The Grey Shadow

Some of you may have seen scattered references to law school in my previous posts and therefore wondered about it. The gist of the story is that I am, in fact, in law school. How I got there is quite a story.

Back to Monday, 10 March 2009. I was busily doing my work in Rev. S.’s office when the phone rings. It was Uncle M., one of my mom’s younger brothers and one of the country’s big-bigshot lawyers, a renowned authority in civil and contract law. He runs the family’s law firm, started by my grandfather back in the 1930s. He droned on his usual imperative low bass voice:

Uncle M: Son, I have been thinking about you. I think you have a great mind for legal matters. You are uniquely qualified for being a lawyer. So, why don’t you give a try?

Myself: Yes, Uncle, I also have been thinking about it. But I have no money, and no way to get books. I am planning to start studying maybe next year, because with some luck I’ll be able to save some money…

Uncle M: Son, the moment is now. Don’t worry about the money. If you are willing, your studies will be paid on your behalf, no strings attached. As for books, you can always borrow textbooks from the law firm’s library. Now, son, this is an extremely important question: are you willing to enter into the study? Because your moment is NOW. Are you willing?

Myself: (Rather trembling) Yes, Uncle, I am willing.

Uncle M: Good. I’ve heard that Universidad Columbia has a great law school and they can get you started now. So go and register yourself TODAY!

Myself: Yes, Uncle, I will register today…

Uncle M: Attaboy. Send my love to your mom, will you? Good bye, son.

I hung up the phone, stunned. I told the conversation to Rev. S., who told me: “This is a long-awaited answer to some of my prayers. You really need to have a good paying secular job besides your theological training. The Church has not been completely fair to your commitment and you need to secure provision for your family. You have a job with me, but you know that our financing can dry up anytime. You will do great in the legal profession, and studying law will be great stewardship for you.”

Moreover, Rev. S. helped me by reorganizing my work schedule so I could opt for afternoon classes instead of evening ones; he also was kind enough to allow me to take days off in exam times, and many other courtesies.

Well, I told about the news to my mother and my wife, and both were enthusiastic. Dad was also very happy and supportive. So I went to the university that very day, registered, and then had my very first class session. That 10th of March was a momentous day; I started the day thinking it would be just a regular Monday, and I ended up being a law student…

Fast forward to today: I’m about to finish my semester. It has been really hectic, and tiring. But so far I am maintaining a 5.0 (equivalent to an American 4.0) GPA. Please pray for my studies; on Wednesday I must sit for final exams on Constitutional Law.

All in all, this has been a wonderful demonstration on how the Lord could turn your life upside down in a matter of minutes. He is really in control of our lives.

You might remember about my father-in-law, Don Victorio, because I wrote about him previously (see Don Victorio the Spaniard). Today I am writing about him to tell you some sad news: he passed away on Friday, June 12th, and he was buried on the next day. He had some complications and had to be hospitalized; sadly, he never recovered.

Don Victorio was stubborn as a mule and he was quite an odd character, as I wrote before. But first and foremost, he was a man of nobility and integrity, who raised six children with his lifelong wife without ever compromising his high ethical standards. A direct descendant of General Riego, he shared with his ancestor the passion for human freedom, dignity, and rule of law. This, together with his staunch, lifelong Catholicism, led him to be one of the founders of the Christian Democrat Party of Paraguay back in 1960, and stood against the totalitarian regime of General Alfredo Stroessner. Another passion of him was teaching, and he held a professorship in the Catholic University of Asunción for several years, and he was a teacher in several schools as well.

He was born into a wealthy family that shortly afterwards lost all money, and was thrown into poverty. Despite that, Don Victorio was a tireless worker, and could provide for his family well enough. Right now, no one of them is wealthy in money; but Don Victorio left them the best inheritance a man can leave his children: the sense of honor and integrity, and the unyielding commitment to the cause of Jesus Christ.

Please pray for the family: for the widow, the children, the grand-children. They are doing well enough, but we know that the upcoming months are going to be very difficult for them.

