A New Dog and Beyond

The weekend went along rather well. I tried to rest, and for the most part I was able to. My wife, as usual, cooked the best dishes in the whole world, and I just sat with her, talked, was available, joked, laughed, etc., with her all weekend long. We sat in our porch, watching the sunset while drinking tereré. She had some discomforts on Sunday, and we decided it was time to see the doctor. Please pray for her health and safety.

When we married, we had two dogs: Loli, a female poodle, and Keeper, a very old German Shepherd, a gift from my in-laws. A month after our marriage we bought Raisa, a beautiful female mutt-like Rottweiler (she looks like a mix of Rottweiler, Doberman, and German Shepherd). With time, Keeper the German Shepherd died because of his old age, so Loli and Raisa became the two only dogs we had.

Later, one day both Raisa and Loli got in heat. All of a sudden, we had Canine National Convention in our backyard ;). Every stray dog from miles around got into, or at least tried to got into our home (Unsuccessfully, I might add; the bitches were all locked up). One of the dogs wanted somehow to stay at our home, and my wife took a special liking to him. This was a smallish dog, with long body, very short legs, and a long, curled tail. He had the peculiarity of making some noises with the throat, so we called him “Ronqui” (from the Spanish roncar, to snore). He liked us and was a very good guardian. The funny thing was that he was collared, but showed no intentions to go back to his home.

Problem was, Ronqui liked the streets too much. One day he escaped, only to come back two weeks later. We admitted him back, but with the understanding that if he escaped again, we would not let him in back. We took a dog from nowhere, without a clue about his health, his vaccines, and so on; if we were to have this dog, I told my wife, we could not afford him to go back to the streets, where he could pick all kinds of parasites and diseases back. Well, last Tuesday he escaped again, and we knew that we wouldn’t let him in.

Meanwhile, my brother in law, who bought Hummer (Raisa’s brother), asked us if we could have him in our home. He was getting married and moving to an apartment, and he liked our expansive backyard for his dog. At that time, since we already had a male in house (Ronqui) we had to turn him down. He called again while Ronqui escaped, and yesterday he came with Hummer, who at once was very happy to see his sister and having a big backyard all to himself.

Now, guess what: While I was waking up today, at around 6.30 am, I heard a ruckus on the front. Hummer was barking like mad. And there it was, Ronqui, trying to get in. My wife noticed him, and asked me to get him back; and with a very heavy heart, I had to tell her no. We made our choice and the dog made his, too. She cried, and I comforted her. I understood the heavy heart she had.

My wife loves her pets. I know and understand; she was raised in a family where the dogs were real helpers in the house, and very protective of the children. I also share her appreciation, because I was raised in a similar family, and I had the opportunity to raise a Dalmatian who had won all the possible awards in its lifetime, including the title of FCI International Champion.

I am going to call my wife now, to see how she’s doing, and comfort a little more that tender heart of hers. Thank you, Lord, for giving me such a precious gift; allow me to be a good steward of our marriage.

Happy (belated) Birthday Tim!

Well, I was unable to post this on the weekend since I was on dialup and way too busy. Last Saturday (Sept. 25) was Tim‘s birthday. He is a true Christian brother and friend, and I thank the Lord for his life.

Please pray for his life and that God might give him the choicest of blessings. Happy birthday again!

The League of Reformed Bloggers

You might have noticed in my column at the right a blogroll identified as The League of Reformed Bloggers. This is a basically composed of an aggregator and a blogroll, and is open to all Reformed people.

If you visited here between yesterday and today, you might also have noticed that the thing is growing fast. I’m glad I was about the seventh one to join :).

See Jollyblogger’s post on the subject for more details about joining.

Hunting Dinosaurs

Exultate Justi has a very good post on why the established press and the intelligence community are totally out of focus with our times: Hunting Dinosaurs.

However, he seems to imply that the established media is redeemable. I think not. I mean, it may change some of its policies, but not its utter lack of accountability, conceit, self-pride, and leftist bias.

Another abduction

When I arrived home I learned about the news. Miss Cecilia Cubas, 31, was abducted and is now reportedly being held hostage for a $1 million ransom. You can see English news reports here. It seems that it was, from the beginning, a carefully planned operation. The attackers had shotguns and M-16 assault rifles, among other weapons.

