Archive for March, 2005
In 2 Kings 3, we read the account of three kings and how God brought victory in a dry time. The short version of their story goes something like this…
Mesha, King of Moab, rebelled against Israel after Ahab’s death and refused to pay tribute to Jehoam. Jehoshaphat, King of Israel, Jehoram, and the king of Edom journeyed for seven day journey through Edom’s wilderness in order to strike the Moabites at their weak garrison on the border between Edom and Moab. The kings found a dry wadi where they expected water for their troops and animals. Jehoshaphat called for a prophet of the Lord, as seems to be his usual practice in times of trouble, and the kings went down to Elisha to seek his guidance. The prophet of the Lord instructed the kings to dig trenches and wait. At the time of the morning sacrifice, God sent water to fill the trenches they dug the previous evening, and the armies drank and watered their animals in the cool morning hours. The Moabites saw the rising sun reflecting red upon the water-filled trenches, gleefully assumed that the three kings had slaughtered one another(1), and ran out to spoil the battlefield. The rehydrated army slaughtered the Moabites.
God prepared - Before they asked
God prepared his deliverance even before Jehoshaphat asked for help. Elisha was not along for the good company; he clearly expressed his distaste for the kings of Israel and Edom. Elisha was there specifically so that he could deliver God’s instructions. Am I where God can use me?
God provided – In response to obedience
First, the kings had to humble themselves to go down to the prophet (rather than summon him). Then, they had to believe the prophet and demonstrate that belief through obedience. Finally, they had to wait for the time God appointed. When they humbled themselves, asked, believed, were obedient, and waited, God provided. How are my humbling, asking, believing, obeying, and waiting skills? (argh… the waiting…)
God prevailed – When it was impossible
The kings spent the seven days looking for water as they marched westward through the Edomite wasteland. They saw no windblown clouds in the distance and smelled no rain, but the water came as promised, and it came from the wilderness to the east. God not only met their short-term perceived need for water, He also gave them a significant victory over their enemy. The Moabites were put securely under Israel’s thumb and prevented from striking against Judah. The kings had only their immediate need in mind when they asked for help, but God had the big picture in view. Do I believe that God can do the impossible, or do I limit Him to the merely difficult?
I am encouraged to stop being anxious because my heavenly Father gladly gives me good things when I ask Him, and He knows what I need even before I ask.
(1) It is unfortunate that those who should have been as brothers were so known for their bickering that an outsider was more inclined to believe that they had slaughtered one another than that God had done a miracle in their midst. It is also amazing that God even used their habitual and historical failings to effect His will.
March 29 2005 | Jesus Stuff | No Comments »
Priorities are messy. Even the definition of the word acknowledges the disparity between things that merit attention and things that receive attention. Merriam-Webster’s OnLine dictionary defines a Priority as
- a (1) : the quality or state of being prior (2) : precedence in date or position of publication — used of taxa b (1) : superiority in rank, position, or privilege (2) : legal precedence in exercise of rights over the same subject matter
- a preferential rating; especially : one that allocates rights to goods and services usually in limited supply <that project has top priority>
- something given or meriting attention before competing alternatives
Believers concur that God should be first, and most cultures and creeds pay lip-service to the concept that Family should be prioritized above Work. After that, it gets messy and situational. Jesus came to deliver us from a rigid set of rules and regulations governing our behavior, and sent the Holy Spirit to direct us. Some would therefore postulate that perhaps we’re not supposed to have a tidy priority list. Perhaps defining priorities only serves as a crutch and encourages us to attempt to serve God in our own strength rather than relying upon His strength. What did Jesus say?
Jesus provided a very short list of absolute priorities:
- Seek first the kingdom of God (Matthew 6:25-33, Mark 12:29-30)
There is no second priority, and we are explicitly instructed that to “not worry” about anything else (Matthew 6:25-33). Kirkegaard explains that purity of heart (that purity which enables us to see God) is to will one thing, to seek only God. Adhering in practice to this single principle is both necessary for any of our other situational priorities to be right, and sufficient to ensure that they are.
For many of us, this is unpracticed preaching, and as a result of failing to set this absolute priority, nothing else works. The first commandment, in both order and importance, has always been to remember that YHVH is the Lord our God, we are to have no other gods before him.
Relative priorities should simply be a matter of applying our absolute priority, but Jesus knows how messy life is, so He gave us some examples to demonstrate what our situational priority list will resemble after we establish our absolute priority. A few of the more explicitly stated biblical valuations that we’ll dig into over the next few weeks are:
Priorities are defined by conflict, and indeed, can not be demonstrated outside of conflict. Stating that Family is more important than Work is meaningless until those come into conflict. If there is no perceived conflict, then our priorities are not what we think they are. What do the conflicts in my life say about my priorities? Do they reflect Jesus?
