HARMLESS THOUGHTS

Here is a really interesting article from the Denver Post. It is by a guy named David Harsanyi, who starts his article titled The Abortion Debate changing, by stating, As an atheist and a secular kinda guy, I practice moral relativism regularly. Still, I've always struggled mightily with the ethics and politics of abortion. Apparently, I'm not alone." I mention this article because he brings about a point, from a different perspective, of something that has bothered me for a long time. I have often noticed that there are many people who have a liberal leaning who use the "if there is a possibility..." argument in so many arenas, yet they are unwilling to apply the same logic to the abortion debate. Harsanyi states it much better than I do by saying this, After a life of being pro-choice, I began to seriously ponder the question. I oppose the death penalty because there is a slim chance that an innocent person might be executed and I don't believe the state...

I just published a post on "Good Stuff" and as soon as I did, I ran across a blog that I can't help but direct you toward. It is called Tolle Lege , which the about section of that blog says that is a Latin phrase which means "take up and read." It is a blog that is filled with great quotes, and if you have ever been a student of mine, you know that I love great quotes. I usually have them posted all over my room. The author of that blog also states his purpose on his blog Here is a bit of it: The purpose of this blog is simple. When I come across a quote in something I’m reading that glorifies God and raises my affections for Jesus Christ I want to share it with others. So I type it up, cite the reference, and post it on the blog. I borrowed the Latin phrase “Tolle Lege” (”take up and read”) from the account of Augustine’s conversion to Christ in his spiritual autobiography Confessions. He then goes on to state an extensive portion of St. Augustine's Co...

(If you don't get anything else from this post, or if you don't even want to read past the first line... I would love it if you could just get one idea. Choose good things to fill your mind. Listen to things that point you toward God. In fact, I just heard John Piper quote Jonathan Edwards in a sermon about the Pastor as a Scholar. He said, “I should think myself in the way of my duty, to raise the affections of my hearers as high as I possibly can, provided they are affected with nothing but truth, and with affections that are not disagreeable to the nature of what they are affected with.” –Jonathan Edwards, A Treatise Concerning the Religious Affections I point this quote out because of this thought of "affections". I know that there is quite a bit more in that quote that we could unpack, and I know that there is quite a bit more that Piper was wanting to point out from that quote, but I mention it to push you in the direction of an affection toward the things...

Here is my new background: Once again it is coming from the Points of Light blog by James Jordan . That is really an awesome blog. He is a great photographer! Here is a link to the post with this picture .

The maintenance man at our school, whom I have mentioned before , must be some sort of hidden scholar or maybe he is a wise man that is just here as a disguise because he has found the true meaning to life. Anyway... He saw this quote hanging up in my room... The chief mark of counterfeit holiness is its lack of humility. Andrew Murray In response, he gave me this poem: Dilemma by David Budbill I want to be       famous so I can be       humble about being       famous. What good is my       humility when I am       stuck in this       obscurity? Where does this guy come from?!?

Just so you know. I recently updated my "27" site. I added some links and changed the look a little. Here it is: http://27.harmlessonline.net I also changed the address of my "27" occurrences blog. It is now http://27blog.harmlessonline.net I have surpassed 300 occurrences. There have been way more than that, but I have blogged over 300. And if you are really interested, I added a brand new "27" submission page on the 27 site. I called it The Others (a 27 submission page) . And you can check out the submissions by clicking here: The Others (the results are in) . The results page is searchable and sortable. Please come by and submit some links soon. If you act quickly, you can be one of the first.

Ok. Today's Photo Friday topic is "shiny" and I couldn't think of anything "shiny" so I decided to take a little liberty. So... Shiny? "Stay golden, pony boy!"

This is it! This is what we have all been waiting for! They have finally found it! The whole world is talking about it, even Google is featuring it on their main page today. It is proof beyond a shadow of a doubt. It has been settled, it is conclusive, it is... "Ida," the small "missing link" That's right, ladies and gentlemen, your ancestor is a small squished monkey. From the National Geographic website : "This is the first link to all humans," Hurum, of the Natural History Museum in Oslo, Norway, said in a statement. Ida represents "the closest thing we can get to a direct ancestor." Here is a picture of the little guy from that same National Geographic site: I don't know. I don't really see the family resemblance.