The really disturbing issue here is that Cecilia Cubas is daughter of former President Raúl Cubas. For a moment, sit down and imagine. How would you feel if some mobsters kidnap Chelsea Clinton? The feeling of insecurity in the country is overwhelming.

Site update

You may already have noticed that I fiddled a little bit with the template file ;). What I did is add some information about myself for the casual visitor, and a couple of blogrolls.

What’s puzzling me is my personal blogroll, blogsphere. Initially I used for that my own WordPress link, creating a category. What I wanted is to sort the links putting the “recently updated” first and with some emphasis, but it didn’t work that way. I then switched to BlogRolling.com (as you are able to see) and I also configured it to work that way, but it is not working! For example, Tim’s blog is right now below all others when it was recently updated, and with an excellent post on confirmation to boot. Any ideas on why this is so?

All in all, my hope is that these small changes are useful and comply with their purpose. For me, it was a fun way of learning a little bit of Word Press template code. Let me know if you have something to offer in the way of feedback.

Devotional – September 22, 2004

Thus says the Word of God:

Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.
(Romans 15:7, ESV)

The world where we live, despite all the empty speeches and platitudes on world peace and unity, is becoming more and more fragmented each day. This has been true since the very Fall of humanity. Sin –separation from God– also implied the mutual alienation of our race and the breakup of families and communities. We also have to acknowledge, to our regret and shame, that this divisiveness is also perceived in the Church and it has been so since its very beginning, despite the fervent prayer of our Lord that we all might be one (John 17:21). How many times we have come to regret divisions in our churches! Too many times these divisions were due to matters without importance, out of vanity or pride; but sometimes there were important issues at stake that left us with no other choice than separation.

But we know that this is not God’s idea. The Apostle reminds us of that, pointing out clearly what is the main effecting agent of Christian unity: “Therefore welcome one another.” Notice that the Apostle does not mention feelings or emotions, or some abstract and vague idea. Real Christian unity is achieved obviously through love; but St. Paul says here with devastating clarity that unity is achieved with the sacrificial and obedient practice of Christian love. We need to welcome and accept our brother, letting him enter in that intimate space of ours that we would like to tenaciously defend from outsiders; we must let our brother know that in the same way he is welcomed by Christ he will be welcomed by us without fear of rejection or eviction.

Finally, we should bear in mind two aspects of Paul’s advice: firstly, we see that since Christ is our model, we also should pay Christ’s price; we have to pay the highest price possible to love our brother. The practice of Christian love proposed by Paul is hard and difficult. Secondly, our motivation should be nothing less and nothing more than God’s glory. We show this love, we welcome our brother in our intimate beings, not out of goodness, not for our own good, or any other motivation. We should do so because God’s will is that we might do so. To welcome our brother in this way is, then, an act of discipline and obedience.

May the Lord allow us to be agents and promoters of unity in the practice of Christian love, for His glory.

Prayer
Our Lord and Father, who loved us first and sent your Son Jesus Christ to save us: Let us, by your Holy Spirit, express Your love to our brethren in the faith during our live, so that we might follow the example of your Son, who loved us to death, and death on a cross. By Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Influence of Protestant dogmatics in the thought of Immanuel Kant

Note: This is the summary of a paper I presented in the Annual Philosophical Week organized by the Faculty of Philosophy of the National University of Asunción. This year the Week’s emphasis was on Kant, in commemoration of the bicentennial of his death. I planned to offer the full Spanish version (8 pages in letter-size paper) in HTML, but that will have to wait till Monday since my LaTeX source code was left on my office workstation.

The paper was very well received. Thanks goes to Professor Sergio Cáceres, who invited me to participate, and the whole pastoral staff of the church, who generously granted me permission to work on the paper during some office hours. Special mention goes to Rev. A., who made available to me his office library.

The Paper

When one examines the thinking of Immanuel Kant, there are some readily discernible influences, such as Wolff’s rationalism, Hume’s skepticism or Newton’s mechanics. However, one influence which is as deep and decisive as all the aforementioned three is seldom mentioned and almost always forgotten: the influence of Protestant dogmatics.

It is not easy to take account into that fact, since dogmatics is no longer part of a general curriculum in the liberal arts tradition; and furthermore, since we (I am talking here of Paraguay) were situated in the part of Christendom that was the farthest away possible from developments in Protestant thinking.

