The UmBlog

I've been asked to speak this weekend at church. We are looking at Proverbs through the summer so that's my jumping off point on the topic of mercy. This is way too much for a 40 minute talk, so I will need to pare it down. This is also intended to address the question of why do we send money to people in need all over the world, like Haiti, when there is so much need in America. All verses are from the NIV. Proverbs 14:21 He who despises his neighbor sins, but blessed is he who is kind to the needy. 14:31 He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God. 21:13 If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he too will cry out and not be answered. What is mercy? Umland’s definition: generosity to the unworthy or desperate Caring for the needy: Parable of the good Samaritan Luke 10:23-37 25 On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life...

Dear Dr. Prothero, Can I call you Steve? I received your book as an anniversary gift, my wife was so kind to pick something from my Amazon wish list. Your book, God is not One:The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World--and Why Their Differences Matter , was near the top of the list and ended up in my mailbox. I think your book was a great introduction to eight influential religions of the contemporary world, but I was not satisfied, and that is all my fault. I do have one or two gripes with your book and I will state those first before I tell you my faults. Gripe 1: Naming Mormonism as a potential 4th branch of Christianity after Catholicism, Protestantism, and Eastern Orthodoxy. I don't have your book in front of me, and I'm not saying these were your exact words, but I think you give that church too much credit. If we take everyone's self-reported numbers at face value, their 13 million worldwide , really is a drop in the bucket among the 2 billion Christians of the w...

Way back in September 2003, before color photography was developed ;-) we brought two bikes, a trail-a-bike and a bike trailer to Acadia National Park, Maine . We put our 7 year old girl on the trail-a-bike and our 5 year old boy and our 3 year old girl in the trailer. My wife rode up the steep trail with the big girl and I pulled the other two up the trail around Eagle Lake. We had left our campsite at Mt. Desert Campground which was near this carriage road and had heard about this scenic overlook of the lake called Connor's Nubble. It's only a half mile off the carriage road. But we found out it was a nearly vertical hike in parts up a granite cliff face. But those little guys scrambled right up it. Then they ran around the top without a care or an ear to our admonishments to stay away from the edges. I took this picture of them with the digital camera unknowingly set to black and white. In July 2010, we rode the free bus into downtown Bar Harbor from our campsite at Mt. De...

I got to learn much more about container housing from a blog and ebook by Alex Klein in Image by seier+seier via Flickr Mississippi. He is selling the 100 page PDF on container housing for $10 at his blog. He is doing work to get some container structures to Haiti and make container housing for oil clean up workers working on the Gulf beaches. The information that was good for me was worth the ten bucks. He recommends closed cell spray on polyurethane foam on the outside. He recommends a SIP roof with standing seam metal on top which makes the installation of solar panels easy. He even recommends the short containers ( ISBU 's to those in the know) to make delivery and drop off easier. A crane is not necessary for the small ones. He shares designs of single container homes and nine container homes. He recommends planning ahead so that adding modules in the future will be easier. He prefers siding like in the house above and not making the neighbors suffer with the architectura...