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I have a great deal more I wish to write about my father’s life, but my last two days have obviously been quite eventful for me. I do plan on adding more of his story later, but as today is the twentieth anniversary of Dad’s death, I think it is fitting to say something about that, very briefly.

A few months after I left home in 1986, my parents purchased a home in Alix, a small town near Stettler, Alberta. (Abandoned prairie towns often had houses for sale for next to nothing; my parents paid $6,000 for this house; a house we had bought in Manitoba a few years earlier had been purchased for $3,500 at $100 a month with no interest.)

Shortly thereafter, Dad began experiencing strange symptoms, including sudden loss of strength in his right hand, to the degree that he began dropping things such as cups. He also had some stuff going on in his upper shoulder / collarbone area that I at first wondered was connected to a car accident we had been in a couple of years earlier. Soon he was losing his balance and falling to the floor.

Read the rest of this entry »

My friend Jamie was dropping off Mom at her adult day program yesterday, but ultimately ended up taking her to the emergency room. There, the diagnosis was a mini-stroke (TIA).

Mom’s personal physician saw her this morning. Unlike the emergency room surgeon who obviously saw Mom in the thick of things, he doesn’t think she had a mini-stroke, after all, and apparently attributes her symptoms to her arthritis. Given what I see, I find it hard to attribute the whole thing to a dramatic turn in her arthritis; and given her history (Mom has had a number of mini-strokes over the years), I have to admit I’m partial to the emergency doctor’s opinion.

At any rate, Mom does feel better, but seems to have lost a fair amount of strength in her left side. She’ll be in the hospital a bit longer…her doctor requested a second CT scan for 10 days from now, and I’m told most people stay in the hospital in that circumstance. Which seems excessive to me; I can’t imagine that would happen if it weren’t a country with socialized medicine….

Your prayers are appreciated.

It is a common conception that marriage gives roots to a man. And I suppose that is true in certain senses (at least, if the man is worth his salt).

But if we’re talking about the taming of wandering feet, it certainly wasn’t true of my father. I recall that at some point our family did a calculation of how many moves we had made. I think it was something like 26 by the time I was twelve.

My father was no longer a hobo, but the travelling never stopped until he contracted ALS. When I was a kid, my Dad at one point figured he made about 100,000 miles a year. None by air.

I guess the moving can’t be blamed entirely on the preaching tours. It started before Dad really turned to preaching much, given the fact the preaching really heated up around 1969 (although I think he first started the year I was born)… and my sister was born in Victoria in 1964, and I was born in New Westminster in 1965, and only lived there for the first three months of my life. And in 1969 we were back in Port Alberni….

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Shortly after his conversion, Dad ended up on the West Coast, in Port Alberni on Vancouver Island. I don’t think he had lived there before, but it became a recurring destination during my young years.

Dad settled into a church in Port Alberni; I think it was an ACOP (Apostolic Church of Pentecost) affiliate. It was there he met my mother, who was 4 ½ years his senior (although he always looked older than she did). Not sure how quickly he took a fancy to her, but I do know that when he first asked her out, her response was “Certainly not!”

Dad could be single-minded, and my mother could be naive. She boarded with an older couple from church, and somehow it came about that Dad would go over there and have Bible studies with her on a regular basis. Despite the fact that he had asked her out earlier, it somehow didn’t seem to occur to her that he may have any ulterior motives. (Has anyone else had such unusual parents?)

Needless to say, the relationship did not remain Platonic. (In fact, Dad never quoted any Socrates at all.) He finally got her to go out with him.

Even at that, though, it still remains a curiosity that he got a second date, as his first attempt was to take her to the local dump to rummage around. (Yes, you read that right.) She demanded to leave, asking, “What kind of girl do you think I am?”

If you think that’s humourous, it should be kept in mind that in married life, dump rummaging was sometimes an almost regular activity, nearly as appealing as going garage saling. (As an aside, I didn’t usually enjoy it all that much myself – and I’ve never been a garage sale hound to the degree my parents were – but on one occasion I did find an antique miniature vase that managed to net me $17, which wasn’t bad for a young kid without an allowance. Well, in the mid-1970s, anyway.)

