The UmBlog

It is no myth that the Wampanoag tribe had a feast with the Pilgrims. They could have wiped them out. Instead they broke bread with them at the Pilgrim's tables. The hosts were the guests. After that, the relationship got complicated. Eventually, the guests became invaders and land thieves and the hosts hit back violently and almost drove the guests all out during King Philip's War, see my previous report here. It's not our proudest moment. But what I like about this holiday of Thanksgiving is that we remember our neighborly time and not our victory. For all the accusations of belligerence made toward our country, the veracity of which I am not commenting on, one of our national, non-religious holidays is in honor of peace. It's non-religious in that even the non-religious can celebrate it without some counter expression and it is not derived from a feast on any religious calendar. Certainly, it's religious for me, and many other Americans. I'm thankful to God …

Tonight I started reading Blomberg and Kamell's commentary on James for a future book report. It's really good so far. But one part really stood out at me for what they said so succintly, something I tried to say over threeblogposts last year about self-control as a marker of Christian growth. As part of the commentary on James 1:4, And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing, they write, James describes this work as "perfect" or "complete"...This expression can denote not only perfection but maturity, as frequently in the OT with the Hebrew equivalent tamim. Both meanings seem intended here: we can aspire to maturity in this lifetime, but we will ultimately attain perfection in the eschaton. As believers, we must constantly strive for perfection, even while knowing that we will never fully reach it until our resurrection and glorification. p. 50 Previously they wrote about endurance or steadfastness …

Renaissance Ronin guest posts Green-Trust.org and combines two really great low construction methods at Can you REALLY live inside a steel shipping container? | Green-Trust.Org As a shipping container guy, he starts with the container. But then talks about giving it wings using roofing and earthen walls, specifically earth bags, but why not compressed earth blocks or rammed earth? Alex gives his "elevator speech" below. His $10 e-book is worth every penny too.
Basic ISBU rules;* You CANNOT bury a container!You cannot just pile dirt on top of it, either. If you do, it’s called a coffin. That corrugated steel is just to keep weather and bugs out. It doesn’t have the strength required to take that kind of load.* The insulation goes on the OUTSIDE of the container, unless you’re nuts.That’s right, I said it. Think about it. WHY make a small place even smaller? Even if you connect ISBUs together to form larger rooms, why rob yourself of living space?* Use SPF (Spray Foam Insulatio…

Software review: Logos 4Back in the early 00's I bought a lot of Bible software from many providers but most of it came from Logos. I have great resources that run on their 2.0 and 3.0 software. But then I returned to the cult of the mac, and all those CD's sat neglected in a cardboard box for years. I considered buying Accordance, but I could not afford to buy the same digitized information formatted for another OS. The internet has narrowed the gap on many of these resources, I really like the NET Bible's site, but most of the material I have on these CD's is still copy write protected and not legally available for free. I did buy VMWare Fusion to emulate windows on my Macs, but it never really worked well, almost like dial up internet (slow as molasses), so I never really used all that good stuff except when I was desperate. Logos 4 is the newest version of their software and it works on Macs and Windows. Logos promises to always provide free software upgrades. So I…