Sunday and the week ahead
A podcast (audioblog) about Sunday morning, pilgrims to Chalma, and (re)finding a doctor…
Jim
About Jim
Posts by Jim :
The last 90 days’ most popular posts (31 Jan ’08)
Ok, I know, it’s the 1st of February. Close enough. Here they are, the most popular last:
- When a blog is quiet – there could be a number of reasons why
- Changing seasons in Mexico – how do you recognize them?
- Festival of colour, mockery and family – about the Days of the Dead
- Migraine and headache and cluster (oh my!) – so I have this other website, you see…
- Canadians, Mexicans, and cold weather – why am I so cccccoold?!
- A Visit with Mrs. G – if you’ve never had a visit, it’s never too late to start!
- DÃa de la Revolución – the kids show off their art
- My famous blog. No, not this one, silly!
- Emails in a small world – a day in the life of my email
- Hannah’s class (video) – see what’s going on at Colegio del Bosque
Great Commission: What does GO mean?
– Jesus
I’ve heard it, haven’t you? Speculation over that little word, go. What does that mean?
You might have heard – I know I have – that in the original Greek this word is actually a participle, and could be more correctly translated "as you are going…"
But Dr. Daniel B. Wallace, Executive Director of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts says it ain’t so.
In some ways, the difference isn’t apparent – after all, if we’re going to reach the nations, somehow or other we have to get where the nations are. Looking at other passages would clarify the situation too.
But then again, some people may point out that we don’t need to "go" – the point is that wherever we happen to be going, we should make disciples.
Anyway, Dr. Wallace, writing at the Parchment and Pen blog, says that this is a misunderstanding of the Greek. Sure, the word is a participle. But not a present participle, an aorist participle. An being in proximity to an aorist imperative, it communicates a command.
No, grammar isn’t my strong pont either. So I looked up some of the similar examples he cited in his article. He says that Matthew 2:13-14 is an example of this, when the angel tells Joseph to flee to Egypt. Can you imagine if the angel had said,"Well, if you happen to be getting up, be sure to take the child along and head over to Egypt…"
No way! It was get up! Move it! Take the child and run for your life!
So the Greek construction here in Matthew 28 means – Go! Skedaddle! Move it on out! It’s not the only command, of course. Go and make disciples.
The disciples took this to heart. In my 2000 Years of Missions seminar I show a map of the direction each disciple took (according to tradition) on their missionary trips. They literally scattered in all directions, and I’m sure it wasn’t by accident.
Recently I heard a children’s show saying that if everyone told a neighbour (about the Gospel), and that neighbour told another neighbour, and another – soon everyone would know. Well, it’s a great idea, and we certainly should share with our neighbours. But in the real world, it wouldn’t work that way – everyone would not know. Here’s why:
- Everyone doesn’t have that kind of connection – they’re in a fairly closed community where no one knows anyone who knows anyone who knows anyone who knows the Lord. Someone must come in from the outside intentionally if they’re going to hear.
- There are people dying without having heard – if the chain doesn’t reach them in time, they will never hear
- Not every neighbour will believe, and so will not share the Gospel.
It’s not enough just to tell a neighbour. There has to be some intentional going. Remember Paul’s words in Romans 10.
Ok, so go means go. How does that apply to us personally? Well, that’s a whole other topic. And Dr. Wallace will be continuing his analysis of the passage next week, which should be interesting. Meanwhile, if you want the details you can read his original post on the Great Commission.
What do you think? Have you heard discussion about the word go? What do you think about the preaching you’ve heard on this passage?
via: JOLLYBLOGGER
Nathanael’s feeling better.
After a rough start to the night, Nathanael was eventually able to fall asleep. I think there was a fair amount of tossing and turning (they have a very squeaky bed – you can’t miss every toss and turn!), but he slept and most of the hives were gone this morning.
He was pretty tired, but we decided to send him to school anyway. He said his teacher let him have a little rest, and now that he’s home again he seems to be doing ok. It may be a rough day (he’s not the only one who’s tired!), but I think we’re on the upswing.
