The hotel packed a large curved desk, a TV stand with three ample drawers, a luggage stand, and a cabinet with a half-height refrigerator and microwave along with two queen beds in my room.  There wasn’t much room for exercising. The walls seemed pretty thin; conversations from the next room could be heard.

The beds were nearly perfect in firmness, and I woke up just before my alarm on most days. Each bed had three pillows that varied in their firmness.

Outlets were in good supply. Four were available at the desk, and another four were in reach of a bed. Internet service was provided by Ethernet and strong wireless, though at times download speed suffered. YouTube buffered way too frequently. The code they gave me didn’t work, but the system also takes one’s HHonors username and password.

Television was divided into three sets of channels: a local set, a cable set, and a digital cable set. This made changing channels by number a bit of a pain. Picture quality was good on all stations, which included HBO, ESPN, several public television stations, and Cartoon Network.

The room had a thermostat on the wall, but heat was provided by a window heater/air-conditioner, which worked well.

The bathroom was efficient but not cramped. Water had good heat and pressure, but it took a little time to warm up.

The large fitness room had three ellipticals, three treadmills, a nautilus, and medicine balls of different sizes. There was also a large flat-panel TV mounted on the wall. There was an indoor pool and hot tub.

I didn’t stay long enough to try the laundry service.  The continental breakfast had two hot dishes in hotel trays, prepared oatmeal, yogurt, fruit, six choices of boxed cereal, and the standard bagel / english muffin / toast trays. During one evening chocolate cookies were set out, but they were brought out of the oven a little too early. They were mushy, and they fused together on the plate.

All of the staff was friendly and professional. The housekeeping even wrote a note when the sheets were changed.

$93 is a little higher than the Holiday Inn in the area, but the breakfast was free and the hotel is less than four years old. The Holiday Inn was seriously showing its age the last time I was in town, but it looks like it has had some remodeling.

Hampton Inn is a member of the Hilton family of hotels, and HHonors is a good frequent stay program.

A hammer has good uses and bad uses; yet we should not ban hammers. Likewise, hydraulic fracturing.

I was a fracturing engineer for about a year and a half, and I continue to teach job design software that involves hydraulic fracturing. There are situations where I would not recommend hydraulic fracturing:

• Pay zone — where the hydrocarbons are — is close to ground water
• Pay zone is near hazardous zones or salt domes which are great natural storage facilities for gas
• Nearby area has been fractured before — I’ve been on a job where we fractured into a nearby well.
• Nearby area is naturally fractured
• We have no idea of the lithology, or rock properties, in the area

Fracturing has risk, as does everything else we do. My company, Halliburton, has had a good track record of fracturing wells safely. I’ve never been in a situation where we fractured into somebody’s water supply. When that happens it needs to be investigated, and the cause needs to be determined so that it doesn’t happen again. If there’s liability to be assessed, then it needs to be assessed. If an operator damages somebody’s water supply, then it needs to be fixed if possible and the affected people need to be compensated. That’s the economics of petroleum production.

When somebody says we need a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, replace the words “hydraulic fracturing” with “hammers.” Hydraulic fracturing is indeed using a water hammer to break up rock under the surface of the either. Much more often than not (which is why fracturing is done), hydraulic fracturing is a safe and efficient way to extend the life of the well, reducing the number of wells that need to be drilled in an oil field.

Some people have questions about the safety of the chemicals we use in fracturing. They are fair questions, but they are questions with answers. Halliburton’s research has led it to develop the CleanSuite^TM technologies that use chemicals sourced from the food industry, ultraviolet light, and water-reduction techniques to reduce our environmental impact. This is the way the industry needs to go.

Don’t freak out about fracturing. We need it. Smart and effective use of this tool increases oil and gas supply and reduces your costs of gasoline, natural gas, plastics, and everything that uses hydrocarbons in their production or manufacture.

Baptism and the Lord’s Supper aren’t mere ordinances, and this is a good thing. When we are honest with ourselves, we recognize that there is nothing inside us that assures us we are headed for any salvation. We can have faith, but even that is given to us.

Font at Trinity-Traverse City

In the typical online Christian discussion each side brings its own proof-texts, but I want to go beyond what is merely “right” to the hope and the comfort that we are given when we let God do the talking. Listen to the promises. Listen to how awesome Baptism and the Lord’s Supper truly are:

1 Peter 3:18-22: Baptism now saves you…as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ…

Titus 3:5-8: He saved us…by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit…[that] we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

Mark 16:14-16: Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved…

John 6:41-59: Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day…As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me.

Matthew 26:26-29: This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

Luke 22:14-20 and 1 Corinthians 11:23-26: This is my body which is given for you.

