the green fields beyond

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Location: Charles City, Virginia, United States

Friday, October 30, 2009

...and she's beautiful, too.


Another year of surprising me with wit, grace, wisdom, and ninja cooking skills. Another year of forgiving me when I've been a fool. Another year of praying, listening, and working overtime for the people of her congregation.
But she never loses sight of the real heroes, like Kermit.
Happy birthday, Mel!


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Monday, October 26, 2009

.3 of a Century isn't very old

Wonderful birthday weekend:
--Friday night, Sushi and "Where the Wild things are" with Mel. Good food, good movie; thought that was the end of it.
--Saturday morning, Mel suggests breakfast at the Five Forks Cafe. Innocently, i accompany her there, only to find two old friends from out of town, James and Eric, waiting for us. Surprise! So we breakfast, and then i accompany them to the WM Homecoming Game, in which we trounce JMU. Go Tribe.
--Butwaitthere'smore: because when i returned home with them, I found that Mattias and Mark were waiting at my house to surprise me further. Huzzah! And here's where it got really tricky: because they started talking about birthdays past, and steered the conversation to the chicken suit that my friend/boss Pete gave me last year. "Oh, some of us haven't seen that suit. Try it on and we'll get a picture of you in it," they said, as if on the spur of the moment. Foolishly, i complied, but while photos were being taken, Pete pulled up in his van and they carried me to it, still in the suit. Away we all went to the Green Leafe....
---Where Charlie, Dave, Armistead, and Mike met us for dinner. Got some truly odd looks in the suit, and in the bathroom was the target of some hilariously obscene jokes from a drunk guy who then said, "So what do you do?"
"Oh, i'm a pastor."
"Oh, i'm so sorry, Father! But you do look ------- funny in that suit!"
---Had a great time at dinner, and stopped by a Chick-fil-A on the way back, still in the suit, because these opportunities don't come very often. I asked them if they served anything but chicken, and feigned a horrified/indignant response when i realized the chick-i-cidal nature of their "family restaurant." The manager was amused until i began to suggest that the patrons take their business to a not-so-fowl establishment, at which point he (understandably) ran out of patience, and we left.
--Back to Pete's house, where I demonstrated my lack of prowess on Guitar Hero.
A wonderful weekend, and sneakily orchestrated by Mel, Charlie, Peter, et al. Thanks!! My hat is off to you and your slick deceptions! I feel lucky to have friends such as these. And strangely unembarrassed about the whole chicken thing. Now i'm going to eat leftover pieces of Mel's AWESOME carrot cake for breakfast.

P.S. Yes, there's photo and video of all this, but i'm not posting it here. Other people are doing a great job of that already. It's not that hard to find.


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Wednesday, October 21, 2009

The Law of Freedom

Exciting! My copy of Dr. Dan McCartney's brand-new commentary on James has arrived! Many of us have been waiting for this book for a long time. Dan McCartney, who taught New Testament at WTS for many years and who is now Professor of New Testament Interpretation at Redeemer Seminary in Texas, is an excellent teacher, a careful exegete (he ought to be: he did the revision of Machen's Greek textbook, after all), and a model of "pastoral scholarship." I've not read through the commentary yet, but hope to do so soon. I'm seeing some very useful things just from my brief skim-through so far.


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