Good-bye, Don Victorio. I will miss our talks about “life, the universe, and everything”. May you rest in peace, dear suegro.

I just discovered a great blogging app: Bilbo Blogger, a blogging app for KDE4. I set it up in its simple config dialog, and presto! it retrieved all my last posts, and automagically set itself up. So far, it looks very promising. We’ll see. Until then, it surely looks like a winner.

For Tim: I plan to post something related to my law studies ASAP. Stay tuned!

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Powered by Bilbo Blogger

Here I am, at 2.35 am, working at a term paper I should submit to Law School. Yeah right, domicile theory should be straightforward… famous last words.

Well, other than that, I had a nice Saturday. This is going to be one busy year.

We are about to finish an exhausting Holy Week. For those of you who live up North, Holy Week in Paraguay is almost entirely a holiday week, thus providing a much needed break from the daily stresses, in a climate of reflection and contemplation of the Passion of our Lord.

I thought I would mostly rest on this week; however, things conspired against that. Besides having two serious term papers to write for law school, I had to finish the church bulletin early (because the presses don’t work on holidays), and some other projects: a court-ordered translation, a report for Rev. S due in two days, and some paperwork. To all this, you should add that the car needed some fixing and spent three weekdays at the garage. The result? is about to be Easter Sunday, and I am exhausted.

I took the opportunity to recompile KDE during all this hoopla and now I am happily running KDE 4.2.2, which appears to be even more fast and stable than the previous 4.2.x releases.

Despite all this toil and work, tomorrow we celebrate the Resurrection of our Lord. He is Risen! and with Him, the promises of new life, new heavens and a new earth. Happy Easter to everyone! The Lord is risen!

There’s a story with sombragris, the trusty laptop that my brother, friend and namesake Ed Hurst graciously gave me. Sombragris is a Dell Latitude D505, and works great with Linux. Great, that is, with the exception of wireless networking, which is furnished by a Broadcom chipset, that never worked, not even in Windows.

Now, whenever I checked /var/log/syslog I began to notice something similar to these lines:

Feb 10 20:32:53 sombragris kernel: b43-phy0 ERROR: Firmware file "b43/ucode5.fw" not found
Feb 10 20:32:53 sombragris kernel: b43-phy0 ERROR: You must go to http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43#devicefirmware and download the latest firmware (version 4).

And just because I was tired, I wondered… “what if I go to that website, get the darned firmware, and see what happens? At least I will make these annoying warnings go away…” And I did exactly that.

It turned out that the Linux Wireless Wiki is an excellent resource on all things wireless on Linux. I followed the instructions that it gave me, got the Broadcom firmware, placed it in /lib/firmware, and lo and behold! I am wireless!

Next, I tested the usability of the wireless connection with the wireless network that my sister put up at Mom’s home. It is a network with an encrypted password, and a good speed. Armed with the passphrase, I was granted access in no time.

Now, I am writing this post using wlan0 as my Internet connection. Yikes!

And here I am, working wireless in GNU/Linux, in a machine whose wireless was unusable in Windows. If only I had paid attention to that warning before. Oh well…

And thank you, Lord, for our small discoveries of every day.

The inscription at the flag says:
“This flag was the last one to wave on the Yhaguy River, on the boat Pirabebe. One of the sailors was Hermenegildo Almirón, who gave this to Mr. José Asunción Rolón.

August 18, 1869″

I’m back at the helm after a quick vacation trip. I visited the historic site of Vapor-Cué (”Old Steamboats’ Place), a site near the town of Caraguatay, where the last seven units of the Paraguayan Navy (including a small warship) were ran aground by Paraguayan sailors so they couldn’t fall into the hands of the Brazilian forces in 1869, during the final skirmishes of the Triple Alliance War that Paraguay fought to the bitter end against the combined armies of Uruguay, Brazil, and Argentina (1864-1870).

I’ll try to post some photos. Click on them to see a larger version.

Warship ARP Anhambay, captured from Brazil, rebuilt.

ARP Pirabebe, rebuilt. Use the small gate at the fence for scaling.