If one is to call baptism and the Lord’s Supper merely symbols, I don’t know of any hermeneutic gymnastics that can be done to maintain that assertion without doing damage to the gifts he has given us.

We do participate in the sacraments in remembrance of Christ. We proclaim his death until he comes. If you struggle with Jesus saying that the bread is his body even as he is breaking it and the wine is his blood even while he is pouring it…let God be God and his gifts, his. The promises are just too great. They also happen to be true.

So far this year the company looks to send me back to Alberta. Halliburton has camps in Medicine Hat, Red Deer, and Grande Prairie. Grande Prairie is out there; we may wander over into British Columbia.

Last year I dropped 40 lbs. through a food diary and 45 mins. of exercise a day; I won’t be dropping another 40 this year. It sounds kind of cool to say I dropped almost three stones. I switched from the Lose It! app on iOS to LiveStrong on the BlackBerry, primarily because the kids now monopolize the iPods.

The podcast has been doing well. After our second pass through the Popular Commentary of Dr. Paul E. Kretzmann, I’m thinking about discussing the background of the hymns we sing: the scripture they reference and the conditions they were written in. Wouldn’t it be sweet if I could get an interview with the likes of LSB composers Pr. Stephen P. Starke or Stephen R. Johnson?

We made two hymn videos. I wish I could have synchronized the video of me singing with the audio a bit better on “What Child is This,” but CyberLink’s PowerDirector was very erratic with that. Video shooting and editing is a process where experience is a slow and demanding teacher, and I would really like to work with someone more experienced on any future projects.

I am quite excited that we are getting new accompaniment from Sam Mussman of Champaign, IL, and the notorious organist of Higher Things, Chris Loemker. Sam will kick off the new year of Time Out on Thursday with CL taking the next three. Jake Weber should also be with us in February. Our frequent guest vocalist Anna Baseley will be more involved when I work out the schedule for the next three months. We are still looking for more; we have no max on our guest list.

The house is now pretty much gluten-free. The market is starting to produce better gluten-free substitutes for normal bread goods, and while they continue to be more expensive, the prices are coming down. Udi’s loaves regularly can be found for under $5. Celebrate Local at the Easton Towne Center has had some good GF cookies that would be hard to discern from typical.

Wishing you and yours a prosperous 2012; keep working hard and forgiving others, as in Christ you are forgiven. Peace.

I humbly submit to you Time Out’s second hymn video, “What Child is This.” Available in HD.

http://lutherantimeout.org/370video

What do you think?

As it stands, we don’t have enough video and pictures submitted yet. I’m going to do some shooting Tuesday and fill in some gaps. We do have some good stuff from Detroit, St. Louis, Columbus, and the Czech Republic, of all places. I’m quite thankful for Jen B., D. Meyer, and Dr. A. Collver.

Many churches are doing their Christmas programs today; photos or videos of such would be cool.

If you have been waiting to send in footage of your church because it has been decked out in Advent blue/purple, and you’d like to show it in white, or if you’d like to send in your completed Advent wreath, I’ll take footage up through Christmas Eve. If you have something really cool planned for Christmas Day morning, let me know in advance, and I’ll save a spot for you.

You can either leave a note for me here or find me on Google Plus / Facebook / Twitter.

I couldn’t stay an evening in the first room because the steam heating had a nasty water hammer. They assigned me to another room, but I couldn’t keep the king-size bed.

Both beds were too soft for my taste. The pillow-top mattresses had so much give that it was impossible to lay on the front. There were plenty of pillows. Turndown service gave two chocolate mints each evening.

The desk had good room and provided 3 AC outlets. There was another set on each side of the bed, but one was too far away for the phone charger, and the other outlet was right behind the mattress. The 36” diagonal flat-screen HDTV had about 25 channels available, including Encore and one French channel.

The room had steam heating on the window side of the room, and there was no air-conditioner. An oscillating fan was provided in each room, and one could sufficiently cool the room by opening the 1’ portal in the window to the winter air.

The bathroom’s tub had fairly low walls, and the hot water was almost dangerous. Only when shaving did I have the temperature control set more than half-way hot. Pressure was very good.

The fitness room had two ellipticals, two exercise bikes, a treadmill, a small nautilus, and free weights. It was located near their Grand Ballroom, so it seemed inappropriate to arrive in workout gear during a Christmas party. The pool on the 3^rd floor was closed for the season; it was outdoors on the roof of a small section.

Laundry service was competent, returning on the same day and obeying all instructions regarding folding and starch. The front desk exchanged my $20 American for $18 Canadian, which is a horrible rate no matter what the times are. One clerk did go beyond her call of duty in helping me, getting directions and also calling to see whether my destination was open.

