Sweet Music

My daughter played a flute solo and duet last Saturday for the district level Illinois Grade School Music Association competition. She did very well and I am incredibly proud of her. Before the competition we go through the ritual of sitting in the gymnasium and practicing along with every one of the other competitors. The sound is overwhelming, both because of the volume and also because each of the competitors is practicing their own song at the same time. It is both loud and confusing. (If I was competing I would not go in the gym to practice, but find a nice quiet place, maybe in the car, to let it loose).

Anyhow, as I sat there listening to my daughter practice it occurred to me that my Christian walk seems a lot like the gymnasium lately. I am happy that my family is dedicated to serving the Lord, but our family is trying to do so much that many times we are making a lot of noise, but not such beautiful music. We are all going our separate ways, and playing our own music, but it never quite comes together in an orchestrated way. I think my job is to orchestrate what we do, and make direct the effort like a conductor. I think we need to slow down a little bit and make an effort to complement each other instead of compete against each other.

Col 1:9-10:
(9) For this reason also, since the day we heard this, we haven't stopped praying for you. We are asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, (10) so that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing [to Him], bearing fruit in every good work and growing in the knowledge of God.

Lord, help us to live out sweet music in our lives.

12 Crackpot Tech Ideas That Could Transform The Enterprise

I ran across a pretty good article on Info World that lists 12 ideas that could be the next big ideas in technology. Here's their list, it looks a little like a wishlist on Amazon.com. I don't want to get into any depth on each item, so to get more information on each item go to the article:

1. Superconducting computing
2. Solid-state drives
3. Autonomic computing
4. DC power
5. Holographic and phase-change storage
6. Artificial intelligence
7. E-books
8. Desktop web applications
9. Project Blackbox
10. Quantum computing and quantum cryptography
11. Semantic Web
12. Total information awareness

A Heart for Nevis

I was asked this last week to lead our church's (FBC O'Fallon) mission trip to the Caribbean island of Nevis. Nevis is about an hour flight from San Juan, Puerto Rico, and near the island of Montserrat. I am honored to be asked, and although I prayed about it all week, I knew it was what the Lord wanted me to do from the beginning.


At our collegiate ministry (The Gate) at McKendree College we had an opportunity to minister to a talented young man from Nevis attend for a semester. His name is Kurvin. He came to McKendree, not to be a student, but to work on his 100 meter sprint skills in order to be able to represent Nevis in the 2006 Olymics. Kurvin was a very mature young man and he had endured some hardship, having to leave his wife and children behind in Nevis while he worked hard training for the Olympics. Kurvin was a very strong believer and quickly became a solid member of our ministry. Now Kurvin is a Youth Pastor at Calvary Baptist Church in his native country of Nevis, and it turns out that he is the one we will be working with on the mission trip.

FBC O'Fallon, The Gate's sponsoring church, sent a team down to Nevis last year and I wanted to be a part of it to be able to work with Kurvin, but the timing didn't work out. So, when the church asked if I could lead the trip this year it was very near to my heart.

I received an E-Mail from Kurvin today and he is pondering having us help him with the following items:

Visiting Youth in their homes
Youth athletic ministry
Hosting a pizza party
Hosting a concert
Leading Praise and Worship Services in church and in the town square
Leading Youth oriented Bible Studies

I believe our ministry is well equipped to help Kurvin out, but we need lots of prayer. Specifically please pray for:

Kurvin
The Youth of Nevis (The church is losing the battle for the souls of the young in Nevis)
That the Lord will help us discern what His direction is
That our students at The Gate, and others, will desire and find ownership of this opportunity
That we can have an enduring affect on Nevis

It is easy to visit a place far away from home and to have a short-term impact. But, many times when you leave the impact fades away. I want us to have a long-term impact. I want to develop community with the Youth of Nevis and be able to make a difference in their lives. So, I am not just committing to a summer mission trip this summer, but to developing relationships with another community of believers and those they minister to.

I have started a Nevis page on The Gate's website. It is located here. Link. Please stop by, browse a little, and pray for us as we go.

God bless each of you. He is an incredible God who does incredible things.

Global Warming: Human Made or Natural?

I read a couple of interesting articles today on state scientists/meteorologists that don't believe global warming is a human made phenomena, but part of a natural cycle. The articles are located here. Link, and here. Link.

I think it is kind of interesting that both articles surfaced at the same time. I have long been skeptical of the current mantra of human kind's responsiblilty for global warming. I don't think there is any hard core evidence that we are responsible, only circumstantial conjecture proposed by those with deep left wing political ties. Science is full of bias, and it just happens that those with a left wing political tie have the most politically correct bias at this time. Their voice happens to be strongest right now. I do believe it is in our best interest to limit all types of polution, and I consider myself to be an environmental activist, but I won't go as far as to blame humanity on global warming.

These two scientists are being persecuted for being "contrarian" and not going along with the crowd. Personally, I believe that not going along with the crowd is what makes for a good scientist. There needs to be a good dose of skepticism in any scientist's tool box. The Governor of Oregon needs to lighten up a little bit.

ORNL scores hit with National Geospatial Intelligence Agency

Thanks to the All Points Blog for directing us to an Oak Ridge National Laboratory News Release titled, ORNL scores hit with National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. The news release can be found here. Link. NGA was so enamored with the RFID technology that they plan to implement it at their St Louis facility to maintain 100% accountability of all personnel for emergency response operations and hands off inventory control.