The Memorial at Vapor-Cué

The Manduvirá River (rather a tiny brook) from the ARP Anhambay. I took the pic from the centerline, looking at the port side.

ARP Añambay's fore. This was a huge ship!

The historic museum at Vapor-Cué. It is very small, but adequate. My car can be seen at the right.

Boilers and other remains of the ships at Vapor-Cué. At the right there is a memorial with inscriptions.

A view of the gardens at the hotel near Vapor-Cué, looking toward the swimming pool. The price, roughly USD $15 for a double room (but no meals at all, not even breakfast) was right.

After spending three days at Vapor-Cué, we went to the town of Piribebuy for some additional rest. All in all, we are thankful for this trip.

Yep. That darned thing left me breathless. After roughly 14-15 h of compiling (that is excluding dependencies, such as Qt which alone took > 4h, and KOffice and Kdevelop as well), I am finally using KDE 4.2. I’m typing this on KDE 4.2, using Konqueror.

After KDE 4.1 I was expecting something good, but, honestly, not that good. The old annoyances are gone and the whole thing seems to have improved by leaps and bounds. And, it’s beautiful.

It might not be perfect, but having a free desktop such as this one is a treat. Kudos to the KDE community!

(click for a larger image)

That’s right. You can read all the gory details at the announcement. This new version promises a host of improvements over previous versions.

The fact is, we’ll see. The level of outcry against KDE4 was unprecedented; the ‘nullification’ of KDE in Red Hat 8 was nothing compared to this. Even Linus Torvalds, a long-time known KDE user, is using GNOME now. Perhaps the “change shock” was too much for too many people (there’s also a response from KDE hacker Aaron Seigo and a more balanced evaluation by Bruce Byfield).

When KDE 4.0 was released, I switched back to KDE 3.5 within hours. The fact that the printing system wasn’t quite there yet, together with the absence of critical applications such as Kontact, made clear the fact that the release was not exactly usable for me. KDE 4.1 was something entirely different; here I had a completely usable desktop, even though it wasn’t able to complete with the engineering feat that KDE 3.5 is. But it convinced me enough to prompt me to switch (I hereby state that rumours of KWin 3D desktop effects running at excellent speeds on my old hardware had nothing to do with this decision ).

Now, I’m pulling sources from the Slackware source tree and I plan to compile them as soon as I can (read: if my wife doesn’t get too upset). I’m curious; it surely looks promising. As said before… we’ll see.

KDE 4.2 - Be free

Our summer is slowly passing by with no major news. I am still without a job, but we are praying for a new one. Days are usually hot, but now we are going through some rainy days that bring a welcome relief.

Meanwhile, I plan to install KDE 4.2 as soon as it comes out. I plan to write the results. Considering how good KDE 4.1 is, the prospect is good.

Paraguayan oxcarts

My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior…
for he who is mighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
And his mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.

Excerpt from the Magnificat, Luke 1:46,49,50 [show]Luke 1:46 Mary's Song of Praise: The Magnificat [46]And Mary said, "My soul magnifies the Lord, Luke 1:49 [49]for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name. Luke 1:50 [50]And his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.

I would like to wish all of you a merry Christmas and a happy 2009. May you spend these holidays with all your loved ones, in peace, joy and comfort.

I spent Christmas Eve with Mom and my sisters, and Christmas Day with my in-laws. Today the reverse will apply: we plan to spen New Year’s Eve in my in-law’s place, while I plan to spend New Year’s Day with my mom and sisters.

All in all, this has been a stressful year, full of changes, but right now is not the time for evaluations. Instead, let’s join me in thanking our Lord Jesus Christ for all his blessings and protection, and asking Him for his continued protection in the year to come.

And thanks to you, my readers, for your continued patience, support, and encouragement. May the Lord bless you richly today and every day of your lives.

I was able to upgrade the Slackware setup on sombragris the trusty laptop, to Slackware 12.2 without any problem. I didn’t install KDE, though; rather, I plan to put the KDE 4.1 setup from Slackware current, /testing directory. I plan to get back with more news as they develop.