It is also necessary to pinpoint that we’re not talking about dogmatic philosophy, as Kant intended it, i.e, that philosophy that takes the possibility of knowledge for granted. We are talking about dogmatic theology, that systematic reflection on the revealed material done by the Church. Finally, we need to take into account that the word Protestant here denotes the legacy of the magisterial Reformers, such as Luther, Calvin and Zwingli, and not those of the radical Reformers.

With that being said, I will explore the issue of possible points of influence in two avenues: (1) Pietism; and (2) Protestant scholasticism.

Pietism

One can say that Pietism’s influence over Kant is a confirmed and self-evident fact; but Pietism itself is ill-understood and maligned as a movement.

Pietism was formed as a reaction to the hardening of categories of Protestant thought brought on by Protestant scholasticism, especially in the excesses shown by Lutheran dogmaticians. The main trait of Pietism is the introduction of the radical subjectivity of the religious experience as the normative criterion for ecclesiology and theology, and a progressive distanciation of the more objective content of dogmatics. Thus, and together with deism and proto-liberalism, Pietism has favored the reduction of the idea of God to the immanent.

According to Roger E. Olson, you can identify four special traits of Pietism: (1) A religious expression characterized by a conversional piety; (2) A tolerant, irenic kind of Christianity; (3) The emphasis on the visibility of the faith; and (4) An activist outlook on the consequences of the faith.

Besides the abundant indications made by his biography, one can point these points of influence in Kant:

  1. It is possible to point that Kant’s transcendental subjectivity has a direct parallel with Pietism’s radical subjectivization of religious experience;
  2. Conversional piety might be the influence behind Kant’s “Copernican Revolution”, i. e., his transition from dogmatic to critical philosophy, and his account of the fact in the Introduction of his Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics, the famous passage where he tells that Hume’s skepticism “awoke me from my dogmatic slumber” is laid out in clearly conversional form;
  3. It would be possible to link Pietism’ emphasis in Christian tolerance with Kant’s superation of the Church as an institution in his Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone and the coming of the Kingdom of God on the earth, as set forth in his work Zum ewigen Friede (“For Everlasting Peace”); and
  4. Lastly, the most common contact point between Pietism and Kant’s thought is that of ethics, so we won’t dwell on it here.

Protestant scholasticism

Protestant scholasticism was a theological movement brought forth by a natural evolution of the Reformation of the 16th century. Generally speaking, it can be characterized as a natural hardening of the categories of Protestant thinking, and the (mis)use of these categories as an instrument of controversy agains those in different theological camps. It is possible to establish some points of influence, and I am going to mention the two more evident:

  1. First, we see that Kant does admit in Book I of Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone the radical corruption of the will, a question hotly debated in all theological circles. This is surprising, since Kant more or less generally sides with the Enlightenment rationalism rather than with Christian faith; but then again, he says that despite this corruption of the will, it must be somehow able to obey the moral law.
  2. Another related question, and one equally debated, is the question of the bondage of the will, a polemic that was started with Erasmus and Luther and went on through the centuries to our very days. It is noteworthy that one of the Antinomies that Kant puts forth in the Transcendental Dialectics part of his Critique of the Pure Reason to illustrate the impossibility of a rational cosmology is that very question of bondage versus freedom. This might be more or less a jab to the contending spirit of Protestant scholastics.

Discussion

After seeing all this possible links between Protestant dogmatics and Kant’s thought, the question might arise, Why it is so? I would like to offer three possible causes:

  1. A quick survey of Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone shows a considerable number of Scripture references. This might indicate that Kant wishes to place himself not as an heretic and innovator, but as a thinker that is essentially orthodox, perhaps of a different kind of orthodoxy. Obviously, Kant’s results are far from any manifestation of orthodoxy.
  2. The use of disputed questions as the starting point of certain features of his thinking shows that Kant is very partial to Pietism’s emphasis in the superation of all denominational differences.
  3. Finally, the use of themes that figured prominently in the Lutheran-Calvinist debate illustrate the growing political tendency towards the unification of the Lutheran and Reformed churches in the Kingdom of Prussia, and in fact there was a law signed by the King Frederick Wilhelm III in 1817 mandating a church merger, only 13 years after Kant’s death and in the tricentennial of the Reformation. In my opinion, Kant saw the writing on the wall and he wanted to rally on its support with Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone.

