"Daddy, can I use your staple gun?" - that is how my day started today and I love every minute of it!
How many dads get this question from their five year old?
Whenever I work around the house, Jacob is there to help. I know that I work at half speed when he is around because of all the questions I have to answer, and the curiousity he has that tends to get him in trouble - but it is also fun.
My favorite thing is when I ask, "Jacob, can you get me a screwdriver?"
and he says, "Do you want a philips or a flathead?"
I am so blessed!
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Sunday, January 11, 2009
I am the richest man in the world
Thursday, January 08, 2009
Sexy Woman
The last week my wife has taken to several home improvement tasks:
Strippping two doors using potent paint remover chemials and a belt sander
Stripping paint for Nathan's soon-to-be new bed.
I find it very attractive when I see her use my air compressor, belt sander and chemical gloves for removing paint. A few weeks before that she was right along side me shoveling dirt back into the trench in our backyard tht I dug for a new sprinkler system.
So using tools is sexy - but when we work together I feel so connected.
Strippping two doors using potent paint remover chemials and a belt sander
Stripping paint for Nathan's soon-to-be new bed.
I find it very attractive when I see her use my air compressor, belt sander and chemical gloves for removing paint. A few weeks before that she was right along side me shoveling dirt back into the trench in our backyard tht I dug for a new sprinkler system.
So using tools is sexy - but when we work together I feel so connected.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Trying something new
So I have not blogged for a while - much of this is me trying to balance my personal data communication between: blogging, facebook, and email (let's not forget cards since we just finished the holidays).
Another reason is that this blog had EVERYTHING in it - personal and tech - the lack of focus gave me even less reason to work on it. I have since moved all my tech blogs to here: http://josherdmantech.blagspot.com/
Hopefully that will give me more incentive. We will see!
Another reason is that this blog had EVERYTHING in it - personal and tech - the lack of focus gave me even less reason to work on it. I have since moved all my tech blogs to here: http://josherdmantech.blagspot.com/
Hopefully that will give me more incentive. We will see!
How accurate is the Bible? How many times is it translated?
The holidays bring up visitng and plenty of conversation over a few beers. Eventhough I could barely finish one, a discussion was brought up covering - you guessed it religion. My extended family (at least 60 or so) is traditionally Christian - varying in those that attend church habitually (sort of the legalistic side that feel that church earns their way into heaven) to the other side where they believe in God and Jesus but have plenty of questions and ideas that Challenge their faith leaving them inactive.
Plenty of reasons came up - I call each of these challenges to the faith - and I had a chance this morning to send an email addressing the translations of the bible. Here is what I wrote:
I was reading my bible this morning and remembered our conversation about how many times is the bible translated? I too had that question a few years ago and found the answer on both the foreword of my bible (not a very good read however) and also Haley’s Bible Handbook.
The entire old testament is written in Hebrew – the language of the jews. It contains all their holy scriptures and contains historical documents, psalms, and prophecy all looking forward to the coming of Christ.
The original manuscripts of the New Testament is written in Aramaic and Greek – this makes sense considering the letters of Paul are written to non-jewish town – the Book of Romans is a great example.
You are right scholars do not have ANY original copies of these letters. Each letter was copied and distributed to other churches and copied again. In total that are over 4,000 complete and incomplete manuscripts of Greek and Aramaic that the scholars take from to compose a bible translation. Texts today are not re-translated from the King James or other older copies.
The amazing fact here is the VOLUME of manuscript copies found (more are found every century – the Dead Sea Scrolls (found in 1947 - http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/deadsea.scrolls.exhibit/intro.html ) and the Sinaitic Codex in 1844 by a german schold in the Monastery of St Catherine at the foot of My Sinai. The story of the Sinaitic codex is actually amazing. The German Scholar, L. F. K. von Tischendorf was visiting the monastery and notices in a wastebasket a bunch of vellum pages with Greek writing set aside to be burned. He returned again in 1859. All of these vellum leaves can be found in the University Library at Leipzig and the British Museum. These new findings have only verified the accuracy of the existing bible that we have been using.