Ok. I finished the talk from Rachel Barkey . It was really good. I don't know what else to add. I just started over her blog and read through her most recent post. It is titled Dying is Hard . Here is a little excerpt from this post: Dying is hard. I’m not sure what I thought it would be like but I think I hoped it would be easier than this. But, admittedly, I’m not that tough. First of all, I’ve never done it before and there’s no one around who’s done it before to ask how to do it well. You have to prioritize and plan your days, weeks, months, without knowing how much time you actually have. You have to find the balance between complaining so that you can get relief and not complaining so that you don’t annoy all the nice people who are trying to help you. All this, I am learning, I am not that good at. Keep reading her post... That post was written April 20, 2009. It has been almost a month since then, and over two months since the video was shot. I just have to wonder ho...

I am passing this along from the Desiring God blog in a post titled She's Dying . So, I am telling you to Go watch this . You don't even need to read the rest of this blog post. Are you still here? Ok. Here is a tidbit from that website, describing this video: On March 4, 2009, Rachel had an opportunity to share about her hope in the midst of terminal cancer. What began as a small talk to her church women’s group became an event attended by over 600 women and was an experience that left many with a desire to discover more about Rachel’s journey and faith. Ok. Maybe you don't have time to watch a video. Do you have time to download the audio? Here is a link to the audio . You can download it to your iPod... or whatever you use. You won't regret listening to/watching this.

I am tweeting my way through my night tonight. It's kinda fun. Follow me... twitter.com/mattharmless Of course, as I tweet, everything gets sent on to my facebook . ... I am such a loser.

I just read a great blog post from Tim Challies . I was following his blog a couple of years ago, then I kinda forgot about it when I switched from Bloglines to Google Reader . Just recently I refound his blog and started reading it again. I could bore you with my own personal thoughts about my blog reading habits and discoveries, but my goal right now is to point you to a post that Tim Challies wrote. I won't go into any detail, but I will share a quote from that post: "Once the law balked at recognizing obscenity, the populace began to doubt the very basis for shame. With no legal, institutional support for consensus, little wonder the bottom fell out from under morality." As obscenity became a thing of the past, so too did it’s necessary consequence: shame. Shame is increasingly missing from our culture. We do things, watch things, enjoy things, participate in things that at any other time and in any other place would be considered shameful. Read the rest of the ar...

This is a really cool image from the NASA image of the day gallery . The site gives it this description: In this tightly cropped image, the NASA space shuttle Atlantis is seen in silhouette during solar transit, Tuesday, May 12, 2009, from Florida. This image was made before Atlantis and the crew of STS-125 had grappled the Hubble Space Telescope. The phtographer made this image using a solar-filtered Takahashi 5-inch refracting telescope and a Canon 5D Mark II digital camera. I just looked at it and I thought... IT is really big, and we are really small. Because you do realize, don't you, that that space shuttle is millions of miles away from the sun. Usually when really big things are really far behind you, you can blot them out. Like in this picture where I can hold an entire tree between my fingers. That is how things work. So, if that huge space shuttle can't blot out something that is millions of miles away... That thing must be HUGE. Then I thought. Man. God is real...

The school's maintenance man (Perry) shared this poem with me today. I had been discussing my faith challenges... with the house and the job and the... and the... Sometimes I get all geared up to face the challenges, and frankly, I am ready. I have, for the most part, moved on to a place that is OK with the challenges. I don't get so discouraged with the things that go wrong, so much so that I just start with assuming that they will go wrong. "I am ready for the suffering Lord. Oh, Yes, I am ready! I don't want it, but I am ready for it! I know that I will be OK if the house doesn't sell right away, and if I don't get the job I am dreaming of, and if... and if..." ...and maybe that is why my friend shared this poem with me. Sometimes by Sheenagh Pugh Sometimes things don’t go, after all. from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail, sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well. A people sometimes wil...

Topic: Self portrait ...for photo friday

Just saw this video over at the 22 Words blog . Great. If you are reading this through a reader, please consider playing this video.

I have a blog titled Let Me Not Wander . I know that most of you who check this blog already know that, but for those of you who don't know about this other blog, I would like to share a little bit about it with you. I started that blog on April 7, 2005. My first post was on Psalm 119:10 , which is the verse that was the inspiration for the title. In that first post I laid out what I was going to attempt to do with that blog. Well... 4 years later and I have to say that I haven't actually accomplished the goal that I was setting out for, but that blog has undeniably become a great tool in my life. There are many times that I will sit down with my Bible and read short and long portions of scripture, but this blog has forced me to dig deep into some of the simplest of verses and allow the Spirit to teach me through them. I am now up to (I think) 490 posts. There are actually a few more than that, but there are 490 posts of a scripture with with some commentary. I make me...