Conclusion

The brief examination we made allows us to state beyond any possible doubt that Kant was influenced by Protestant dogmatics. Pietism was the most important factor, but Protestant orthodoxy should also be taken into account.

Birthday Gifts!

Those might or might not be insignificant, but I took them as little birthday gifts from the Lord:

  • I was able to expound my paper on Kant on the Faculty of Philosophy of the National University (more of that on other post).
  • Finally, Part III of the Stealth Desktop series appeared at OfB.biz.
  • Furthermore, that very article was slashdotted in yesterday’s front page!

As usual, thanks for the Stealth Desktop series goes to Tim.

Of Being Thankful

Today is a special day on two counts:

  1. It was exactly four years ago that the most beautiful and loving lady in the world called me long distance, from Asunción (Paraguay) straight to my Michigan dorm after a marathonic IRC session, and began to start something so wonderful I am at a loss of words to explain. In time, I came back to Paraguay, and less than a year after my arrival we got married. And here I am, your domesticated nerd and former unrepentant bachelor, happy as a clam with the fact that he’s being married ;). Thank you, my love, for bringing happiness and color to my grey life…
  2. It is also on this day that I was born, 34 years ago. While I am usually shy and I don’t like to celebrate birthdays, I am very grateful to God for all the blessings and mercies He has shown all the way upon me. Lord, allow me to be faithful to your Kingdom and be a witness of the good news of Jesus. Give me patience, give me kindness, give me understanding. And thank You for your continued protection and blessings. Amen.

Thankfully, today is a rather quiet day. I expect my parents and siblings to come visit my home later in the evening.

Don Victorio’s Pacemaker, part II

Thankfully, Don Victorio’s surgery went very well. He was conscious all the time during the procedure. Next day (on Thursday) he was released from the hospital and went home, where he is continuing his recovery.

He is in a much better mood than while he was at the hospital, which is understandable. My mother in law told me that he is eating very well and willingly (quite an achievement!).

Thanks everyone for the prayers and intercession. Keep praying for him and his family.

Don Victorio’s Pacemaker

Don Victorio (my father in law) is about to enter the surgery room for the implantation of a pacemaker. To the effect he is now being carried from the Social Security Hospital (where he is being treated) to the French Private Hospital, where the surgery is going to be performed.

Please pray for the successful outcome of the surgery and the post-surgical evolution.

Three Years Later…

It still feels like yesterday. A classmate from the lower apartment called me and told me, “Do you know what happened in New York”? “No; what’s up?”, I replied. “Come and see”, he told me.

We went down the stairs, and when we got into his room, I saw a TV scene that looked like a bad B movie or directly from the book of Revelation… only that it was live TV.

All that people (including two Paraguayans)… all those selfless firemen, policemen, paramedics, and people who helped, losing their lives and knowing it… it was simply too much to bear. The people who defied terror and chose to offer their own lives in an airplane, or amidst the ruins… I salute you!

America, I salute you at full attention today. You showed the world your true backbone of freedom, courage and liberty that day. God bless America the beautiful!

Oops!

Sorry for the relatively few posts of this month. Don Victorio is wreaking havoc with his illness. I have good news of him, though. (More on that later.)

I just had a major scare with KMail, my email program. I have several addresses and aliases, and major filters, all set up, and I moderate a mailing list, admin a website with email, and do several other things with it. You can see that this is pretty important to me.

Well, today I booted the machine, and first order of business was to start Kontact (which is an Outlook-like application that uses KMail to handle e-mail). After a few seconds, I got a dialog: “KMail encountered a fatal error and will terminate now”, with only the OK button. And then it shut down. I tracked back any runaway processes with ps -auxw, killed them, and restarted KMail. No luck. The dreaded dialog appeared again. I then invoked KMail from a console window, just to see the standard error output; perhaps the reason for all this was some esoteric misconfig or error. No luck; stderr would say the same thing as the message window: “KMail encountered a fatal error and will terminate now”.

Then I resorted to more extreme measures. First I restarted my session; no luck. Then I rebooted; no luck. And then I did a complete shutdown with power off and unplugging of the power cord. After that, I booted and restarted KMail, and it seemed to operate longer, but after some time the dreaded message appeared agan. What could I do??