Yes, my Dad was a regular Mel Gibson who knew just what women want.

But, for all that, she married him, even though she had long maintained she didn’t need a husband. She lived relatively modestly and took care of herself on her teacher’s salary. How a stable farmgirl from Saskatchewan who had nearly reached midlife came to say “Yes” to someone with the rootlessness, artlessness, and, well… tactlessness of my Dad is one of life’s great puzzles.

But once upon a time, it really happened.

The highway was his home, and it was mid-winter, but his Damascus Road experience – or rather, South Carolina highway experience – served my Dad with clarity: he was in the USA illegally, and needed to get back to Canada.

Not easy to face, since he did not own so much as a winter coat. But determined to do what was right, he started his northward journey. By thumb, naturally. (It was a lot easier to hitch rides in the 1950s than it is today, of course.) And witnessing to everyone who would pick him up.

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I am closing in on an anniversary. It arrives this coming Saturday.

On that day twenty years ago, I lost my father to a 2 ½ year battle with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), otherwise known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. He was 59 years old.

Born in Nova Scotia on January 4, 1931, my father had the calamity of being named by an illiterate mother, and so ended up with unfortunate initials: his full name was Paul Innis Gallant.

An illegitimate child raised in a cold environment, Dad was raised by a grandfather who was (to use the technical term) a tough old S.O.B. On his first day of school, my Dad got beat up and came home crying; his guardian’s response was that he better not do that again unless he wanted to face a worse whupping at home. Not surprisingly, the little guy (who topped out at 5′ 5 ½”) got toughened up pretty quickly.

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So, The Mighty Fed (TM) has done it again. Vanquished Andy Murray – whose time had purportedly come – in straight sets to win his 16th Grand Slam. One can’t help but think he’s going to reach 20, which seemed unthinkable. Read the rest of this entry »

Congrats to Jie Zheng and Na Li, with their respective unprecedented runs to the Aussie Open semis. Of course, no one gives them any chance against Serena and Justine… though Henin is still working through rust.

And oh yeah, congrats to TMF for 23 consecutive Grand Slam semis. Not bad.

For a couple weeks, I’ve had a few friends helping me beta test a new web site for Grande Prairie believers (adults 20 and up). Now it seems ready to go live:

http://grandeprairiechristian.com/

The idea here is to help local believers expand their social circles and get to know fellow Christians from the neighbourhood. Introduce yourself online with a profile, get to know one another by participating in forums and chatrooms – but don’t leave it there; once you’ve made new friends, since the whole constituency will be local, you can make arrangements to get together in real life.

So if you’re (1) a Grande Prairie area resident; (2) at least 20 years old; and (3) a Christian – please join up and join in!

Simple rules… lead to complex behavior. Complex rules, as with the tax law in most countries, lead to stupid behavior.

For a couple weeks, I’ve had a few friends helping me beta test a new web site for Grande Prairie believers (adults 20 and up). Now it seems ready to go live:

http://grandeprairiechristian.com/

The idea here is to help local believers expand their social circles and get to know fellow Christians from the neighbourhood. Introduce yourself online with a profile, get to know one another by participating in forums and chatrooms – but don’t leave it there; once you’ve made new friends, since the whole constituency will be local, you can make arrangements to get together in real life.

So if you’re (1) a Grande Prairie area resident; (2) at least 20 years old; and (3) a Christian – please join up and join in!

Interesting application for adding pie graphs to your web page without building your own graphic.

Dear _______,

Thank you for your concern regarding HTN1, which is apparently a Technological variant of H1N1 (also dubbed “influnetza”). We assure you, the pandemic is of grave concern to all of us.

We have been in contact with our host, and have been assured that all of the component parts of each server are taken out daily and scrubbed with soap and water. This has had only a minor affect on uptime.

