Erichs Room

-Rockford Airfest 2012-
















--------

"Neither Boys Nor Men" — Our Calling in This Cultural Crisis
by Jonathan Parnell | October 16, 2011

Addressing the church, Darrin Patrick writes:

"We live in a world full of males who have prolonged their adolescence. They are neither boys nor men. They live, suspended as it were, between childhood and adulthood, between growing up and being grown-ups. Let's call this kind of male Ban, a hybrid of both boy and man.

Ban is juvenile because there has been an entire niche created for him to live in the lusts of youth. The accompanying culture not only tolerates this behavior but encourages it and endorses it. (Consider magazines like Maxim or movies like Wedding Crashers.) This kind of male is everywhere, including the church and even, frighteningly, vocational ministry. . . .

In a culture where the influence of godly men is desperately needed, this void results in a legitimate cultural crisis. We are not going to solve it by ignoring Ban and hoping that he eventually grows up. We are not going to solve the problem simply telling women that they should take up the slack.

We might solve the problem by modeling biblical manhood and calling adult boys to forsake their youthful lusts and become the men that God is calling them to be in the context of the local church. This call should come from godly men and women sitting in the pews and, specifically, from the pulpit of God's church. The models should be men of God."

"There is a war going on. All talk of a Christian's right to live luxuriously "as a child of the King" in this atmosphere sounds hollow -- especially since the King himself is stripped for battle." - John Piper



"Easy being green, it is not"




Graphing Alanis Morissette's "Ironic"

...about 16 years late but, whatever...





...Fall wasps on our garage... moments before being sprayed into eternal destruction!!!  Hehe








"All our offerings, whether of music or martyrdom, are like the intrinsically worthless present of a child, which a father values indeed, but values only for the intention". C.S. Lewis

 
Pondering Passover

I’m reading a book that, in part deals with the Passover in Egypt and expounds on its symbolism and foreshadowing of the Crucifixion. Some thoughts I’ve just had have gripped me:

There was really no power in the blood of the Passover lambs that were sacrificed that night so that their blood could be used. There was certainly an economic and perhaps even sentimental consideration, but ultimately, it was just a farm animal. So I’m pondering the whole event that night from the perspective of the spirit of Death himself. I feel quite certain that this powerful, God-created angelic being knew what this blood symbolized… the event that wouldn’t happen for over a thousand years, but had been planned from the dawn of time.  As Death went from door to door that night, he did so with the mind of an eternal creature who knew, and perhaps could even see, the Lamb of God hanging from a piece of wood, stained with His own atoning blood. And I see Death shivering with a God-fearing terror, as he looks over the doorposts of the Israelites, and sees the blood. He didn’t just ‘Passover’ the blood, he was restrained from entering the homes because of it!  Why?

Because as we see the blood through his eyes, we see him ‘remembering’ what is to come, and seeing what one day will be his own crushing defeat, when this powerful, dark angel is no longer employed by God as a tool of His wrath, but is destroyed forever. I see him going first to Goshen, where the Israelites dwelt, and then, driven into a frenzy by his inability to pass into the homes of God’s people because of the blood of the Lamb, he moves on to the homes of the Egyptians, and with all the anger and wrath and hatred of a demon that has just been reminded of his pending demise, he takes the life-breath of every one of Egypt’s firstborn.

How awesome the power of the blood of Christ, that over 1,000 years before the Crucifixion, the mere foreshadow of the redemptive blood would restrain the hand of Death himself from doing what he was created to do.  On the doorposts of Goshen, three and a half thousand years ago, Death looked at the fresh, dark red, glistening blood the lamb and saw Christ hanging on a tree. And like Kryptonite to Superman, he shrank away in horror. Death saw his own death.




Temecula, California 5-08


Emma e las Senoritas de Honduras  7-10



Solvang, California 5-08


"Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshippers meeting together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be were they to become "unity" conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship. Social religion is perfected when private religion is purified".  -A.W. Tozer



Yellowstone 8-07



Blackhawk Farms Raceway 8-11