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Yes, it's a purse. On my blog. Bear with me here for a minute.

Kim White was lucky to find an entire warehouse full of old unused auto seat fabric and bought the whole lot. Now, she uses it to make cool purses and handbags. Hey, I'm not a girl but what's not to like about a back made from 1983 Camaro seats (in three color combos)?

The tragedy is that this fabric could have been used to fix up actual Camaro seats. Still, ain't it cool?

If the Camaro is a bit much, maybe the one below is better. It was scheduled to cushion your fanny while driving your 1974 Plymouth Fury. Then there's the 1975 Gremlin bag, the 1975 Pacer bag and more.

HT: Michael Banovsky at vLane

Great discussion at church tonight about the nature of Abraham's faith. I'm not sure how successful I'm going to be in articulating my thoughts but here goes.

The key passage we looked at was from Romans 4:

In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, “So shall your offspring be.” He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb. No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.

Romans 4:18-21

Was his faith blind or without thought? No, it says he considered, the NIV says he "faced the fact", that his body was as good as dead. He didn't put blinders on to his circumstances nor ignore the facts of his surroundings, he faced them head on and chose to believe God instead.

Why?

A hint might be found in Genesis 18. God tells Abraham that the sin in Sodom is great and he's going to destroy it. Abraham stood before the Lord and basically said, "Hold on God. What if ..." 50 good folks? 40? 20? 10? He's interrogating the Lord - humbly - but he's grilling him. He wants to know what kind of God this is. Is he fair to the righteous when punishing the wicked?

Abraham had been hanging around God for a while, listening to him and following him. I think this is a turning point in their relationship. This is the first time that God let Abraham in on his plans. Sodom is wicked, and this is what I plan to do about it. This was a side of God Abraham hadn't yet seen. Up until then, it was God saying follow and promising to bless him and Abraham following.

But here, Abraham stands up to God saying what if? And God patiently listens and answers. I think that this added to Abraham's understanding of who God was.

So, when God promised him many descendants, Abraham looked at the facts. He was old, as good as dead. He was no longer equipped for fathering. But, there was another set of facts, perhaps more elusive or even subjective. That was the fact that God, who was powerful enough to rain fire down on Sodom, had never left him, had never let him down and had demonstrated his justice and fairness.

So, while the plain facts indicated that it was impossible, the facts of faith allowed him to proceed anyway. God had proven himself able to do the miraculous and had proven his trustworthiness. God was true, so his promises could be trusted even when tehy made no sense.

Faith isn't simply ignoring the facts and believing God, it's looking beyond the obvious to see the facts of faith. That God is with us, He sent Jesus to rescue us, that he is able to rescue and all those personal ways that we've felt his presence and that he has worked in us in ways that we cannot explain. And he has promised to never leave us, that all would work for good if we follow, that he would rescue us and that we would not be tempted beyond what we can bear.

So faith is looking squarely at the Earthly facts but seeing God who is over all, bigger than any circumstances and who already showed us how much He loves us in Jesus. In a way, faith is choosing to see the larger picture, or perhaps more accurately choosing to trust teh one that can see the larger picture that we cannot.

Matt Chandler on the Gospel vs. moralism. Excellent.

Via. Jared at The Thinklings.

I had planned on reading much of Romans 8 today, but I stopped on Romans 8:1 and found that I needed to park there for a while. Maybe a long while.

Paul jsut spent the last two chapters explaining that because of Jesus' death and our participation in it through our baptism, we are free from the law and sin. We are subject to neither anymore, because of Jesus. After establishing those comes the therefore:

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Note that he does not say no guilt, oh we are guilty as all get out, but - because of Jesus - there is no condemnation. I'm convinced that I don't get this. I don't fully comprehend all that Jesus has accomplished in me. I suspect most of us don't. No condemnation. Not some, not just a little, none.

I spend far too much of my life wondering what people think of me. It's somehow ingrained in my being. I wonder if I've let you down, if I've offended you, in fact, I pretty much assume that, absence of you actually saying that I've done good, that I screwed up and you're mad at or disappointed with me. Silence = condemnation as far as my messed up psyche is concerned. Any negative feeling about anything (the weather, your job, traffic, etc.) - it's somehow my responsibility.

