Thoughts Upon the Close of the Fiscal Year

Take my life, and let it be
Consecrated, Lord, to Thee;
Take my moments and my days,
Let them flow in ceaseless praise,
Let them flow in ceaseless praise.

Take my hands, and let them move
At the impulse of Thy love;
Take my feet, and let them be
Swift and beautiful for Thee,
Swift and beautiful for Thee.

Take my voice and let me sing
Always only for my King;
Take my lips, and let them be
Filled with messages from Thee,
Filled with messages from Thee.

Take my silver and my gold,
Not a mite would I withhold:
Take my intellect, and use
Ev'ry pow'r as Thou shalt choose,
Ev'ry pow'r as Thou shalt choose.

Take my will, and make it Thine;
It shall be no longer mine:
Take my heart, it is Thine own;
It shall be Thy royal throne,
It shall be Thy royal throne.

Take my love, my Lord, I pour
At Thy feet its treasure store:
Take myself, and I will be
Ever, only, all for Thee,
Ever, only, all for Thee.

-Frances R. Havergal

Thoughts = Math.Random()

As you may have noticed, my posting has become increasingly eclectic in content of late. It's not just my writing - it's my mind right now. Not sure why.

This was pointed out poignantly tonight. In the PHD Comic (phdcomics.com) for 9/27, which I saw this evening, there's an apparently random number on a computer screen. Except it's not random - it's actually pi/2. And, yes, I did notice this on my own. Not sure what to make of it, but I haven't figured out an explanation that bodes well for me yet.

God is still good. But I do wish I knew His goal in this time of listlessness is. All in good time.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 says "He has made everything beautiful in its time." This is followed by verses 12 and 13: "I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil--this is God's gift to man." Perhaps this is the lesson - to discover joy, not in either the wonderful or the depressing things of life, but in the swirling mass that results when the two mix together. If so, I hope I learn quickly, but I have a sinking feeling that this is a lesson only learned with patience...

All the way my Saviour leads me;
What have I to ask beside?
Can I doubt His tender mercy,
Who thro' life has been my Guide?
Heav'nly peace, divinest comfort,
Here by faith in Him to dwell!
For I know, whate'er befall me,
Jesus doeth all things well;
For I know, whate'er befall me,
Jesus doeth all things well.

All the way my Saviour leads me,
Cheers each winding path I tread,
Gives me grace for ev'ry trial,
Feeds me with the living bread.
Though my weary steps may falter,
And my soul athirst may be,
Gushing from the Rock before me,
Lo! a spring of joy I see;
Gushing from the Rock before me,
Lo! a spring of joy I see.
-Fanny Crosby

Terra Beata

The Latin phrase Terra Beata means, roughly, "blessed earth." It's the name of the the tune to "This is My Father's World." Looking through my photos, I realize I'm blessed to be living in a truly beautiful place, and thought I'd share some of it with you.

Some may say this isn't half as pretty as Troy. Those people have been breathing too much smog. Brunswick is nice, though, but it doesn't have the same variety - with the exception of the field, which is by my church, all the pictures are within walking distance of the house.

Anyway, enjoy!

Funniness

On a completely different note...

Reading an article tonight, saw another article referenced, a review of the second version of a middle-school textbook. The title of the article is, I think, great:

"The Puffins Don't Help; the Book Is Still Trash"

I get the feeling the author didn't like it.

Thoughts - September 7, 2006 - 1 Kings 19:9

"'What are you doing here, Elijah?'"
1 Kings 19:9 ESV


Crazy but true, I've decided that I need to keep going with Elijah's adventure here. Why? Because I find it fascinating. Mainly because there is so much depth here, yet it doesn't make sense at first blush.

If you remember, we left off as Elijah, powered by God, reached Mount Horeb, a.k.a. Mount Sinai. Having come to Sinai, he found a cave, and set up camp. Now, God knew he was coming. In fact, based on verse 7, I don't think it would be stretching things to suggest that God sent him there. So, with that being the case, one is forced to wonder: why are God's first words to the poor guy there "What are you doing here, Elijah?"