Other copies of old manuscripts can be found at the VaticanRylands Library in Manchester, England. All this is stuff I found out in the Hailey’;s bible handbook.
In all over 4,000 complete and partial manuscripts exist. In comparison to Homer’s Odyssey – no complete copy exists earlier than 1300 AD.
In short the Bible is the most accurate and complete ancient writing in the world. The other amazing fact is the accuracy between the copies, despite the fact that they are separated hundreds of years and countless miles!
Of course one can always punch holes in this since they want Original texts – they want to SEE Paul’s signature on the text. That is where faith is required.
I hope you find this helpful – Putting this letter together for you was actually quite exciting for me. It renews y spirit seeing just how amazing our God is. Yes man and Satan have many schemes to lead us astray, but you need to ask yourself – is our God big enough to conquer those?
References:
http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-t007.html
http://www.freethoughtdebater.com/bibleaccuracy.htm
I realize that this is an answer to only ONE of the many stumbling blocks for Christians. During our conversations someone said – “that is where faith comes in” – and yes, you need faith to persevere in these challenges – especially when you currently do not have an answer or solution – but what I have also found in my walk is that THERE ARE ANSWERS! You just need to find them – the Internet and a few helpful books make this so much easier today.
I then suggested that we continue to find the answers for each challenge and created this list of popular Christian challenges:
1) Where to the dinosaurs fit?
2) What about the verse in Gen 6:2 – “The sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose.”
3) The bible was written so long ago – (4,000 for the oldest writings to 2,000 years ago) – how can it really apply to my today?
4) If there are demons in Jesus’ day to be cast out – where are they today?
5) What about ghosts and the paranormal? Aliens?
I just made one condition - I will work on answers to these challenges if he would put a bible in his bathroom and every time he sits on the porcelain throne, he must work on reading a chapter from the book of Proverbs and James. Just one chapter at a time.
As I said above, it has been alot of work - am I an sure I do not have water tight answers - but what I have found has been very exciting to me.
Plenty of reasons came up - I call each of these challenges to the faith - and I had a chance this morning to send an email addressing the translations of the bible. Here is what I wrote:
I was reading my bible this morning and remembered our conversation about how many times is the bible translated? I too had that question a few years ago and found the answer on both the foreword of my bible (not a very good read however) and also Haley’s Bible Handbook.
The entire old testament is written in Hebrew – the language of the jews. It contains all their holy scriptures and contains historical documents, psalms, and prophecy all looking forward to the coming of Christ.
The original manuscripts of the New Testament is written in Aramaic and Greek – this makes sense considering the letters of Paul are written to non-jewish town – the Book of Romans is a great example.
You are right scholars do not have ANY original copies of these letters. Each letter was copied and distributed to other churches and copied again. In total that are over 4,000 complete and incomplete manuscripts of Greek and Aramaic that the scholars take from to compose a bible translation. Texts today are not re-translated from the King James or other older copies.
The amazing fact here is the VOLUME of manuscript copies found (more are found every century – the Dead Sea Scrolls (found in 1947 - http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/deadsea.scrolls.exhibit/intro.html ) and the Sinaitic Codex in 1844 by a german schold in the Monastery of St Catherine at the foot of My Sinai. The story of the Sinaitic codex is actually amazing. The German Scholar, L. F. K. von Tischendorf was visiting the monastery and notices in a wastebasket a bunch of vellum pages with Greek writing set aside to be burned. He returned again in 1859. All of these vellum leaves can be found in the University Library at Leipzig and the British Museum. These new findings have only verified the accuracy of the existing bible that we have been using.
Other copies of old manuscripts can be found at the VaticanRylands Library in Manchester, England. All this is stuff I found out in the Hailey’;s bible handbook.
In all over 4,000 complete and partial manuscripts exist. In comparison to Homer’s Odyssey – no complete copy exists earlier than 1300 AD.
