Ordained Evil

[Edit] Man, in no way did I capture the spirit of the message. I'm just so bad at reorganizing and communicating thoughts. =[

I was trying to finish up the rest of the resolved messages today, the only problem being I don't remember which sermons I listened to. But anyway, seeing as how I forget everything as soon as I stop hearing about them, I decided to finally blog some thoughts, because I've got time and I finished a midterm today =]. So I was listening to John Piper's "How Sin serves the Glory of Christ" (go to resolved.org if you want to dl the sermons) and it was more about God's sovereignty over all things, in this case over the sins that we commit. So, remember when Joseph gets sold to Egypt by his brothers, and like 20 years later or something his brothers come back to buy grain. Joseph, second in command of all of Egypt, had all the power to imprison them for life, or anything...exact revenge...whatever. But he says that while they meant it for evil, God meant it for GOOD.

Now, that just seems so crazy, that God could use even someone's sins to do a GREAT work, even a GOOD work. I feel like when I sometimes read the Bible, I read it like a story, especially the history parts, and the gospels. When I read the part where Solomon begins to turn away from God because of his wives, I just want to yell at him, "HEY FOOL! CUT IT OUT!" And then when I read through the crucifixion, I imagine that if only I had a time machine, I would go back and stop that from happening. Is it sinful to think that? Because what I've done is forget all about the fact that God is Sovereign over ALL things, and then will the cruicifixion not to happen. The Bible is filled with flawed people, messed up things, because People are MESSed up. Ever since the fall, we've all been flawed, every one of us, but the one person who is perfect is GOD. Even before Adam's fall God had perfectly planned out the crucifixion on Calvary, and through all of man's sins, he was able to set up the only way possible for us to escape the grasp of Sin and Death. God did not simply use the evils that we committed for his Good, but he had meant the WHOLE time for all of it to happen.

So I realized, this calls for me to look at life and the word with new eyes. I'm going through Ezekiel and I've been going through the prophets, and reading about all the sins of Israel and Judah and God's plan of judgement and salvation upon them. It's a little depressing reading all about impending doom and destruction coming upon a wicked people. BUT, now I need to see that even with all their wickedness, God intended to use it to show his power, grace, sovereignty, and judgment all along. Isn't it crazy? Judas committed the most heinous of crimes by betraying the SON of GOD, and yet, God meant to use that so that he could make his love and grace manifest through Jesus' sacrifice for the whole world! And so? Even though the world is filled with evil, and we experience so much of it, we shouldn't ever despair, but instead, Give thanks in ALL circumstances, and be joyful ALWAYS, like it says in 1 Thess 5:16-18, because we know that He is sovereign, that His plan is Perfect, and there is nothing that goes on without the approval of his Good will.

8 Grievances against Macs

So I've come to use CSULB's iMacs every time I come to the computer lab. And I know that actually having your own macbook or whatever is different, but these computers make me want to never own a Mac in my life. Of course, this may be because these are not actually my computers (not to mention retarded restrictions because it's a school comp), and I am a little biased, being a Windows user, but there are little navigation problems/hotkey issues I've noticed that just bug the heck out of me. Let's start with the more minor ones first, shall we?

1. Buttons. Why do they have to be on the left? They're supposed to be on the right!
2. The taskbar has to be on the top of the screen? it makes more sense just to put it on the window itself
3. The stupid CSULB mice keep zooming out the screen on me because I keep clicking the side buttons. Also, these mice can't scroll because they're broken. BOO

4. I just like the way Windows looks better. It's glassy and pretty! But Mac does look smooth and uniform, and every window has the same Mac feel to it.

Ok so these are just issues with me getting used to the system, and problems with the school's sucky computers. But the next ones actually cause me problems.

5. KEYS! Ok, so I've done this at least 5 times writing this blog. I keep pressing command delete to delete a word, because on Windows ctrl delete does that, and I've figured out that command pretty much = ctrl. But NO! Command delete deletes my whole line, and makes me write everything all over again. They don't even make this uniform on the Mac Word (probably because it's made by Microsoft (I just did it again)) which makes me even more confused. And then control has no apparent function to me. Why is it there? It's useless! It doesn't do any of the things that it does on Windows. And why are there three function buttons anyway? I thought Macs were all about simplicity.

6. Why does double clicking on the top of the window minimize it? Not only that, why can't you maximize to the whole screen? I want the window to fill the screen, but then it just extends it to the bottom, and then the dock is there so it doesn't even do that properly. Windows 7 deals with this so much better. It does both! But here you have to drag the partially maximized window over to the side, and maximize it manually (is this just because it's the school mac?) which brings me to my next point

7. Ok so the thing that REALLY bugs me is that you can't resize the window anywhere but on (I deleted it again!) the lower right hand corner. It's SO inconvenient! Let's say I want to make a window smaller, but i want to make it smaller to make room on its left. Well let's say the corner is slightly off screen. That means I have to move it into view, resize it, and then move it to the place I want, when normally I can just resize the left corner.

8. Also, home/end/page up/page down are just for viewing purposes? They don't move the cursor while typing on the internet?

All in all, Mac's are nice to use. They look nice, have cool animations for minimizing windows. But I think I like them as a novelty. I'll keep using them at school, because I don't own one, but as long as the OS stays the way it is, I don't think I'm ever going to own a Mac myself.

I want to actually make an update soon, instead of posting these facebook-like one liners. Curse my unproductiveness.

A Prayer, short and simple

O Lord, please let me see what sin really is. I've seen the evil it can do, and where it leads, but what does it look like to You?

This week...

God has punished my vanity.