Love and Forgiveness

A lot of times I forget how extremely vital love and forgiveness are to the core of who God wants me to be as a Christian.  It's so natural, so human to think negatively about others that don't quite fit into our world view, either through their behavior, their personality, the color of their skin, idiosyncrasies, etc.  Take it a step further - think of someone that cuts you off while driving, that pushes you out of the way at the store, that you find out has been disparaging your reputation by spreading rumors and untruths.  It hurts, and naturally, we want to get even - to let them feel the full expression of what we consider to be the recompense of our pain.  Many times that translates into a grudge, bitterness, or unforgiveness.  We think we have to keep that hurt alive in our hearts and minds to keep ourselves from being hurt again by that person, but it only hurts us more.  The fact of the matter is, people are going to hurt us.  We're going to hurt people.  We're going to mess up because we are corrupted, we are far from perfect.  God calls us to His perfection (Matthew 5:48), however, so we are compelled to forsake what is natural to our corrupted nature and live into His calling with the grace He has given us (II Peter 1:3).

There are a few scriptures that really stand out to me about this topic.

Matthew 5:23, 24
"...if you are standing before the altar in the Temple, offering a sacrifice to God, and you suddenly remember that someone has something against you, leave your sacrifice there beside the altar. Go and be reconciled to that person. Then come and offer your sacrifice to God."

God won't accept what we bring to offer Him if we're not right with someone.  If we come to Him offering our worship, our service, our time, etc., but we're not right with somebody, He will not receive it.  He wants His church to live in unity, but we can't do that if we have grudges against other people or if they have grudges against us.  We have to be willing to lay down our pride and our rights and humble ourselves and make things right with whoever we have harmed or who has harmed us.  Psalm 51:17 speaks to how God will not refuse someone with a contrite (humble) heart.  If we are living in a state of humility we won't hesitate to make things right with someone we may be at odds with.

Matthew 18:23-35
"...the Kingdom of Heaven can be compared to a king who decided to bring his accounts up to date with servants who had borrowed money from him. In the process, one of his debtors was brought in who owed him millions of dollars. He couldn't pay, so the king ordered that he, his wife, his children, and everything he had be sold to pay the debt. But the man fell down before the king and begged him, 'Oh, sir, be patient with me, and I will pay it all.' Then the king was filled with pity for him, and he released him and forgave his debt. But when the man left the king, he went to a fellow servant who owed him a few thousand dollars. He grabbed him by the throat and demanded instant payment. His fellow servant fell down before him and begged for a little more time. 'Be patient and I will pay it,' he pleaded. But his creditor wouldn't wait. He had the man arrested and jailed until the debt could be paid in full. When some of the other servants saw this, they were very upset. They went to the king and told him what had happened. Then the king called in the man he had forgiven and said, 'You evil servant! I forgave you that tremendous debt because you pleaded with me. Shouldn't you have mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?' Then the angry king sent the man to prison until he had paid every penny. That's what my heavenly Father will do to you if you refuse to forgive your brothers and sisters in your heart."

The message here is simple.  God cannot tolerate unforgiveness.  He has forgiven us a lifetime of sin, yet we'll explode in rage if someone cuts us off in traffic and makes us a few minutes late.  What can someone possibly do to us that can overshadow the amount of forgiveness God has shown toward us?

I've heard this explained another way that I feel really puts things in perspective.  Genesis explains to us that man was created in God's image.  So whenever we get mad at that person in traffic, we look with disgust at an individual that's not like us, we grumble against someone that's not living up to our expectations, we are marginalizing His creation that He loves.  If we are pursuing after God, we cannot ignore those that He loves.

I John 4:20
If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.

This further illustrates the point above that we cannot forsake people and love God.  God's Word says we are a liar if we say we love Him but do not love another person.  We have to love as Jesus loves - unconditionally, without holding back, without a grudge.  I have to check myself on this daily.  I'm still working on this but hopefully I can keep this at the forefront of my heart and mind and truly show people love.

