Pages

Monday, January 30, 2006

here we go again

Tomorrow starts yet another semester in what seems to be the never ending cycle of school that my life has become. My second semester of seminary will hopefully be better than the first. In previous entries here I blogged about the questions and doubts I was having about being here at all, but God has dispelled all the doubts and answered all the questions. Plus, I got my schedule worked out much better this semester. I'm taking:

Intro to New Testament II
History of the Baptists
Survey of Christian Ethics
Greek Syntax and Exegesis

I got my classes worked out so that I'm only in school on Tuesday's and Thursday's. The first three classes listed above will be back to back from 1:30-5:35 p.m. on both days. Then on Thursday I'll take Greek from 7:00-10:00 p.m. This will be so much better than last semester. Then I was in class Tuesday-Friday. I had 5 classes on Tues and Thurs, 2 on Wed, and 1 on Fri. Plus I would have a class, then a break, then a few more classes, then another break, then another class. In between all that I had to try to fit in some work hours.

And to top everything off, my stack of reading this semester has decreased by approximately 7 inches. The only scary thing with the reading is the fact that my professor for Baptist History authored 3 of the 5 assigned books, and coauthored one of the other ones. That should be a challenging class, but interesting.

Now that school is starting back, and I will have to be a little more disciplined with my time, I am going to try to return to blogging more regularly. Hope you'll all tune in.

Monday, January 16, 2006

Book of Daniel

Last Friday I actually watched an episode of "The Book of Daniel" the controversial program about an Episcopal priest and his dysfunctional family. In the show this priest is addicted to drugs, he has a son who is gay, a sister in law who is a lesbian, his wife has a horrid, antagonistic relationship with her mother and he has just hired a construction firm run by the mob to build a school at the church he pastors. Many people have been offended by the portrayal of Jesus, whom the priest can see and interact with on a physical level. I personally found him to be funny. At one point he asks Daniel (the priest) "Aren't you going to take a pill? Somebody said something mean to you." Sometimes I think that is exactly the reaction Jesus has to us. We claim to follow Him and rely solely upon Him, but when we are attacked or when something bad happens to us how often do we turn to our own personal crutches?

To me the really sad thing about the show was how accurate its portrayal of liberal Christianity seemed. They have taken the acceptance of all people into the church and twisted it into the acceptance and even tolerance of all practices, no matter how sinful. They have gone from looking the other way when what they considered to be a small sin occurred to embracing all practices and not calling them sin, even in cases where the practice is clearly prohibited by scripture. This is what saddens me about "The Book of Daniel". Not that it is such a horrible portrayal of what Christianity is supposed to be (which it most definitely is), but that it is such an accurate portrayal of what mahy modern American churches have become.

Anyone else have any comments on the show or the state of the American church?

Thursday, January 12, 2006

kudos to ER

I just got done watching tonight's episode of ER and I was incredibly impressed with the way they presented the war and veterans' views of the war. Dr. Gallant, who is recently back from Iraq, visited a wounded friend in the VA hospital. Even though the friend was horribly injured the only thing he wanted was to go back. Gallant later told his new wife that he wanted to go back also and in trying to explain his feelings to her he told her "There's a war going on. Some people may like to forget that, but I can't." What an awesome statement. What an incredible presentation of what the military truly feels about this war no matter how much the MSM tries to tell us that they are disillusioned and have low morale. From this veteran, kudos to ER for presenting the true picture of our military servicemen's feelings.

what a difference a month makes

I retook my Greek final today. When I took it back in December I was questioning whether I should even be in Seminary and what God's plans for my future were. Well, God reaffirmed that yes I am supposed to be here and yes, I am supposed to be pursuing the chaplaincy. Anyway, back to the Greek final. The first time I took it I didn't do very well. In fact I did horribly. I got a 61 on it and I needed a minimum score of 70 to pass the course. But since Southern has experience with people not doing well on the final they offer a free Greek Review course and a chance to retake the final if you don't pass it the first time. So today I retook the final and this time I made a 91.5. Amazing how your scores can change when your perspective changes.

Monday, January 09, 2006

When it rains...

What a whirlwind week this past week has been. On Jan 3 I started taking a two week Greek review course. I didn't score high enough on the final exam last semester to move on to the next level class so I have to take this course and retake the final. Hopefully I'll score high enough to move on so I won't have to retake the entire course. Well, in the middle of me taking this course Dee Dee started feeling bad and went to the doctor only to find out that she has a bladder infection. We got her medicine and she started feeling better toward the end of the week. But then on Sunday afternoon she told me that her back had been hurting all week long and it was getting worse. My first thought was problems with her kidneys. This morning, the morning of the Midterm exam for the Greek review course by the way, she was really feeling bad so I took my exam and then came home. She already had an appointment to see the doctor this afternoon but we called and got the appointment moved up a little. Just as I suspected, the doctor said that she has a kidney infection, so she prescribed a strong anti-biotic to knock it out. We came home and Dee Dee crawled back in the bed and I went to get her medicine. She took the first dose at around 5 PM. Between 5:30 and 5:45 she called me to the bedroom and said her eyes were itching and her mouth hurt. When I looked at her eyes they were puffy and red and the side of her tongue even looked a little swollen. So, we called a friend from church to come sit with the kids and I took off to the emergency room with Dee Dee. By the time we got there one eye was swollen completely shut, the other was about half shut, her face was swollen up like she had just gone 10 rounds with the heavyweight champ, and she said her throat was starting to get tight.

