The Rock in the Rapids

Speak! my soul, words unfathomableYour ways are hidden, even from me.Sing! my heart, lyrics eternalI'll lift my eyes, God's glory to see.Though in this mind, confusion reignsI know the sweet sap of grace sustains.Excitement and sadness hold hands and embrace,The ways of a mans heart, who can trace?O what to do with this desire to fight!Why can't answers come into the light?I am engaged in the battle of ages,What words will I write on history's pages?Here I am, swamped by life's enormity,My heart so tempted by the call to conformity.I thank God, there is a rock on which to standSo I will rest in God's sovereign hand.Shout! all creation, God is faithful,The world may crumble, but God's mercy is sure.Rejoice! boys and girls, salvation is here,Despite all our sin, His love will endure.

Why I'm Doing This

Those of you who know me may be wondering why I would get into blogging. I'm not a fan of the social-networking sites like Myspace and Facebook, in fact I'm almost anti them, so why blog? I have three main reasons (though these aren't in any particular order):First, I like to think some of my thoughts would help others, and so I hope that as I record them here they will help someone, somewhere, somehow. While I plan on writing a lot about my thoughts on theology, I intend to do so in a way that has practical application. I also wrestle with some very real problems and I hope that as I learn things through these, I can pass these lessons on to my readers as well. Overall I'm pretty much just going to be writing my musings on life as they happen, though I like to think they're fairly deep.Second, I hope that in doing this that I will waste less time in useless thoughts and activities. I often wonder how I spend the many hours of my days, and often can't come up with anything significant. I hope that the motivation to write good thoughtful posts on here will cause me to spend more time thinking, reading, praying and writing on weighty issues. The reading thing deserves special attention, in that not only do I want to read more, I want to read more discerningly as well. I plan to do reviews of books I read, and I hope that doing so will inspire me to read more and pay more attention to what I read (if only out of shame for not writing enough book reviews!)The third reason I'm blogging is because I want to develop my abilities at writing. In the long run (as in, sometime in my life) I hope to write a book about something of significance. As I understand it, writing is one of those skills that you only get good at by practicing, so this blog is precisely that, practice. These may not be all the reasons I'm blogging, but they were the first ones that I thought of now, which I guess means they're the most important. I hope you as the reader enjoy this blog,. I'll try and be fairly regular about posting, and try and make it interesting, and sometimes funny. I promise!

Thinking about socialising

I have been thinking a lot about social-networking sites such as Myspace, Bebo and Facebook recently, and my conclusions run along the same lines as Josh Harris in his article My One and Only Week on Facebook. That is, I personally avoid getting caught up in them because I find it a great temptation to waste time. I waste enough time as it is without spending hours updating my profile and uploading photos. I guess this is also a good time to say sorry to all the (many!) people who have asked me to be their friend on Bebo. I am your friend in real life, honest! But I've consciously decided not to get a Bebo account, as myspace and facebook consume enough of my time.Speaking of time, a large influence on my thoughts these days is this wee sermon by Jonathon Edwards, with the title The Precious Importance of Time (And The Importance of Redeeming It). It challenges me every time I read it, which can only be a good thing.I have different (and less noble) reasons for not writing on people's "wall" though, because I simply don't know what to say! I find the idea of saying something to someone, but knowing that potentially the whole world is going to read it, quite funny, and a little scary. The short story is that I feel pretty awkward about writing stuff on people's sites, I'd much rather send an email or (if possible) talk face to face.Josh Harris says his experience on Facebook "encouraged me to think about me even more than I already do," which is something I haven't found to be the case. I wouldn't put this as a reason why I'm not doing it, though I can see how it would work. Maybe it's because I think about myself heaps as it is, so these sites don't add that much to it. But I think a larger reason is that I haven't made much effort at developing my sites and trying to get people to be my friend, so it'd be silly for me to be too worried about what people think of me based on that.Anyway, this isn't a dig at anyone using those sites, just my personal views on it, and a defense of why I won't comment on your site. I think it is worth questioning your motivations for doing it though, and I'd say doing it 'to fill in time' isn't a good enough reason.