husband, I am Very Superior Take the test!

Bam!

New iPhone announced

It's coming out June 11 and will cost only $199! Happy Birthday, Honey!

(View keynote address.)

New iPhone leaked

Apple's been keeping this a secret for a very, very long time. We weren't supposed to find out about this until Steve Jobs' keynote address at the Apple Developers Conference tomorrow morning. But someone has leaked it.

CNET Asia has a blog with all the goods.

If there's no pink one, I'm going to need to get a case mod for my wife...

A happy guy enjoying God's gifts...

There's a Bible study going on at my brother-in-law's on the other side of town tonight. I'm not there because I'm on-call at work and have to babysit the servers. But my wife just told me that Paul is sitting there with pizza in one hand, and a cookie in the other, and he takes one bite of cookie and takes a bite of pizza to wash it down with before it's been swallowed.

That's hot!

I'll have to try it one day. But for now, I'm just sitting here listening to the Rattle and Hum gospel version of "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For."

(I wanted to get someone to take a picture with their camera phone and e-mail it to me, but no takers...)

New blogging format

Perhaps you've noticed I haven't blogged in a while. One reason is that I've been busy with family life, with my beautiful bride Christina. And another is my busy church life. Another reason I haven't blogged is that I had been intending to upgrade to the latest version of MovableType so that I could take advantage of the CAPTCHA plug-in to block comment spam. But upgrading MovableType is such a pain...

So, I decided to switch from MovableType to Blogger. For one thing, I have high praise for Google's technology, with Gmail's spam fighting technology and smooth Ajaxian interface, their powerful search engine, and cool developer tools like Google Gears.

Another reason for the switch is that MovableType does not work very well on Windows servers, and as a .NET developer, of course my site is hosted on Windows. Also, upgrading MovableType is a pain. With Google's Blogger, the posting interface is online, and their software updates are therefore automatic. This should therefore remove the obstacles to posting new blogs. Oh, and I can also post directly from my iPhone, which is definitely a plus!

Sent from my iPhone