Meanwhile, Asunción is an unbearable mess. 38 C / 100 F with no wind is taking its toll on the city. This is going to be a very, very hot summer.

As I told you before, Rev. S. (my boss) told me that my current job would run through December 31. Well, today my boss told me that he already needed the office. Some of his relatives would come over for the holidays and therefore he needed to convert our office into a makeshift bedroom. So, he paid me in advance and, at noon, I walked away as an employee for the last time.

Right now I am without a job. I have my (meager) severance pay, so I might get by for a month or so; but the fact is, I need a job as soon as possible.

I was told I might get rehired if a certain special project is approved. My boss also told me that the pay would be way better. In any case, I covet your prayers. Thanks!

Wandering through the Web, I found this piece by Linux Canuck: How to Help a Newbie. The writing is full of excellent advice; therefore I am glad to recommend its reading. It is a great resource indeed, and valuable not only for helping “newbies” in the Linux community, but in a whole range of social groups as well.

Meanwhile, I upgraded the blog to WordPress 2.7. So far it looks great. Now, let’s download those Slackware 12.2 ISO images…

Given the sorry state of world affairs, these collects make great prayers:

Most gracious God and Father,
in whose will is our peace:
turn our hearts and the hearts of all to yourself,
that by the power of your Spirit
the peace which is founded on righteousness
may be established throughout the whole world;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

and,

Almighty God, our heavenly Father,
infinite in wisdom, love, and power:
have compassion on those for whom we pray;
and help us to use all suffering
in the cause of your kingdom;
through him who gave himself for us on the cross,
Jesus Christ your Son, our Lord. Amen.

After Dad’s passing, everything went to normal. All my daily chores, school, work, errands, reading, study, and so on, were exactly the same as usual… but I realized that they were more and more difficult to perform.

Thankfully, we are arriving at the end of the year. Believe me, 2008 was quite an experience so far. But the guidance of our Lord was always with us, and now more than ever.

Please keep praying for my family and me; and also pray for a new job. My current one ends on December 31, and I have no prospects, yet. Thanks!

After battling several chronic illnesses, my father passed away on Thursday, November 6, 2008. He was 72 years old. His passing away happened after a one week of hospital intensive care.

We had the funerals and the burial on Friday, and I tried to get some rest yesterday, because I was simply exhausted.

We are going to miss Dad. His example, his virtues, his advice and his company well be missed. Please pray for the the bereaved family; we surely need those prayers. Thanks!

The other day Rev. S. confided me that one of our pastors was causing some stir within our church’s pastoral team. It is a problem that is bound to happen every October, just before our end-of-the-year regular administrative assembly, because it is the time when we have to submit the names of candidates for all the different leadership positions within our congregation.

This particular pastor is an excellent Christian and he has our utmost respect. He earned his reputation working as a missionary in Nepal, facing paganism and demonic forces almost daily (no, I am not exaggerating), while being a good witness of Christ. But the problem with him is that he came from a Pentecostal denomination, and he is too influenced by perfectionism. Whenever we proposed some candidate, he objected pointing out a flaw or another: “But he has trouble raising his kids”… “But he is reluctant to tithe…”, “But he is divorced and remarried…”, and so on.

The other pastors of our church understand that is not realistic to expect perfection. As a side observation, I concur and I also can see that the current generation that provides our church leadership material (i.e., people usually over 45) is facing several issues and many of them lead less than perfect lives. So why point the finger to those people’s faults?

I think that most of the objections raised by this pastor come from his flawed understanding of Christian holiness, an understanding that has been tarnished by Christian perfectionism, or a doctrine that maintains that, in John Wesley’s own words, is possible for the Christian to attain in this life the “deliverance from inward as well as from outward sin”. Please note that this is not, by any means, a denial from all sin; and even the perfectionistic Wesley had a rather realistic view of sins in the Christian. After all, he was an accomplished pastor of soul and had an excellent insight on issues of sanctification and holiness. But the teaching of this doctrine led to impossible standards in most Holiness churches; and I can tell that in our particular environment, this brought the practice of double lives and hypocrisy among Pentecostals and other Holiness churches.