If God had called Elijah to Horeb, then the way many Americans would read this question, as an accusation - "Why aren't you where I told you to be?" - doesn't work. Instead, the point of the question seems to be to get Elijah to think, and beyond that to take possession of the experience. In other words, God wasn't satisfied with just taking Elijah and restoring him, as if he were a machine to be wound back up and sent out. He wanted to cooperate with Elijah, to participate with him is his restoration. What this meant, of course was that Elijah had to establish what he wanted.

Unfortunately, it's at this point that I think Elijah made a crucial mistake. Rather than consider God's question, he replied with the statement he'd been planning on making for the last 40 days. Not that what he said wasn't for the most part true (although there is some exaggeration), but he failed to actually answer the question. He was too busy making his complaint to consider why God had brought him so far to ask such a simple question, which was in fact profound. In other words, he got too caught up in himself to stop to consider God's plan.

What happened next is one of those scenes that can be read hundreds of times without ever losing its ability to instill awe. Quite simply, God showed up! It's interesting, though, how He did it, as even in His method He made a point. The things that came before Him, the wind, and earthquake, and fire, recall to the mind to events of chapter 18, with fire falling from heaven, and great drought-ending storms blowing in. Amazing displays of God's power, but not God Himself. Elijah had seen God act in these events, but seeing Him act wasn't (and isn't) the same as meeting Him. What he needed was a whisper.

Why a whisper? Because it demands stillness and intimacy to be heard. It doesn't allow one to move, for the very rustling of one's clothes can be enough to drown it out. And one must draw close to hear clearly what is being said. In other words, to put it theologically, God's whisper was a call to Elijah to commune with Him.

Unfortunately, it is apparent that Elijah's heart kept him from this communion. Because he refused to follow God's plan, he was left unchanged by the experience. When asked again in verse 13, by that whisper, why he was there, he gave the exact same answer. Nothing to him had changed.

Now God still took care of Elijah. He answered his complaint, and provided Elisha as a helper. And Elijah, by God's grace, continued his prophetic work. But I am forced to wonder what Elijah missed in this experience. Had he abandoned his own agenda, and sought only to follow God's will, what power, what grace, what promises might have been his? We will never know.

I believe that God often asks us that same question when we come to Him: "What are you doing here?" May we be willing, when He asks, to stop in our tracks and examine ourselves, and in so doing to place our hearts in a place where He can touch them! It's only then that we can hear and respond to the whisper, within which is God's method to restore and empower our souls.

Thoughts - August 27 - 1 Kings 19:4

"It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers."
1 Kings 19:4 ESV


If you open up your Bible and turn to the vicinity of our key verse, you'll probably recognize some of the events around this passage. Just before this is Elijah's famous battle with the prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel, when Elijah and God set Israel straight on who was God and who wasn't in a rather clear and decisive manner. From there, Elijah declared an end to the long drought in the land, and saw it come to pass. Unfortunately, this was followed by the queen Jezebel, who wasn't particularly nice, sending some rather nasty threats to Elijah. And, in spite of the anticipated spiritual high at this point, Elijah got scared out of his wits and ran. After running for a day out into the wilderness, he stopped and uttered the cry that is our key verse.

There is a very traditional sermon that begins much like this. It's all about seeing things through God's eyes, or something like that. If you've been to church enough, you've heard it, and you know that Elijah gets a pretty bum rap for appearing to give up on God after everything that's happened. Let me submit to you that this interpretation is incorrect.

Why is that reading incorrect? For one simple reason: what Elijah did was absolutely correct! To see why, let's examine what he actually said. He makes two statements here, first, "It is enough", and, second, "I am no better than my fathers", and from that a conclusion and request, "now, O Lord, take away my life".

