I copied this from an email I sent to a friend tonight. We've been talking in part about how to deal with complicated moral questions that we really are NOT sure about. My Dad shared a few thoughts about it with me, and I thought they were pretty profound. So I shared and expounded on them in that email, and here too :)

Forgive the inconsistent pronouns here - sometimes I use "we," "you," and "I" interchangeably to refer to no one in particular when using an illustration. I mean it's an email, who cares that much about some of the finer points of prose? Well, some do I'm sure, but I don't :)

[Dad] said when we obsess about not making mistakes and wrong decisions, fearing that we'll "mess up" God's work in our life, we are really trying to limit God in what He can do, even if we don't realize it. Of course He's able to foresee our errors and build His plan around us; do we really think we're so important so as to mess that all up with our daily blunders? If God thought right decisions were the most important thing, He would have made us perfect to start with. But He didn't!

Something related - he also said sometimes we get this fork-in-the-road syndrome. We're faced with a choice and we don't know what's right, or what God wants us to do. But sometimes (probably even oftentimes) God is down both forks! If I'm debating moving to St. Louis or New York, am I not able to serve God in both places, albeit, most likely, in different ways? If I love God and take my best guess, He'll see to it that I'm able to serve Him where I'm at for better or for worse. Of course, that is different than debating between one decision that serves ME and another that serves God. Obviously, I should take the latter in that case. But sometimes we see two or more things, and we're not sure which is right for God's sake, regardless of what benefits it has for us personally. In that case, I think we ought to take our best guess. And honestly we never can know how both paths are going to pan out; we can only know one, and we can only know it by walking it, not ahead of time. I may move to St. Louis and think that it would have been a much better decision to move to New York, but I can't say that with any real certainty. I may have been hit with a tornado if I went to New York for all I know!

And there is no undo button in life, either ;-) Thank God there isn't; it'd take 1,000 years to live till you're 70! More so for perfectionists like me.

And you can probably apply that thinking to any decision. Perhaps you're waffling between whether you ought to drive the speed limit or go with the flow of traffic. Assuming you really are trying to make the best decision for God's sake (and not one way because you like driving fast or the other because you want to feel self righteous about driving the speed limit when few others do), I don't think it matters greatly what decision you make. There's merit to both schools of thought. You could probably say the same about head coverings to some degree. And a thousand other things, too! The fact that I don't know all the facts shouldn't keep me from making a decision at all. I may well change my mind down the road, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't make up my mind to begin with. In fact, by necessity, I'll have to have made up my mind earlier to change it later! I ought to take my best moral guess as to whether I should drive the speed limit or go with traffic, and not give up driving because I couldn't figure it out being 110% certain, riding my bike the rest of my life. If you take that attitude in very many circumstances in your life, you'll have to be content with sitting at home alone eating stale bread and water the rest of your days. But even then you'll probably come up against some conundrum that prevents you from making it through even those simple tasks!

You should think and ACT on the things you DO know something about, and not worry about the things you don't know about! Christ was much more about action than philosophy. And if you start acting like Him, lo and behold, you'll turn into Him :-)


This will probably be my last post before going to Brazil. The prayers are very appreciated, and maybe I'll have time to write a brief post or two from down there. Vão com Deus!

He even offers everything for nothing. In a sense, the whole Christian life consists in accepting that very remarkable offer. But the difficulty is to reach the point of recognising that all we have done and can do is nothing. What we should have liked would be for God to count our good points and ignore our bad ones. Again, in a sense, you may say that no temptation is ever overcome until we stop trying to overcome it - throw up the sponge. But then you could not 'stop trying' in the right way and for the right reason until you had tried your very hardest. And, in yet another sense, handing everything over to Christ does not, of course mean that you stop trying. To trust Him means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you."

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book III Chapter 12 - "Faith"


That's not much to read, but a lot to think about. If you haven't read this book, READ IT.

Tchau :)

Go tell all of them congrats on becoming new parents/grandparents/aunts (respectively) :)

That's the Young Men's Leadership camp for those unfamiliar with it :)

Last week I had the tremendous privilege to be a counselor at this camp in Alabama for young men 14 to 18 years of age. It is a week full of intensive Bible studies, prayer, opportunities for leadership in front of people in the form of song leading and public speaking, but much more importantly leadership in the form of service and in the small insignificant things.

