Busy Nothings

I especially thought of the Terrible Swede when my brother sent me this link.

But I’m going to blog about it anyway. Yesterday in Pastor’s sermon, baptism was again mentioned as being so very important. It is when God makes us a part of his family! I am passionate about baptism especially after seeing so many baby dedications in the past year and knowing that although the parents promised to bring up their children in the Lord, they withheld from their baby the most important thing–salvation as given through baptism.
Elle and I again discussed this yesterday, but she blogged about it first, so I’m just going to add my two cents here:

Why wait to baptize children? Because of a service where family and friends can come that is planned for days or weeks down the road? I understand the idea of wanting to witness to them, but why not just have a baptism reaffirmation service? I believe it would actually be more of a witness to them because they would see how serious you were as a parent about the salvation of your child that you didn’t want to wait. What is more important here–that your child is given the gift of Salvation God has ready to give them or that family members are there? If someone you were witnessing to asked “What must I do to be saved?” would you tell him to wait a few weeks or that you have a pastor standing by in case his health suddenly diminishes? I don’t understand how people can be so calloused when it comes to their children being baptized when as Christians we would immediately welcome an unbeliever who asks us how to be saved! Salvation is a gift God is waiting to give babies through baptism. Why hold out on giving them God’s gift?

Last night I was reviewing some music history at the request of one of my students and came across this simple fact:

Bach was considered old fashioned in the latter part of the Baroque period.

Isn’t it interesting that Bach was considered outdated before he was even dead? Stylistically, Bach didn’t change all that much. His works do not show a huge development as a composer as, say, Beethoven or even Handel (who was much more popular than Bach at that time). Probably explains why outside of Bach’s six motets, the Goldberg Variations, and the Brandenburg concertos I’m really not much of a Bach fan.

I got this catalog in the mail and found it absolutely hilarious. I sure hope it’s my first and last catalog!

In taking this quiz, it was interesting to view my results:

John Calvin 100%
Martin Luther 100%
Karl Barth 73%
Augustine 73%
Anselm 67%
Friedrich Schleiermacher 40%
Jonathan Edwards 33%
Paul Tillich 27%
Jürgen Moltmann 20%
Charles Finney 13%

They still scored me as Luther, though. Whew!

This was on my calendar yesterday:

Just imagine living where love fills our lives so completely there won’t be any empty spaces left in us to fill. Therefore we won’t want anything. We’ll be perfectly content–supremely satisfied. And since that will surely be the case, it seems quite likely that our heavenly palaces won’t need to be very big because we won’t have any stuff to store.

Yay! No stuff!

My stepdad’s brother went home to heaven this morning. I didn’t know him well enough to call him Uncle, but I do know my stepdad and stepbros well enough to rejoice with them that he’s in heaven and pray for the Lord to comfort them in their loss.
I’m posting this at 7:30 AM Alaska Time on Monday the 20th. Don’t know why my timestamps are screwed up on my blog.

Usually I try not to blog about personal issues, but this one is plaguing me so I’m requesting extra prayers.
My hubby and I have been married 4 years and we really want to be parents. I have been told that I am infertile. Although we’d love to adopt, money is tight right now. I am 30 years old and am feeling the biological clock ticking. I know God can work miracles, as he did with Sarah and Hannah, but lately I’ve found myself angry with God for creating me “broken” (one of those horrible results of sin). I am like Hannah, praying and weeping with a bitterness in my soul, a bitterness that seems to be increasing as the months go by.
Is anything too hard for the LORD ? I cling to those words the angel spoke to Abraham and Sarah and pray for a miracle. I’m asking for your prayers, too.

The guys at Preach. Teach. Confess. found this quiz. I guessed even before I took it which book I was.

*sniff sniff*
Our little moose is growing up! He’s got two little antlers growing on top of his head! Wish I had a picture, but he didn’t stick around long enough. Typical teenager.

Jackson was found not guilty on all 10 counts and lesser counts only moments ago. Not a surprise. If O.J. was acquitted, why not Jacko?

With all of my Bible and Catechism knowledge, my hubby still makes a better Samaritan than I do. Yesterday a guy Sean used to work with in Juneau called from Seattle and said that he was coming back from a training thing for ACS. Apparently Leanne, the CEO of ACS, cancelled all the company credit cards so the guy had to pay out of pocket for his hotel and rental car, maxing out his credit card. His car was sitting here at the airport in long term parking and they had no money to get it out. Sean agreed to pick them up and pay to get their car out, trusting that ACS would reimburse them and they, in turn, would reimburse us. I wasn’t so hot on that idea–it’s not like we have $70 in extra cash just lying around! But I hesitantly agreed with a LOT of reservations. Their original flight was cancelled, then their rescheduled flight was 45 minutes late, and then their luggage got lost! Finally about 2 a.m. they got to the Alaska Airlines baggage counter (Alaska lost a LOT of luggage last night!) and found out their luggage came on an earlier flight. By this time they had been up for 24 hours and we had convinced them to stay overnight with us instead of driving all the way back home to Kenai. We helped them get their car out thanks to the mixup with ACS not paying for anything, and we finally got here at 2:30 and got to bed about 4. They were so thankful to us for bailing them out and I had to repent of my selfish sinful behavior to both God and Sean for not being willing to help out a neighbor. We may have done more witnessing by our actions than if we were Bible-thumpers!

I LOVE this quote from John Cage–it really fits me!

“I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.”

(John Cage was an innovative 20th century composer whose works include 4′ 33″, one of my favorites to perform!!)

Our new server is up and running, my hubby’s going to move files over this weekend and early next week. That means this site and Elle’s site will be up ALL the time and load much faster! Yay! This will not affect our web addresses at all, so all your bookmarks can stay the same.

Had the server been up and running I would have commented on this sooner, and even as I am writing this in OpenOffice the server is down. But the good news is the new server is being built right here in our office.
Anyway, I figured I should comment about this since I’m a degreed musician and all.
It is exciting to discover new pieces by already composers, but this is probably more exciting from an educational standpoint to see how it fits into his development as a composer, as the article points out. I would be more excited and anticipating its recording if it was a contata or motet. It was not uncommon for composers to write shorter pieces for individuals’ special occasions and I am not surprised it was only found in a private collection. What is interesting about this piece is that it is not a typical Bach work—a strophic piece which is similar to our hymns where one melody or accompaniment is used for several verses. It is also composed for a single instrument and voice which is atypical of Bach who usually composed on a much larger scale. Bach’s works are, as a rule, much more polyphonic and developed. It will be interesting to follow this discovery, but don’t expect it to be the caliber of the Goldberg Variations. While I’m more of a Romantic than a Baroque person myself, I can just imagine my college professor’s excitement at this finding and I’m sure his Theory and History students will be well-informed of it!

Take a look at this commentary from our local paper. I’ve heard quite a bit about it on the news the past couple days and I am so relieved that there are still politicians–even if it is “only” on the local level–who actually listen to their constituents before conforming to their peers.

Last night at the Tony Awards, Monty Python’s Spamalot won 3 of its 14 nominations: Best Musical, Best Director of a Musical, and Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical. You can read the acceptance speeches here, here, and here.

Since my pastor always has great sayings and such, I thought I’d start posting them.

Church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.
–Rev. Fred Voss

When the water becomes troubled, he likes to fish.
–Martin Luther, on the devil