A Prayer

Posted Wed, 2009-01-28 12:08

This past week and the next few weeks have me preaching twice at Regeneration and once for the Sunday morning youth service, all of which is much more frequent teaching than I have done in the past. It also comes at a time that the anticipation and emotion of getting married soon is increasing day by day. Last week as I felt weak to go before Regeneration and teach on the incarnation, I lifted up this helpful prayer from The Valley of Vision, entitled "A Minister's Bible":

O God of truth,
I thank thee for the holy Scriptures,
     their precepts, promises, directions, light.
In them may I learn more of Christ,
     be enabled to retain his truth
     and have grace to follow it.
Help me to lift up the gates of my soul that he may come in
     and show me himself when I search the Scriptures,
     for I have no lines to fathom its depths,
     no wings to soar to its heights.
By his aid may I be enabled to explore all its truths,
     love them with all my heart,
     embrace them with all my power,
     engraft them into my life.
Bless to my soul all grains of truth garnered from thy Word;
     may they take deep root,
     be refreshed by heavenly dew,
     be ripened by heavenly rays,
     be harvested to my joy and thy praise.
Help me to gain profit by what I read,
     as treasure beyond all treasure,
     a fountain which can replenish my dry heart,
       its waters flowing through me as a perennial river
       on-drawn by they Holy Spirit.
Enable me to distil from its pages faithful prayer
     that grasps the arm of thy omnipotence,
     achieves wonders, obtains blessings,
     and draws down streams of mercy.
From it show me how my words have aften been unfaithful to thee,
     injurious to my fellow-men,
     empty of grace, full of folly,
     dishonouring to my calling.
Then write thy own words upon my heart and inscribe them on my lips;
So shall all glory be to thee in my reading of thy Word!

Though perhaps specially relevant to those who are entrusted to teach the Word to others, it is a great prayer for meditation on Scripture in general.

More borrowing??

Posted Thu, 2009-01-08 10:36

Although the current economic downturn has been largely caused by years of excessive consumer and corporate borrowing, our government, with Barack Obama already leading the way, appears ready to attempt to mitigate the crisis by borrowing yet more money. The Congressional Budget Office predicts budget deficits of upwards of a trillion dollars next year, and Obama seems to be angling for a massive "economic stimulus package" that will borrow yet more mountains of money to hand out amongst ourselves.

At the consumer level, I think we are starting to see people realize that borrowing is not a long-term solution to financial woes; instead we are turning to sound financial principles like budgeting and saving. Why is the Federal government going the other way? Do they think that they can keep borrowing forever, propping the economy up on foreign money? Sooner or later the piper will come to be paid, and there will be no one to bail us out.

Reading the Bible in 2009

Posted Tue, 2009-01-06 14:49

At the start of 2009, I decided that it would be a good idea to follow a Bible-reading plan this year. Since I was busy last Fall teaching at Regeneration and at youth small group, most of my study and meditation on Scripture ended up being related to whatever teaching assignment I had next. While I'm not sure that this is necessarily wrong, I think it does tend to limit the parts of Scripture that I look at and tends to make my reflection more focused on getting what I need out of the text rather than simply reflecting on it and letting it speak into my life for itself.

The reading plan that I decided to use is the M'Cheyne plan as modified by D.A. Carson. I found a PDF that I was able to print two-sided on a single sheet of paper to fold and stick in my study Bible. It will actually work out to be a two-year plan that will take me through the New Testament twice and once through the Old Testament.

For other Bible-reading plans, see Justin Taylor's roundup. When I went through a plan before, several years ago, I used the Discipleship Journal plan, which, interestingly enough, John Piper has decided to use this year.

Power System Challenges for "Green Energy"

Posted Wed, 2008-12-31 12:14

I came across an interesting article this morning about the challenges of installing increasing amounts of wind and solar power in the electrical grid. From my vantage point in the power industry, I agree with most of the information in the article. Wind developers are ready to build wind farms all over the place if only they had transmission system access and capacity to be able to deliver the power to consumers. The biggest difficulty with building new transmission lines is siting. No one wants a high voltage transmission line running through their back yard, and because dozens or even hundreds of landowners must acquiesce to the route of a transmission line for it to be built, the process of siting a new line can be quite difficult, and the many zig-zags that can result from going around obstinate land-owners increase the cost and construction time of building a new line.

The article also talks about a "smart grid" that allows demand to be responsive to market prices or system conditions. The technology is definitely there for such an application, but I think it will be difficult to convince distribution companies to change out all the meters that would need to be upgraded to be able to implement the smart grid. Even a small town can easily have thousands of meters, and at costs of hundreds of dollars per meter and probably hundreds of thousands of dollars for the home-base and substation communication equipment, there has to be some substantial financial incentive for them to do so.

One final issue that the article does not mention but which is significant is that the power engineering workforce is limited. My office is as busy as we could be and still hiring aggressively. At a recent seminar that I attended at which there were representatives from a competitor, the joke was that we didn't need to steal work from one another—we needed to steal employees. The power engineering workforce is aging and shrinking, and there are few engineering schools that still have strong power engineering curriculum. Though this may be a detriment to the massive investment in renewable energy that some are calling for, it bodes well for me personally as I am likely to good job prospects even through tough economic times.

Merry Christmas!

Posted Thu, 2008-12-25 09:08

Have a very merry Christmas!