A few months ago I had a falling out with someone I was friends with for many years.  We came to a disagreement on a number of things, and ended up even attacking each other personally.  After some of the lessons above, I realized I had to make this right, and I did.  It involved casting off pride and humbling myself, which is hard.  To me, the initial thought of getting rid of pride hurts, as if I'm giving up a piece of myself.  The reality is that there's freedom there.  There's freedom when you're not holding that grudge, when that bitterness is gone, when you can draw near to God and He draws near to you because you don't have anything against a brother or sister.

This is what I challenge you (and myself) to do daily.  Check yourself.  Did you marginalize someone else because they disrupted you in some way or another?  Is there a past hurt that needs to be resolved?  Is there pride that needs to be forsaken to make things right with a brother or sister?  Are you willing to enter into a deeper relationship with God?  Or do you want to hold on to your pride that will get you nowhere in the immediate or in the eternal?

Colossians 1:9

Colossians 1:7 & 8
"You learned it from Epaphras..." "It" in this context refers to the gospel. These two verses speak about Epaphras, who is considered at length at this website: http://thebible.net/modules.php?name=Read&itemid=8&cat=5
I won't go any more into these verses since this covers it pretty well.

Colossians 1:9
"For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding."

This verse sheds a little more light onto what we saw in verse 3. Verse 3 showed us that Paul prayed for the Church. Verse 9 goes into more detail about how he prays:
- "Since the day we heard about you..." This implies an immediacy to Paul's prayers for the Colossian church. He didn't make a note of them on his prayer list and prayed for them when he got around to it. His prayers were immediate.
- "...we have not stopped praying for you..." Paul's prayers were persistent. Just as Paul said in I Thessalonians 5:17, "pray without ceasing", here we see evidence of that. Praying without ceasing is not simple repetition (Matthew 6:7); rather it is an open stream of communication between yourself and God. You bring EVERYTHING to Him, and He speaks back to you. Prayer is not just us talking TO God, it's talking WITH God. It is enormously difficult to constantly maintain a state of prayer where we can really stay in tune with God when we're at work, at home, running errands, etc. Paul would not ask us to do this if it were not possible. I think one of the keys is simply to draw near to Him.
- "...asking God to fill you with the knowledge of His will..." Paul's prayers were specific; they spoke to a need. He knew what the Colossians would need to continue to grow. When we come to God with a request for a person or a situation, we must be able to speak to the specific need that we see. As we draw closer to Him and acquire His insight, we will be more able to speak directly to those needs.

"...to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding."
To know God's will we have to be actively participating with Him, drawing nearer to Him, to really understand what He has planned for us. I believe some people will live life as they want, not in submission or obedience, with the thought that "as soon as God tells me what to do, I'll go for Him." If we're not staying in tune with Him, we are going to mis out on what He has called us to. We have to be listening intently to hear.

I'm tired. Bed time.

Colossians 1:3-6

Colossians 1:3-6
We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all the saints-the faith and love that spring from the hope that is stored up for you in heaven and that you have already heard about in the word of truth, the gospel that has come to you.

A few things stand out to me here.
"We always thank God..when we pray for you..."
Paul exhibited a consistent pattern of prayer (1 Thessalonians 5:17), staying in supplication for fellow believers. This is challenging to me because many times when I pray I'm focused on myself or those immediately connected to me. Paul prayed for believers all over the world; he prayed for the entire church. I don't know what exactly he prayed for when he prayed for them. That might be something I find elsewhere. Praying for the church would be a very good habit to get into. We can see the in-fighting that occurs within the church among demoninations, churches, Christians, etc. - none of which is becoming to followers of Christ. If we pray for each other we are exhibiting love and concern for one another. If we have love and concern for one another, we have unity. As Jesus said, "By this all men will know you are my disciples, if you love one another." (John 13:35). I guess that ultimately this becomes a lesson that we NEED to love one another to be the people Jesus called us to be. Love is not something that comes naturally of our carnal selves. Love comes from a relationship with the Father. Relationship is achieved through prayer to the Father. This reminds me of 2 Peter 1:3: "His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness." God gives us what we need to have love for one another through Him, and only through Him. This shows how dependent we must be on God for the success of our Christian walk; it is accomplished through relationship with Him.


