Month: November 2008

I Am Thankful

Today is Thanks­giv­ing, and once again I am remind­ed of all that I have to be grate­ful for.

God loves me. I have a won­der­ful fam­i­ly (both by birth and by mar­riage). I have a faith­ful team of sup­port­ers who part­ner with me in min­istry. I have the coolest call­ing in the world. I have fab­u­lous stu­dents in my min­istry. I live in Amer­i­ca in the 21st cen­tu­ry — one of the great­est, freest, and most pros­per­ous cul­tures of all time. I live in Cal­i­for­nia, which is as awe­some as the rest of you think it is. And, and, and, and…

Today is Thanks­giv­ing, and so such a list springs eas­i­ly to mind. It reminds me that I am to be thank­ful every day. Many pas­sages com­mand us to be grate­ful. Among them are Eph­esians 5:19–20, Colos­sians 2:7, Colos­sians 3:15–16, and 1 Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans 5:18. They’re won­der­ful pas­sages and worth mem­o­riz­ing.

But my favorite pas­sage on grat­i­tude is from Deuteron­o­my 8:17–18:

You may say to your­self, “My pow­er and the strength of my hands have pro­duced this wealth for me.” But remem­ber the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the abil­i­ty to pro­duce wealth…

It is God who gives us the abil­i­ty. Not just the abil­i­ty to pro­duce wealth, but also the abil­i­ty to make jokes, to find love, to enjoy a sun­set, to get good grades, to run quick­ly, to leap in pud­dles, and to sleep sound­ly at night.

Every day is filled with occa­sions for grat­i­tude, but we almost always let them pass unre­marked.

This Thanks­giv­ing, take to heart the ever-quotable G. K. Chester­ton:

You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the con­cert and the opera, and grace before the play and pan­tomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketch­ing, paint­ing, swim­ming, fenc­ing, box­ing, walk­ing, play­ing, danc­ing, and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.

Amen. 500mg tabs depakote er

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Expecting An Email From Me? Check Your Spam Folder.

If you haven’t heard from me and you’ve been expect­ing to, I apol­o­gize. For some rea­son a lot of my very nor­mal emails (par­tic­u­lar­ly to stu­dents) have been labeled as spam. Here’s an exam­ple of an email that gets labeled as spam:

Stu­den­t’s email to me: “Glen, can I get a ride to church on Sun­day?”
My reply to the stu­dent: “Sure, I’ll pick you up at 10am. See you then!”

Result — auto­mat­i­cal­ly delet­ed as SPAM! The poor girl thought I was ignor­ing her and almost biked to church before we got it straight­ened out.

I had a stu­dent send me a copy of one of the unfor­tu­nate emails, and dig­ging through the head­ers I found this entry from Stan­ford’s spam fil­ter:

X-Spam: Probability=82%, Report='URI_CLASS_ABS_DOMAIN 8

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from with­in movie , BODY_SIZE_6000_6999 0, WEBMAIL_SOURCE 0, __BOUNCE_CHALLENGE_SUBJ 0, __CD 0, __CP_URI_IN_BODY 0, __CT 0, __CTE 0, __CT_TEXT_PLAIN 0, __FRAUD_419_BODY_WEBMAIL 0, __FRAUD_419_WEBMAIL 0, __FRAUD_419_WEBMAIL_FROM 0, __FROM_GMAIL 0, __HAS_MSGID 0, __HELO_GMAIL 0, __MIME_TEXT_ONLY 0, __MIME_VERSION 0, __PHISH_SPEAR_HTTP_RECEIVED 0, __PHISH_SPEAR_STRUCTURE_1 0, __RDNS_GMAIL 0, __SANE_MSGID 0, __URI_CLASS_ANY 0′

I’ve googled for URI_CLASS_ABS_DOMAIN, but I haven’t been able to fig­ure out what it means. I’m send­ing my emails from gmail, so I don’t think there’s any weird­ness there. Some­thing about the con­tent of my email seems fishy to the spam fil­ter. My best guess is that it’s my foot­er (which I intend to dis­able as a test), but any insight is appre­ci­at­ed.

The foot­er, in case you’re curi­ous, is an innocu­ous

Glen Davis: http://glenandpaula.com/
Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship @ Stanford University: http://xastanford.org/

Bot­tom line: if you expect­ed an email from me and you haven’t seen it, check your spam fold­er. A hap­py sur­prise might be wait­ing for you.

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