Internet access was pretty weak. Wireless only, the signal at the end of the hall was sufficient only half of the nights. At least it was free.

Breakfast in the morning consisted of a continental buffet or items off a menu, neither of which were free. The omelets got good reviews from my coworkers, who did not give good reviews for room service. The hotel bar had good Indian butter chicken, and the waitress suggested a decent local beer.

Entrance and egress are on different sides of the building, with the exit on a one-way away from the hotel, making it difficult to pick up friends at the front.

$108 Canadian is fairly reasonable for a downtown hotel. That and the proximity to the corporate office make the Ramada a place I’d stay at again on business.

Both services were led by Pr. Markus Zeuch, who speaks German, English, Portuguese, and Spanish. Pr. Zeuch is from Brazil.

Portion of German order of service

The Gesangbuch surprised me; there’s no music to go with the hymns. The old-world typography was another challenge. The two orders of service were in the back of the hymnal. Some parts of the service were similar musically to LSB Divine Service 3/TLH p.15, such as the Sanctus, the conclusion of the Lord’s Prayer, and the Agnus Dei. Unlike LSB, the German hymnal doesn’t write out the “Vaterunser” (the Lord’s Prayer) in the order of service; I had to find that elsewhere. The Apostles’ Creed is used instead of the Nicene Creed, which we normally use in our services of Holy Communion.

If you visit the Google+ album, you’ll see a picture of the organ, which is known throughout town as “The Beast.” Jenny Jordan, all I was told was that it had a tracker action.

I also attended the English service afterwards, Divine Service 3 out of LSB.

Fernando the Columbian had relatives in Calgary, and they took us to three places with beautiful scenery. More photos can be found here on my Google Plus account.

Our first stop was Lake Des Arcs.

We spent most of our time on Sulphur Mountain, above the resort town of Banff. We rode the gondola to and from the top of the mountain.

Lunch was to be had at Eddie’s in Banff. I tried poutine for the first time. Gravy and melted mozzarella over french fries is a good thing.

Just before dusk we made it over to Lake Louise. Part of the lake was completely frozen and turned into an ice skating rink. The temperature dropped to about -12 deg C ( 10.4 deg F ), and that was my limit. We went inside the Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise for warmth and beverages.

I’m very sorry to report that I had taken some great video with my phone, but between an incomplete movie backup and a hasty delete, I lost most of my video footage. Lesson learned the hard way, but we had a lot of fun.

I think it took me about 30 takes to get the words right.  Next time, I’ll use a script.

The last two years Time Out has had an extra Advent Bonus Edition and a Christmas Bonus Edition.  We’re not going to do those this year in lieu of a new project.

We’re making another hymn video, to be released Christmas Day, featuring my favorite Christmas hymn, LSB 370, “What Child Is This.” Rather than focus the video on the performers this time, we need footage from you.

We are looking for stills and video (that you have permission to submit ) that match well with the lyrics of the hymn.  The literal sense is good, but there is plenty of opportunity to be creative. Think of what you can do for, “Joy, joy, for Christ is born,” for example.

This is a great opportunity to show off your church, your community, and your own creativity. We will give you full credit in the credits and in the YouTube notes for what you send us. Free advertising is good, right?

We would like your submissions by December 18, but we would greatly appreciate it if you could send it in earlier. If you want to submit stills of your sanctuary decorated for Christmas, we can be a little more flexible with that. If you have Christmas footage from last year’s services, that would be good, too.

Let us know if you are interested and if you have any questions: talkback@lutherantimeout.org.

⁷For we are brought to an end by your anger;
by your wrath we are dismayed.
⁸You have set our iniquities before you,
our secret sins in the light of your presence.
⁹For all our days pass away under your wrath;
we bring our years to and end like a sigh.

Psalm 19:12 :

Who can discern his errors? Declare me innocent from hidden faults.

Secret sins. Hidden faults, hidden even from ourselves.

If we are responsible for saving ourselves from eternal damnation, or even partially responsible, be it through a decision, an indulgence, a commitment, an act of penance, or reaching a certain age of accountability, we are done for. We can confess all our sins, and still there is even more.

As angry as someone can get at me if and when I mess up, that’s just a breeze compared to the deserved wrath from the eternal God who is just and holy. Whether you’ve angered your friends, your parents, your employer, your children, or your spouse — righteous anger that may be when you’ve harmed them — it is infinitely worse from the Creator.  Your and my heavenly Father, who created us for good works, and we have let Him down aplenty.

