I met with a friend last night and we were discussing the difficulty at times of accepting the grace we know to be truely ours in Christ, and the difference between conviction and self-acusation. Combined with this discussion was a consideration of how conviction of the gospel message cannot be separated from the desire to bear witness of Christ, to be intentional about sharing our faith.

I was reminded of a little book by C.H. Spurgeon (right), entitled All of Grace. I had mentioned, in a brief note in 2006, how this evangelistic book had moved me when I brought it along to my short term missions trip to Moldova. Well I pulled it of the shelf this morning,

What may be good for a voice podcast, is not good for music.

Ever listened to a sermon podcast in the car and got frustrated fidling with the volume control when your pastor goes from really quiet to really loud or visa versa? To deal with this problem we post-process our sermon recordings with a software compressor, effectively making the recording all one level. (Actually doing this with software [we use audacity's compressor effect] as opposed to hardware at recording time introduces it's own complications and sometimes we still don't get it right. Primarily this is because it requires investigating each recording and then applying the appropriate compression ratio's.)

However, making a recording all one volume pits listening convenience against dynamic quality.

Monday, I considered the relationship between knowledge of the revealed Word of God and faith through trials... how gazing ahead to the eternal glory of Christ allows believers to view the challenges of today with peace. The view is both far and near, and may require bifocals.

Tuesday, I found an amazing sermon from someone I have read some of, but had never heard speak, Martin Lloyd-Jones. There is an MLJ Recordings Trust (thanks CO for finding this), which sells audio and books, as well as offers a daily broadcasts (streaming only) of Lloyd-Jones' sermons.

On the site is one free sermon: "Meeting Trials and Temptations" preached just two years before Lloyd-Jones' death in 1981. So I downloaded it, and threw it on my iPod (thanks honey).

Wednesday morning I listened to the sermon on the way in to work, and was pleased to find that it was on a passage which I had been meditating on for the last several months, 1 Pet 1:13-25.

Therefore, gird up the loins of your mind, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Pet 1:13)

We have been facing many trials in our personal lives, and in our church body ...

My sister in Christ posed an excellent question, "Is it possible to be “over-educated?”

I often think about how merciful God is to not overwhelm us with all the future concerns of our lives, let alone the universe.

Sometimes we get frustrated when we see but through a hole in the fence, especially during hard times. But the more I consider it, trust in a sovereign God is completely freeing. Not of responsibility, but of worry.

I was considering the fact that Scripture tells us to do two things:

I Decided to take shadyvale.org from blue to green, being a lush valley and all that. The old logo didn't work, so I thought I would spend a little time and see if I could come up with something other than a plain text site name.

So I fired up the old inkscape, and played around a bit. I know so little about graphics or artistry, but was able to make use of the fine tool and took advantage of the Open Clip Art SVG Library.

I then set out to create a favicon (the little picture that appears in the address bar for those using cool browsers) which I have done previously in theGimp, and ran across a little web tool, FavIcon from Pics which did the trick. Just exported a png from inkscape and uploaded it to the site and was given a decent favicon.ico. It appears that the background is white instead of transparent, but good enough for now.

Note: IE 6 users, you will see an ugly site logo since PNG transparency was broken for years in Internet Explorer. Sorry, I am tired of providing work-arounds for the bug, I would highly suggest downloading a newer browser.

I have to say that the Drupal 5 rocks, the drupal core Garland Minnelli theme has met my needs, and with the included "color" module I was able to alter the colors of the theme without editing any css.

Anyway, let me know what you think.