You asked whether we could provide a numerical IP address in case parts of the internet shut down. You should know that IP addresses are in fact most vulnerable to the pandemic, moreso than domain names. This is because there are only ten numbers, while there are twenty-six letters; thus the pandemic spreads easier. We have been lobbying the U.S. government for some time for a larger spectrum of numbers to resolve this issue.

Meanwhile, we are  extensively masking domains. Unfortunately, this still leaves the problems of domain propagation undealt with, and there is always the threat of proliferation due to the common practice of “forwarding.”

To date, we do not believe our sites have been affected, although it can be hard to discern, as computer use invariably involves headaches at the best of times.

We prepare for the worst case scenario, of course. We are aware that hacking is very hard on the system, and once that level is reached, a “hands-off” approach is no longer appropriate.

Thank you once again for your concern. Please be assured that, as long as we are healthy, we will do all we can to keep our corner of the internet running.

Yours sincerely,
_____________

Yes, a Christmas Day launch (of sorts – my official launch took place rather late in the evening).

http://www.changeinthewind.ca

For various reasons, I have recently had occasion to start thinking about matters related to sociopolitical issues.

On a couple earlier occasions in my life, first as a late teen (when I actually contemplated going to university to major in Political Science) and then later when I was in my Reconstructionist period, politics were very high on my interest list. But when, for exegetical/biblical-theological reasons, I moved away from Reconstructionism/theonomy about a decade or so ago, I largely stepped away from those concerns.  I suppose part of that was due to the fact that, upon moving away from a directly theonomic approach, I wasn’t entirely sure how to think about politics.

I certainly do not claim now to have all the answers, but this new site is aimed at becoming an educational/discussion resource to help Canadian (in particular) Christians work through what we should be aiming for on a sociopolitical level,  as well as to help stimulate ideas for how we can serve our country on a less directly political level.

The site features four main sections: (1) Articles section dealing with various matters of principle, policy, values, etc; (2) Special features section for focusing on current events; (3) Categorized links library to help Christians find valuable articles etc around the web, as well as other web sites; and (4) a blog for keeping up conversation and commenting on current events or whatever. I am hoping to draft a few more contributors, as well.

At this point, the articles section has four articles available, dealing with foundational matters as well as economics and a summary piece on marriage/family/sexuality. There are a couple of substantive posts on the blog, and the links library has a modest beginning. As of yet, there are no special features on current events.

Anyway, do check it out, and pass on the news.

Another serious security hole has been uncovered, and no patch is currently available:

Read the alert.

… and the workarounds either don’t work or can’t be performed as Microsoft themselves explain them.

Someday, I’ll have to create a list of the handiest free utilities I’ve used. One of these definitely has to be CutePDF. While there is a Pro version (49.95), since I have Acrobat Professional, I just use the freeware. What’s great about it is that you simply use it like an alternative printer, and instead of printing on paper, it saves a .pdf file. (It’s much simpler than Acrobat’s Distiller.)

This convenience came into play again for me today. One of my clients was attempting to send me floorplans. Trouble was, the only image file type their floorplan app would save to was .bmp… and it was doing something to the .bmp file so that, while the bitmap would open nicely in the program itself, the image was just a black box everywhere else.

So I had my client download CutePDF and print from the floorplan app. Bingo. Nicely optimized to send me via email (all the files saved at between 25kb and 70kb each). I opened them up in Acrobat, saved them as PNG files, and presto! I can display them as is.

Here is an introductory set of tips that I am working on for safer, smarter web browsing and email use, including being a good “web citizen.” Many of these ought to be common sense, or would be if we all thought about things. As a web developer and a bit of a “power user,” I’ve had more opportunity to think about them than most. Please check it out and make sure you’re not unwittingly being foolish or even contributing to “the problem.”

My new adventure in business is up and running.

I’m quite excited about this concept. Now for the work of getting the word out.

Well, this was VERY stressful, but it forced a chuckle nonetheless.

I’ve been moving sites from one host to another. Was going okay, but when I set one site live, it was a disaster. Only text would show. Following image links generated level 500 server errors. I thought it was javascript-related.