Thanks for your prayers! 🙂
Nathanael’s feeling miserable.
Poor Nathanael. He’s got hives. Over a good portion of his body. No fun.
We’re going to put him to bed pretty soon, but if you happen to be reading this in the next day or so, we’d appreciate your prayers for the itchy guy. Thanks!
Resizing photos
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Sending photos by email? Uploading them to your website? Wondering how to make them the right size? Let me tell you what I do.
Recently I was emailing a couple of people on this topic, so I thought I’d copy the information here.
This is actually pretty important for email and blogs and websites. In email, you don’t want a file that takes 18 minutes to send and receive. When it’s received, it’s nice to be able to see it on the screen easily. On websites, it’s nice if your picture doesn’t take 6 minutes to load. Even too many seconds is too long. Someone with a slow connection will leave your site rather than wait 20 seconds for the photos to load.
So here’s what I usually do to "optimize" photos for the web – that is, make them the right size (visually), and fast loading.
- Download and install Irfanview
- Load your photo into Irfanview
- Crop as necessary
If you’re using the photo on a website, it will probably end up fairly small. Make sure you crop it so that the important stuff can be seen at that size. Just click and drag anywhere on the photo to make a square around the part of the photo that you want to keep. Then click Edit, then Crop selection. - Resize
To resize your photo, click Image then Resize/Resample. In the box that opens, be sure Preserve aspect ratio is checked. Then, simply enter the new width and click OK.How big? Usually for a website the width ends up being around 100-450 pixels. For email, a size no greater than 800 pixels wide and 600 pixels high is usually safe (this is the size of a low-res monitor. Most people have larger monitors, but they often view email in a smaller window).
- Save the photo
This is the tricky part. You’ll probably want to save your photo as a jpg file. Go to File, then Save as. Now, enter the file name (Website tip: It helps to use keywords in your filename – ie jim-with-taco.jpg, not file0024.jpg. That way search engines will find it easier to recognize.) For the Save as type, choose JPG – JPG/JPEG Format.
Now look at the little window on your right. Uncheck everything. Now, you’ll need to change the Save quality. What I do here is simply keep changing it until I come up with a file size that I want. For example:I save the file to my desktop with a quality of 50. I right click on it, choose Properties, and see that it’s 25.8kb. Too big for me (I always aim for under 16kb – better if it’s under 10kb. That’s for a website – for email you can go a little higher – 50-75kb or even more is usually ok for most people. For grandma who wants to print it out, go with higher quality – even a MB or two). So I save it again with a quality of 15. Now it’s 11.6kb – getting better. I open the new file, however, and find it a little too distorted (the lower the quality, the more distorted it gets.). So I raise the quality to 25. Now it’s 16kb, and I can live with the quality. Ok, I’ll leave it at that.
Tip: Usually website visitors aren’t quite as picky as you when it comes to quality. Go with a quality slightly worse than you would like.
So basically there are 3 easy things to do to make a smaller file:
a) crop it (so that you can resize it smaller)
b) resize it smaller
c) save it at a lower qualityPlay with it until you get a quality/size combination that you are happy with. Ideal is 15kb for the entire page, but 15kb per picture is probably a reasonable compromise.
One last tip: If you end up with a file size that’s larger than ideal, try checking the Save as progressive JPG box. That way the person visiting the page will see it as its loading, so they’ll know something is there even before it’s fully loaded. This doesn’t apply when sending a photo by email.
- Upload or email!
Note that this assumes a few things. I use a Windows operating system, and to simplify things I simply used the jpg format. This works well for photos, but if you have simple color or black and white cartoons, icons or diagrams, you might want to use gif or another type of file.
Also, remember that this optimizes the photo for viewing on the computer, not for printing. For printing, the higher resolution the better. Here at CottrillCompass.com I have a photo gallery that has full size high quality photos. For example, on this post I have a photo optimized for the web, but if you click on it you will go the the photo gallery. Click the numbers beside Full size on your right, and you’ll see the full size – high quality version, suitable for printing.
Thanks for keeping the web fast!