I was stuck, and I needed to Do Something Now. To make things worse, today is Prayer Bulletin Day, and I have to send the bulletin via email. I began considering how to migrate to Mozilla Mail (yuck!) or Ximian Evolution (even more yuck!) or to some other app. Suddenly, I had the idea to check my .kde directory. There I deleted the links to the socket; then I deleted the HTTP cache, and after that I deleted my whole /tmp directory. Guess what? It worked!

My goodness; that big and loud pheeeeeeeew! you heard was just me, sighing of relief. 🙂

Devotional – September 1, 2004

Thus says the Word of God:

The earth, O LORD, is full of your steadfast love;
teach me your statutes!

(Psalm 119:64, ESV)

There is no doubt that the chores of daily living are difficult in so many times, and tiresome, with all the struggles and disappointments which we have to endure daily. Our Lord Jesus Christ is overwhelmingly frank when he tells us, “In the world you will have tribulation” (John 16:33). Even so, our duty as servants of Christ is not to sink in despair, because he has overcome the world; instead, we are encouraged to always have in mind those things that are lovely, honorable, excellent, good and true (Philippians 4:8).

That is the reason why the Psalmist reminds us of that wonderful truth: The steadfast love, the mercy of the Lord, is in all the earth. Even in this world that brings us forth thorns and thistles, pain, sickness and sorrow, God did not leave Himself without witness; very to the contrary, evidences of His love and care for us sprout everywhere to the eye willing to recognize them. It is Him, and none other, who clothes in His glory to the lilies of the field; it is Him, and none other, who makes the sun rise over just and unjust; it is Him, and none other, the One who gave us the waters of the great sea, the silent majesty of the snowy summits, the lush and color of our tropical forest. It is Him, and none other, the One who freely gave us everything, and gave us this earth as our home, so that we might administer it with wisdom and care, bearing witness of the steadfast love of our Creator and Redeemer.

Is this earth, this world, this our home, the theater of God’s mercy. And we, the servants of Christ, are the ones who must show the world the power of God’s mercy, who fills the whole earth. And in order to bear good witness, we need to learn from God’s word. There lies the secret: to be willing to learn God’s will as stated in His Word, His statutes, and apply it to our daily life. May God allow us to show the world, by obeying His word, the mercy of He who had sent His own Son to save us.

Prayer
Our Lord and Father, whose mercy fills the whole earth: grant us, by your Holy Spirit, the grace of learning, knowing, and practicing the statutes of your Holy Word, so that we might be witnesses of your mercy that fills the earth, and show forth the love of Christ to every creature. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Don Victorio the Spaniard

I’ve been busy these days because Rev. S. is going to travel again. He is going to Dallas, TX, and also he plans to cross the border southward for a brief visit to Mexico.

My father in law is stable, but I think his worst problem is just himself. Don Victorio is stubborn in a way that mules would appear meek and mild in comparison. I guess that’s just right since his dad was a Spaniard who was even more stubborn. When the physicians in emergency care inspected him, they noted a swollen left ankle, and took X-rays just to be sure. It turned out that Don Victorio had an untreated, old sprain in the ankle, and as a result of the fall of the minor stroke, now he also had a fractured fibula. So, as first order of business, they put a plaster boot on his lower left leg and foot.

My goodness. He complained and complained and complained so much that the resident physician agreed to cut a little bit of plaster. When the traumatologist learned of this, he strongly scolded her, telling her that she should mind her own business and not meddle into traumatology stuff. Worse, a little bit later, my father in law took the plaster case off his ankle and threw it out, all by himself.

Meanwhile, he also claims that doctors want to perform “experiments” with him, and it is a real battle to have him take his medication and perform other duties. And since he cannot walk (due to his ankle…) and there’s no restroom inside the door, he is forced to use a bedpan, and usually one of my sisters in law has to clean him up afterwards; you can imagine how unpleasant the whole business is. Don Victorio the Spaniard is driving his family’s patience and understanding to the limits, and beyond…

Please keep praying for him. I really understand his situation and predicament, and I am sympathetic; but I also think he has to be more careful in what he says and does. As my wife said out of exasperation, he is making a fool of himself.

I plan to write today’s devotional and post it here later.

Sermon: The Discipline of Prayer

Sermon preached on Villa Morra Baptist Church on August 22, 2004, 19.00 (Regular church evening service)

Text:

(2) Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. (3) At the same time, pray also for us, that God may open to us a door for the word, to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison– (4) that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak.
(Colossians 4:2-4, ESV)

Introduction: There are a lot of messages and studies on prayer, but what about a down-to-earth, practical advice? Paul gives this kind of advice in this brief text on his Letter to the Colossians.