That’s why the doctrine of perfection is a danger for the Church: despite all its good intentions, it is a sure recipe for hypocrisy, double-standards, legalism, and judgmentalism. As for me, I prefer a church of fallen people with all its warts and difficulties rather than some shiny, “Stepford-Wiwes”-esque, pasted-smile den of hypocrites.

Despite the good intentions and the sincere intention of commend the search for holiness implied on the doctrine of Christian perfectionism, I cannot clear it as is neither Biblical nor realistic; and it is completely contrary to a true Reformed view of total depravity. Better than writing any answer to it, let me suggest you this excellent rebuttal by Zacharias Ursinus written roughly 200 years before Wesley, as a commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism.

We need to keep in mind all the time what Paul has said so eloquently on 1 Corinthians 1:26-29 [show]1 Corinthians 1:26-29 [26]For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards,(1) not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. [27]But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; [28]God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, [29]so that no human being(2) might boast in the presence of God. (ESV) Footnotes 1. [1:26] Greek 'according to the flesh' 2. [1:29] Greek 'no flesh'
. With his usual wit, my namesake Ed Hurst has nailed down the crux of the issue on the motto of his “School of Holy Cynicism” (a post of his, a post of mine): Mankind is fallen. Sinners will sin. Let’s not lose sight of this. If we do, we are doomed to fail.

I finally caved in and enabled the Akismet web service to stop comment spam. I was getting between 250-300+ comments per day, all of them spam. So far, it seems to work well… and whoa! what a relief!

Meanwhile, I’m spending the day at home, doing some errands and pampering my wife, who caught the flu. Tomorrow will be a whole different day, though… Friday, the dreaded Church Bulletin Day. Carpe diem!

First, a disgression. I know it’s been a long time since I posted something substantial here. This is because of my busy life, and in part… because of the success of the forum. You see, I come here with the best intention of writing something, and then I have to face with something like 2000+ comments waiting for moderation. When I finish clicking through all of them (now in batches of 25 instead of 100, courtesy of the newer WordPress), I am not only tired and barely able to think of something; the fact is that I also am left with no time for writing; the rat race of clicking ate all of it. Sigh… Now, with 554 comments pending, let me put a little rant.

The sidenote. Yesterday I was watching a talk show on a Christian TV network who shall go unnamed. The interviewer asked a young Christian lawyer about the “dangers” of the Internet, with a strong implication on pornography and eroticism. The lawyer began to ramble on and on about how “dangerous” it is, especially for children. He also noted that most “Web safety” (i.e., censoring spyware) installed on home computers can be circumvented; and how even if it is not, people can bypass the restrictions by browsing with their mobile devices. He went on to suggest parents to register their child’s phones with mobile carriers as a children-owned phone so its Web access could be filtered. Well, you get the idea: Control, control, and more control. Big brother is watching you so you’d better behave.

For the record, let me make it clear that I support the efforts of parents who wish to know the whereabouts –real and virtual– of their children. That’s only natural, and it’s the way of parenting. I am not going to tell parents what to do. My bone of contention is different.

What I saw in the program, and in the outlook of most Christian “answers” (????) to pornography and related sins of lust and the flesh, is how misguided they are. They think that the answer is control, and more control.

If the Church thinks that the problem of the sins related to lust, such as pornography, are going to go away because of more control, perhaps she must think again. More control, and the sensation of being constantly watched is deleterious to true Christian spirituality, which needs of a closed, very private and personal space for its adequate development (see, for example, Matthew 6:6 [show]Matthew 6:6 [6]But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. (ESV)
).

Moreover, the “more control” approach mistakenly conceives the “pornography problem” as a problem of willpower, when it’s not. Most sins of the flesh, and especially pornography, are sins of the heart highly related to idolatry. Sinful habits are just an effect of this. Therefore, with the “control” approach, you are just attacking the effects, leaving the real causes untouched. You cannot fight hunger just by glueing the lips of the hungry.