We have no clue how much we have let him down and how damaged we are, until He tells us with His law.  Some look at the law, don’t like what they see, and refuse to acknowledge it.  Others look at the law and delude themselves into thinking either that they can keep it, or that they can sufficiently keep a part of it. We should look at the law and despair, knowing that the sum of it is meant to be kept and something we would actually be able to do without being told, were it not for the Fall.

We can’t even pray.

Thus in all honesty we have no hope of contributing even the least little bit to our salvation. No indulgence, no decision, no act of penance, no act of will on our part brings us closer to being justified by God. Peyton Manning has more ability to win the rest of the season for the Colts than we do contributing to our salvation.

Our salvation must be given.

This gift is not given to us because though we are sinners, “God loves us anyway.” No, God loves us one way. God loves us in this way, that he gave His Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.

This way. Only this way. Not this way and something else. Not 99% Jesus and 1% you. This is something to be thankful for. Your temporal deeds have plenty of good use serving your neighbor. The deeds that you need for salvation are performed by Jesus and counted to you. Thank God that you believe, however weakly, that the Christ was made man, suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, died, and was buried; descended into Hell, rose again from the dead and ascended to heaven for your and my justification.  All of it. There is no stink of sin in His work.

You can’t wash off dirt with dirty water. You wash off sin with water and the Word. He that believes and is baptized will be saved. There are no qualifiers: no “sincerely,” no “mostly,” no “as soon as a coin in the coffer rings,” and no “enough.”  Jesus is our enough. It is finished.

The parking lot was full, so I pulled off of the asphalt onto some gravel parking.  There was a little bit of a bump, but that bump caused a loud bang under the car. I thought I had hit something, but I looked under the car.  Nothing.

I went inside the hardware store, found some wrenches under $3, and left.

I started the car again, pulled out of the hardware store, and started to smell something awful, like hot rubber.  I rolled the windows down to see if it was outside, but then visible but light smoke came out of the vents. I called the nearby mechanic and told him I was coming in.  He had just freed up a bay and was ready for me. I eyed the car’s thermometer, thinking that if there’s a coolant leak, I would pull over before the engine got hot.

I got to the mechanic.

The quick strut on the driver’s side front wheel had rusted through and broken, and a piece of the broken strut had rested on the wheel. The rubber smell had come from the tire. The tire was worn down to the steel belt on the inside tread but had held pressure.

A little providence action there, I think, considering where it happened, when it happened, and what could have happened.

But that’s going to be one expensive Allen wrench set.

I will admit that it was kind of nice letting her sleep in and not getting her ready for school. Mornings have been way less stressful with getting just one kid out of the house.

From her point of view I suppose you can’t beat the learning environment either: go to the ABA therapy room in your jammies, take a snack and a drink, have a nice quiet place to work, get puzzles and iPod time every page completed. Almost like working out of the house!

Her assignments from school have been crazy. Before she was even sick, the homework was bad enough, with a batch of math assignments due every week and the occasional spelling list. Now that she was sick, her sister was bringing home all of the projects and schoolwork that these 2^nd graders have been doing in class for points. It has been impossible to do all of the everyday assignments and the normal homework load, especially for a kid who has been sleeping and recovering from pneumonia. I am very thankful that Friday is a three-day weekend; I am looking forward to getting caught up.

The school policy on homework says we have as many days as the kid has been absent to turn in homework. That’s nice enough on their part, but it’s scholastic suicide in practice. If we dared take nine days to get all of our girl’s work done, she’d be incredibly behind in class. If I didn’t have a kid bringing this home I’d have the teachers scan and email assignments daily.

After being home sick in 2^nd grade myself, I never had a sick day through high school graduation. God did my parents a serious favor, there.

I got a divine favor myself: the girl got sick on the two weeks where I have guest Time Out performances from Michigan.

I’m looking forward to getting back to work when Twin 2 goes back to school: working for HAL, getting the bills paid, running the wife’s and my errands, and singing for the podcast. With nobody in the house to listen for, I’ll also get to work out in the basement, and my living room floor will be thankful.

But this has been a good couple of weeks with the kiddo, aside from being almost merciless with the homework. I see how some parents enjoy homeschooling, but how they get anything else done in their lives is beyond me.

The target audience for the movie seems to be the Lutheran who already knows some history.  It shows Lutherans persecuted for secret church services in Germany, but it doesn’t really go into the mandate of the Prussian Union that attempted to force Lutherans to worship with people who denied the doctrines of the sacraments.

The movie covers the voyage over, the landing in New Orleans and move to St. Louis, the attempted establishment of a Lutheran commune in Perry County, MO, and C.F.W. Walther’s wrestling with whether or not the Lutherans in America were actually a church, when their bishop who led them to America was discovered to be a chronic adulterer and was exiled.