That's a whole 'nother topic, but here, Paul says there is no condemnation for me. God isn't disappointed, he isn't checking off the many ways I've fallen short, he isn't considering what punishment might be suitable. He isn't, as I certainly might, looking for an opportunity to teach me a lesson.

Wow.

So, why then the long face or furrowed brow? Why, rather, aren't we dancing in the streets? Giggling with joy, foolish with this understanding? Because we forget who He is and the work He has done. We forget just how marvelous, improbable - no, impossible - and complete this transformation He has made in us is.

We should be doing pirouettes on our desks, dancing in the rain and singing at the top of our lungs.

Stop for a minute and contemplate the weight and the buoyancy of this one little verse, a single sentence, 13 little words:

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Let it bring the kind of smile to your face that will make folks wonder what's gotten into you.

And then tell them.

I'm playing with Action Streams in MT so I can add my activity elsewhere here. It's rather daunting, unless you just want to use the default settings, so I'm going to try to post tips as I go.

Say you have a feed that is infrequently updated that you want to display on you site using Action Streams. For me, it was my blip.fm feed. I use blip.fm to share music that I find interesting, but I don't do so regularly. Some days I might blip a bunch of songs, then I might go days before the next blip.

The bundled Action Streams feed widget sorts the items by the day of the week. So, you get the subhead of 'Today' and the items posted today, then you'd get 'Thursday' (since today is Friday) and the items from yesterday, then 'Wednesday' and so on until the max number of items is reached.

Well, if you set the number of items too high or if you don't generate new items that often, you can get multiple instances of 'Today'. The reason is, the widget code simply checks to see what day it is today and then looks for any items that have the same day and changes the label to today. So, anything that happened on 'Friday', even if it's 28 weeks ago, gets labeled 'Today'.

It's a little odd to see 'Today' then 'Monday' then 'Thursday' then 'Today' again.

Fortunately, the fix is easy. You just change the date format to look for 'Month date' instead. That's an attribute of the <mt:date> tag. In the Action Streams Widget, it's <mt:date format="%A">, change that to <mt:date format="%B %d">. You'll also need to change the <mt:StreamActionDate format="%A"> to <mt:StreamActionDate format="%B %d">.

That's it. Now, today's items will still say 'Today', but older items will be labeled by their actual date, 'May 3'. If you want the date formatted differently, you can use the various attributes of the <mt:date> tag to generate whatever output you want.

Romans 7:1 - "Or do you not know, brothers ... that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives?" Review Romans 6 (and Romans 7:4), through Christ we died and rose again. Since we are dead, the law no longer applies to us. Whoa.

Romans 7:4-6 - We were not set free from the law so that we could do whatever we want, we were set free to bear fruit for God. We are designed to bear fruit, without Christ, we bear fruit for death through sin, because of Jesus we can, and should, bear fruit for God.

Romans 7:10-11 - We like to believe that a set of rules will teach us to live and guide us along the way. This is true, to a point. The full reality, however, is that we are ill equipped to follow any set of rules completely. We fail, even at following our own pet peeves, let along the complete law of God. We frequently are offenders at that which we hate in others. So, what the law does ultimately is prove our inadequacies, showing us to be completely and utterly hopeless apart from Christ.

Romans 7:18-19 - "I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing." Anyone else live here? So, if this was Paul's experience, and we can relate as well, how then should we treat those who fall short as they follow Christ? I'm not talking about the blatant sins of adultery, rape, murder, etc, certainly Paul wasn't saying that every now and then he falls back into hunting down those who disagree with him, as he had done with Christians. I imagine that he's talking about character sins - harshness, pride, judgmentalism, anger. Do you know any disciples like that (you're talking to one)? Do you dismiss them as ungodly, or treat them with love by mixing grace with frank honesty?

Romans 6:1-14 - The beginning of Romans 6 has always been a favorite passage of mine ebcasue of the way it illustrates what happens during baptism. Baptism has been an overlooked sacrament in much of the Evangelical world, and frankly over emphasized in Church of Christ circles.

The baptism that Paul describes is a powerful, transforming event:

We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

Romans 6:4

In baptism, we participate with Christ in His death and resurection. Just as He laid His life down to take up another, more glorious one, we too lay down our own lives in baptism and take up a new, more glorious one made possible through Jesus.

But Paul's point was not instruction on baptism. Rather, he wanted to remind them of what it meant to be baptised into Jesus in regards to sin. As far as sin is concerned, we are dead. If we are dead, how can we participate in it?