Until we stop fighting pornography with pseudo-ascetic, hyper-controlling approaches and we begin focusing on it as what it really is, i.e., idolatry, we are doomed to fail. Let’s hope we realize our mistake sooner than later.

The national Paraguayan newspaper ABC Color published in its Cultural Supplement a translation I made of the famous Two English Poems of Jorge Luis Borges. I prefaced my translation with a short introduction. The article is available here. Enjoy!

Thanks to the Lord’s grace and mercy, I turned 38 years old last Thursday. I didn’t want any celebrations; however, I had a nice noon dinner with the family.

The year that just passed was hectic, full of changes, difficulties, and opportunities. My work with Rev. S. is about to end when he ends his term in office. My salary was in steady decrease since two years ago, and in the last year this decrease in my income almost reached crisis proportions. Thankfully, I am now registered as a Public Translator, a condition that potentially can help a lot with the family economy. However, I began to study again, and I had endless opportunities to write, speak, and think.

Certainly I am not getting any younger. I must confess that I feel anxious about the problems the future might bring. However, I try to obey the Lord’s command about not worrying because of tomorrow (Matthew 6:34 [show]Matthew 6:34 [34]"Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. (ESV)
). And, especially, I am grateful to Him for His countless blessings, beyond everything I could measure. Let’s keep walking ahead, one step at a time.

To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn. (Isaiah 8:20, NASB)

Once I read in an online forum a post by a fellow Christian who mentioned that a common argument against having the Bible as our rule of faith and practice is pointing out that the Bible is silent on the matter; and this fellow wanted some help in countering the argument. Someone else cited Isaiah 8:20 [show]Isaiah 8:20 [20]To the teaching and to the testimony! If they will not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn. (ESV)
, and to this, the original poster replied, almost relieved: “It is a good text”.

This verse of Isaiah is not just “a good text”. It is a strong, firm and secure indication about the right place that the Bible, the Word of God, should have in the life of the Christian believer.

The Word of God is law; it is a rule of living that must provide guidance our actions and intentions in every moment, because it is a record of God’s will. We must also keep in mind that the meaning of ‘law’ should also be extended to the meaning given to it by the ancient Israelites, an idea that is made very clear in Deuteronomy 6 [show]Deuteronomy 6 The Greatest Commandment [6:1]"Now this is the commandment, the statutes and the rules(1) that the LORD your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which you are going over, to possess it, [2]that you may fear the LORD your God, you and your son and your son's son, by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be long. [3]Hear therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, and that you may multiply greatly, as the LORD, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey. [4]"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.(2) [5]You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. [6]And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. [7]You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. [8]You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. [9]You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. [10]"And when the LORD your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you--with great and good cities that you did not build, [11]and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant--and when you eat and are full, [12]then take care lest you forget the LORD, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. [13]It is the LORD your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear. [14]You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you-- [15]for the LORD your God in your midst is a jealous God--lest the anger of the LORD your God be kindled against you, and he destroy you from off the face of the earth. [16]"You shall not put the LORD your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah. [17]You shall diligently keep the commandments of the LORD your God, and his testimonies and his statutes, which he has commanded you. [18]And you shall do what is right and good in the sight of the LORD, that it may go well with you, and that you may go in and take possession of the good land that the LORD swore to give to your fathers [19]by thrusting out all your enemies from before you, as the LORD has promised. [20]"When your son asks you in time to come, 'What is the meaning of the testimonies and the statutes and the rules that the LORD our God has commanded you?' [21]then you shall say to your son, 'We were Pharaoh's slaves in Egypt. And the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. [22]And the LORD showed signs and wonders, great and grievous, against Egypt and against Pharaoh and all his household, before our eyes. [23]And he brought us out from there, that he might bring us in and give us the land that he swore to give to our fathers. [24]And the LORD commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the LORD our God, for our good always, that he might preserve us alive, as we are this day. [25]And it will be righteousness for us, if we are careful to do all this commandment before the LORD our God, as he has commanded us.' (ESV) Footnotes 1. [6:1] Or 'just decrees'; also verse 20 2. [6:4] Or 'The LORD our God is one LORD'; or 'The LORD is our God, the LORD is one'; or 'The LORD is our God, the LORD alone'
: The law is also teaching (as the ESV rendering of the text); is what makes us learn the way of God.