I don't know what you think, but here is an interesting post from the Desiring God blog. It is titled 6 Reasons Pastors Should Blog . Here are the six reasons: ...to write ...to teach ...to interact ...to develop an eye for what is meaningful ...to be known To get the explanation of each of these six reasons, you will have to go to the original post . I mention them here mostly because I just thought it was interesting and lately I have really enjoyed some interesting posts from other people's blogs that I have felt the need to share on this blog. The other reason that I mention this is because it got me to thinking about teachers blogging. I especially liked what he says under reason #4. The author says of blogging, "It nurtures a habit of looking for insight and wisdom and value in every situation, no matter how mundane." He goes on to say that this habit can help you to become more aware of what God is doing in your life. I agree, even if you don't blog, ...

I found this video over at the Official Google Blog . I couldn't believe it! Even if you don't watch the whole thing, it is worth watching just a portion of it to get an idea of the scope of the internet. Obviously, Google is making some money.

Before I started drinking diet soda, I was an avid drinker of (regular-full strength) Mountain Dew. That could get expensive though, so I started drinking the Sam's Choice Mountain Lighting. When I finally switched to diet, I kept hoping that they would come out with a diet version of the Mountain Lightning. 10 yrs. later it is finally here. Now, maybe it has been around for longer than this, but this is the first time that I have seen it. And I am pretty sure that I check every time I go to Wal-Mart. But, before I finish this post, I would like to share a little insight into the purchasing of "generic" beverages. My first real encounter with the ins and outs of the world of generic came when I used to work at a cheese packaging plant in Crawfordsville, IN. It was there that I watched them take one huge block of cheese and as they began to slice it down and I watched it get packaged, I noticed that from the same block of cheese we would change the roll of plastic pa...

Found this over at Jay Adams blog and thought that I would share it with you. I once heard J.I. Packer say, “The Holy Spirit works through habits of holiness.” I don’t remember the context, but I was so impressed with the wording that I wrote it on the opening page of Romans in my New Testament, which was all I had to write on at the time. How right he was! And the question is whether or not your habits—and don’t kid anyone, you live a large share of your life by habit—are holy or not. What a great self-examining question that is! You see the problem with habits is that they are often the CAUSE of our difficulties with God and others. Habits are C omfortable-like old shoes; they fit us well. A utomatic-you don’t have to tell yourself, “do It,” you just do it. U nconscious-you begin to do something before you realize it. S killful-The plausible lie is out of your mouth before you know it. E mbedded-difficult to break. Indeed, so difficult that by God’s grace they must be replaced with ...

"Would you like to be rid of this spiritual depression? The first thing you have to do is to say farewell now once and forever to your past. . . . Never look back at your sins again. Say, 'It is finished, it is covered by the Blood of Christ.' That is your first step. Take that and finish with yourself and all this talk about goodness, and look to the Lord Jesus Christ. It is only then that true happiness and joy are possible for you. What you need is not to make resolutions and to live a better life, to start fasting and sweating and praying. No! You just begin to say, 'I rest my faith on Him alone, who died for my transgressions to atone.'" D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression, page 35. [HT: Challies from Ray Ortlund ]

We've arrived

We are going to visit North Point Community Church in Alpharetta, GA today. That is Andy Stanley's church. I really love my church ... But I am really excited about this. I will let you know how it went when I return. Later!

Here is an interesting blog post about Women Worship Leaders . I (personally) hadn't put much thought into the topic. I had some assumed beliefs, but my overall opinion was a little cloudy. This really cleared some things up in my mind. Does anyone else have any thoughts about Women Worship Leaders? Please comment and let me know what you think/believe. [HT: Straight Up ]

Black light

Arriving at the zoo!

On the way to the zoo.

Here is a great John Piper quote. If there is a sound downstairs during the night and it might be a burglar, you don’t say to her, "This is an egalitarian marriage, so it's your turn to go check it out. I went last time." And I mean that–even if your wife has a black belt in karate. After you’ve tried to deter him, she may finish off the burglar with one good kick to the solar plexus. But you’d better be unconscious on the floor, or you’re no man. - John Piper, This Momentary Marriage [HT: I found this over at the blog Challies dot com . And Challies was referring it from a blog called Collegiately Collected Quotes .]

Google Latitude just released a couple of new tools: Google Public Location Badge is the first one. With this tool you can add a badge to your blog or website that will let your visitors see where you are. You can set the level on the nearest location, or you can set the location to city level. It basically tells people where you are when you are signed in to your Google account. Read more here . The other one is the Google Talk Location Status (beta) . This one works with Google Talk (and Google Talk in Gmail). It will change your status to your current location. Read more here . Both of these new options need to be enabled in order to use them. The links that I have included in this blog will take you to the correct spots to enable. Of course, you will also need a Google Account.