March 25 2005 | Jesus Stuff | 3 Comments »
This is a handy source for .NET Regular Expressions reference information and samples, as well as a handy test tool.
RegExLib.com (Regular Expression Library)
RegExLib.com Regular Expression Cheat Sheet (.NET RegEx)
March 25 2005 | Geek Stuff | No Comments »
Nothing terribly deep here, but after a long time without writing new code using COM, I had to remember that there’s a GetErrorInfo method. Here’s a quick reminder of how to get more information on a COM method failure.
{
// Snippit… Assume you’ve got a pointer pCOMObject with
// method Foo and that COM is happily initialized, etc…
// The FAILED macro returns true if the HRESULT returned
// by the operation is negative, indicating a failure
if FAILED(pCOMObject->Foo())
DisplayError();
// Don’t forget to clean up
pCOMObject->Release();
CoUninitialize ();
}
DisplayError()
{
LPERRORINFO pErrorInfo=NULL;
// GetErrorInfo returns a pointer to the most recently set
// IErrorInfo pointer in the current logical thread. It also
// transfers ownership of the error object to the caller,
// and clears the error state for the thread.
GetErrorInfo(0,&pErrorInfo);
BSTR strDescription, strSource;
pErrorInfo->GetDescription (&strDescription);
pErrorInfo->GetSource(&strSource);
// Display or log error appropriately, not this way
_tprintf(TEXT(“%s\n”),strDescription);
_tprintf(TEXT(“%s\n”),strSource);
// Clean up
pErrorInfo->Release();
SysFreeString(strDescription);
SysFreeString(strSource);
}
http://blogs.msdn.com/greggm/archive/2004/11/24/269378.aspx – Debugging tips
http://blogs.msdn.com/adam_nathan/archive/2003/06/13/56713.aspx – Gotchas
http://blogs.gotdotnet.com/anathan/PermaLink.aspx/6d021f27-72c8-4420-b6ad-1c5f0690bde8 – Win32/.NET Interop tips
March 25 2005 | Geek Stuff | No Comments »
No significant complaints yet, and kudos for webhost4life.
I had my support request for webhost4life and was very pleased with the results. I got my initial reply within about an hour of submitting the request, a reply to my response within less than an hour, and a final followup message after the issue was resolved. The support dude was helpful and communicated clearly. Great first webhost4life support experience.
I have found a few things I’m unthrilled about with dasBlog themes, but haven’t had any major issues there yet.
Performance on webhost4life is adequate, but if I were running a commercial or very high traffic site I would be a little concerned. Response time isn’t bad, but it isn’t great either.
March 23 2005 | Euphemos Blog | No Comments »
Once in a while, you’ve just gotta crash to see what’s going on in memory. Somehow, I managed not to know about this handy setting, so I thought I’d pass it along now that I do.
First, ensure that your system is set to create a complete memory dump in the Startup and Recovery (Open Properties on My Computer, Click Advanced, Click Settings in Startup and Recovery, then select “Complete memory dump” in the “Write debugging information” dropdown list).
Then, add the following to your registry (assuming you know what you’re doing in the registry and aren’t going to blame me if you blow things up…this is, after all, about crashing your system).
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\
System\
CurrentControlSet\
Services\
i8042prt\
Parameters
REG_DWORD CrashOnCtrlScroll = 0×1
Then, to force a system crash and memory dump, hold down the right CTRL key and press the ScrLk key twice.
Ta-da, you’ve got a dump and can load up your favorite debugger and see what’s going on.
Happy crashing.
March 22 2005 | Geek Stuff | No Comments »
Hey, here’s a quick update on my experience with domains through www.godaddy.com, web hosting with www.webhost4life.com, and dasBlog.
Domain purchasing through www.godaddy.com went smoothly and quickly. My only complaint there is that the young man who made a courtesy call to confirm that everything was ok was extremely bored and unprofessional. My wife answered the phone and found him to be… lame. I think it is great that GoDaddy.com makes a courtesy call, but it is somewhat pointless if the caller is unprofessional. The only other negative I can offer about www.godaddy.com is that I found their a la carte hosting options inconvenient and, for the feature set I needed, more expensive than I expected.
Web hosting with www.webhost4life.com was equally smooth. I received the necessary information (login, DNS, etc.) more quickly than I expected, and had no problems pointing domains to the server. The online help addressed the few minor issues I had, and I found the webhost4life control panel to provide all of the functionality I needed. I like being able to set my own permissions and ASP.NET application directories, and setting up email addresses for www.euphemos.com was very simple. The only things that I found mildly irritating (although common with hosting companies) is the extra charge to direct other domains (e.g. euphemos.org and euphemos.net).
