Today was Canadian Thanksgiving. Besides getting together with my extended family, I was working hard painting our duplex and getting it ready for renters (As I have posted, we have just moved into a new house. We are keeping our old duplex as a rental property).

During my solitude (just me and my paint) I was reflecting on thanksgiving and what I am thankful to God for — and I have much to be thankful for. I have a beautiful supportive wife who has stuck with me for 17 years (despite my own faults which outnumber hers by far!). I also have three wonderful children who I am very, very proud of. I have a great extended family, a wonderful house, a fulfilling teaching position, and much much more.

I couldn’t help feeling a bit guilty thinking about how very much I have considering how many people around the world are in such need (especially thinking of Pakistan, and the places affected by Katrina and the Tsunami). I find that the key things to remember is that (1) there is nothing I have done to deserve my blessings; and (2) to those who have been given much, much will be required.

I only hope that I may be faithful with all I have been blessed with.

Mental Note: In the future, don’t move into a new house during the beginning part of a semester.

OK, so we are emerging from the boxes and some rooms are actually partially set up, including my home office. Despite the rain the move went very well. I had a number of very good friends show up Saturday morning at 9 am to help move. I was able to upsize my the rental truck, so I had a 26 foot truck and friends brought three other pick-ups. We were pretty much finished the move at around 1:30 pm when we sat down to a feast prepared by my mother-in-law (it was a good thing we had pretty much finished since no felt like carrying much after lunch!).

Well, I need to do some work for my courses. I will have to put some more pictures of the hosue and my new office soon.

My blog has been quiet lately, due in part to the beginning of semester crunch but more recently due to the fact that we take possession of our new house tomorrow.

Suffice it to say that our current house is in a bit of disarray with boxes and piles everywhere! Everyone is pretty excited about the new home. I’m happy that I will actually have some pretty neat space for my home office and library and my kids are estactic that they will have their own rooms. All of us are happy that we will have a bit more space and a bigger backyard (complete with fire pit!). Here is a picture of our new house:

There will be a brief interruption in internet service, so I’m not sure how much blogging I will be doing the next few days. I have a couple posts in draft form that I may finish tonight, but I can’t promise anything!

OK, time to get back to packing…

I came across a reference to the “Jesus Diet” while reading the comments from Ed Cook’s blog entry on “Fat Yanks” and I couldn’t believe it!

The “Jesus diet” consists of (1) no pork; (2) a lot of fish and kosher foods generally; (3) “four legged meat” only occasionally; (4) lots and lots of bread (no low carb diets for Jesus!); (5) fruits, vegetables, grains, etc.; (6) good physical condition; and (7) [ample amounts of] beer and diluted wine.

I personally could lose some weight, so I was thinking I should cash in on the trend and start my own “biblical” diet craze. I was thinking about the “John the Baptist Diet” where you can eat all the locusts and honey you can handle. Or what about the “Ezekiel Dung Cooking Diet”? I imagine that if you had to cook all your meals over human dung, you would eat less! How about the “Holy Land Milk and Honey Diet”?

As you can see, my biblical diet craze still requires some more thought. I’ll have to ponder it over some beer and wings…

The first-ever “GodBlog” conference will be held at Biola University on October 13, 2005.

The conference will feature some blogosphere heavyweights including syndicated talk show host Hugh Hewitt, author of Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation that’s Changing Your World, whose personal blog draws more than 40,000 viewers per day. According to promotional material, GodBlogCon is designed to mobilize the Christian blogging community and to provide opportunities for Christian bloggers to think strategically about their role within the religious and political blogospheres.

Sounds interesting, though I would personally rather get together with other bibliobloggers during SBL if I had the choice. Unfortuantly, I will not be at SBL this year 🙁

Source: Newswise