Google Tailors Earth for DoD Users

Here's a great article on how Google Earth is creating the ability to fuse geospatial information layers for visualization purposes for the US Department of Defense. Link.

I'll have to admit, even as a die-hard former ESRI employee, that the Google Earth visualization platform is hard to beat. It is simple and easy to use, provides a good viewing tool, and Google seems to be able to responsively make changes to Google Earth rapidly to meet customer's needs. But, it still isn't useful as an analysis tool like ESRI's ArcGIS is. The DOD executive decision makers may be asking for Google Earth to help them visualize the information needed to make the tough decisions, but most of the information creating the layers behind what they see comes from ArcGIS users.

ESRI is marketing a Google Earth-like viewing platform that will work well with ArcGIS 9.2 called ArcGIS Explorer that blends good visualization tools and detailed analysis capabilities, but it still isn't quite there. I played with it extesively last week and it still has some bugs in it. ESRI is trying to compete with Google Earth, and it is sad to say, but I believe as the Google organization gets bigger and more cumbersome it should be easeir for ESRI to compete in the viewer market.

I Want To Die A Martyr For Christ

We kicked off the first Thursday Night Alive! at The Gate by having Noah Oldham, one of The Gate's charter members, come back and share with us last Thursday. Noah and his wife Heather took the 2 hour drive north to spend an incredible evening at The Gate. Noah graduated from McKendree College in 2005 and is serving as the Youth Pastor at Little Chapel Church in Harrisburg, Illinois. His program is very successful, and Noah has the opportunity to affect the lives of over 125 students that regularly attend his program on any given week. Noah has grown a lot over the last 5 years that I have known him, and the fire for Christ that he has in his heart pours out of every cell of his being. There are only 2 people I know personally who have a fire like that and Noah is one of them. He is truely an incredible person and brother in the Lord.

Whenever Noah visits us he always says something that is profound and keeps me thinking about my committment to Christ along after he is gone. This time he said something that I have been mulling over in my mind for the last 4 days. What he said was "I want to die a martyr for the Lord". Thursday night I took that to mean that he doesn't want to live a life that is comfortable and secure, but wants to push his dedication to the Lord in new and challenging ways that will cause him to live his life on "the edge."

But, over the weekend I really looked deeper into what Noah said. Here are a couple of my thoughts:

Most of the Apostles died as martyrs for their committment to the Lord. How did they live their lives when the Lord was with them? The Gospels describe them as a group of stumbling, disconnected, ineffective men devoted to a Lord they didn't fully believe or understand. Just look at the actions of Peter and Thomas in the final chapters of the Gospel of John. Peter boldly defends Christ by cutting off the ear of the high priest's slave (John 18:10-11), but then on the same night denies Christ three times (John 18:15-17, 25-27). Thomas truely didn't believe that Jesus had been resurrected until he sawHis hands and feet (John 20:24-29). The Apostles were in horrible shape when they gathered in the upper room After Christ was crucified and resurrected, and the Holy Spirit was poured out on them their lives were totally changed. The book of Acts records their lives as a bold, daring, committed, and effective group of men. They went from a group of individuals to a band of committed men. They lived their lives for the Lord as salt and light (Matthew 5:13-16) as a witness to the rest of the world to the extent that it cost most of them their lives.

As I pondered the changed lives of the Apostles I also thought about what it means to be a martyr. I thought about the terrorist suicide bombers in Iraq, and how crazy I believe they are, because they give up their lives so willingly for their cause. I don't believe they are true martyrs, because they chose to take their own lives. But their actions do cause me to stop and think about what it means to give up your life for a cause you believe in? Unless the Lord comes first, and I pray every day for it and believe it will happen soon, we will all die anyway. So, why not live our lives in a more meaningful way. If our time on earth is so short and we are all going to pass away like the grass (1 Peter 1:24-25) then living a cautious and safe life to a point where we never take any chances to step out in faith means our committment to the Lord is worth nothing to us. We may extend our time on earth and make us more popular with others, but what does living a safe life accomplish? Living a life that makes people think about their mortality, their personal relationship with a living God, and why they are not choosing to serve Him is a worthy cause. The Iraqi suicide bombers are giving up their lives pretty much because they don't like Americans. Our cause is so much more noble and important.

I just want to close with a quote from the Gospel of John. I think it sums up what I have been writing about so far today. John the Baptist's mission was to prepare the way of the Lord and to point to the coming Christ. His lived to see Jesus and his mission was almost finished here on earth when he said, He must increase, and I must decrease (John 3:30). I believe that is what living the life of a martyr is today. We must sacrifice our lives in order to live for Christ. It may or may not involve the giving of our physical bodies, but it surely involves the giving of our time on earth.

I don't mean to belittle Noah's comment about dying a martyr for the Lord, because, knowing Noah, I believe he sincerely meant it the way it came out. But, the concept of dying a martyr for Christ is so hard to grasp.

IEC Awarded DHS Contract for First Responder, Three Dimension Locator Systems

Here’s a link to good article on the ASD daily about GPS 3-D indoor use in emergency settings. Link. Maybe a new line of business for those of us involved in GIS?

U.S. Warns About Canadian Spy Coins

Yahoo has a great article on using RFID bugs in Canadian coins to track US Department of Defense contractors as they travel through Canada. Here's the link. Link.

NCAA Football Playoffs?

Yahoo has a good article on the most powerful man in college athletics and his stance on NCAA playoffs. Link. Doesn't sound like we are headed for a playoff any time soon.