James's Weblog

I've known Sam Allberry for about 15 years now. I've long appreciated his clarity as a teacher, preacher and writer. I now admire his courage and honesty as well.

Sam has a new book coming out shortly, entitled "Is God Anti-Gay?" That's a good question. Many people assume that the answer is no, by which they mean that God has no objections to someone fully embracing a gay lifestyle. Alternatively, once one says God does have objections to this, you are saying that God is anti-gay.

Sam sets out to steer the reader through this particular minefield. It is his deep conviction that a gay lifestyle and identity is not something that God is content for a person to embrace. And yet Sam also wants to affirm, equally passionately, that this does not make God anti-gay. The Christian gospel is good news, and it is good news for everyone - including those who experience same-sex attraction. Sam has had to think these things through from the perspective of his first-hand experience.

Today, I'd like to introduce you to cascara.

It's not a kind of make-up.

It's not a sequence of waterfalls.

It's a byproduct of the coffee producing process, which most people in these shores haven't heard of. Yet in the coffee producing regions it is turned into a drink in its own right.

Meet: Cascara

Sometimes, during our evening services, there is plenty of time for discussion. Recently, we were having a session looking at the name of God, and I was asked a question. I answered it as best I could, but I've been thinking about it some more since. I think I could have done a little better. In case this is helpful, I'll put it here.

The question was whether we could call God our creator, redeemer and sanctifier.

I just got a call. The caller display showed "international". The accent was foreign.

Operator: "Hello, this is N calling from the technical department of Windows Computer Systems. Could I speak to the main user please."

Me: "I'm sorry, there is no company called Windows Computer Systems."

Operator: {Silence}

Me: "It doesn't exist. Where did you say you were calling from?"

Operator: {Hangs up}

I feel prompted to post part of Psalm 2 this morning

¹ Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?
² The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying,
³ “Let us burst their bonds apart
and cast away their cords from us.”

Drupal websites don't always need to allow users to register themselves with an account. This site doesn't, for instance. Anonymous commenting is turned on. The contact form is enabled for anonymous users. And those are the only thing that any member of the public would need to do - other than read. So nobody needs to set themselves up with a login.

Here's why you should never trust the autocomplete feature of Google

I've used the services of Pingdom for a long time to keep track of how my websites are loading. They will check any website from ten different servers around the world, as often as once a minute. You can look at graphs of how the load time varies with time, and you can be notified as soon as the site goes down.

For those who don't know, a Hot Top is a home coffee roaster that operates a bit like a miniature version of the commercial roasters. It roasts in a perforated steel drum that rotates while the air temperature around it ramps up to the right temperature. When the beans are roasted, they are ejected into a cooling tray where ambient air is blown through the beans that are stirred with a paddle. The whole thing takes 20-25 minutes.

Getting Things Done

David Allen, in Getting Things Done (paid link), has lots of very useful tips on how to keep on top of all the things that need to be done. I don't think you need to adopt his method in an all-or-nothing way, although if taken as a whole approach there is a consistency that lends itself. Even then, you have to work out how you will put the principles into practice.