The discussion of the governmental shift from bishop-led commune to individual and congregational self-effort was rather abrupt and needed more development.  It seemed like people were angry at the bishop for his desire to build roads to his new house; then suddenly people were angry at the system of church government. There was opportunity for a discussion of vocation and letting the talents of the people dictate what they could do, but maybe this was a discussion that didn’t happen in the day.

The background hymns sung by Erin Bode were wonderful; I do hope she blesses Time Out with a hymn or two. 

Some of the other audio work needed some improvement, though. A couple of times a person would address a group in a room, and the background noise was noticeably different from microphone to microphone.

I liked the “interviews” with some of the characters to explain some of the details that were going on. I felt that taking the movie into more of a documentary direction than a drama would have served it well.

I learned how to pronounce “Vehse” (veh-see) .

I commend the effort of Concordia Seminary in the making of this movie. Covering the history of the period for 2-3 weeks prior to viewing the movie would help it to be appreciated by those would can really stand to benefit.

You had a quote about one of the most effective ways to pray is calling upon God to keep his promises. I was wondering what prayer like that looks like. What promises do we call upon in prayer?

To this person, thank you for the question!  I’ll open this up to my friends in the Office of the Holy Ministry, but as a challenge to myself, I’d like to take a crack at it.

For background information, the quote I posted was from Dr. Paul E. Kretzmann’s Popular Commentary, from Isaiah 63, which I read for Time Out:

One of the most effective forms of praying is that of taking the Lord aside, as it were, and reminding Him of His promises, to hold Him to His Word.

When I think of the promises of God, I think of:

1. Baptism. Acts 2:37-41. “For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off…” This baptism now saves us, 1 Peter 3:18-22.
2. The Lord’s Supper. Matthew 26:26-28. “…this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”
3. Living under the promises of God as opposed to living under the curse. Galatians 3:10-29. The eternal inheritance promised to Abraham and his offspring, that we are all sons/daughters of God through faith. We live without fear of the coming condemnation of all that is unholy.  A quick search reveals other references regarding Abraham’s promise: see Romans 9, Hebrews 6, and Hebrews 9:15.
4. God will be our God, and we will be His people. 2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1. He will no longer be hidden from our senses but will walk among us, and there will be no more sin, death, sickness, wickedness, and any evil that came through the Fall.

These promises, you may notice, are eternal and eschatological. Many televangelists and authors will try to pick a promise made to the people of Israel and expand it to include everyone, or they may pick out one of the if-then clauses of the Old Testament, in order to benefit themselves in the now. I run from most of that stuff. First of all, I can’t meet the requirements. Secondly, Christ has fulfilled the requirements for me. Is it more important that I prosper in this lifetime, or that I reign in paradise with the Most High God for eternity?

This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t pray for temporal needs. He gives us those things, too, but is it more important that I rise and walk, or that my sins are forgiven?

Many of the collects that I read for Time Out have commonalities that can be considered a form. The form, obviously, is not a law — I’ve said, “Help, Lord,” even meaning it on occasion , and surely He’s heard that — but the form can draw our attention to what goes on in prayer.

Thursday’s collect, for the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels, reads:

Everlasting God, You have ordained and constituted the service of angels and men in a wonderful order. Mercifully grant that, as Your holy angels always serve and worship You in heaven, so by Your appointment they may also help and defend us here on earth; through Your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

We have parts (the official names, if they exist, elude me at the moment). Note some handy things to keep in mind when we’re praying:

1. Who you’re talking to: “Everlasting God”
2. Something God has done and we are thankful for: “You have ordained and constituted the service of angels and men in a wonderful order.”
3. What we’d like to see happen: “Mercifully grant that, as Your holy angels always serve and worship You in heaven, so by Your appointment they may also help and defend us here on earth; “
4. Through Christ, our Mediator (1 Timothy 2:5-6)
5. Amen. Yea, yea, it shall be so.

Again, that’s just a tool.  “For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” — Romans 8:26. Who better than God Himself can stand before God and deal with Him on our behalf?

See also Episode 152 of The God Whisperers, where Pastors Cwirla and Donofrio talk about the collects in the liturgy.

Finally, there’s always the Lord’s Prayer.   Don’t let anyone deride you for using something unoriginal or mock you because you didn’t come up with something from the heart. It was good enough for the Son of God. If it weren’t good enough for us, Christ wouldn’t have said, “When you pray, say…” (Luke 11:1-4) or “Pray then, like this:” (Matthew 6:5-15).

I hope this helps! Pray to keep the faith, to believe that Christ died on the cross for you, to save you from hell and damnation, to bring you to Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness.

