Sin

Something JD just mentioned on KLOVE struck a chord.
Roughly quoted, if you've strayed so far off the path and you're thinking you can't walk all the way back, you don't have to. All you have to do is turn around.

To God, the tiniest little sin is the same as the lifetime of sin of a serial rapist. But Jesus has already paid for it all. You're not racking up a debt; you don't have a sin credit card that you have to pay off. There's no bill due at the end of the day. Jesus has already paid for it all. You just have to trust Him.

God has no shades of grey, it is either a sin or it is God's own truth. Humans introduce shades of grey, and we try to dispense punishments commensurate to the crime. But the difference betwen crime and sin is more than mere semantics. Crime is a human thing, a piece of the world that is a symptom of its brokenness. You can sin and commit no human crime, and vice versa. A judge tallys up your crimes and punishes you with a sentence he or she deems suitable to the transgression. Jesus paid for all your sin, past present and future, 2000 years ago in a single stroke and opened your way to heaven. All you have to do is take His hand and trust Him.

Vivian's two websites
jewelry and baking

Random

drop.io is good stuff. I've got some notes there that I need to transcribe here. Leaving myself voicemail online is neat, even if I do have to copy it afterward.

Though I wonder what their business model looks like. It's got to be disgusting storage and bandwidth requirementes. I wonder what I can do with the API...

A Plea

I see your hatred
I see your anger
I know who you are
And I know why you hurt

But I cannot help you

I cannot touch you
Without you touching me

Don't go changing people's stuff!

Point to note: When I do an upgrade, I will not change people's stuff.
I just upgraded from Opera 9.[something or other] to 9.52 and my whole theme was trashed. Buttons I had deleted were added back in (like that stupid new page button on the tab bar, isn't that what mouse gestures are for??), even bars I had disabled popped back up, not to mention the entire flipping skin changed to some ugly dark grey tabs and stars and such. Take note, go look back up top, THIS WAS A POINT UPGRADE. Not a major version. I don't even think it was a minor version upgrade, I'm pretty sure I was on 9.5 already, though I don't think I quite understand thier version numbering. Either way, this shouldn't have been ANYWHERE NEAR this traumatic.

Yes, it only took 10 minutes or so to get it mostly straightened out. I think. That's not the point. An app like Opera HAS to pride itself on customization (or why bother ditching IE in the first place? Okay okay, Firefox then) but when every upgrade (they've done this before a couple times) trashes those customizations, which were probably made long enough ago that you've forgotten exactly what you did in the first place, then what's the bloody point? And don't mistake, you CAN'T let your browser goout of date for very long. People keep trying to add crud to the HTML spec so you can't trust that new content will work properly unless you're up to date.

So in short, Opera, Don't Do That. It's BAD (tm). No cookie.

PS, I still think the Opera browser is the absolute best available, it's just thier update procedures that need some work. And a few relatively minor compatibility niggles that I rarely run in to. MUCH better than when I first started using it, BACK IN THE LAST CENTURY when it was still trial-ware and streamed ads to my browser window. So, yeah, not switching to anything else, but damn that's aggravating.

Thoughts on the nature of God

Edit: Yeah, apparently this is wrong. But I leave it up so I'll remember later that it's wrong. I should probably give up on this sort of contemplation but I know I won't.

I was considering the nature of God's omniscience, time, human free will, and the idea that God always responds to holy prayers (not selfish ones obviously).

The thought came to mind that perhaps God exists in all times at once. To clarify, instead of viewing the world like a movie He's already seen (which greatly complicates the idea of Him ever acting on the plot of said movie by requiring the ability to see beyond the present as experienced by humans, which is vastly complicated by the assumption of an infinity of possible futures based on present actions; not to mention making the idea of human agency altogether rather dubious) He instead views it entirely at once, as though laid out on the director's storyboard. If He chooses to create a worldwide flood He can watch the entire storyboard change at once see all hte repercussions thereof. If someone prays for healing and it fits His plans or whatever criteria He uses such that He grants the prayer then He can instantly see every change that makes further down the timeline, both the effect on the physical world of that person continuing to live and the effect on human agency in the world as a result of that person getting well.

In short, God exists out of time in this context. He has no need of fast forward and rewind to see the possible outcomes or adjust a decision. Following that idea then, reality would become something rather like a puzzle. Such a viewpoint would say nothing about the consequences and value of 'solving' the puzzle (or obtaining a best case result). And anyway, I've rambled enough about it. I should have put this down days ago when I first thought it out, but my internet's been down at home and I kept forgetting.

Accountability agent emails

Note for accountability agent's email:
Quote 2THS 3:14-15, Paul's comments on idle believers. It lays out a good biblical tone for the agent to set with their reminders.