  1. Prayer is a habit, v.2
    1. Requires steadfastness, perseverance, commitment.
    2. Requires being watchful, i.e., with full dedication.
    3. Requires an attitude of thankfulness.
  2. Intercession should not be missing from prayer, v. 3
    1. Intercession –praying for— is the door to God’s power.
    2. Intercession should be always linked to the proclamation of the mystery of Christ.
    3. Remember that you should always intercede for your pastors and spiritual leaders.
  3. Prayer is always practical, vss. 3 and 4
    1. Prayer is always concerned with practical matters.
    2. It should always refer to our daily lives.
    3. It should always give us orientation for our living.

Conclusion: It is not easy to develop a prayer life. But prayer is the oxygen of the body of Christ. Let us pray that we might show Christ’s victory to this troubled world by our life of prayer.

Devotional – August 25, 2004

Thus says the Word of God:

Great peace have those who love your law;
nothing can make them stumble.

(Psalm 119:165, ESV)

It is commonplace to state that God’s law is an expression of the loving will of the LORD for our lives; it is the “manufacturer’s manual” that must be obeyed by His people. It is perfect, good and acceptable, destined to revive the soul. And this text from the longest Psalm of the Bible confirms this notion, because it states clearly that the law of God guarantees lasting peace. Now, this peace is not the mere lack of disturbances or trouble; it is a deep, inner peace, derived from the strong will to please and serve the Heavenly Father, from Whom all blessings flow.

But today’s text calls our attention because it says something else. Peace does not come from doing or not doing something, or to observe certain rules as a mere formality. The Psalmist, in contrast, proclaims that peace is the gift of those who love the LORD’s law. Loving the law of God requires from us an active obedience, which comes not from fear, but from the love of the one who freely choses to offer himself to the Father’s will, in trusting response to Him who loved us first. For those who are willing to give everything for the sake of God’s love, He promises a peace which surpasses all understanding (Philippians 4:7.

How many times we have wanted peace! The true Shalom, God’s everlasting peace, is out there, even amidst grief, pain, suffering and tragedy, amids the shadow of death and the challenges of life. The LORD tells us that even so, if we love His law, nothing will make us stumble. That is the peace our Lord Jesus Christ cried for, and it is the same He is offering us today.

“If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace!”

Prayer
Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world: have mercy upon us.
Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world: have mercy upon us.
Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world: give us your peace.

O Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world: take away all impiety from us and give us your peace, which surpasses all understanding, so that me might draw closer to the throne of the Father with a confident heart, always walking in loving obedience of His law, which is agreeable, good and perfect. By our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Buddy, can you spare me a copy of Latex2HTML, please?

Yesterday I had to prepare a translation. It was a five-page sermon (in fact, more like a prep-talk) that was obviously a transcription of a speech, and obviously a poor one at that, with Spanish spelling, grammar and syntax errors aplenty.

I had to deliver the translation in both PDF and HTML formats, so I thought that instead of doing it in OpenOffice.org, it would be a good idea to do it in Latex, since it is able to provide excellent PDF output, and HTML output through latex2html.

Now, problem is, today, while I was preparing to send the translation over by email, I suddenly realized that there’s no Latex2HTML in Slackware and seemingly never was there in the first place; i.e., latex2html never was part of the distro. Bummer!

Fortunately, I was able to download, compile and install it. Two hours later my HTML copy of the translation was ready, and after tidying it up some, was happily sent to the intended recipients.

A happy ending, no doubt… but boy, what a scare I had! 🙂

Swamped

Here I am, swamped in work as usual.

Friday went off normally. Lots of work, church bulletin included. A bright note is that I saw KDE 3.3 released the day before; and after leaving the machine overnight downloading (download speeds went down to a crawl, understandably), I was able to install it. Oh boy, what a treat! Something I especially loved was the fact that, after being a victim of KDE Bug 73592 the KDE 1 Window Decoration is again usable. Yahoo!! And I see a review coming 🙂

But… saturday is my only day of rest, and Saturday morning is usually the only one in the week where I do not have to worry about alarms at all. But that Saturday started out badly. I got a phone call in the morning, while I was sleeping soundly. Believe me, I usually do not pick those calls, but we are amidst our father-in-law trouble, so we took the call.