In short the Bible is the most accurate and complete ancient writing in the world. The other amazing fact is the accuracy between the copies, despite the fact that they are separated hundreds of years and countless miles!
Of course one can always punch holes in this since they want Original texts – they want to SEE Paul’s signature on the text. That is where faith is required.
I hope you find this helpful – Putting this letter together for you was actually quite exciting for me. It renews y spirit seeing just how amazing our God is. Yes man and Satan have many schemes to lead us astray, but you need to ask yourself – is our God big enough to conquer those?
References:
http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-t007.html
http://www.freethoughtdebater.com/bibleaccuracy.htm
I realize that this is an answer to only ONE of the many stumbling blocks for Christians. During our conversations someone said – “that is where faith comes in” – and yes, you need faith to persevere in these challenges – especially when you currently do not have an answer or solution – but what I have also found in my walk is that THERE ARE ANSWERS! You just need to find them – the Internet and a few helpful books make this so much easier today.
I then suggested that we continue to find the answers for each challenge and created this list of popular Christian challenges:
1) Where to the dinosaurs fit?
2) What about the verse in Gen 6:2 – “The sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose.”
3) The bible was written so long ago – (4,000 for the oldest writings to 2,000 years ago) – how can it really apply to my today?
4) If there are demons in Jesus’ day to be cast out – where are they today?
5) What about ghosts and the paranormal? Aliens?
I just made one condition - I will work on answers to these challenges if he would put a bible in his bathroom and every time he sits on the porcelain throne, he must work on reading a chapter from the book of Proverbs and James. Just one chapter at a time.
As I said above, it has been alot of work - am I an sure I do not have water tight answers - but what I have found has been very exciting to me.
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Crazy last seven months!
April: Moved into hour first house & Nephew born
May: Church Men’s retreat
June: Camping at Hume
July: Sister's Wedding
August: Trip to Colorado via Train for Family Reunion -> Oldest turned 5 years old -> Oldest started Kindergarten -> work sound board for our church’s 3 day summer camp at Camp Hammer (took oldest son with me)
Sept: Fostering two Bassett Hounds –> Took on two new clients (Visualpurple.com, cheaofca.org) -> Lost one client -> Travelled to SF to do some on site work for a remote client (Guayaki.com)
Travelled to LA for some on-site work with (Cheaofca.org) -> Took Employees to Magik Mountain before the Fall Quarter started at CalPoly
Oct: Took on another Client (Alanjohnsonperformanceengineering.com)
Who knows what I am in for in Nov!
May: Church Men’s retreat
June: Camping at Hume
July: Sister's Wedding
August: Trip to Colorado via Train for Family Reunion -> Oldest turned 5 years old -> Oldest started Kindergarten -> work sound board for our church’s 3 day summer camp at Camp Hammer (took oldest son with me)
Sept: Fostering two Bassett Hounds –> Took on two new clients (Visualpurple.com, cheaofca.org) -> Lost one client -> Travelled to SF to do some on site work for a remote client (Guayaki.com)
Travelled to LA for some on-site work with (Cheaofca.org) -> Took Employees to Magik Mountain before the Fall Quarter started at CalPoly
Oct: Took on another Client (Alanjohnsonperformanceengineering.com)
Who knows what I am in for in Nov!
Monday, June 02, 2008
Grace Church Men's Retreat
I just got back from a Men's retreat - 50 of us got away to a campground just south of Oxnard. What a great time of relaxation, reflection, fellowship and learning. As a hard working man, you realy forget about what it feels like to do stuff together and feel connected. There is nothing like getting a bunch of guys together around multiple camp fires - all cooking different kinds of meat - roaming from campground to campground - its the ultimate potluck!
Even today as I am going back to work - I still feel connected somehow - knowing all these other guys are doing the same thing. There is definitely strength in numbers.
Even today as I am going back to work - I still feel connected somehow - knowing all these other guys are doing the same thing. There is definitely strength in numbers.
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