"It is enough" is kind of brief. For Elijah, it was even more so - in Hebrew, it's one word, rab. (More than you ever wanted to know about it here) But it was a simple and profound statement of his condition. Basically, what he's saying here is "I've had all I can take." It's the same phrase God uses in 2 Samuel 24:16, when He stops the destruction of Israel because He can't stand to see any more. And Elijah was definitely right - over the course of a couple of days, he'd challenged an entire nation, crippled a religion, outrun a chariot, and then topped it off with a day's trip in the desert. And now he was physically, emotionally, and spiritually spent, and he knew it.

He followed this with "I am no better than my fathers." "Fathers" here could refer to his physically ancestry, or it could refer to the prophets that had come before him. And there is truth in both sides. First, in the light of the acts of God he had just witnessed, his own imperfection and sinfulness was readily apparent. All the thing he had done for God, while good, hadn't made him significantly better than his countrymen - he too had sinned, so that it's easy to understand him saying, like Paul later would, "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" (Romans 7:24) Second, at least from his view, he had accomplished his divine mission as well as the prophets of old had. Which, considering how deep into apostasy Israel was, wasn't particularly well. In spite of all he had done for God, all he still saw was rebellion (see v. 10). So, basically, he acknowledged his utter incompetence for the task he had been appointed to.

With these in mind, it's little wonder that his request to God was to let him die - he had given his all, and was found wanting still. He had utterly failed in his God-given task, and had nothing left with which to try again. Truly a depressing state to be in. But Elijah's wisdom was two-fold: he was completely, simply, and utterly honest about his condition, and in his honesty submitted himself to the will and care of the one Person who could address his needs.

What's truly interesting, beyond that, is what happened afterward. God didn't come and give Elijah a pep talk. Nor did He send a messenger come to cheer him with good tidings from Israel. In the face of absolute honesty, the Lord was quiet, for in fact He had nothing to add or correct. What He did do, however, was begin to provide Elijah with what he needed to be restored. God wasn't going to meet with His prophet in the middle of the wilderness. Instead, He gave Elijah what he needed to come to Him. And, thus strengthened by God's care, Elijah went, not north back to Israel, but south, "to Horeb, the mount of God." (v. 8)

Thoughts - August 24 - Isaiah 43:19

"Behold, I am doing a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?"
(Isaiah 43:19)


You may not know this, but I enjoy taking passages like this, that are often seen out of context, and putting them back into it. It's not that the interpretation is necessarily wrong, but it is incomplete.

In this whole portion of the book of Isaiah, God is giving Israel this amazing two-sided message. First, they're a bunch of rebellious evildoers who should know better. See, for example, 42:18-20, "Hear, you deaf, and look, you blind, that you may see! Who is blind but my servant, or deaf as my messenger whom I send? Who is blind as my dedicated one, or blind as the servant of the Lord?" Basically, the chosen people, rather than being heralds of God's truth, were not just as bad as the nations around them, but worse, since they should have known better.

At the same time, though, out of His unspeakable love, God had chosen to forgive and redeem them. In 43:25, one can almost feel His anguish over them and their refusal to acknowledge Him: "I, I am He, who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins." Verse 12: "I declared and saved and proclaimed, when there was no strange god among you" to confuse you as to Who it was!

So, as our key verse says, God had decided on a new approach. Even though Judah had ignored His many, many appeals to them, He refused to give up. Being a smart guy, He knew that the same old, same old wouldn't work. So, out of His love, he went back to the drawing board. And came up with Babylon.

Now, if you're going to be corrected by the Creator, you generally want Him to speak to you and tell you. If that doesn't work, or if you're part of a large group on the same wrong path, a prophet might be nice. What you probably don't want is for a foreign nation to come in, destroy your land, and carry you off into exile!

Israel's history shows that this isn't what God wanted either. He tried for centuries to reach them in the nice way, but it just didn't work. So, did He finally tire of them and abandon them? No! He gave them what they needed, and, further, promised His help while they went through it and recovered from it (43:1-7).

Now, did it work? Somewhat. Judaism since then has been much closer to God in the millennia since then than it was before. Did it work perfectly? No - when God Himself, in Christ, came to fully claim His own, they rejected Him. But even that wasn't the last straw for them, either. Though they were destroyed again in A.D. 70, the last century has witnessed yet another restoration of Israel, and with it a significant number of the Jews finding Christ.