The ER at Baptist East here in Louisville is fabulous. They rushed us back into triage and within a very short time Dee Dee was lying on a gurney and getting a shot of Benadryl among other assorted drugs. Within 15 mintues after that first dose she was already looking better. Her face had lost the red color and the swelling had gone down enough that she could actually open both eyes. We were back home by 9 PM and she sacked out (which is to be expected after 2 doses of Benadryl). Tomorrow I'll go get the new prescription and hopefully this one will agree with her system a little more than the first one did.

We have no idea how much the emergency room visit is going to end up costing us. Hopefully it won't be too terribly much since I have tuition payments coming due again real soon. I didn't really want to do this, and I debated it for a long time, but I have actually added a Paypal donation button to the blog just below the Christianbook.com search box. If anyone is so inclined as to donate to the "Help send Rob to seminary" fund we would appreciate it. We also get a percentage (a fairly substantial 10%) of all sales on Christianbook.com that are made through the search box, or the book links that I have placed on the blog. If you're looking for a particular book you just type in the title, or the author, or whatever other information you have and click Go. If you then make a purchase from Christianbook.com we'll get the percentage back.

If this is not something you feel comfortable with doing, what we could use even more than donations or sales percentages, is prayer. We covet the prayers of our friends and spiritual family more than ever in these times of stress that going through seminary bring. As one of the professors here at Southern put it, "I'd rather get a C in Greek and an A in family than the other way around." These times are stressful on our family with me having to spend so much time studying. Please pray for us, that I would divide my time wisely.

Well, that's it for this installment. It's approaching midnight and I have a quiz tomorrow morning. That is, if Dee Dee is feeling well enough for me to leave her alone with the kids.

Thursday, January 05, 2006

Thank you Texas!

I am SOOOOOOOOOOOOO happy that Texas beat usc last night that I just don't have the words to describe it. I have gotten incredibly tired, over the last 2 years, of hearing about how the current trojans are basically God's gift to college football. They were the media darlings and every sportscaster from here to Timbuktu was talking about how they would make history this year by winning their 3rd consecutive national championship. Excuse me? I know many will think I'm biased since I graduated from LSU but this would not have been number 3. No sir, methinks it would have been number 2. There was a great article on Yahoo! Sports a couple of weeks ago that talked about this very thing. USC won the national championship last year, but the year before that it was LSU.

I absolutely hate the BCS and think we should go to a playoff system (along with basically every other person in the country except for the presidents of the universities in the 6 major conferences who don't want to give up any money). However, all the schools in those conferences, of which USC is a member, agreed that the BCS would crown the national champion. They did not agree that the BCS would crown the national champion... "unless we don't like the outcome and then we'll decide to use some other poll that we like better." That's not the way things work. You have to play by the rules on the field, and you have to live with the results when you come off the field. Otherwise, I think I might just form a foundation to name a national champion every year. We'll even go back and look at records from prior years to name champions for those years as well. If so then in 2006 LSU will be going for its 114th consecutive national title since they started play in 1893. Don't you just love revisionist history.

Oh yeah, Hook em 'Horns!

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

another step down

Well, I have taken one more step toward becoming a chaplain candidate. After my Greek Review class yesterday I drove up to Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio for my commissioning physical today. I spent the day being poked and prodded and running from building to building to get everything done and get all the paperwork filled out. Ah the efficiency of miltary paperwork. This was the first time I have been back on a military base since I got out of the Army in April 2000 and it felt great. Even though this was my first trip to WPAFB it felt like I was coming home. It's amazing how much the military lifestyle can get into your blood. But I digress. Now that everything is done my application will go up to the Department of Defense and we begin the waiting game. As soon as they sign off on it I will be commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the Air Force Reserves. I've been told that it has been taking about 90 days for applications to be approved, but the length of the wait has been steadily coming down from 7 or 8 months 2 years ago to 90 days a month ago. Hopefully it's still coming down. Well, that's about it for tonight. I need to go study some more Greek.

Monday, January 02, 2006

Don't blame me... I voted for Bobby Jindal

This post over at Michelle Malkins blog points out just how much some people in Louisiana are out of touch with what's going on there. I have heard some horrible reports about Gov. Blanco since she took office and particularly since the hurricanes devastated my home state not long after we moved to Louisville, but this report takes the cake. We are constantly told by the MSM that it's the conservative Republicans who hate the poor and downtorodden and spend all the government's money on themselves but this shows the other side doing so. I have long said that I believe the state's reaction to the crisis would have been totally different if Bobby Jindal would have won the gubernatorial election. I can almost guarantee you that he would not have spent more than half a million dollars to renovate his offices 6 weeks after New Orleans was flooded.

Sunday, January 01, 2006

amazing things you can find on the internet

Awhile back I was doing some random Google searches, (this was obviously not during this past semester of seminary) and I came across the site of the USS Fletcher. This was one of the ships my father served on during World War II. For those of you that know me and are wondering how my father could possibly have served that long ago, I was born very late in my parents' lives. My mom was 44 and my dad was 3 days shy of 49 when I was born. Anyway, I started surfing around the site just to see what was there. I started looking through the photos and found a couple that made me say "Hey, Dad has that picture in his memorabilia." Then it happened. I actually found a picture of my dad among the pics of WWII crews. He's standing in the back row all the way to the left. The internet is an amazing thing. My father died in 1979, long before the vast majority of people had ever heard of even the precursor to the internet, and yet now, 26 years later, I can find pictures of him on the web. What an amazing tool we have to share information, and more importantly to spread the gospel.