Twas the Night Before Easter

A little catch-up from the week:

I did quite a bit of gardening - soil spading, irrigation, and planting. I've heard a saying that "that which does not kill us makes us stronger." I think it's probably true (it seems to be for Jack Bauer anyway), but I just hope my back knows that saying. Speaking of gardening, I just emerged victorious from the third battle in the Great Crabgrass War of '09. The second battle, a few days ago, nearly did me in. My personal holiness was stretched to the breaking point. Maybe just a teensy bit beyond. It was still a theological experience, though - a good case of the problem of evil: if God is all-good and all-powerful, why did he create (and why does he sustain the existence of) crabgrass? I must confess I was tempted to doubt the goodness of God once or twice.

I smoked my first turkey. A real turkey - that's not a brand of cigar, I don't do that. I found what looked like the best recipe - an absurdly detailed set of instructions for the perfect smoked turkey and followed them as closely as possible. Actually turned out pretty doggone tasty. Between gardening (I snipped some fresh thyme for the inside of the bird) and smoker cooking, I think I have my summer hobbies all ready to go.

I read Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology by Eric Brende. A guy goes and lives with an Amish-like community for 18 months and writes his masters thesis (at M.I.T.!) on the experience. His research question, essentially, was "how much technology is really needed to provide for human leisure?" He and his new wife lived as subsistence farmers without electricity and motorized machinery of all kinds. They discovered they had much MORE time for personal, family, and communal enrichment than they ever did in their technology-saturated urban lives. I am truly rocked to the core by the questions I've brought away from this read. How has technology shaped my relationships with my family, other people, and God? How has it affected my family's development? What have I automated that I shouldn't have? Brende shows how technology often does the opposite of what we suppose it will do (farmers often go bankrupt because they can't earn enough money to make the payments on their big machines), and it takes us away from other people instead of bringing us closer together as we think it will. I'm sure this will come up again here in the near future. Meanwhile, pray for my wife. She's afraid I'm going to drag her off to live with the Amish. I've reassured her that I'm not thinking any such thing. But this is the kind of book that you really have to ponder carefully and then do something about it. More later.

And now it's the night before the very best day of the year. I can't wait for Resurrection Sunday worship. God is real, God is good, Jesus is alive. Ultimately, what you do with that makes all the difference.