This is the 8th year for the AL camp. I attended it years ago as a camper in 2003 and 2004. Back then there were about 40 or 50 campers...this year there were 128! It was overwhelming, although in a relatively good sense :) Mr. Sewell Hall (the brother that started the camp years ago) kept managing to find more places for these kids to sleep (such as camping trailers and RVs), and so the need arose for a few more counselors to help "tame the masses," so Gary invited me down to help. In spite of the numbers tripling, the spirit of the camp was absolutely unchanged, if not improved!

The daily schedule of the camp hasn't changed much from the previous years. There were 6 45-minute classes, 2 assemblies, times for devotions and singing, and about 4-5 hours for sports and free time (and yes, 3 AMAZING meals - biscuits and gravy every morning! I was happy).

Of the 6 class periods, there were 7 classes offered, so you would miss one of them (unless you did like Micah and either skipped lunch or ate it in 10 minutes to make it to 2 4th period classes ;) ). I skipped two of the morning classes since for a few days I would run into town for things that other counselors or campers needed. And by Wednesday, while I was spending a lot of time studying and praying with other people, I was getting so busy I was neglecting my personal study and prayer time! So those few quiet hours in the morning were a good chance for me to do that. But here's a brief synopsis of the classes I did get to sit in on.

Ecclesiastes - taught by Paul Earnhart
I cannot think of a more appropriate person to teach this book! Mr. Earnhart is in his 70s or early 80s, and is just brimming full of wisdom. In a nutshell, he described Ecclesiastes as a search by Solomon for something of ultimate value. He talks about many things of value (such as work, health, pleasure, companionship, marriage), but finds vanity in it all when it isn't something substantial enough to build his life on. In the midst of our blessings, may we learn from Solomon's findings and remember what really matters in this life!

Philippians - taught by Scott Smelser
I loved the way Mr. Smelser taught this. Have you ever been taught something relatively difficult by someone who is clearly learned and intelligent and uses their vast knowledge and vocabulary to make you feel really dumb? Well, Mr. Smelser often makes me feel kinda dumb when he teaches, but in the sense of, "That's so simple; how could I have not seen that before??"
This was a sort of two fold class. First we were to learn the book of Philippians (and I mean LEARN it - back and forth!) and some of its applications to our lives, but we were also going to use Philippians as a model for learning other epistles to the same extent. Have you ever had one of those moments where you know the Bible says something, but you can't remember whether it's John 3:4 or I John 4:3 or 3rd John 4? Well, learning the epistles (or any book) in the way that he taught us will solve a lot of that! And I think that will be the subject of my next post :)

Public reading - taught by Guy Warner
This class started out as public speaking, but Mr. Warner offered us a vote between public speaking and reading. I'm glad it swung in the favor of public reading...I have not heard much teaching about this subject. I have gotten the impression that many people think of public reading in the assemblies is a sort of "starter" for young Christians, to get them ready for the "big" stuff like giving talks or song leading. Sometimes, if the preacher hasn't chosen a passage to be read, there will not be a reading. I think this class elevated the public reading of scripture back to its rightful place of importance in worship. In I Tim 4:13, the public reading of scripture was a command given by Paul at least on par with preaching and teaching! In the text, reading actually precedes the other two. Also, Jesus and Paul commonly went to the synagogues to read from the scriptures. There's a lot of power in the Word of God, and we need not underestimate it! A friend of mine mentioned about how her father would read story books to her with "flair, character, and panache" and when compared to the "professional" readings, the latter were all wrong! There's a lot of power in the scripture, and dull monotone readings take away from it. It was cool in this class to hear guys read beforehand, but afterwards, reading with much more insight into the passage.

Mark - taught by Gary Fisher
What else should Gary teach besides his book? :) I think Gary speculated one time that he had at least started studying Mark with hundreds of different people so far, perhaps even over a thousand. So, this class was very beneficial. I really saw the emphasis that Mark put on themes through the gospel. He put these stories in there in that order very carefully and for specific purposes: to teach us something about the nature of Jesus. For instance, at the beginning of the book, several passages teach us about Jesus' authority and the proper response to him. Also, passages about his power over all things spiritual and physical, his knowledge and wisdom of the scripture in how he refuted those that opposed him, and the lessons he taught in parables. One of the main purposes of the study was to learn it to be able to study it with non Christians, but also for more intensive personal study. This week sure prepared us for both!


