The UmBlog

Although I love straw bale houses, New England is not a big wheat producing region with lots of waste straw to bale. I'm not certain, but I think straw would have to be imported for a Connecticut house. It's a great insulating "brick" to build with, but I've been pondering what is local, and abundant and affordable to build with? I also love earth bricks, but our soil typically needs to have clay supplemented in these parts, to make them. I have seen a Canadian rammed earth house built in a sandwich around a foam core. Rammed earth has the same needs as earth bricks and earth bags as well. I live in Connecticut, where farms are very good at raising rocks. Literally, for centuries, New England farmers have to clear new rocks out of their fields, heaved up each winter by the freeze thaw cycle. Stone walls are everywhere around here. Like many things in these parts, glaciers get the blame. Nevertheless, stone is an abundant natural resource. Quarries are als...

When it comes to understanding the Bible, context is extremely important. Dr. Currid has provided a very distilled, but excellent introduction to the ancient Near Eastern (ANE) world that the Jewish scriptures emerged from in his book Against the Gods: The Polemical Theology of the Old Testament . Archaeologists have done tremendous work and translators, who cannot keep up with all the discoveries, are making the context better and better. Dr. Currid focuses the book on a few key stories from Genesis and Exodus. He has a chapter on the creation account, Noah's flood , Joseph and the false rape accusation, Moses and his infant escape, Moses's escape from Egypt, God's name "I am that I am", Moses's miracle rod, the parting of the Red Sea and seemingly plagiarism of Canaanite Psalms. The book description on the back of the book is enlightening for what leading question it does not answer. "Did the Old Testament writers borrow ideas from their pagan n...

During my Haiti trip I brought my Kindle and read in transit and in down time. After finishing Tom Sawyer, I read a book I bought on sale at Amazon, Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament Go d by Paul Copan, a Christian philospher and apologist who teaches in Florida. He uses the criticisms of the Bible by the Four Horsemen of New Atheism as the topics for his chapters. I found the book helpful but uneven. Some things were really good, but not everything. I have many highlights which I will be interacting with in this book response. The following assertion is an example of the "not-so good" because it is reductionist. The Theme of the Pentateuch: Abraham’s Faith and Moses’s Unbelief Biblical scholars have pointed out that the theme of faith holds the Pentateuch (Genesis–Deuteronomy) together at its seams. The two major players are Abraham and Moses. Abraham is the positive example of faith, while Moses is the negative example. Abraham had faith withou...

We arrived in Haiti on Saturday, July 13th, and went to church on Sunday, July 14th. I took a brief video clip in church so I could remember it. Here it is. Before the earthquake, there was a concrete block building here, that was also a school. It partially collapsed and killed a few people. Although the church leases the property, they took care of it, and removed all that concrete and rebar down to the cement pad, and they built this 2x4, tarp, and tin roof structure. They have met here for three and a half years since the quake. However, the property owner decided that he no longer wanted to rent to the church. Our team had to dismantle the church. Every piece of lumber and tin was saved. We pulled so many nails out of the lumber. No matter how bent, they were all saved to use again, when a new property becomes available. This was service of closure. The congregation worshiped God out of gratefulness for what he has done and in anticipation for what he will do. This is ...

When my kids were little, I loved watching Veggietales videos with them. Phil Vischer created them. His company, Big Idea , produced great stories with great visuals about Jesus, God and the Bible, told through the lives of armless, legless vegetables with big eyes, crazy voices, and silly songs. This book is the story of how this extremely popular show and quickly growing business collapsed into bankruptcy, leaving Phil with his God, his family, and his broken dreams. Yet it is a story with hope and redemption and restoration with the same God, same family, and a bigger dream. The Veggietales videos promised and delivered a half hour of entertaining morality tales. This book delivered in one sitting of about four hours a story that had me laughing out loud, angry at the bad guys, shaking my head at the stupid things, misting over in the hard parts, and choking up at the end. Vischer starts with his childhood, showing how God prepared him for movie making and story telling and ne...

The other morning, I did something rather unusual. I stayed in bed and read. Justin McRobert's book, CMYK , kept me in bed. I didn't want to miss out on the conversations Justin was sharing with me. This book is a series of letters written in response to the vagaries of life. McRobert's writes as a pastor, husband, son, father, friend, musician, and disciple of Jesus Christ. His words do not come from a mountaintop, but from alongside, which is very encouraging. Although these letters are not written to me, all of them speak to something in my life. I received this encouragement for someone else. "Your story is not a story of failure; it is a story of boundless mercy. It is a story about getting second chances seven times, and then seventy times that. While some would suggest your life’s process was marked by failure, I believe that it is characterized by grace." The perspective of grace changes everything. McRoberts is not only graceful, but humorously sel...

I've been back for almost a week since my trip to Haiti with my daughter through the organization Mission E4 . The picture above is before their front gate at the girls' orphanage in Cassagne, Leogane . This is a picture of us from day 3 at the outdoor dining area of the guest house in Gran Goave. Our team stayed at a beach house in Gran Goave owned by Mission of Hope International . There is another group named Mission of Hope Haiti . They also do great work in Haiti, but we didn't stay with them. They do not have air conditioning, you need regular electricity for that, but I was able to walk right out the back gate, down the boat ramp and into the Gulf of Gonave every afternoon for some resuscitation after a hot work day. I don't know, nor did I want to know, how (un)clean the water is. It was very murky, but so refreshing. On the horizon, we could barely see Gonave Island . Mission of Hope has a small motorboat that they take out to the island to d...