bierkergaard

The day before Valentines Day I was at the Hallmark store along with all the other poor sucker men looking through the cards. Valentines Day is a damned if you don't holiday for sure. Advice to the newly married or men in a relationship perhaps leading to marriage. Don't believe the woman when she says that Valentines Day is no big deal. It's a trap to see if you can have the wisdom to do the right thing despite the words. You had better learn that lesson sooner or later, and the sooner the better. Applicable to much more than Valentines. My wife is not a particularly sentimental person and neither am I. So, 99% of the cards were not suitable. We love each other and all but sugary verse, especially with the awful rhymes, off-limits. I finally wound up buying a card in the snarky section with script that stated that I loved her more than I loved bacon. And, I love bacon. Dangerous to even equate a person to a thing, even if it is bacon. Some women want roses, chocolat...

' There are demons she fought privately and publicly for many years... She's been on a downward spiral for a long time and when you have those people around you that enable the behaviour ... she couldn't shake those demons.' That is the quote of a music insider about the life and death of Whitney Houston...I am pretty sure that the intention in the use of the word "demons" is generic with not the belief in the actual supernatural origin of demons tormenting her.  A couple of years ago I was in conversation with a parent about a situation regarding another person and he used "demons" in the same way, but I had to ask to make sure. For I believe that demons are fallen angels and the Bible is quite clear that they exist and are a malevolent presence in the world.  I am no Medievalist. The world thinks anyone who actually believe in the demonic to be backwards and backwoods. So be it.  The battle between good and evil is cosmic in scope. Satan f...

Walking out of school today, I saw one of these Valentine heart-shaped balloons, floating alone in the sky. By the time I got my iPhone out, zoomed, and focused, the balloon was no longer able to be seen in the photo. Was it cast loose in a cool dismissal of unreciprocated love?  An illustration of the wayward winds of human affection? Or, the string lost grip of by trying to text too? In fourth grade, I saw the distribution of Valentine cards in accordance to the popularity and prettiness of the girls. The cutest girl received the best cards--I still remember her name--Marissa, while the lower status and physically unattractive girls received the leftovers, and their names are long forgotten. Childhood can be sad... I read this in Calvin's devotional this morning based on Psalm 27:1. It just seemed appropriate for Valentines Day. This is beyond the vagaries of human affection. God, therefore, kindly allures us to himself....that it may ravish our hearts with admiration o...

Last evening, we had plans for dinner down at a Mexican fine dining establishment in Wayne, Pa. The event had been planned for a couple of months. Lina and I were having dinner with a man who mentored me as a young man. In fact, he still does, although I ain't so young anymore (Springsteen). He is fairly well known in Libertarian and Conservative circles. I will leave it at that. Our respective schedules tend to require a degree of planning. My mentor earlier in the day wrote an email advising that we should cancel and reschedule because inclement weather was in the forecast with that deadly three letter word: ICE. Snow does not really rattle me. Ice on the other hand makes me get angina. Yet, I decided to take our chances. Lina and I were the ones driving and traveling down the Pa. Turnpike, so ultimately it was our call. I just didn't want to delay our dinner. Delays can turn into de facto denials. Don't presume upon tomorrow type of thing. I did presume that Penn-...

As an educator, by far the most gratifying reward for the work is for a former student coming back and expressing thanks and appreciation for the role I played in their life. Don't get me wrong...I like getting a check every two weeks, however the best deposit and return on investment is the positive difference we have made in eternal accounts. Today was one of these days. My former student is a truck driver. I don't try to steer everyone of my students to college. It is not where some of my students should be going. Instead, they are better advised to use the gifts that they have to drive the road they are equipped for. I know that I should not by driving trucks for a living based on my lack of depth perception. I prefer being in the seat of my desk. I would suck driving a tractor trailer, and dangerous at that. All labor and work has value, if done with excellence. My former student mentioned a trucking maxim  acronym. It is called: Get Out And Look (G.O.A.L.). This a...

This is a new steel church built in the 'burbs. One designer called it "sexy." Man, I don't know what I think about  this. I like cool architecture...too many churches look like McMansions that would blow down with a huff and a puff. But, I want to register a deeper complaint. The Church in the Bible is not a place; it is a people. Whenever we start thinking physical structures, we are already playing into the world system. Jesus said that "man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from God." Bread could be a substitute for building. Man does not live by the building alone. We fool ourselves when we think a building, music, or anything else but good lives is what is required for evangelization and discipleship to happen. How many churches (places) are stuck in a debt rut because they thought the place was the key to reaching the community only to find that you could build it and they still might not come. How about going to them?

As I cleared the parking lot on Sunday in the A.M. of cigarette butts, I contemplated trash. Like who throws it, who picks it up. What the role of the Church should be in picking up the trash in society. And it is not just physical trash, but ideological trash. Worldviews that should best be discarded, and the wreckage that ensues because of false premises. I always get frustrated and even angry when mere men criticize the faith because of the trash pile of thought and action they sit on like a throne. Acting the king when quite the beggar. Throwing garbage. The Parking Lot Movie/documentary is a thoughtful piece of work. Although the topic is not trash, it is about the dynamics of parking lots as a sociological phenomenon. Parking lots are a lot more complex than I gave them credit for...class warfare, labor, privilege, existential boredom, the mobile society. How many layers are in the lot like an onion? While I was picking up the trash on Sunday, there was a church ...