Apparently, Cell Phones Could Be More Dangerous Than Cigarettes.
They say it take about 10 years to really be able to tell. But that’s okay because I figure with the technology moving at such a rapid rate, we are probably up to something that is going to wipe the earth out in a few years anyway and we just don’t know it yet…
I refer you to the episode of Stargate SG1 called 2010! Better hope there’s a Stargate around, and someone to predict a Solar Flare so we can loop the Stargate’s wormhole through the Solar Flare, so that those of us still alive when we realize the disaster can send a message to our past selves!
Have I ever mentioned how blessed our family is to be part of such a wonderful church? I’m sure I have, but I was particularly blessed today by the care the folks showed for me today in asking about the status of my health and just the concern in general that I am not completely whole yet (I had a really bad ear infection last Lord’s Day you see, and a fairly bad cold… the ear infection lingers and I still have a cough that’s becoming a dry cough, yeck!).
But more than that, I was blessed today by the Liturgy (thank you Pastor Lovett for your dedication to put that together each week for us). Even though I couldn’t sing that well today, and am having trouble with my ears, I was still able to come and worship the Lord today in this covenant conversation we have each Lord’s Day.
I want to share a little bit about Heritage’s liturgy. Now, for those of you who don’t know, the definition of liturgy according to the American Heritage Dictionary is:
A prescribed form or set of forms for public religious worship.
Liturgy is simply an order of worship which we follow on the Lord’s Day for our Worship. At Heritage, our liturgy is very purposeful and deliberate.
In a somewhat abbreviated fashion, this is the basic structure of our Liturgy.
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Prelude
As the appointed time approaches for our worship, the pianist plays a hymn arrangement to both let us know worship is about to begin so we can find our seats, and to aid us in preparing our hearts for worship.
Meditation
After the prelude, the Elder (currently our only Elder, we are actively seeking God’s council and wisdom for leadership) will ask us to meditate on a passage of scripture as the musician plays a meditative piece.
Call to Worship
After the meditation, the Elder calls us to the worship of God almighty. This is typically responsive as the Elder leads us and we respond.
Invocation
After we are called to worship, the Elder asks for God’s presence in our worship.
Hymn of Praise
We respond to God’s presence in our worship with a Hymn of Praise and thanksgiving!
The reading of the Law
The Elder then reads the Law of God to the people. This is to remind us that God is Holy and we are transgressors. We serve a Holy God and we are sinful creatures.
Confession of Sin
We respond to the reading of God’s Law in corporate confession of our sin.
Assurance of Pardon
After the confession, the Elder proclaims God’s pardon of His people from His Holy Word, to which we corporately respond, “Thanks be to God.”
Psalm of Response
We then respond to God’s assurance of pardon with an appropriate Psalm from the Psalter.
Confession of Faith
After our Psalm of response we confess our faith. For some months this has been by means of the Heidelberg Catechism where the Minister asks the question and we respond with the Catechal answer.
Pastoral Prayer
At this time, the Elder will pray for God’s people as the Lord leads him.
Psalm of Praise
We then sing a Psalm of Praise to the Lord from the Psalter.
Reading of the Text
The Elder now reads the text for his message
Prayer for Illumination
Without the Holy Spirit we cannot understand spiritual things. This is the prayer for the Illumination of the Holy Spirit as the Word is expounded unto God’s people.
Message
At this time, the Elder brings the message the Lord has laid on his heart to bring before the People of God.
The invitation and fencing of the Table/Words of Institution
As we prepare to commune with the Lord at the table He has prepared for us, the Elder fences the table by extending the invitation to the table to God’s people and warns that the table is only for God’s people. The Elder then recites the Words of Institution.
The Sursum Corda
It is at this time that we are encouraged to lift our hearts up to the Lord in communion with Him:
Minister: Life up Your Hearts
People: We lift them up to the Lord
Minister: Let us five thanks unto our Lord God
People: It is good and right to do so
Unison: And so, merciful Father, we lift our eyes from the visible elements even as we lift our hearts to heave itself, where Jesus Christ is seated on the right hand of the Father, from where He shall come again to complete our redemption, in Whom all the promises of God are fulfilled, and all spiritual blessings are to be found. In Joy of heart, in brotherly union, in Christian love we come to partake of Your table, giving thanks for the great love which You have shown to us, and ever singing…
Sanctus
Holy, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord!
Holy, Holy, Holy, Worshipped and adored.
He without beginning, Ageless and the same,
Is and ever shall be, Glory to His name.
Prayer for the Work of the Holy Spirit
At this time we pray in unison for the work of the Holy Spirit as we partake of the elements.
Consecration of the Bread
The Elder consecrates the element of the bread, then as we sing a hymn, he distributes the bread. The Elder then asks us to partake together.
Consecration of the Wine
The Elder consecrates the element of the wine, then as we sing a hymn, he distributes the wine. The Elder then asks us to drink of the wine together.
Prayer of Thanksgiving and Consecration
We then pray in unison, giving thanks, and consecrating our week ahead to the service of the Lord, asking him to send us out with His blessing.
Benediction
The Elder then pronounces the Benediction of the Lord upon His people, asking for God’s favor to shine upon them.
Singing of the Shalom
The Sending Forth
Minister: Go in peace to love and serve the risen and reigning Lord Jesus Christ
People: Thanks be to God!