But the Bible is also a testimony. It is a living, extant record of how God decisively intervenes in the midst of human history to guide us to salvation, up to the point of the supreme sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Eternal High Priest, King and Prophet, and thus opening the doors of salvation through faith alone. The Bible is also a testimony, a record, of how a new humanity, transformed by God’s grace, was seeking to walk in obedience, hope, and faith towards the heavenly Jerusalem, the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God (Hebrews 12:22-24 [show]Hebrews 12:22-24 [22]But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, [23]and to the assembly(1) of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, [24]and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. (ESV) Footnotes 1. [12:23] Or 'church'
; Hebrews 11:10 [show]Hebrews 11:10 [10]For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. (ESV)
).

The text from Isaiah is very clear: “If they do not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn.” In the practice of our faith, once for all delivered to the saints (Jude 3 [show]Jude 1:3 Judgment on False Teachers [3]Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. (ESV)
), we have the sacred and solemn duty of conform our doctrine, our teaching and our lives to the rules of the Word of God. As the context of Isaiah 8:20 [show]Isaiah 8:20 [20]To the teaching and to the testimony! If they will not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn. (ESV)
shows, other may place their trust in horoscopes and stars, or they migh seek communication with the dead, to get some guidance for their living; but “we will remember the name of the LORD our God” (Psalms 20:7, NKJV). ¡Amen!

Article written for the church’s weekly bulletin, Sept. 07, 2008.

After a long hiatus, I was invited to preach at my church’s youth group at their weekly Saturday evening meeting. I preached on the “falls of the just person” as stated in Proverbs 24:16 [show]Proverbs 24:16 [16]for the righteous falls seven times and rises again, but the wicked stumble in times of calamity.
. So far, it looks like the sermon was well-received. (I plan to post the notes soon.)

It was nice to be back in preaching. I was quite out of “homiletical shape”, so it was more difficult than usual; but it was nevertheless a blessing for me. Adding to that, seeing so many new faces in the youth group was a real bonus.

Please keep praying for my church, who is facing some difficult times with several issues affecting the congregation, and especially for the youth group: seemingly untouched by those issues, it is very sensitive to anything disturbing the peace of the congregation.

I upgraded “phoenix”, my PIII-450 desktop workstation, to Slackware 12.1 over the last weekend. My workstation had Slackware 12.0 running smoothly, and I did the upgrade using the procedure described in the Slackware documentation.

Thankfully, the upgrade went well, and now I have 12.1 running on phoenix. Overall it feels really good, and even faster. The only serious problem I’ve seen so far is that since Slackware 12.1 offered so much more libraries, my tiny hard disk is becoming low on free space. Oh well…

Reading several Internet news media, it is apparent that KDE has gotten a lot of heat recently from several quarters. The main issue seems to be the KDE 4 release and its buggy-incomplete quality, and the fact that several distributions rushed to place KDE 4.0.x as a replacement of KDE 3.5.10, something which clearly was never intended to be.

To get the facts clear, Groklaw put a page explaining several myths about KDE. This is recommended reading, and helps a lot to dispel several criticisms made to KDE in general.

But the best thing is that today KDE 4.1 was released With this release, several concerns were addressed, and in general it looks like a promising desktop. For starters, Kontact (the PIM Suite) and the printer applet are back! However, there are several apps regarded by many people as essential, such as amaroK, Koffice, and Krusader, that are in alpha status yet. Yet, with PIM and printing working, it will be an usable desktop again.

Once again, I had the privilege of helping with the Spanish translation of this release. I plan to download the tarballs and start compiling ASAP. Let’s see if KDE lives up to the hype this time.

I already said once that in Paraguay there’s a saying that goes like, “In Paraguay there are just two seasons: summer, and fishing…”, meaning that besides the scorching heat of summer, all other seasons are just practical jokes of Nature.

