10 Reasons Why I Love My Wife

1. She was a cute little girl... and we will have cute little girls.
2. She is real.
3. She likes Frank Sinatra's music.
4. She always tells me how much she loves me... even in a text message.
5. She always encourages me.
6. She is beautiful.
7. She like to snuggle and cuddle and hug.
8. She always wants to spend time with me.
9. Her sins have been atoned for by the precious blood of Jesus, she has been justified by God-given faith, and she has been granted the right to be called a child of God.
10. Christ, not me, is her treasure.

Tree of the Week (5.19.09)

Religious Dessert

So, what is it with desserts and religious terminology?

Here are some common adjectives used with sugary, after-dinner potions:

1. Divine
2. Heavenly
3. Sinful
4. Indulgent

And of course there are "Angel Food Cake" and "Devil's Food Cake."

Who decided that this was a good idea? Why not tasty or delectable like all the other food?

You never hear someone say, "Wow. This pork loin is divine," or "Mmm. This burrito is so sinful." That just sounds dumb.

I doubt heaven will have little brownie-bites that you heat up in the microwave or that anyone will be cast into the lake of fire because he or she ate a truffle. Maybe. But I doubt it.

Let's cut it out.

Tree of the Week (5.12.09)

Red to Green, Death to Life

During a recent outing to the tennis courts, Jordan (Resident Thorns Poet) drove through a rarely green stop-light unabated. Miraculously, he was able to achieve the same feat on the return trip.

"Wow," I mused. "That was incredible. Two green lights in two tries."

"That's right," replied Jordan with a smug glow of self-congratulation as if he had somehow willed the light green.

Jordan's faith in his self-sufficiency (although completely in jest) is a trap that many Christians fall into concerning their salvation (unfortunately not in jest): ascribing to themselves that which only God is capable of.

Jordan had no ability to make the light green, just as the Christian had no ability to call him or herself from death to life. Yet the free-will beast rears its head and Christians claim that they breathed life into their own dead lungs.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

-Ephesians 2:4-10

God made us alive together with Christ.

Figurative Wesley-slayer, Augustus Toplady, put it this way,

"A man's free will cannot cure him even of a toothache or a sore finger, and yet he madly thinks it is in his power to cure his soul of sin."

Tree of the Week (5.5.09)

Under Construction

Thorns is under construction.

I thought I could pull off all of the changes I wanted in an evening, but I was wrong. So if you are a regular visitor to the actual blog there is a reason it looks like a six-week-old paraplegic ape was messing with it. If you usually read Thorns from Facebook or a feed-reader, then you can ignore this post. Thanks for your patience. 

210

I just went into the bathroom to brush my teeth. Rebekah requested that I wait five minutes since she was about to wash her face. I said yes.

With five minutes on my hands I decided to celebrate my 210th blog post. But first I had to write it.

So this post is both the reason for my celebration and the celebration itself.

Thank you to all of you who made this possible.

I will now brush my teeth.

Job the Book

Job the Book by John Piper

I Haven't Decided If I Am a Big Enough Dork...

...to watch the Lord of the Rings fan film, The Hunt for Gollum.

The independent film is 40 minutes long and will be released online this Sunday.

Arlen Specter: Shameless Self-Promoter

Blogging politics isn't something I've done in a while, but this is too good to pass up.

For those of you who haven't heard, Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter did the flippity-flop from the Republican party to the Democratic party this past week. Why? The answer is simple. He is a shameless self-promoter.

Picture courtesy of the LA Times

In 2004, Specter was reelected to his Senate seat--which he has held since 1991--despite opposition within his own party. His republican challenger, Pat Toomey, painted Specter as a lefty and almost upset Specter in the primary.

Now, with the 2010 election in his sights, Toomey has aimed at the Specter-held Senate seat and many have claimed that he has the ability to take the seventy-nine-year-old in the primary.

Specter has foreseen his beloved Senate seat slipping from his grasp. In 2007-08 he made a bid to shore up his grip by attempting to soothe the pain of a hometown Philadelphia Eagles Super-Bowl XLIII loss to the hated New England Patriots in 2005. He called for a congressional investigation of the destruction of the infamous "Spygate" tapes (illegal video footage the Patriots had taken of other teams game-preparation) by the NFL. Specter wrote to the NFL commissioner, Roger Goodell, asking him to address the tape's destruction hoping to scrounge up some dirt on the Eagles Super-Bowl loss. Goodell shrugged Specter off by saying, "they confirmed what I already knew about the issue." Specter pursued it a little further, but when no one was paying attention, let it fizzle out.

Needless to say, his antics did not win him any support with the Pennsylvania voters. And neither did his March 18, 2008 statement, "To eliminate any doubt, I am a Republican, and I am running for reelection in 2010 as a Republican on the Republican ticket." But Toomey's threat only grew. Specter needed to propel himself forward with something big. Something shameless. Something self-promoting.

So he flopped.

Yesterday Specter declared,

"As the Republican Party has moved farther and farther to the right, I have found myself increasingly at odds with the Republican philosophy and more in line with the philosophy of the Democratic Party."

Riveting.

Don't think for a moment that Specter doesn't understand the gravity of the situation. By switching parties Specter puts Senate democrats at fifty-seven seats. And if Al Franken overtakes Norm Coleman in the never-ending Minnesota recount--which he is predicted to do--democrats will have achieved fifty-eight seats giving them a close to filibuster-proof Senate. Add in the two independent seats, which rarely vote in line with the GOP, and you have the magical number sixty.

With this in mind Specter said, "I will not be an automatic 60th vote."

Yeah. Thank you, Senator Obvious. Specter wants to be the straw that preserves or breaks the camel's back. He wants the publicity and the glory. He wants reelection in 2010 which he was not going to have as a Republican with a 52% Pennsylvania disapproval rating and a significant poll deficit (Toomey: 41%; Specter: 27%).

Changing parties could place him in the limelight. It could give him new life in the heart's of Pennsylvania voters. It could be his ticket to another six-year stint in Washington D.C.

Arlen Specter is a shameless self-promoter.

Tree of the Week (4.28.09)