Postlude
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I cannot tell you how I look forward to this conversation with the Lord every week. We need rest, we rest one day in seven as the Lord commands. I know I need to come into the presence of the Lord, hear his assurance of pardon to His people, and be equipped for the coming week of service to the King. The Lord’s Day is God’s blessing to His people, and the fellowship of God’s people is also his gift of refreshment to His children.
So there’s a glimpse into what I look forward to each Lord’s Day, and what I long for during the week.
Disclaimer, this post took me a little bit of time to write, it is long after all. There is bound to be spelling mistakes, and/or grammatical mistakes. Please overlook those, and look into the heart of my post.
I normally don’t gripe about Apple stuff in public, after all look at the alternative! But once in a while I indulge my desire to gripe about even the best things in life.
You see, I had been having this annoyance with my MacBook Pro… but let me back up.
I purchased my first Apple computer, a shiny new 1.33 GHz Powerbook G4 in the later half of 2004. Came with Panther (10.3.x… .5 or .6 I believe). Now, you must understand that I bought this my first Mac somewhat grudgingly. I had held that Apple Computer products were akin to evil Martians, here to invade, and completely stupid. And ya know, they were incompatible, no software, couldn’t do anything, only appealed to a specialty group… etc. etc.
Well, I quickly fell in love with my Powerbook! I learned that there is an abundance of good software, that it made even the smallest of everyday computing tasks so much easier and friendlier. But the time came recently when my beloved Powerbook just wasn’t cutting it anymore. It was a good solid computer, but really showing it’s age after these few years. It really wasn’t a viable main computer anymore as far as the power I needed, editing, graphics, etc.
So, after a few sobs, I parted with my Powerbook (which is still in good use by a good friend of mine), and bought my current computer, a 2.4 GHz Core2Duo MacBook Pro. And I really do love this computer, it’s FAST!!! But there was one thing in particular that was bothering me about this computer. That was it’s little problem with waking up from sleep (you PC folks call it System Standby… but whatever). For that matter, I hated how long it took it to even actually go to sleep. When I close my computer, I want it to go to sleep right away so I can put it in my backpack and haul it off RIGHT AWAY! I don’t want to wait for it for 60 to 90 seconds then take it away. I want it to be ready now. My Powerbook had always gone to sleep and woken up instantly, why was this new computer being such a pain.
Well technically, I knew “why” it was being such a pain… it’s because all Apple portables since about sometime in 2006 do something called safe sleep. Safe Sleep is a combination of something you PC people call Hibernation, and regular good old fashion Sleep (system standby). When you put one of these safe sleepin’ Apple portables to sleep, they first write the entire contents of the RAM to hard drive, like a PC does when it Hibernates (only it does seem at least a little faster than a windoze PC), but then it doesn’t hardware suspend as does a hibernating PC, noooooo, it then goes to sleep just like the old models used to, only now with more hassle and time involved. The idea is that, in the VERY UNLIKELY event that your battery goes complete dead, or falls out, or whatever, that your computer will still come back to life in the same state you put it to sleep in (only it would just take a little longer to write the contents of RAM back to the RAM from the hard drive). Of course this is just stupid because even if the battery died or whatever, your computer is going to be just fine… you just have to boot it back up. And if you had unsaved documents before you put your computer to sleep, well frankly, your just STOOPID anyway!
So that explained why the stupid computer took so long to get to sleep. But there was this other problem, waking up from sleep. It seemed that, the first time you put the computer to sleep after a cold boot, it would wake up normally. And the second time was usually alright too. But after that, it’s pretty much a crap-shoot as to whether the computer would wake up at all, or if it did, the whole system might be unstable, requiring a re-boot which of course, as you might guess, completely defeats the purpose of putting the thing to sleep as opposed to just shutting it down in the first place. In fact, I started shutting the thing down completely almost anytime I needed to pack the thing somewhere. I mean, it took the same amount of time to go to sleep as it did to shut down. And a cold boot insured that the system wasn’t somehow destabilized by whatever sleep bug was plaguing it.
But on a hunch, I figured that, OS X being OS X, this whole safe sleep thing had to just be a preference in a .plist preference file somewhere. So I did some googling and found a preference pane plug-in that will allow you to turn off safe sleep completely (called Smart Sleep, available here). So I downloaded it, turned off Safe Sleep, and would you know that not only did it fix this problem of taking 300 years to actually get to sleep, but it COMPLETELY cured the “stability on wake” issue. So obviously SOMEONE (I’m looking at you Apple) let this whole safe sleep business slip out of Cupertino with some stability issues!
But who in the world needs safe sleep anyway. I hated hibernation because it literally takes the same amount of time, if not more, to shut down and boot a PC anyway. So why would we introduce this as a “feature” on OS X? And then not even really allow us to USE the feature, but tie it to sleeping.
So that’s my gripe. It’s actually two gripes about the same thing. 1). Why do we even have this bother in the first place, and 2). why was it allowed to get out of the gates with such a huge stability issue? This is very unlike the Apple I used to know and love…
But again, as a whole, I still think Apple is years beyond anyone else in the computer world so… Like I said, look at the garbage you would have to put up with from the alternative.
Rachel met me in Franklin today so we went to Pucketts for lunch.
The sister-in-law also came to visit recently over spring break.
I got off work early on that Friday so we went to the Franklin Park.
Rachel dyed her hair with Henna while Anna was here.
And here are some random pics of a cute little boy.