"...because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus..."
Paul said he is thankful for their faith. I've never thought of thanking God for another person's faith. I think in our human minds we get accustomed to the whole story of sacrifice and forgiveness and become desensitized/numb to it. We have to be constantly reminded of how great it is that we have this gift; that we, as sinful men who have shunned God, can simply take what He has freely offered, and become His sons and daughters that He loves. To keep the wonder alive, we have to stay focused on Jesus: "Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." (Hebrews 12:2).

"...and of the love you have for all the saints..."
The Colossian church was doing it right. They had love for each other. So much love that Paul had HEARD of it from other people. When was the last time we heard this about ANY body of believers?? In today's society we are overly self-centered. We follow this lifestyle of self-dependence rather than interdependence on each other. This causes us to strive to get ours first, and if there's nothing leftover, too bad. This goes in direct contradition to Phillipians 2:3 & 4: "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others." There is no way that the Colossians could have been self-centered (as we are in our society) and still have gained this reputation of loving each other. What kind of change can we bring about in ourselves and in our churches to gain this kind of reputation and fulfill what Jesus said in John 13:35?

"...the faith and love that spring from the hope that is stored up for you in heaven..."
This goes back to earlier where we see a sort of fulfillment of 2 Peter 1:3. Our love for one another springs from a relationship with Jesus. We HAVE to have this RELATIONSHIP.

Colossians 1:6
"All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God's grace in all its truth."
If the previous focus was on prayer, the focus here is on the gospel, i.e., the Word of God. The gospel was bearing fruit and growing because people were living it. It wasn't something they passively read or studied then continued in their normal life. It was something that when they heard or read it, it kicked off a deeper yearning for more. It triggered something in their spirit that caused them to realize that they needed God. They started living the gospel, they made it integral to their lives, and it brought about massive change in their hearts, minds, and actions. It was transformational (Romans 12:2). I think another piece of what brought about such a powerful transformation in their lives is they saw how people like Paul were living it, how the Word shined through in their lives. They realized that they needed it in their lives by seeing it active in others. How is the Word active in our lives? Is it integral? How are we living it?
Another thing I noticed at this point was that the KJV says "knew" instead of "understood." Of course if we look back at Genesis, we see that Adam "knew" his wife. In essense, this is indicative of a very intimate familiarity. After some studying, I found that "knew/understood" in this verse is interpreted from the Greek word "ἐπιγινώσκω" - "epiginōskō". It means "to become thoroughly acquainted with, to know thoroughly, to know accurately, know well". The word epiginosko is rooted in "γινώσκω" - "ginōskō", which is more suggestive of the intimate sense of understanding or knowing. So what we can draw from all of this is that the Colossians were intimately familiar with "God's grace in all its truth", i.e., the gospel, which is the Word. We know that the Word was something that was central to their lives and was something of utmost importance to them; they loved it.

John 13:8

"Unless I wash you, you have no part with me."

The context of the portion of the verse above is Jesus's response to Peter when Peter had initially attempted to dissuade Jesus from washing his feet. I think there's a bigger meaning to this little response, though.

To me this points to the total surrender that is required to be a Christian, a follower of Jesus. We can acknowledge his Lordship mentally, but what are we actually doing about it? Is our life reflecting the fact that we are not our own, that we were bought with a price (I Cor. 6:19 - 20)? What evidence in our life shows that we have denied ourselves, taken up our cross, and are following him (Mark 8:34, 35)?

The other thing this makes me think of is the transformational process that takes place when we truly make Him our Lord. Romans 12:2 says to not be conformed to this world, but be transformed through the renewing of our mind. Titus 3:5 says the Holy Spirit washes us and renews us. How is this transformation evident in our lives? Is our daily prayer for him to change us, to create in us a new heart (Psalm 51:10)?

Keep in mind the intent of this is to check myself. If these reflections can help convict someone else and change a life, then awesome.

Another visit...