Paul was convinced that they simply didn't understand what they had become a part of. they had died, voluntarily offering themselves in baptism just as Jesus had offered himself on the cross. And since he's already died, death has no more power of Him. Since, through Jesus and through baptism we have died as well, we are dead to sin.

Simply put, we are dead men with Christ through baptism and dead men can't sin.

We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin.

Romans 6:6-7

But we don't really get it, we find sin's power impossible to resist. We still live as though we are a part of this world and its rules. Paul says, when sin calls you can ignore it. It has no power over you, so don't grant it any. As dead men, we live under different rules.

Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

Romans 6:12-14

Amazing, heady stuff. Oh that I could grasp the reality of this resurrection in full! What if I could clear my head of the earthly fog and see me and my life's reality as God does? What would that life look like? How would live? What would I do?

Romans 6:15-18 - So, if we're under grace, then obedience isn't a big deal, right? What?! Did you hear what he just said? Don't you get what has happened to you?

Here's the thing - we cannot be simply free. We either involuntarily serve sin or, through the freeing sacrifice of Jesus, we are allowed to serve righteousness. Once Jesus has freed you, why would you choose sin?

I was into Styx big time in HS and college, collecting all their albums and following the band member's solo careers. Mr. Roboto was the song that started it for me, believe it or not.

I've got a couple of Dennis DeYoung's and Tommy Shaw's solo albums as well as a three Damn Yankees albums with Tommy Shaw. I even have James 'JY' Young's first solo album with Jan Hammer of Miami Vice fame (not good, at all). Tommy Shaw was the only one to have any real musical success outside of Styx with the Damn Yankees, who were awesome. I always thought that although Dennis was seen as the leader of Styx, it was Tommy who made the band a big success in the 70's.

The Kilroy was Here tour was pretty cool, at least I thought so (I only saw it on VHS tape after teh fact). It opened with a movie made by the band that told the story of how Rock and Roll was banned and 'Kilroy' was a rocker who was imprisoned because he wouldn't stop. He overpowers a Mr. Roboto (Japanese servant robot thing) and uses it as a disguise to escape. He then organizes a protest/concert in the old Paradise Theater. That was the end of the film and the start of the concert. At the end of the show, the 'authorities' break in and drag the band off stage.

Dennis DeYoung (lead singer) was always interested in the Rock Opera concept and this was his baby. Yeah it was cheesy, but it was 1983, everything was cheesy.

I later saw them on the Edge of the Century tour int he late 90's and they put on a great show.

Thanks to Jared at the Thinklings for the video.

Romans 5:1 - "... we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." Now there's good news!

Romans 5:2-5 - Paul says more than rejoicing in the "hope of the glory of God", we rejoice in our sufferings. Rejoice in suffering more than in hope? What? But look at what he says though: Suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, character produces what - hope. the suffering is important because it leads to a deeper realization of the hope that is already a reality.

Romans 5:8 - "While we were still sinners." We still run around trying to please God by our goodness when he was pleased to rescue us while we weren't worth rescuing. He declared through Christ that we were valuable to Him, whether we saw it or not, how are we going to somehow make ourselves more valuable after that?

Romans 5:17 - Much is made in this passage (Romans 5:12-21) in regards to sin entering the world. I think (not sure, actually) that this is one of the passages used to support original sin. Adam sinned, bringing sin to everyone. Yet verse 12 says that death spread because all sinned, not because Adam did. I guess one could say that Adam started it, not making all of us guilty but exposing us to something we could not master - sin.

In that regard, verse 17 says that death reigned because of what Adam did, and everyone who would come after him are subject to it. However, Jesus came and offered anew way of life and all who would follow him would no longer live under death's reign. Because of Jesus, we can escape the inescapable - death. Sin reigned through death, now grace reigns through righteousness (verse 18).

Hemmings reports that the 'cash for clunkers' bill that's been bounced around is going to be included as part of an environmental bill called American Clean Energy and Security Act. Take a look at the Hemmings post for lots of links to info about the bill.

As an old car enthusiast, I stand against this kind fo thing because it takes old cars that may be desirable and sends them to the crusher. Even if they aren't restorable, they may have valuable parts that could be used to restore another. But even without my special interest in keeping neat old cars on the road, the idea makes little sense to me. I won't pretend that the following is the result of a lot of research and reading, it's not. It's just my thinking.