Yesterday I was thinking precisely about that. We were in the midst of winter (remember, I am in the Southern Hemisphere), but we had a heat wave that was lasting over a month. Last night was especially warm; at 20.00 (8pm), the temperature was 29.6 C, or 85.3 F. The air was dry, but it was hot nonetheless.

However, there is a trait of our “wintertime hot days” that is completely different from summer: these days are dry. Yes, dry. Weeks, and weeks, and weeks, without any hint of rain or humidity. Sometimes is convenient (like when you hang your clothes to dry them off, and they are dry in a matter of mere hours), and sometimes isn’t (like when you see dust clogging every pore of your skin).

But you also see something else: dried Lapacho flowers and leaves everywhere. Walk around the streets of Asunción, and you will be treated to a beautiful scene: tall, imposing trees, covered in nothing but pink flowers. It is truly a sight to behold; I am never tired of seeing those beautiful Lapacho trees showing their colors. And below, there is the bed of dried leaves and fallen flowers, crackling under your steps…

Lapacho is a tree that does not flower in spring; it shows its flowers in middle or late winter. Common wisdom is that for Lapachos to flower, they must undergo a period of cold climate followed by a short period of warm weather. This is exactly what happened in June, so they began to flower, and amaze us with their splendor.

Last night we had a thunderstom followed by heavy rain and a drastic decrease in temperature, which now is around 14.5 C/58 F; a sorely needed relief. But Lapachos are still in the height of their splendor and beauty.

So, come with me; let’s have a walk on some quiet street of my city, and watch how some Lapacho flowers crumble on the floor, and some others bloom near the eternal blue sky, while we talk and drink tereré…

Photo: Lapacho Tree across from my house, by Webshots.com user cuddley3. Click on the photo to see a larger image.

I need a hammer. A Really Big Big Big Bad Hammer(TM), and also Some Things to Crush In a Fit of Anger. While moderating my ever-increasing spam comments, some perfectly good and legitimate comments (especially those from Tom Di Giovanni) went down the drain, mistakenly classified as spam. My mistake, and my apologies to those affected.

This makes me think again about how uncomfortable the moderation system became since WordPress 2.5. I upgraded to 2.6 yesterday, but the “improvements” (?) in the comment system are still there. Arghhh…!!! where’s my hammer???

Some days ago my boss, Rev. S., had a serious talk with me. He gave me some not so good news. Those were expected, but they were difficult news nonetheless.

Rev. S. told me that he would not seek another term as a high-ranking elected official in the denominational organization he is currently serving. That was expected; he is feeling tired, and his age is pressing him towards his retirement. And I agree; he really should retire. The problem for me, obviously, is that with Rev. S. in retirement, I will be left without a job; and Rev. S. broke the news to me that my job would end in December.

Therefore, I began to dust off my resumé, and I will start to actively seek a new job real soon now. Please pray that I could get a new, better job soon.

From the original Latin, a timely advice for rulers everywhere, from one of them that once ruled over the whole civilized world:

Deo auctore nostrum gubernantes imperium, quod nobis a caelesti maiestate traditum est, et bella feliciter peragimus et pacem decoramus et statum rei publicae sustentamus: et ita nostros animos ad dei omnipotentis erigimus adiutorium, ut neque armie confidamus neque nostris militibus neque bellorum ducibus uel nostro ingenio, sed omnem spem ad solam referamus summae providentiam Trinitatis: unde et mundi totius elementa processerunt et eorum dispositio in orbem terrarum producta est.

Ruling with the protection of God the Creator the empire that was entrusted to us by the Heavenly Majesty, we have happily finished the war, glorified the peace, and sustained the Republic; and in such a way we uplift our spirit to ask the help of the Almighty God, that we do not put our trust in arms, nor in our soldiers, nor in generals, nor in our own mind; but only in the Most Highest Trinity do we place all our hope, from where all elements of the world came, and the whole orb of the earth had its disposition born.

Emperor Justinian I, constitution “Deo Auctore”