Well, it was the guy at our print shop. I usually send him the church bulletin as a PDF file over email; but this guy waited till 9am Saturday morning to tell me the file didn’t show up. Groaning, I stood up from bed, got dressed, and picked up a cab for the office. There, surely, it was a bounce message from the printer’s ISP telling me that my message was bounced because the Paraguayan national wireless network (run by a stupid monopoly) is on some stupid blacklist who is employed by the stupid ISP.

I called the printer to know how could I send him the file, and he just told me, “Eduardo, don’t worry. Your email just arrived. I called tech support and they saw your message being bounced, and let it pass.” My goodness. I saw my morning and my rest being flushed down in a bad joke. And I was furious to say the least. I told the printer about my serious displeasure, and how much of a nuisance he was, and went back home.

On Sunday I taught the Sunday School class, and left church immediately. I was supposed to preach on the evening service; and thanks to the LORD I found an excellent text. I prepared the sermon, and the message went quite good. A lot of people loved it. Perhaps I might put the outline here just to see if it might be of benefit to someone.

On Monday Rev. S. came back from his trip to La Plata. He was all OK, and I was glad to learn that his sickness went away there. He was obviously happy, and I felt also happy for him.

Now, about my father in law: He is stabilized now. It seems that his condition was caused by an arrhythmia which in turn was sparked by a stomach problem. He is still in coronary unit, but the medical staff is looking to move him to cardiology unit. Treatment is still being discussed; a possibility is the use of a pacemaker, but the family is very reluctant to let him go through another heart surgery.

He has the usual discomforts brought by hospitalization, but he is already on his way to make his own way. He requested a swinging chair to be brought to him, together with his chess set (he is a FIDE National Master). He told my wife he intended to play with docs and nurses. He also requested newspapers, books and his Bible to read. Oh my goodness… it is good ol’ Don Victorio all over again.

My wife told me that he is moved by all your prayers; I told her about all the intercession coming in from this blog and the CS-FSLUG list and he was moved. Thanks, and please keep praying.

Caring for the sick, reloaded

You might have notice a total lack of activity here after Monday, and that’s for a reason.

I’ve been swamped with work on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Rev. S. was to go on a trip to La Plata (Argentina) despite his health, and I had to commute between office and his home to do some work, preparing a lot of documents, files, and related materials for his trip. Additionally, Rev. A. wanted me to write a piece on the philosophy of our Christian School. I don’t blame him, since I am both a trained philosopher and a member of the school Board of Trustees; but I was utterly unable to come up with something. I had to tell him that I couldn’t do anything. You can’t even begin to comprehend how humiliating this could be.

Because of all the hoopla, I was unable to prepare this week’s Prayer Bulletin and that’s why there’s no Devotional for this week.

Now, on Wednesday morning, sometime after my wife and I finished dinner (that’s Paraguayan dinner for you Americans; we dine late at night, 9pm being a good time for that) and we were preparing for crash the bed after a stressful day’s work, we got a phone call. It was my sister-in-law, and it was meant for my wife.

Oh dear. My father in law had apparently suffered a minor stroke. They called an ambulance which was due to arrive at the house anytime soon. Of course this caused my wife to go ballistic; she understandably wanted to be right there with her beloved dad. I had to instill some sense in her, telling her that she was in medical care with a particularly strong variety of flu, and her presence would do her dad more harm than good right now.

The ambulance took my dad to the Institute of Social Security hospital (IPS, after its Spanish name). He couldn’t afford a private hospital. He was admitted into Emergency Room at around 11pm that Wednesday, so you think that took care of it, right? Wrong!

My father in law was left in E.R. for hours. He was given oxygen and nothing else. Meanwhile, the whole family was frantically trying to get him inspected by a specialist who could determine his condition and to which sector of the hospital he should go. Meanwhile, his dossier was misplaced and almost lost; his diagnosis was lost; his tests were lost. An order to move him up to regular hospital care came two times, and two times the hospital beds were took by other folks. Another order was issued, to take him to Cardiology, but the E.R. droids were raising a stink because the doctor who signed the order was not a cardiologist. It was 6pm Thursday, and my father in law was still stranded in E.R., without receiving anything that remotely resembled proper care.