I would submit to you that there is a definite parallel to this in our lives. God will try to speak to you and correct you as gently as possible, because He loves you. If you ignore Him in that, though, He won't abandon you; because He loves you, He may turn up the heat. But, if He does, He'll get you through it, too, and you will come out on the other end.

So, if you're going through a time of trial, turn to Him, and see if He's trying to get through to you. If you're not, but you've been trying to ignore Him, rethink that plan before He has to try a little harder. And, in whatever happens, trust Him - He really does love you!


"When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie,
My grace all-sufficient shall be thy supply;
The flame shall not hurt thee; I only design
Thy dross to consume, and thy gold to refine."
- Hymn, "How Firm a Foundation"

Thoughts - August 22 - Revelation 21:6

I'm going to call these "Thoughts", at least for now. I'm not sure I'm quite up to writing "Devotions" yet. And, hey, if I am, the little extra dose of humility might not be a bad thing either...


"And He said to me, 'It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment." (Rev. 21:6)


I was surprised reading over some of what I've written over the past few months how much I've focused on change. The more I consider it, the more I find that change is very interesting, because it's a continuing process: each end always holds a new beginning, and each new beginning bears the seeds of an end. The cycle self-perpetuates, and the only way to attempt to avoid it is to stretch out the period of time between beginnings and ends. Some try to do this by never beginning anything at all, and, while I suppose this may work, it seems like a miserable way to live. Others grasp the now for all it's worth, trying desperately to keep pushing the end off. This is, unfortunately, a losing battle. So what are we to do?

It's in that spirit that I've considered this rather well-known passage from Revelation. It's an awe-inspiring statement, signaling the end of Earth and Heaven as we know them, and the inauguration of our eternity with Christ. But I want to pull out a couple of details.

First, He is. It doesn't read 'I was the Alpha and will be the Omega.' It says "I am"! It echoes Christ's "Before Abraham was, I am." (John 8:58) To Him, the beginning and the end are both in the present - "I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done," (Isaiah 46:9-10)

Second, He's not an end, or a beginning - He's THE beginning and end. There's no beginning before Him, and no ending after Him. And, since to Him both exist at once, all the individual beginnings and ends converge towards those two poles, that are both Him.

Now, any RPI-type person who reads this will realize the implication quickly. By the Squeeze Theorem, if the beginnings and the ends each converge to God, then those things between them, which would include all events, must also converge to Him. In other words, "From Him and through Him and to Him are all things," (Rom. 11:36), including the events of our lives. Whether in the hard turning points of change or in the smoother times in between, we are always near to God.

If this is, then the case, then in whatever happens, we have a promise to live on. For the One who declares His omnipresence, in His very next statement, invites us to drink in the fullness of life with Him: "To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment." The promise is not only real - it's the gateway to all that God has in store for us!

Coming Soon!

Just to forewarn/excite you, I'm toying with the idea of posting a semi-regular devotional on here. Mainly to help me work out odd thoughts that strike me in my scripture reading, but perhaps also to edify others. If you're interested, stay tuned. I may even start tonight, depending on what happens.

Have fun!

Three Months Later...

Wow. I haven't posted in over three months. You'd think I was busy or something...

I never would have imagined back in May what was going to happen. And, in fact, it's just as well. Those whom I was honest with back in April and May knew that there was one place I did not want to end up at for the summer. And, much like ol' Jonah in the Old Testament, that one place was exactly where God sent me. Fortunately, unlike Jonah, it wasn't a bad place; it just wasn't where I wanted to be. For, you see, God made my plans fall apart, and in the end I found myself at home.

There were two reasons I wanted to avoid Florida. The first was the risk to the independence I had gained and learned to treasure during my time at RPI. Not independence to party wildly or do other various and sundry stupidity - that's not me. Rather, it was the freedom to determine my own schedule, to go where and when I wanted, to enjoy people, and to avoid people when I'd had enough. None of which really happens at home. Not that there's anything wrong or pushy with my family, but six people in one house makes the trampling of one's freedom a given. Plus, and I'll be completely honest, there was more than a little pride involved, too, that I was able to "make it" without my folks.