Contacted support, and they told me that mod_security was blocking something. Funny, never did at the old host.

Well, when all the dust settled, it turned out to be the domain name – innocuous enough: gpconcretespecialist.com

You don’t see the problem?

Well, the host’s local mod_security rules were blocking c i a l i s.

Kinda a bad rule at that level, as there must be zillions of sites with “specialist” in the name… but kinda funny too, as I’d never even noticed that before.

New post on the Biblical Horizons blog on 2 Corinthians 5.21.

In looking again at Leviticus 8, I noticed that in the baptism>anointing sequence, only Aaron gets anointed at first. Then, after the sin offering and ascension offerings are completed, not only Aaron but also his sons are anointed.

That fascinates me in connection with the sequence of things in the Gospels and Acts. Jesus is baptized by John and immediately anointed by the Spirit. But while many others are baptized, both by John and by Jesus’ disciples, no one else gets anointed.

Jesus becomes the sin offering on the cross and completes His role of ascension offering when He ascends to heaven. It is only then, after the completion of the sin and ascension offerings, that He pours out the Spirit and the “sons” are anointed.

One of Peter Leithart’s chief insights is that a priest is a palace servant.

In preparing a sermon on Lord’s Day 12 for this Sunday (by way of Revelation 1 – which, by the way, focuses upon God’s people as servants in 1.1 and as a priesthood in 1.7), this got me reflecting on the question of how the high priest relates to this. If a priest is a palace servant, what is a “high” palace servant?

This in turn led me to think about the predominant Servant theme in Isaiah, a rabbit trail that turned out to be helpful, although I’m not entirely sure yet where to go with it. Read the rest of this entry »

I suggest a moratorium on new Christmas hymns, until we all learn the Magnificat and the Benedictus and the Nunc Dimittis so much by heart that they seep out our fingers at the keyboard, until we instinctively sing of Jesus’ birth like Mary, like Zecharias, like Simeon.

Another gem from Leithart.

The links between David and Christmas are clear enough on the surface of the various texts. It is after all an event that happens in Bethlehem, the city of David, and Joseph and Mary are there precisely because Joseph is of David’s lineage (Lk 2.4).

But as well as what is quite explicit, there are also other undertones and overtones from the David story.

For overtones, we can simply note that just as God passed over the “obvious” choices among Jesse’s sons in favour of the shepherd boy, so too God passes over the “obvious” choices regarding whom will receive the proclamation of the birth of the Messiah, and sends His army to make the royal announcement to… a bunch of shepherds.

Undertones: In Matthew 2, we find Herod making the mothers of Bethlehem childless; in the few verses immediately preceding the record of David’s anointing, we find Samuel hacking Agag of Amalek to pieces with the words, “As your sword has made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women” (1 Sam 15.33). The connection gives us a pretty good idea what is going to happen to Herod very shortly, and so we are not surprised to learn of his death not far down the road.

For a couple weeks, I’ve had a few friends helping me beta test a new web site for Grande Prairie believers (adults 20 and up). Now it seems ready to go live:

http://grandeprairiechristian.com/

The idea here is to help local believers expand their social circles and get to know fellow Christians from the neighbourhood. Introduce yourself online with a profile, get to know one another by participating in forums and chatrooms – but don’t leave it there; once you’ve made new friends, since the whole constituency will be local, you can make arrangements to get together in real life.

So if you’re (1) a Grande Prairie area resident; (2) at least 20 years old; and (3) a Christian – please join up and join in!

New article at the Biblical Studies Center. Nothing very original, but hopefully, helpful.

In our co-ed Bible study, we’re currently listening to the audio set by James Jordan, “How to Read the Bible.” Tonight we heard the second session, entitled “Beware of Rules;” Jordan also covered his third point, “Read the Bible in the Church.”