So, that leaves dasBlog. Gotta say the documentation, where it exists, stinks. All-in-all though, it has been remarkably easy to build, tweak, and get up and running. dasBlog 1.7.5016.2 seems pretty responsive, stable, and the feature set is looking good. I’ll be curious to see what Scott Watermasysk does with .text (dotText), and what happens when telligentsystems releases CommunityServer::Blogs, but right now I have got to say that dasBlog appears to be the ASP.NET open source blog of choice. I would like to see enhanced documentation on features, what the configuration settings do, and more “how do I… with dasBlog” type of questions. I suppose that whining means I should look into submitting some content the wiki that Omar has been kind enough to host until there’s an official one at www.dasblog.net.
Easy as pie so far, and no complaints with webhost4life and www.godaddy.com prices and services.
March 21 2005 | Euphemos Blog | No Comments »
A Beautiful Mind, Part 7
by David Smith
“… whatever is admirable … think about such things.” ( Philippians 4:8 NIV )
What is the holiest moment of worship?
Is it exuberant celebration? One of those times when people are on their feet and animated. When the room is filled with spontaneous shouts of “Hallelujah” and “Amen.” When people simply cannot contain themselves in celebration of the saving work of their self-sacrificing, risen Lord.
Or is it one of those moments when there is perfect silence. As if the whole congregation is holding its breath in expectancy or absolute humility. Those times when no one dares make a sound because a sense of His presence is obvious to all.
We need not choose between the two. Heaven itself is depicted as embracing both. The question is flawed.
Well then, what is the holiest place of worship?
A quiet temple or a relatively noisy, songbird-filled forest? A silent moment before the table remembering the flesh and blood of the Lord Jesus or the noisy splash of the baptistery as someone is buried with Christ Jesus?
Again, the question is skewed. We don’t have to choose. God is obviously present in both places.
But…
When an apostle began building a list of things that came to his Spirit-prompted mind as to the things a Christian must fill their mind with, he settled on one word with which to end his list. And he must have selected this word with especially great care for it not only serves as the consummation of his list, but his use of it would come to be the only time this word was ever used in Scripture.
Euphemos
It’s extremely difficult to convey this word’s meaning in English. No one word or phrase does the job fully. That’s evident from the variety of ways English translators have attempted to interpret it for us. Following are just a few: Commendable (NRSV); Admirable (NIV, NLT, NJB); Respected (NCV); Proper (CEV); Attractive (REB); Gracious (RSV, NAB); Of good report (KJV, NASB).
And yet as difficult as this word is to translate, we simply must understand it. For as Christians, we must “think about such things.” So let’s consult some qualified help.
Years ago, James Moulton and George Milligan co-authored a book which attempted to illustrate the way words used in the New Testament were used in everyday life in New Testament times. In commenting on our word here, euphemos, they noted that the word typically had reference to:
“…the delicacy which guards the lips, that nothing may be expressed in public worship that could disturb devotion or give rise to scandal.”
Similarly, the New Testament scholar William Barclay observed that it was:
“…specially connected with the holy silence at the beginning of a sacrifice in the presence of the gods.”
Barclay went on to say that:
“It might not be going to far to say that it describes the things which are fit for God to hear.”
Speaking things fit for God to hear. Remaining silent before the sacrifice. Refusing to utter anything that could distract or offend.
That indescribable moment and substance in holy worship when silence says much more than words.
Those are the things with which to fill your mind. Those silent things which speak much more than words. Those are the things that are “admirable.” They are the things which make us remember:
“The Lord is in His holy temple; let all the earth keep silent before Him.” ( Habakkuk 2:20 NIV)
God my Father, my mind is a noisy place. In the name of Jesus I pray, hush my mind, and in so doing, fill it with Your presence. Make my mind Your temple, a never-ending place and moment of worship. May I never willfully defile Your holy place or fritter away my time with You there. Amen. And amen.
“…whatever is admirable…think about such things.” ( Philippians 4:8 NIV)
March 20 2005 | Jesus Stuff | No Comments »
Euphemos (yoo’-fay-mos);
Word Origin: Greek, Adjective, Strong #: 2163
- sounding well
- uttering words of good omen, speaking auspiciously
Philippians 4:8 Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honorable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.
This site is dedicated to those things.
March 20 2005 | Euphemos Blog and Geek Stuff and Jesus Stuff | No Comments »