Beyond that, as previously stated, there were people too. RPI friends and church friends, all of whom I also love dearly. While I'd never attempt to denigrate familial love, there's something about love chosen that makes it much more compelling in everyday life. Maybe it's because the love of friends hasn't had nearly as long to solidify, so that it seems so much easier to lose. I don't know. What I do know, however, is that the only thing that still makes me unhappy about the situation is missing them as much as I do.

God has shown me, though, that He's had a plan. My Grandpa passed away last month, after fighting a losing battle in the hospital for a couple weeks. Had I been in Massachusetts, the whole thing would've been torture: even had I been able to get back and forth easily, I wouldn't have had the flexibility to take far more time off than a temp should to support my family. At home, working with my old boss, who's extremely good to me, it wasn't an issue. At all.

Beyond that, He's given me the chance to get some interesting things done at church. Things like actually participating in the eMinistries committee, learning more of the ins and outs of website work, continuing to try to get the website moving (almost there!), getting to know some people better, and exploring some new opportunities. Why I'm doing all of this here, and not helping to save a dieing church in Troy, I don't know.

He's also been working on the aforementioned pride, although I've still got some learning to do, based on the last sentence of the previous paragraph!

And, last but not least, He's been good to me with my friends. I haven't managed to keep up with all of them, but I've done a lot better than my usual number, which is ~0. AIM, GoogleTalk, and Skype are wonderful things. Blessings, in fact.

Oh, and believe it or not, I've used the telephone once or twice, and even snailmail. Rather low-tech, I admit, and I imagine there'll be some penance due for it when I return to RPI. Not sure what that would be, though. Maybe 39 lashes with a wet Cat5 cable?

Anyway, now comes the really fun part. Because, you see, I needed a co-op for the Fall. I tried to get back to Troy, and have ended up yet again - you guessed it - at home. I'm confident that God has a plan. And, knowing Him, it'll be amazing. All told, one never loses by following Christ's path.

"For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." (Matthew 16:25 ESV) If life itself, then how much more the details of it!

Have fun!

Beginnings and Ends, Continued

The last post was a bit fragmented - I had a lot to say and a lot swirling around inside my head to sort out. It's still not quite settled, but I realized that I had a point to make that I never got to. But, rather than try to reorganize the previous post, I'm going to try again here.

There's an "old Englih proverb" (which probably has a known source that's unknown to me) that says simply this: "All good things must come to an end." I'm realizing that's the case, even for really good things like this past semester. These things come to their end no matter how much we love them and no matter how much we try to hold onto them.

There's a reason, a point, to the good things ending, though: change. Change is a vital part of being human; in fact, we do it continually. And, because we change inside, we need changes outside to reflect, foster, and modify those internal changes. God made us beings in a constant state of transformation, and one of His tools for controlling it is the circumstances of our lives. Now, how He does that varies from person to person, but it's a certainty that He will, at least for those willing to allow Him to do so.

So, my point is that apparently some new phase of His work on me needs to commence. But doing that requires that the current phase be ended, despite my desperate wish to the contrary. And perhaps I need to be out of the way for a time to allow change in someone else's life. Or there may be something else afoot on the Boss's part. But, whatever it is (and it could be more than one - those aren't XOR's), it requires that I follow His leading to get there. Not that it's either easy or what I want to do. But, last I checked, those weren't in the brochure.

Someone once asked me what "peace" meant. I puzzled for a few minutes, and couldn't think of a good explanation, so I finally said something that, although it smelled of "complacency", almost fit. It was only after a lot of thought that I realized what the difference is between the two: complacency is being comfortable with where you are; peace is being comfortable with the One moving you along. Change is happening in my life. But I know the One who's guiding this whole thing, and I'm going to trust Him with it. Or at least I'm going to try to.

"Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee." Isaiah 26:3 (KJV)


In simple trust like theirs who heard,
Beside the Syrian sea,
The gracious calling of our Lord,
Let us, like them, without a word,
Rise up and follow Thee.

Drop Thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of Thy peace.

Breathe through the heats of our desire
Thy coolness and Thy balm;
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still, small voice of calm.

(Verses from the hymn "Dear Lord and Father of Mankind")

Ends, Beginnings, and the Spots In Between

So, the semester is over at RPI. Tonight I finish packing, and tomorrow I head home. The switch to IT has worked out really well, and I've had quite the time. I filed the paperwork today to officially switch departments, so hopefully that'll be approved by the Powers That Be next week. Beyond that, I'm happy to say that everything's done.

At the same time, I'm sad to see the semester end. I've grown a lot in the past few months, and learned more about IT, myself, and God than I ever thought possible. I've gained some amazing friends, and done some really cool (and some really inane) stuff. It's sad to watch us all go our separate ways - phone calls and AIM aren't a good substitute for actually being with people.

On a different note (but on the same minor chord), I have a summer and fall co-op, working for Avidyne Corporation, in Lincoln, MA. They have a couple of projects they need to have done, in addition to the day-to-day IT stuff. It should be interesting - it's my first actual IT job (or at least the first one that's officially IT and that I get paid for). At the same time, I'm a little disappointed, because there was a job in Troy that I really wanted to get but didn't. There's a number of things I'd like to be involved in here, including RPI things in the Fall, but, alas, it appears God has other plans. I'm sure they'll be good ones, but until I find out what they are, my outlook is a tad bittersweet.

One thing I can vouch for is that this whole God-directed life thing is quite the adventure. If it weren't for the fact that I know that He knows what He's doing, I'd probably be a lot more unhappy right now. But, as I once said to someone once who commented on the "convenience" of having God to run the universe for you, it's almost like a contract - He's the Boss, so I do what He tells me to do, and then it's His job to make sure the details work out. Unfortunately, He doesn't generally feel it necessary to give me all the details beforehand.

So, stay tuned for the adventures of Nate in Massachusetts. And news on the various projects I have planned for my evenings. This should be a most interesting next few months.

God is good!

Free e-Books

As promised (in person - we can apparently still communicate that way at RPI), here's a link to the University of Virginia's library of free e-books:

http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/ebooks/

By the way, The Last of the Mohicans was written by James Fenimore Cooper.

Still Truckin'

Hey, it's a Wednesday, and I'm still alive. Spring Break starts on Friday, and I can't wait to get home. It's been two months since I've been out of the Troy area - I'm ready for a break, even if it will include a fair amount of homework. At the midpoint of the semester, though, things are going pretty well, especially compared to last semester. So far, I'm busy enough without being overwhelmed, and I'm having a lot of fun. God's really being good to me.

Also, I found a link to an interesting article tonight. Enjoy.

It's Like a Breath of Fresh Air

There was a link to this site in a Townhall.com article today. The church put billboards up all over the area, and all they showed was the URL and four bare feet sticking out from between the covers (picture). I like the idea - it's bold, it's creative, and it probably made at least a few parishioners squirm in their seats.

Admittedly, the church may have been a little too provocative, but it beats the alternative most churches go with - keeping mum. Jesus wasn't afraid to openly take on the issues of His day, but we in the modern church seem to have gotten away from that idea, because it makes us "uncomfortable". Hopefully, things like this will start to change that - if we don't tell people the Good News about the whole of their life, who will?

Fun At RPI

Life at RPI is always an adventure, because the place seems to be a perpetual SNAFU. Today we had a rather nasty set of storms pass through, and one of the transformers got hit by lightening, taking out power to the majority of the residential campus. I was in my room at the time, and got to experience the whole thing first-hand. This is the second time this academic year we've had a transformer blow - the first being when someone tried to fix their toilet and instead flooded the building.

