bierkergaard

This summer, I was strategic about what I planted in the garden. I made it, what I thought, groundhog- proof. Just tomatoes, red peppers, and jalapenos, all vegetables that these suitcase-sized vermin don't like to eat. Oh how they disgust me. However, I see tell-tale proof that these mendacious mandibles on all fours have penetrated my two-fence defense perimeter and are eating the produce nonetheless. Teeth marks in the half-eaten tomatoes. At least finish what you have started. No dessert for you! Besides a few stray pickings, Lina and I have only been able to get two rounds of copious tomatoes off the vines. Usually, by this time, we have a red tint to our skin from eating so much of the fruit. We are also thinking that the passive-aggressive neighbor out back who is retired is also helping himself. It is a satanic conspiracy between man and beast. An unholy alliance of pillagers. Reminds me of that Wendy's commercial of yore, the "Where's the Beef" ca...

It is coming 20 years now since I first heard of the band LIVE. Lead singer Ed Kowalczyk is now doing his own thing but many of the elements that made LIVE a critical and commercial success have crossed over. Since I have not been feeling well, I pulled some major hours sleeping. I felt better but then I couldn't sleep. Address one issue, create another. So it goes. Last night, I decided to read a blog which then sent me to a website detailing an event down in Nashville where Ed K. performed last year and professed faith in Christ. I don't put a lot of hope in celebrity conversions. Dylan came and went but nonetheless, I do believe anyone who is a Truth-seeker has to come to Jesus who is the Truth. Really loved this video "Grace." There is a line in the song that "Every saint used to be a sinner." That is not quite true...every saint is still a sinner. What Luther called, "simul iustus et peccator." As we walk in Grace, we leave sin pr...

Not sure how I accomplished this one. I came down with a cold in August with it being 80 degrees outside. Maybe working three 12 hour days in a row last week at the start of school did me in. I rarely call off work even when I am not feeling well but today I did. I suppose that I am finding trying to tough it out just prolongs the misery. Shut down and let the body and soul rest. I am hoping to be better by tomorrow. It is good to feel weak...it is a sure medicine for the pride of self-sufficiency. If God has to increase the former to reduce the latter, it is a wise transaction. One ails the body, the other destroys the soul. Mark 2:17 On hearing this, Jesus said to them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."

With Hurricane Irene turning on the spigots in the skies, it makes me more at peace that we live in Mountville, high upon a hill. Higher ground in the best response to flooding for water obeys gravity even when it is acting up. High places signify many realities in spirituality. They typically are places of worship. What is worshiped can vary, but worship happens. Just as nature abhors a vacuum, high places--what a culture believes to be ultimately the transcendent truths of life--are going to be occupied. One has to have a view of the world, a worldview, and ultimate truths are the apex. There recently was an article published in the New Yorker about the Dominionist . The writer Lizzi (a literary Lizzie Borden for the ax job) essentially posited that Christians who think that the faith applies to more than Sunday morning are dangerous. Nancy Pearcey, one of the writers targeted in the article, defends her viewpoint better than I can . There are two essential major stories i...

It is Friday afternoon. The first three days of school are over. 177 to go. Not that I really count. I can't afford to. I take it one day at a time and trust that God will provide the sufficient grace required thereof. And, it is not that I don't plan...I do. But, I try to avoid thinking overly about what is to come. If for no other reason than I am often wrong. So, it is a fool's errand. Being that it is Friday, I have decided to have a couple of beers. Since I am a beer aficionado, I refuse to buy Bud, Miller, or Coors. My default is Yuengling Lager. It is a good, not great, beer. At $ 20 a case, I am drinking my brews for under a dollar apiece. I am all for great beer. I have plenty of it in the Beer Fridge and downstairs in the basement. Some of this beer goes for around four dollars per 12 oz. That is an educated guess...I am really not up for doing the Math. I could barely muster up the brainpower at work to check my phone voicemail at 3:00 PM. It is true that...

Lina, my wife, has been doing exercise/yoga-like routines from Netflix. We are doing a trial run before she goes all in and buys a DVD set. The DVD set is one of those "Three easy payments of $ 79.99." When one does the math and goes, "Yikes." So, in the download pre-programmed work-out routine, the instructor says things like "Good!" as if she is praising her audience who are doing the routines well. Here is the strange part--there is no audience in real time. It is a general affirmational tone without any awareness of how the audience is actually doing. For all she knows, her audience might be some dude with a gut who is eating chips and likes to see women stretch. Seriously. Does the instructor want to praise that? Our society tends to think that praising creates praiseworthy behavior. It is actually just the reverse. When we praise without something that deserves praise, it cheapens praise because it is so effusive and sloppy. When I worked wit...

Damn straight I worry. Last night specifically around 12:05 am. I was going through several complex schedule changes in my head. Visions of trying to work something out while the lines of students with incorrect schedules mounting outside my door like water on a New Orleans levee was causing me to be wakeful from worry. For today was the first day of school. I learned about two decades ago that if I could not sleep because I was worried about something I could address that moment, then I should get out of bed and stop my ceiling-gazing and solve the problem. This revelation came too me after many sleepless nights pondering what to do rather than actually doing it. SO, early this morning, I hopped on my computer, accessed the Student Information System remotely, and did four schedules that were likely to be the most challenging in the morning. After about two hours of doing this and addressing a couple of other issues, I went back to bed. The remedy for worry? Work. Do something...