It's 1 am. I have to leave for Arkansas tomorrow morning, hopefully before lunch. I've been here since July 3. This is probably the longest time I've spent at home since I moved to Arkansas 4 years ago.

I honestly don't want to leave. Being here is like heaven to me, here in the house that I grew up in with my parents, brother, grandparents, friends, family, etc. Essentially, my roots. Nearly every good memory in the first 22 years of my life took place here. When I'm here I feel such a deeper connection to those memories, the people, everything. Every time I have to leave it's as if all of those roots are being ripped up, like my heart is being torn out of my chest. As I sit here, memory after memory passes through my mind, and each one brings a new wave of sobs.

There's no way this is the way it's supposed to be. I know God didn't intend for us to leave our families hundreds of miles away so we can provide for ourselves. Adam and Eve screwed it up with sin, but us humans weren't content to leave it at that. We have progressed deeper and deeper into depravity, selfishness and greed, sacrificing our families to the point that now it's normal and expected that a child leave his/her parents way behind as they progress in the world.

Don't get me wrong, I have a great life in Arkansas. I just don't have any solid roots there like I have here, and sometimes that gets really difficult for me.

Salsa recipe

After studying the salsa at Maria's and a few practice rounds, I think I've come up with a pretty darn good salsa recipe. I put in the ingredients kind of by feel, so I don't have any measurements here...just use common cooking sense and it will be good :)

The salsa takes all of the following:
Stewed tomatoes (Great Value stewed tomatoes from Walmart work great)
Onion
Garlic
Cilantro
Celery
Bell Pepper
Cumin
Paprika
Pickled Jalepenos
Vinegar
Salt
Lime

Strain the stewed tomatoes the best you can - the less liquid you have in them, the better. Mince up your onion, garlic, cilantro, celery, and bell pepper as fine as you can. The total of your bell pepper, celery, and garlic should be less than the total of your onion. Bell pepper and celery are mainly for color and texture, so keep that in mind - don't want to over-do it or you might get weird flavors. You want a light sprinking of salt, cumin, and paprika. It's easy to over-do the salt. Put in just a dash of vinegar to get a little extra tang. It's easy to over-do the lime too. You might want to go with the juice of about 1/3 of a lime for every two cans of tomatoes. Get all of the ingredients listed above together in a blender, then blend it slowly. Don't do it too long because you don't want a salsa smoothie. At this point I put the salsa in a pan to simmer for a while to help soften up the onion, bell pepper, and celery and get the flavors to mix, but this part may not be necessary.

Once you're done with all of this, if you're feeling adventurous you could throw in some corn and/or beans to add to the mix.

Put it in the refrigerator for a while to cool down, then you're ready for chips and salsa.

Common sense about immigration

Got this email from my grandma...

This is what I am afraid of and I want to stay as far away as possible from.

North American religion is basically a consumer religion. Americans see God as a product that will help them to live well, or to live better. Having seen that, they do what consumers do, shop for the best deal. Pastors, hardly realizing what we are doing, start making deals, packaging the God-product so that people will be attracted to it and then presenting it in ways that will beat out the competition. Religion has never been so taken up with public relations, image building, salesmanship, marketing techniques, and the competitive spirit. . . I found that gathering a religious crowd was pretty easy, provided I didn't get too involved with God. . . . Religious consumers are like all other consumers, easily attracted by packaging and bargains. But I also knew that to follow this route I would have to abandon the very thing that gave the life of a pastor its worth: a passion for God.

- Eugene Peterson

Getting Started with Kdenlive in Ubuntu

I recently got a JVC MS120 digital camcorder. I tried for a while to get something to work for me in Ubuntu as far as video capture and editing was concerned, but couldn't figure it out. I decided to go ahead and give the software that came packaged with the camera a whirl - FAIL. It is awful. It requires that iTunes be installed, and I dislike iTunes, so that's one strike against it. Whenever I add video content to the application it doesn't show up until I restart the application. It serves about the same purpose as Windows explorer - shows you your videos. LAME.