Personally, I love blackouts, so it wasn't too big a problem to me. It has elicited some interesting anecdotes, though. For example, the maintenance guy was telling me that, when it happened, one of the students came out to complain to him that his lights had gone out. The guy politely asked him to notice that the hallway he was standing in was rather dark, too. I'm not sure, but I think the complainer was probably an engineer.

Also, in the "I wish I was a fly on the wall" category, as I was walking to the Student Union (where I'm writing this), I passed a campus tour on its way up to show off the dorms. Apparently, no one told the tour guide the lights were dead. I almost wish I'd followed and watched.

The power will probably be on later, when I get back there. How disappointing - RPI's a lot more fun when things go wrong.

It's Been a While

I haven't written anything on here in quite a while. Things have been pretty busy, and I've fallen into the Jared Crocker mode of blogging. However, he's posted again, so I guess I should, too. Except that, as usual, I'll probably write more than him. I tend to do that.

First off, I've semi-officially switched academic fields. I'm out of Aeronautical Engineering, and into Information Technology. I needed to try Aero and see that it wasn't where I should be, but now that that torture's done it's good to be back where I should be. It's also a little bit scary, because, until recently, I'd viewed the CS stuff as kind of a stopover before I got into the engineering stuff. It's looking a lot more like a career now.

The interesting thing is that, officially, I'm still listed as an Aero. It worked out (and I credit God entirely for it, as it's rather unusual) that Aero needed me to fulfill its TA commitments, so they let me stay as an Aero major, get the TA job and pay from them, yet start the IT coursework. Which is good, because I would have been in rather dire financial straits had the TA-ship been cancelled. The official switch probably won't happen until after the end of the semester. The only problem with it, so far, has been some funny looks from IT class profs when they see that major listed on their classlists. IT is really an interesting program to be in, though. It's more of an interdisciplinary field than a subject in its own right - for example, this semester I'm taking three CompSci classes and a Decision Sciences class. Variety is a good thing.

Outside of academics, my life has been going pretty well. I'm busy as a bee, but it's with a lot of fun stuff. First off, obviously, is homework. I like IT homework a lot more than engineering homework - especially since it doesn't involve Differential Equations. The Alliance Church up here is still letting me play the piano, and I've also been playing with some electronic stuff there - messing with the sound equipment they have but don't use (it used to be a much larger congregation) and pushing for a website. I'm also keeping up my involvement in the campus's Intervarsity chapter, which is a nice way to have a mini-Nyack experience.

On a professional note, my first website went live last month, which was kind of exciting. I'd done the design over the summer, but it had been on hold until I got back for the Christmas break. It went up in January, and so far seems to be going over well. If you want to see it, it's at www.wvefc.org .

Looking forward, my big project is finding a co-op or job for the summer and fall. So far the search is going pretty well - I have a company that was recruiting on campus and seemed very interested in me (an avionics company called Avidyne - www.avidyne.com), and there's a faculty position at RPI opening up that I would have a pretty good chance at getting. God will work the right job out for me, I'm sure, but, until it's all set, I'd appreciate your prayers about it. Also, if you hear of anything that I might be interested in, I'd appreciate it if you'd let me know.

That's it for now. I haven't heard from anybody from Nyack in a while - are you guys still alive?

Later.

-Nathan

Merry Christmas!

I haven't managed to post anything big since the semester ended, and that's not going to change tonight, but let me take a moment to wish you a Merry Christmas, and a happy, blessed New Year.

If you get a minute, there's a nice article over on Townhall.com that's worth taking the time to read.

Great Quotes

Studying, I came across this quote from a professor. It speaks for itself:

Canonical interval: "The God-given interval on which the function works."

The Last Week

I'm basicaly into the last week of the semester now. If I survive the next week, I'll be OK. Actually, I guess it's not so much a question of surviving as it is getting everything done - I have a small mountain of work and not much motivation. My plan is to do what I can and be happy with that. I may not do much blogging, though.

In other news, I discovered today that the NCCS webpage has finally been changed. I hate to say it, but the new look is an improvement.

Oh, and it's snowing. RPI's classes are still on, though. Stink.