I was privileged to meet him at the Model Theological Conference on Worship in January 2010. His presentation there, essentially saying that the key to revitalizing our synod was the restoration of the Mass, was excellent.

Rev. Beecroft had stepped down from his office at Grace Lutheran in Tulsa for health reasons. We prayed for his health, but now there are other concerns.

I’m told (and verified with a second source) that he has left for Roman Catholicism, and this disappoints me for several reasons. First, because all of the good things that he did will now simply be poo-pooed as “Romish.” Secondly, because he was a good scholar whose services will not be in the LCMS employ any more. Finally, because of where he’s going, how one can renounce justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone? The man-made law can only bring an appearance of comfort.

And he’s not, in Roman Catholicism, going to avoid theological liberals.

Please come home, Rev. Beecroft.

Topics we covered included: why supplement the weekly Divine Service, when one should start supplementing, how the Divine Service provides comfort to my child with autism, maintaining continuity among home, church, and the Church; and getting one’s kids to go along with the routine a parent wishes to set for them.

I enjoyed talking about it; I hope you enjoy listening.  The episode is available on The Parental Office website.

Kids songs have their place, and some of them can be quite cute. They remember the challenges, though, and meeting challenges does wonders for their self-esteem and makes them hungry for more.

Sometimes I hear that some hymns are too hard for adults. Maybe, if someone saw “Behold a Host, Arrayed in White,” out of the TLH, or “Thy Strong Word,” for the first time, they might have a point. I would be careful not to sell short our musical intellect. We seem to do well with our national anthem, and that doesn’t come from the kiddie pool of singing.

Here is a snippet of the Time Out hymn coming in eight days.  One 37-year-old and 2 eight-year-old girls take on octave jumps, dotted-eighths and sixteenths, melismas, and other fun stuff in this classic by Martin Luther. You can’t knock the sheer amount of theological content, either.

There seem to be some indications in the Old Testament of the burning of remains, if not with God’s commandment, at least without God’s wrath: 1 Samuel 31:8-13, when the Philistines burned Saul and his sons; 2 Kings 23, where Josiah threw down the idolatrous altars and burned those in the tombs at Bethel (v. 16); and 2 Chronicles 34 where it is written again that Josiah cut down the altars and burned the bones of the priests on their altars.

I don’t see any prohibition against cremation, nor do I see anyone who wished to be cremated.  Maybe there’s something in the base languages, I don’t know.

The main argument I see against cremation is that it denies the bodily resurrection. But is it the action that confesses a denial of the resurrection, or is it the confession of the person being cremated that denies the bodily resurrection?

At the end of my Biggest Loser DVD workout, Bob the trainer leads the class through some yoga poses. There’s a “Warrior 1,” a “Warrior 2,” a “Triangle,” and a “Warrior 3″.  I do them. The stretching is good. Yet, do I say or believe that I am channeling some energy, or am I uniting my soul with a Supreme Spirit?  No.

St. Paul covers this kind of issue in 1 Corinthians 8. Eating food sacrificed to idols isn’t going to harm St. Paul, because “‘idols don’t really exist’ and ‘there is no God but one.’” On the other hand, he doesn’t eat the food of idols if someone sees him and thinks the idols are OK.

Would I take a yoga class with someone who preaches the Yoga religion? No. I would not want to appear to anyone that I was giving my ascent to his belief system.

Gnostic. Big time.

So: cremation or burial? Neither is going to affect you. There is one God, one doctrine, one truth. The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed (cue Messiah, based on 1 Corinthians 15:52). What you ought to consider, should you have opportunity to make this decision for yourself or for others, is the confession to those who remain. Are there going to be gnostics? Klingons? Are there people who are firm in their belief that you are disposing of a shell, no matter what pure word of God comes from your Lutheran pastor’s mouth? If so, maybe you should, in your freedom, not cause another to stumble.

But whatever you do to me after I’m dead, don’t put me in an urn on the fireplace. I saw Meet the Parents.

The first thing I did when I decided I was not going to buy anything in a 48″ waist was to download Lose-It! for my iPod Touch. The app is a combination food diary and weight-loss tracker.  It suggests an amount of calories to net (food intake – exercise) each day. It has a great web site to accompany the app. By the time summer 2010 rolled around, I wasn’t pushing hard against the 46″ any more, even without exercising.

Then the iPod got wet and died. I tried using a similar BlackBerry app, but it wasn’t designed very well and wanted me to put in how many calories I spent sleeping.  It was lame.  I hated it, and I was gaining weight again. As much as I love BlackBerry, iOS won this game.  The Apple Store exchanged my iPod, and I was back in business.