Jordan often says very striking things and leaves you to chew on things. One of the things that he noted from Romans 1 is that “people are crazy” – professing to be wise, they became fools, because they suppressed the truth in unrighteousness and failed to respond to God’s revelation with pistis (faith, faithfulness). He also noted that Jesus is the alpha and omega - i.e. the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. And he stressed that we must let the Bible teach us how to read itself. We learn to read the Bible, not by approaching it with a set of autonomous rules, but by reading it over and over again. (Rules are spectacles, paradigm-providers. If Scripture does not provide these spectacles, our reading is in fact tending to stand over it, rather than in submission to it.)

Putting all of this together, it strikes me that what we’re really talking about is learning a new language. Jesus is the Word of God by whom all things were made and are sustained; He is the divine language, and in the Scriptures the Holy Spirit speaks Him.

When you have a baby and start to talk to him or her, the sounds you make are not very significant to that child. The slate is too blank; the child has not yet been enculturated into the language you’re speaking.

In our case, as we’ve noted, we are crazy. We’re not merely dealing with a blank slate; we’re unlearning all sorts of things that we “know” which in fact are not true.

But in both cases, it is constant exposure to the language by which the child or disciple is taught the language. Read the rest of this entry »

I have recently been engaging in a discussion regarding the importance of recovering the biblical meaning of terms like “law” and “gospel.” We Protestants have inherited a rather dominant tradition of using these terms in a rather abstract sense something along the lines of “law = any requirement God lays upon man.” “Gospel” has become virtually a technical term for forgiveness of sins apart from works. (Just as an aside: just as there is a typical Protestant use of these terms, there are also Roman Catholic uses that no doubt could be criticized. My aim here is not to say we Protestants are wrong, and Rome is right, after all; it is rather to engage in critique from within, so that we can correct things we ought to correct.)

Now, of course, God does lay requirements upon man, and God does grant forgiveness of sins apart from works. But the Bible’s use of the terms “gospel” and “law,” particularly in Paul’s writings, where Protestant discussion on these subjects tends to centre around, is very different from these definitions.

Paul always uses nomos (“law”) to refer to Torah, whether in the sense of “the Mosaic covenant” (by far his most frequent usage) or in the more general sense of “the five books of Moses.” In the second sense, his focus is on Torah as Scripture, as e.g. the Genesis narratives concerning Abraham are referred to as nomos in Galatians 4.24 and, given the immediately following context, likely in Romans 3.31 as well.

Similarly – and not surprisingly, given the content of the books we call Gospels – the term “gospel” is a very concrete term with definite historical connections (after all, it means “good news“). While free forgiveness of sins has always been God’s way of dealing with sinners, the term “gospel” is tied to God’s concrete and dateable historical actions related to what some scholars call “the Christ event,” with Christ’s death and resurrection at the center (see e.g. 1 Cor 15.1-4).

I have become increasingly convinced of the importance of abandoning the abstract usage of these terms, not because the general theological point is wrong; it is not. God saved us, out of His own sovereign mercy, not because of works of righteousness which we have done (Titus 3.5). But the problem with using the specific terms law and gospel in the way that we do means that inevitably those “synthetic” meanings get read into all the biblical texts where the terms appear. And that is not a good thing.

What follows is a lightly modified version of a private post I made on this subject. I have tried to clean up the style slightly, as well as eliminate points that were really germane only to a narrower discussion. To aid clarity, I have also added a couple of brief statements that distill thoughts I had made in the more extended discussion.  I trust making this public will prove somewhat helpful in terms of clarifying the importance of the fight for biblical language. Read the rest of this entry »

As we’ve seen, Israel was ignorant of God’s righteousness and did not submit to it. Meaning: they did not acknowledge the Messiah as their Lord, as God’s embodied righteousness for their salvation.

“For,” Paul adds, “Christ is the telos of the law.” Actually, he says more than that, but we need to sort out several things, so let’s deal with telos first.

So, what does telos mean? Its field of meaning revolves around the idea of “end,” but there are nuances. It can of course simply mean “end.” (E.g. Mt 10.22, “The one who endures to the end will be saved; Mt 24.6: “The end is not yet.”) This is the most common usage in the Gospels; and it appears frequently in Paul.

Read the rest of this entry »