AND....well, this is getting pretty long. I suppose I'll stop it here and finish up next time :)

EDIT:
(This will probably happen several times as I find new stuff. I'll post the edits at the top and in the body so you don't have to go hunting for the changes)

7/1/09 5:45 AM EST: Non-gold users can now leave private comments on on gold user blogs! But if you want to leave private comments on anyone's blog, you'll have to go gold for that :)

7/8/09 11:30 PM EST: The "add to watch list" option is located under the "add to friend list" option on others' blogs.

7/8/09 11:30 PM EST: This isn't a p3 change, but is handy: If you use a hex code with 3 sets of double digits, such as #224433 or #00dd00, you can abbreviate it to #243 or #0d0.

7/8/09 11:30 PM EST: Since you can't do piggyback posting anymore, you can use a horizontal rule tag (<hr>) to give the illusion of two different posts when you edit an entry. Pleo won't let you change attributes (like length, width, etc), so just a simple hr tag is all there is. You can see one below.

7/8/09 11:45 PM EST: There's a link on the homepage now to see what users are online. You can't IM them, but visit their blogs from this page or message them.

7/8/09 11:45 PM EST: Gold users can also see online friends. Of course, so can normal users by skimming through the online users page...but gold users have a special link for online friends, and if any number of friends are online, the number appears in gold at the top right corner of your screen.

7/13/09 12:25 AM EST: Gold users can mark all their entries private by going to the homepage and clicking on "account settings." The option is at the bottom. This is handy if you ever go gold and want to make all your 352 entries private at once. This is NOT reversible...although, you can make them all public one-by-one if you want.

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Original post:

I really like the new look, and there are some great new features. Here is a summary of some of the new stuff. If you see it written in gold, it’s….a gold feature ;) For you gold users out there, I may miss a few features unique to gold because they don’t show up in all of my options. I’ll try to remember as many as possible from betanast.

Right-side sidebar

Probably the most apparent change in layout. You’ll see several grey title bars along this right-side bar. You can click on any of these to get drop-down menus and fiddle with them. Here are a few things that have changed:

Avatar

In p3, when you upload an avatar, it is cropped/resized to a 195x195 pixel square. To change your avatar, click the appropriate link under your screen name. After uploading the file, you’ll be able to tell pleo what part of the picture you want to show. I think the reason for the square avatar is to make the layout look slicker. But if you must have a larger picture (please be reasonable), you can put one in a room and link it in your blurb. Read on to learn to do that.

Profile

If you click on profile, you get three options. Hiding your profile makes it invisible to everyone but you, but making it private will make it invisible to everyone but you and your friends. Most of the sidebar options can be hidden in the same way. Making your profile private will not make your blog private! It only makes this list of information private. Editing your profile lets you change your name, location, birthday, email, screen names, and blurb. Go here to learn how to put an html code in your blurb for bigger profile pictures. However, if you do it that way, it will NOT show up on others’ friends lists or in your comments.

Rooms

Hmm, looks empty. Click edit rooms, and check the boxes of all the rooms you want to appear on your blog. This is nice for all those rooms you use to hold pictures, but you don’t need them on your blog. Also, you can drag-and-drop entries on your rooms list to reorder.

Galleries

No, this isn’t supposed to be gold. Which means…everyone can have galleries now! Non-gold users are limited to 3 galleries and 100 pictures, but it’s definitely better than nothing :) Like the rooms list, you need to check “show on sidebar” for it to show up. The format has changed a bit too; play around with it! Galleries can also be made private individually.

Friends

You can “edit friends” to change names and…reorder your friends list! This used to be gold-only. You can also hide your friends list, and click “befriended by” to see whose friends lists you are on. Gold users can “clear dots” if you’re having a hard time keeping up with comments. Avatars also show up on your friends list now.