I have been using Lose-It! consistently since January 6. I logged 278 lb. on that day, and today the scale read 237.4. I’m wearing 38″ shorts comfortably. I don’t know if I can or should hit 36″; we’re talking about a size I haven’t worn since high school.

The food diary has forced me to make choices on a pseudo-metric calories-per-taste mentality. Vegetables are lower in calories and can be made to taste good. Rice? Let the sumo wrestlers keep that. There is still room in the diet for good things, too, if I budget well enough.

I was losing pretty consistently without exercise from January to the beginning of April, when I leveled off at around 255-260. I bounced around that for a little bit until mid-June, when I decided I actually needed to exercise.

My wife had a Biggest Loser DVD that had multiple stages of workout difficulty. After 2 weeks of Level 1, 2 weeks of Level 2 (which was Level 2 + another section), and 2 weeks of Level 3 (Level 2 + the third section), it recommended going back down to doing 2 of the 3 sections, three times a week.  I stayed doing all three sections, about four times a week.

To vary things up, I mow the lawn (push, not drive, of course ), and I have a Tae Bo DVD from the last time I decided to lose some weight.

When the DVDs started getting easy, I added dumbbells, first 3-lb and then 5-lb. Try punching with 5-lb. dumbbells; it’s fun! .  There are some exercises where I can go with both a 3-lb. and a 5-lb. in each hand.

I can actually tell that I’m getting stronger. I helped move some furniture in and out of a U-Haul, and I could tell things are a little easier now than they have been in the past.

Looking at my own gut, I may have a little bit to lose, but I may be at that point where if I keep exercising I may actually gain weight, gaining muscle weight more than losing fat weight. What a cool thing that would be!

I’m no Master-Fat Blaster-Pastor Ryan Fouts, who nearly won a competition with his transformation story, but I do have a couple of suggestions if you’re looking into losing weight.  Free — though there is this one podcast you could donate to…

1. Get a food diary. Lose-It! rocks. It has a database of food and calorie values, and the web site allows me to add foods that don’t have a label.
2. Work gently into an exercise routine. Find a 20-30 minute routine and work up. P90X’s hour-and-a-half scares me. Set low standards, meet them, then raise them.
3. Do not weigh yourself every day. Seriously.  The scale is a mental hazard. You’re in this to be healthier, not to obey the scale.  The scale was meant for man, not man for the scale.
4. When you do weigh, be consistent. Weighing after workouts?  At the end of the day? At the beginning of the day? Pick a time and stick to it, in order to keep your weight change throughout the day from messing with your head.
5. When you screw up, forgive yourself. Don’t quit just because you red-lined on the food diary or didn’t get in your exercise for the week.

Pictures? Nothing like Fouts, but I may not be as camera-shy now. I still shoot the pictures in my family.

Here’s hoping I can stay in this routine for a long time.  If there’s more results, great, if not, I’m OK with that, too. I do not want to be where I was, ever again.

If you’re doing the health thing, what’s working for you?

Unfortunately, he couldn’t reproduce the error, but he did say a couple of things about the detergent.  We’d been using All “free and clear,” which has the “h-e” symbol on it for our high efficiency washer.

First, since we were on relatively clean city water, we didn’t need even as much as the cap suggested: only 1-2 tbsp. of detergent was necessary.

Secondly, he said their tech department has been saying that Tide, Cheer, and Gain carry an extra additive that makes them true high-efficiency detergents.  He couldn’t say what it was.  I’ll have to see if I can find ingredients lists.

Finally, he recommended a washer cleaner, affresh, to clean out the washing machine once a month.

First thought: “Why am I so tipsy?”
Second thought: “This isn’t right. I haven’t been drinking…”

Later: “As much as I like a government shutdown…praying people are safe.”

Someone else had a photo of the damage in DC.

Your favorite earthquake responses. Go.

At the Visitors’ Center we noticed that a Zipline Safari that looks very fun.  Perhaps we can come back and do that when the girls are just a little bit older.

Persian Onager

Pictures are in the gallery. There’s the expected rhinoceros and giraffe, but there are a couple of oddball creatures such as the Sichuan Takin and the Scimitar-Horned Oryx.  We had a great guide who interacted well with the kids and knew his stuff.

The Animal Adventures tour lasted an hour and a half, perfect for 8-year-olds, and finished with an indoor presentation of a corn snake, an opossum, and a grey fox.  The snake and the fox were allowed to be petted.

The kids enjoyed the tour, and so did we. We can’t recommend this enough. Parking is $5 at the entrance and must be in cash, but after you park you take the bus to the Visitors’ Center and can use credit cards there for admission.

This gift does not stop at the cross and tomb but continues in the Word that we receive through faith and the sacraments that He has given to us. We trust in these things for forgiveness of sins, for life, and for our salvation. Knowing our own continued sinfulness, we recognize our need to receive as much of these gifts as often as possible.