So what good can come from giving people a few thousand dollars (Hemmings says $4,500, but I don't know what the final is) toward a new car if they junk their old?

• You get older, perhaps polluting, perhaps less efficient cars off the road


• You give the car companies and dealers a boost by spurring sales.

Stick it to the Poor

To illustrate what's wrong, let me start with a couple of my recent clunkers.

• In 2000, I traded a 1988 Grand Caravan with 180,000+ miles on our late model (at the time) Honda Odyssey. It was rusty, rattly and worn, but the engine was only 35K old and the tranny only 80K. Still, I got only $500 on trade. I'm sure it went to auction and eventually someone who needed a cheap car ended up with a solid van for around $1,500, maybe less.


• In 2006 I got my new 2005 Mazda3. It replaced another rusty and worn car with 180K+ on the clock, a 1993 Escort. The car ran great, but the clutch went out. I gave it away to a mechanic who put a clutch in it ($100 or so in parts) and either drove it or sold it, I don't know. Even if it was sold, I doubt anyone paid over $1,000 for it, not bad for decent transportation.

If cash for clunkers had been in place, well, the extra $4,000 on trade for the Caravan may have put me in a new Odyssey instead of used and $4,500 for the Escort would have been phenomenal. That would have been more than 25% down on my Mazda. But, that would mean that those two families wouldn't have had those sub-$2,000 cars available (the law says they must be crushed). Even if I hadn't taken advantage of the cash for clunkers, someone would have likely given me substantially more than market price fore each, maybe over $2,000 each, so they could turn it into $4,500 off a new car.

I wonder what effect cash for clunkers will have on the cheap car market that the working poor relies on? If every old car is suddenly a $4,500 coupon toward a new one, the price of basic transportation is bound to go up.

But We're Helping the Environment, Right?

But this is about the environment, getting old, inefficient polluters off the road. (My Escort was far from inefficient, averaging 34.6 MPG over the 10 years I owned it, but never mind that.) That is true, one of the purported benefits is getting old cars off the road and encouraging folks to get into more efficient and less polluting vehicles. Older cars may not meet current emissions laws and are more likely to be poorly maintained and therefore polluting more.

But, as I stated, the law as I understand it requires that the clunkers be destroyed. They cannot even be parted out to help keep other clunkers on the road. (Another hit to the poor who rely on cheap, junkyard replacement parts) Junkyard parts are a not insignificant part of keeping the environment clean. Giving these parts a new lease on life keeps them out of the landfill for a few more years.

What impact on the environment will disposing of hundreds of pounds of scrap metal and plastic, not to mention the fluids, have? Where is it all going to go?

It seems that we're trading one environmental problem for another.

It's Going to Help the Industry

Yes, for now. We're creating an artificial environment where new cars are more affordable, when that environment is gone, then what? Folks who are going to look for a car, are going to take advantage of this program and buy before it's over. Once it's up, I bet sales tumble for a time. So we're setting ourselves up for a short boom then another bust.

Have We Learned Nothing From the Housing crisis?

I heard Ben Stein sum up the mortgage crisis something like this. "Democrats wanted to give a mortgage to anyone with a pulse and Republicans wanted to let the banks do whatever they wanted with no regulation." So, at the urging of the Democratic congress (I'm sure there were other reasons too), banks lowered their lending standards and the Republicans lowered oversight. Folks saw a house, a bank now willing to lend and a payment they could afford (now anyway), and took on more than they should have.

Now, we are hanging another big carrot of folks heads. A new car! Look, here's $4.500 for your hooptie, just sign up for $12,000+ in debt. Doesn't anyone else feel a little deja vu here? How many folks are going to get sucked into loans they cannot afford? At least now the banks are so scared to lend that maybe they'll actually turn some of these people down.

But isn't the message a little off? Times are tough, go borrow money to replace a car that was serving you fine until we waved a $4,500 check in your face.

I'm sure there are other reasons that people smarter than me can come up with, but cash for clunkers looks a lot like a program that will cost more than it gives us. It raises prices on the poor, hurts the environment as much as it helps it, provides only a temporary boost for the industry and sends the wrong message. The only people it is really good for are congressmen who get (again) to look like they're doing something while actually making things worse. There's that Deja Vu feeling again.

Not to mention the neat old cars that will be gone forever.