Watched users

This is a new gold feature. It’s like a friends list, except it’s invisible to all but you, the people on it can’t see your private info, and you can’t see theirs. This is good for people whose entries you like to read, but you don’t really know them well enough to be “friends.” The "add to watch list" option is located under the "add to friend list" option on others' blogs.

Online friends

Gold users can see when their friends are online. Look up at the status bar next to your name at the top right. If there's a gold number there, (next to where the green number for messages appears) that's the number of your friends that are online. You can't IM them through pleo, but you can send them a message or post back and forth on your blogs. You can also access this page through the homepage via online users.

Entries

Entry Drafts

Surely you know the frustration of losing an enormous pleo post for your browser crashing, cat jumping on the keyboard, etc. No more for gold users! Now entries are periodically backed up until they’re created.

1-per-page entries

Instead of 5 posts per page, p3 only shows one at a time. There are a number of reasons for this, but they take a while to explain :) You may notice that your URL field never says “www.pleonast.com/your_name”. No worries, you can still type that URL and it will redirect you to your newest entry. If you want to send a link to a particular entry, just copy that entry’s URL. (p2 had problems with this, and that’s part of the reason for the change) If you want to see older entries, there are buttons at the bottom for previous/next entry, or you can see the master list through the “entries” link under your name on the sidebar.

White entries

If someone updates twice in a row, you might have missed the first update on p2. But on p3, when you click on the entries list, all the entries that you haven’t seen will be white, so you won’t miss anything :) And, if you edit an entry 15 minutes after it’s created, your name will still turn white as though it were a new entry. If you liked making “piggy back posts” on p2 without comments to go on top of your main post, editing is a good alternative to that on p3. Also, you can use a horizontal rule tag (<hr>) to separate an edit from an original post, giving the illusion of two different posts. You can see one between the edited and original sections up above. Don't bother trying to change the width or height of the rule though; p3 won't let you :)

Mark all entries private

Gold users can mark all their entries private by going to the homepage and clicking on "account settings." The option is at the bottom. This is handy if you ever go gold and want to make all your 352 entries private at once. This is NOT reversible...although, you can make them all public one-by-one if you want. But that's a lot of work, so click responsibly :)

Comments

Editing comments

One of the best things about p3! After making a comment, you have 15 minutes to edit it in case you made a mistake.

No more <br> tags!

The comment entry box now lets non-gold users use the enter key instead of <br> tags to make line breaks.

Easy linking

The [text|target] way of linking users and rooms has been applied to external websites as well. So [gooooogle|google.com ] becomes gooooogle.

Stricter html

If you like using hex codes for colors, you have to include the # before the code or it won’t work. So <font color=00dd00>green font</font> gives you green font, but <font color=#00dd00>green font</font> gives you green font.
(Side note: If you use a hex code with 3 sets of double digits, such as #224433 or #00dd00, you can abbreviate it to #243 or #0d0)

Limited private comments

Non-gold users can now leave private comments on on gold user blogs! But if you want to leave private comments on anyone's blog, you'll have to go gold for that :)

Homepage

There are a few new features on the homepage – www.pleonast.com

New entries

Anytime your groups or friends have new entries, these will show up in a lime green link saying “X new entries.”

Messages

Normal users can now send messages!

Followed entries

This is kinda like watched users, except this time you watch a single entry, and it’s kept on the homepage. This is useful for keeping track of entries with comments being added frequently. The option to follow an entry should be at the end of whatever entry you want to follow. You can also opt to receive a message when someone comments on a followed entry.

Send messages to email

Gold users can have all their messages sent to their email if they want. Enable this feature in account settings on the homepage.

Receive messages when linked

If you’re gold, you can receive a message every time someone links you in an entry or comment. You won’t receive a message if you’re linked in a private comment or entry that you can’t see, though (so, you still can’t know if someone’s talking about you behind your back) Combined with the previous feature, you can be emailed anytime someone links you as well. This feature is off by default - enable it in account settings on the homepage.

Online Users

You can see who's online in pleoland now. You can't IM them, but can visit their blog or send them a message if you'd like. Gold users also have a tab on this page for online friends. If you don't want to be seen as online, disable the feature in "account settings" on the homepage.

This isn’t an exhaustive list, but hopefully this helps people learn to use the new pleo. Hope you all enjoy it too!