Here is a good post from the Guru's Handbook about leaving. The title of the post is "A Change of Season". Here is one quote from that post, just to wet your appetite. As teachers, we have a greater responsibility to our students than they to us, especially with respect to the greater scope of the teaching relationship. We can - and where we are able we should - speak of these transitions to allow the student to reflect and change under the umbrella of our support and insight. Click on over to the Guru's Handbook and read the full post .

The 9Marks blog wants to know if you can Twitter the gospel. It is an interesting challenge simply because Twitter only gives you 140 characters per "Tweet" (post). The idea behind the challenge is to see if you can accurately convey the gospel in those 140 characters. My mind immediately jumped to a 140 character statement of, what I believe, is the Gospel in a nutshell, that is actually in the Bible! Can anyone think of it before I mention it? If you would like to participate in this challenge, you can read more here at the 9Marks blog . To read some other thoughts about this little challenge, check out Josh Harris' blog, he posted about it as well . To see my "tweet" of the gospel, just click here .

I finally watched the movie, The Passion . I had been putting it off for a long time because I didn't know how I felt about it or how I could feel about it after I watched it. My wife and I had mentioned several times that we would like to view this movie, but it just isn't a Friday night with popcorn kind of movie. So, it kept getting bumped back and bumped back until two days ago when we finally watched it. There are several different topics that I could blog about when approaching this movie, but instead of focusing on the different issues of the movie, I have decided to share with you the thoughts that persisted throughout the course of the movie. I want to do this because I can honestly say that I was deeply moved in the watching of this film. I really don't want to discuss Mel Gibson and his life or the ideas that he was trying to support through the movie. We'll save that for another day. The first thought that kept coming back to me throughout the movie is...

I know that these three look the same, but there are some slight differences. Any thoughts? #1 #2 #3 *update* #4 The plug looks like it is coming out a little bit more...

Here is the difference between a disease and a mental disorder. Great straight-forward explanation. The thing that intrigued me the most about this particular clip is that it (as far as I can tell) did not come from a Christian site. [HT: A former student ]

Ok. I know that 99.9% of you could care less about a logo for my website, but if I was blogging for responses, I would have given up long ago! Anyway, here is the newest rendition of my logo. There are 27 squares, and there is an H on the front and an O on the right side. (... for Harmless and Online...) This is my favorite one so far. I also like the colors. The bright green is for the color of my first car. If I had a picture of it, I would post it for you. It was a 1974 VW Beetle. And it was that color of Green. I thought that I had one on my blog somewhere, but I can't find it. Anyway, here is the new(est) logo: OR

Lately I have been blogging through Genesis 1 on my Let Me Not Wander blog. Just before that I finished blogging through I Peter 2:1-12 . If you haven't checked that blog out... Oh, c'mon! Check it out! I'll be honest, I am blogging about that blog right now because I am trying to acquire more readers! I can admit that. I know I started that blog for myself, to help me to really dig deep in each and every verse that I read, but it is a little more fun and a lot more encouraging when you have readers participating. Maybe you don't like my commentaries on those verses, fine... come by and add your own commentary in the comment section. I am inviting that! I want to learn and understand these scriptures, and your input could be helpful. And maybe, just maybe, my input might be helpful to you. http://letmenotwander.blogspot.com

Here are two more logos that I am contemplating. This first one donated from another teacher, Mr. Bibo. This one was inspired by the number 27. (There are 27 squares in the logo.) or

Blogging the church picnic ...

Blogging the church picnic ... Time for games

Here is the stage. The band is playing during lunch time. Here is the lunch line! Another shot at the lunch line! It only took about 35 minutes for the entire church to make it through the line. They really kept us moving. The catering was done by Streetside Catering .

Blogging the church picnic ... Peter preaching.

Sorry for the bad video quality...

Blogging the church picnic ... Lots of people! This shot doesn't really do it justice. The area was filled!

Blogging the church picnic... Weather.com is calling for rain... let's hope that doesn't happen.

Every Sunday morning I meet my friend Lee at Liquid Highway . Originally we were supposed to work through a book together, but that never panned out. We have a good time anyway, encouraging each other and drinking some good coffee. Liquid Highway is one place that I will miss once I move.

Killin' ants

Here is the rest of the Chapel. (Once again... So sorry for the poor quality video. My phone seems to be doing worse than normal!)

Here is the Choral group singing Mighty to Save: (Sorry about the poor quality video... all I had was my phone.)

Here is my first Photo Friday submission: The topic is " casual " and my submission is "Casual Shoes". By the way, I bought these shoes sometime around 1995.