The gift then shows up in our lives as service to our neighbor in our vocations. Having been given the creation by God the Father, we materially serve our neighbor.  Having received the blood-purchase for our adoption by God the Son, we forgive our neighbor. Bestowed the faith by the Holy Spirit to believe this gift by the Holy Spirit, we habitually spread this theology to our neighbors. In all this creation, atonement, and faith, we are just beggars telling other beggars where to find the bread.

If and when we do quibble over doctrine and theology, it is only because of the sheer awesomeness of the gift given to us. We deserve to receive this gift with as little compromise as humanly possible.

“If the Son sets you free, you are free indeed.” — John 8:36

“For freedom Christ has set you free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” — Galatians 5:1

In the vitamins section One-A-Day had two vitamins for men: the normal Men’s Health Formula and the Men’s Pro Edge.

The Pro Edge had half the tablets (50 vs. 100) at vitamin levels about 20% higher than the Men’s Health Formula.

For the same price.

Someone at One-A-Day marketing wasn’t taking their vitamins.

For my own funeral, I would choose hymns that impress upon the singer that Death is no mere rest, that it is an enemy to be dealt with, and that Christ has dealt with sin, death, and the devil on our behalf. Funerals in reality are not for the dead, they are for the living that remain.

TLH 607, “Day of Wrath, O Day of Mourning.” This is the English version of the ancient hymn Dies Irae. It isn’t in the Lutheran Service Book. The hymn has 19 verses, but they are short. This would make a good entrance hymn.

While the wicked are confounded,
Doomed to flames of woe unbounded,
Call me, with Thy saints surrounded.

TLH 656, “Behold a Host, Arrayed in White.” Now, some people would call a foul on me, because this hymn is in the LSB at 676. The TLH version has a prettier setting, arranged by Edvarg Grieg, and the lyrics while Jacobian are also easier to sing. LSB 676 is good and serviceable; I just prefer TLH 656. This was sung at my grandmother’s funeral, and I’m grateful she had requested this one.

Despised and scored, they sojourned here; But now, how glorious they appear!
Those martyrs stand a priestly band, God’s throne forever near.
So oft, in troubled days gone by, In anguish they would weep and sigh,
At home above the God of Love For aye their tears shall dry.
They now enjoy their Sabbath rest, The paschal banquet of the blest;
The Lamb, their Lord, at festal board Himself is Host and Guest.

Now I’ll put away the old red hymnal…

LSB 672, “Jerusalem the Golden.” A great hymn that again looks forward to the second coming, referencing both Isaiah and Revelation.  The tune itself has a beautiful build in the third line that you will remember long after most of the service.

Around the throne of David, The saints from care released,
Raise loud their songs of triumph To celebrate the feast.
They sing to Christ their leader, Who conquered in the fight,
Who won for them forever Their gleaming robes of white.

LSB 490, “Jesus Lives, the Victory’s Won.” Filed under Easter, this hymn delivers real hope in the Savior who died and rose, that I may be his own. The last verse is particularly cool at the funeral of the Christian, who seems to sing back to the living:

Jesus lives! And now is death
But the gate of life immortal;
This shall calm my trembling breath
When I pass its gloomy portal.
Faith shall cry, as fails each sense:
Jesus is my confidence!

The rest of the hymns I enjoy singing any time, any occasion.  They confess the faith, and when do you need that confession more than when you see the casket at the base of the chancel?

656, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”
578, “Thy Strong Word”
954, “We All Believe in One True God”
766, “Our Father, Who from Heaven Above”
941, “We Praise You and Acknowledge You, O God”

Well, let’s hear it! What did I leave out? What do you agree with?

I have to admit, it was cute. Unfortunately I can’t agree with the YouTube poster that it was the Best Prayer Ever, and not just for the lack of reverence other blogs have covered and will cover.

When you look at the Lord’s Prayer or most prayers of the church, you find not only thanksgiving or praise of God but petitions asking God for things He provides. God didn’t stop providing for us 2000 years ago on the cross. He continues to bless us daily in His creation and through our vocations. He gives us His Word and sacraments, strengthening our faith and giving us forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation.

The least Pastor Nelms could have done was to pray for the safety of the drivers, the pit crews, and the fans. I originally missed what might have been the only petition in this prayer, that the drivers may “put on a performance worthy of this great track.”

The best he could have done was not to draw attention to himself, but, given the thousands present and probably millions watching around the globe, to give those listening some Jesus. Not just Ricky Bobby’s baby Jesus, but the one who died for us, that we may believe and be saved.