Category: Spiritual Growth

We’re now offer­ing brief med­i­ta­tions on the Bible that you can down­load to your portable MP3 play­er. Our chal­lenge is sim­ple–sac­ri­fice a song. Take the time you would spend lis­ten­ing to one song and turn that snip­pet of time into a prayer oasis in the midst of your day.

Right now we’re think­ing about the prayers that the apos­tles prayed and how they can serve as exam­ples for us. Our hope is to make it easy for you to include prayer in your dai­ly sched­ule.

You can lis­ten to a sam­ple (now fixed)
[FLASH]http://xastanford.org/playmp3.swf?mp3=http://xastanford.org/podXAsts/podXAst‑2.mp3,200,35[/FLASH]

We’re using a tech­nol­o­gy called pod­cast­ing, which is just a fan­cy way of deliv­er­ing MP3 files to your iPod (or oth­er Mp3 play­er) over the inter­net.

If you use iTunes, just click on ‘Advanced’ and then ‘Sub­scribe to Pod­cast.’ Enter http://xastanford.org/podXAsts/ into the box that pops up. That’s it–you’re done!

If you don’t use iTunes but like to lis­ten to MP3s, down­load the free iPod­der, instead.

Check out our podX­Ast archives!

Wel­come back to school.

Most of you have already decid­ed upon some com­pas­sion­ate response, but in case you haven’t we took an offer­ing at our Win­ter Retreat for tsuna­mi relief efforts and rout­ed our funds through AG Relief.

If you would like to assist in any way, please let me know either via email or at our on-cam­pus wor­ship meet­ing.

Christ­mas Eve draws to a close and I can hear rein­deer in the dis­tance, so I’m sign­ing off for the night.

In those days a decree went out from Emper­or Augus­tus that all the world should be reg­is­tered. This was the first reg­is­tra­tion and was tak­en while Quirinius was gov­er­nor of Syr­ia. All went to their own towns to be reg­is­tered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Beth­le­hem, because he was descend­ed from the house and fam­i­ly of David. He went to be reg­is­tered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expect­ing a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliv­er her child. And she gave birth to her first­born son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

In that region there were shep­herds liv­ing in the fields, keep­ing watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glo­ry of the Lord shone around them, and they were ter­ri­fied. But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; for see—I am bring­ing you good news of great joy for all the peo­ple: to you is born this day in the city of David a Sav­ior, who is the Mes­si­ah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.’ And sud­den­ly there was with the angel a mul­ti­tude of the heav­en­ly host, prais­ing God and say­ing, ‘Glo­ry to God in the high­est heav­en, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!’ When the angels had left them and gone into heav­en, the shep­herds said to one anoth­er, ‘Let us go now to Beth­le­hem and see this thing that has tak­en place, which the Lord has made known to us.’ So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shep­herds told them. But Mary trea­sured all these words and pon­dered them in her heart. The shep­herds returned, glo­ri­fy­ing and prais­ing God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

Luke 2, NRSV

Mer­ry CHRIST­mas. Enjoy the rest of your break–Paula and I look for­ward to see­ing you all when Win­ter Quar­ter kicks back off! Don’t for­get to pray for us at Win­ter Con­fer­ence.

I just ran across a most remark­able online Bible study tool: the Greek New Tes­ta­ment brows­er. If you ever want to do some seri­ous study this site will be pret­ty help­ful. I can’t say enough good things about this site’s ele­gant inter­face and sol­id con­tent.

Hat tip to the two excel­lent blogs who brought it to my atten­tion: the New Tes­ta­ment Gate­way and the Bible Soft­ware Review.

Check out the great bib­li­cal charts at threetwoone.org (scroll down a bit until you see the “reli­gious” sec­tion).

Con­sid­er, for exam­ple, the Old Tes­ta­ment overview.

One dis­claimer: the author seems to come from a mod­er­ate (rather than con­ser­v­a­tive or lib­er­al) per­spec­tive on Bib­li­cal schol­ar­ship. Adjust the charts accord­ing­ly based on your con­vic­tions.

I got the prob­lems with Dis­ci­ple­ship By Design fixed. Now you too can learn from cam­pus min­istry leg­end Har­vey Her­man!

“There is noth­ing so piti­ful as a young cyn­ic because he has gone from know­ing noth­ing to believ­ing noth­ing.” ~ Maya Angelou.

Tim Smith, leader of Keep Your Eye on the Ball (opens a Quick­time video).

As always, check the video blog archives for more humor­ous and inspi­ra­tional clips.

What hap­pens when a friend puts your nose out of joint? Find out in the lat­est Chi Alpha video blog — Devi­at­ed Sep­tum (opens Quick­Time movie).

As always, if you like this remem­ber to check the video blog archives for more.

Inci­den­tal­ly, the guy who’s doing this blog was my spir­i­tu­al men­tor when I was a stu­dent. How cool!

In Food Porn, Susan Wise Bauer writes about the ten­den­cy of mod­ern authors to cri­tique cul­ture with­out offer­ing a viable alter­na­tive: The cov­er-mod­el ide­al is warped and twist­ed, but they can’t man­age to unwarp it. I’m remind­ed of J. R. R. Tolkien’s orcs, who (accord­ing to the Sil­mar­il­lion) were mod­eled on elves by the dark pow­ers; they were fash­ioned “by slow arts of cru­el­ty … in envy and mock­ery,” because dark pow­ers can only warp and twist, not cre­ate afresh. If you’ve nev­er seen an elf, and you try to work back­wards from an orc to its mod­el, you’re darn well not going to end up with Orlan­do Bloom.

You can’t build on nega­tion alone.

How often is our plan for being good to stop being bad? In the Bib­li­cal per­spec­tive, holi­ness is an addi­tion equa­tion, not a sub­trac­tion equa­tion. We don’t mere­ly seek to erad­i­cate vices such as gos­sip and lying; on the con­trary, we active­ly cul­ti­vate virtues such as love, joy, patience, and self-con­trol.

Just some quick thoughts inspired by an absolute­ly bril­liant Tolkien ref­er­ence in an oth­er­wise unre­lat­ed arti­cle.