So I went back to Linux. After two days of poking and prodding around, I finally have a solution that works VERY well. Note that I have an Acer 5920 running Ubuntu 9.10, and the solution I have found here works for my purposes. If you follow these steps and it doesn't work for you, then your PC probably hates Linux.

#1: Get your codecs
This url is a trouble-shooting page from the kdenlive website (which we will be using, but there are specific installation instructions for that, so keep reading). Basically if you run the following apt-get instructions you'll have all of the codecs you need:
sudo apt-get install libavcodec-unstripped-52 libavdevice-unstripped-52 libavfilter-unstripped-0 libavformat-unstripped-52 libavutil-unstripped-49 libpostproc-unstripped-51 libswscale-unstripped-0

#2: Get kdenlive
I found these instructions here but have summarized them below.
Go to System > Administration > Software Sources, click on the "Other Software" tab, then click "Add", then insert the following line:
ppa:sunab/ppa

Yes, that is correct. Confirm the repository reload then run the following from the command line:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install kdenlive

#3: The Project Monitor in kdenlive on my system works as far as video is concerned, but the sound is horribly choppy and just bad. I found out how to fix this from this video. To fix this, get the following library:
sudo apt-get install libsdl1.2debian-pulseaudio

Once this is installed, open kdenlive, go to Settings > Configure Kdenlive, go to Playback, and select "PulseAudio" for the audio driver.

Now you should have the latest version of kdenlive, the codecs necessary to encode to virtually any format, and a project monitor that looks AND sounds good. All you need to do now is get crackin'.

[EDIT] - one more thing - I have to adjust the pixel aspect ratio to 1.19 for all of the videos I import - the software doesn't import the JVC MOD files quite right, but once you adjust the pixel aspect ratio it's fine. To do this, right-click on a clip you have imported, select Clip Properties, then go to Advanced, and plug in the number. I'm also going to try this Slideshow Creator out, it would be good to integrate it into some videos.

[EDIT 2] - just discovered "OpenShot Video Editor", it is Gtk native as opposed to KDE as Kdenlive is. I tried to get it and run it but some sort of Python errors prevented it from running. After some tweaking I finally got it to run. After a few minutes of poking and prodding around, I quickly determined that this would not give me the flexibility I need that Kdenlive offers. So I'm sticking with Kdenlive.

Scanner Sharing over Network CAN Work in Ubuntu 9.10!

Can't sleep so I thought I'd share today's Linux-wrangling experience.

I have a Xubuntu 9.10 system designated as my file/print/everything else server. It has an HP All-In-One Deskjet F4135 printer/scanner combo attached to it. I wanted to be able to acquire images from my scanner directly to Gimp (image editing application) on my laptop from the comfort of my couch without having to bother with remote desktop connections, file transfers, etc., so I decided to share my scanner over the network. I had done this a few years back via xinetd, but after reading this link I was under the impression that they had greatly simplified the process of setting up a scanner as a network resource.

I followed the directions, then went to test my newly network-enabled scanner, but got nothing. I poked and prodded and checked help forums for a while, but got nothing. I even tried the old method of setting up a network scanner (via xinetd) but still nothing. Eventually I came across a suggestion on the sane FAQ page to run the sane daemon in debug mode by adding the "-d" flag. I ran it with the saned user, but still got nothing. I decided to try running as root and I was able to connect! After a little more poking around I found where my USB port was located in the file system - /dev/bus/usb/001 and saw that its owner was root but group was "lp". This is why I was able to share my scanner as root but not as saned - saned is neither root nor is it in the lp group, so it didn't have access to the scanner. I added the saned user to the lp group, restarted the saned daemon (under the saned user) then bam, network scanner access.

All this to say, scanner sharing over your LAN is as easy as the Ubuntu guide would lead you to believe, you just need to run the following command:
sudo adduser saned lp
...and you should be good to go. Just remember to restart the server daemon:
sudo /etc/init.d/saned restart

I found a bug report a few minutes ago indicating this has been a bug since Ubuntu 8.04. You can read there for more information. If I had read it earlier it would have saved me a lot of headache, but I wouldn't have had the satisfaction of figuring it out myself :)