My wife was desperate. She went into the hospital to see what she could do, despite her health. She called me and asked me for help. After praying, I got an idea. I called Dr. MP, which is the new medical director of the Baptist Medical Center. He also happens to be member of our church and my student in Sunday School. Well, I called him and asked him if he please would call one of his colleagues working at the IPS Hospital, asking him or her to take some interest in my father in law’s ordeal?

It turned out that one of Dr. MP’s buddies back in medical school was the very Medical Director of the IPS Hospital. After some calls, Dr. MP called me telling me that the IPS Medical Director was looking into the matter, and he would see that my father in law receives proper care. Soon after that, my wife told me that he was being moved into the intensive care and coronary unit.

My wife came back home in dire need of some serious rest. I bought a junk-food dinner, we ate, and after hugging her, we crashed the bed. She really slept like a stone ;).

Please keep praying for my father in law’s health, and my wife’s too.

Caring for the sick

We had a nice weekend. I generally just tried to rest a while, and I managed to do so even though I had a rather large translation to do. What troubled me the most what the fact that my wife was very sick with the flu. She picked it out from me, and did not respond to it quite well. She was coughing during all of yesterday, and despite this she was very reluctant to go to the doctor.

I finally managed to convince her after a lot of coaxing, and she should be here in around half an hour so we might go to the doctor next door. Keep praying for her health.

On Sunday morning I taught the Sunday School class as usual. After that, the service was regular stuff. Thankfully, there was no drummer, so at least I was spared from that. Preacher was Rev. J.M., who as usual screamend on top of his lungs instead of preaching. The whole service was the boring soap-opera stuff; but I have to be at services, so let it be, at least for now.

KDE 3.3 RC2

Last Tuesday, the KDE folks released KDE 3.3 Release Candidate 2 as a source-only release. Thankfully, the ever-helpful Jean-Christophe Fargette produced Slackware packages in no time, and by Wednesday afternoon the Slack tarballs were waiting in the KDE FTP server. I’ve downloaded them, and installed the packages as a first order of business yesterday.

The truth is, I’m (almost) in computing Nirvana. KDE 3.3 beta2 was already very stable, but with a few bugs remaining. This Release Candidate has a lot of the bugs squashed, and it is really a contender. So far, I’ve found no showstoppers nor big annoyances. Additionally, a pet peeve of mine (bug 73592) was fixed! I am able to use the famous KDE 1 Window Decoration again! I can’t even begin to tell you how happy I am… 🙂

Devotional – August 11, 2004

Thus says the Word of God:

I have rejoiced in the way of thy testimonies,
as much as in all riches.

(Psalms 119:14, KJV)

We again enjoy the never ending riches of the longest Psalm of the Bible so that we might contemplate the most precious treasure we might ever posess: the Word of God. Amidst all toils and travails of our life, in any circumstance, the Psalmist give us a call to rejoice with unrestricted, unstoppable joy. How important it is for us to remember this call from the Bible! It is a call which springs not from the cheap emotionalism so common in the world, and –sadly– also in many churches. It is, instead, a firm and steady joy, stemming from a choice of he who, once and for all and in the middle of the ruins and ashes of his world turned around and fallen down, proclaims, “I have rejoiced in the way of thy testimonies”.

It is telling to see how the Psalmist links this joy directly with the question of the riches. As the very Word of God states, “money answers everything” and is a “protection” (Ecclesiastes 7:12; 10:19). The relevance of the Psalmist’s experience is even more important now, when so many people have been suddenly impoverished, and hundreds of people lost not only material possessions, but also those who loved most in the world, to a whirlwind of gases and fire which will keep scarring our community for a long time to come. The Psalm tells us that there is, indeed, a source of joy which surpasses any loss: the joy of walking the way of the Word.

Finally, it is to be noted that joy does not come after complying with certain pre-established rules, or belonging to such and such group, or being this way or the other. Joy comes after walking the way, after the continuous toil of our feet in the long march over the hard way that is to follow and obey God’s will. If we really want joy in our lives, let us follow the Psalmist’s advice, and change our way; let us stand up now, and follow the way of our Lord, until the finish line.

Prayer
Beloved and Holy Father, who has shown us our way in your Word: Grant us your grace to do the pilgrimage in the way of your will, so that we, with the light of your Holy Spirit, might show Jesus Christ to this world, and embody the joy He brought us with his eternal victory. By Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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