In the past months the server that hosts this site has been dragging a little bit. It has gone down a few times and has begin consuming too many resources. And so I’ve decided to move to a new server with a host that is dedicated to supporting Movabletype, the software that runs behind the scenes here. While I was going through all the trouble of moving to the new server, I decided to rebuild the site’s templates from the ground-up (or nearly so) and to tinker just a little bit with the site’s features and design. I also upgraded to the latest version of the software.

And so by this morning most of you should be seeing the site on its new server. I, on the other hand, am still waiting for the changes to “take” and continue to see the old site.

There are a few new features on this site you may like to know about:

At long last I changed around the top banner. Gone is the lonely winter tree. As much as I love the image, I think a year was long enough for it to be there. In its place is a chair. Yup, a chair. This will, of course, be utterly irrelevant to those of you who read via RSS!

You can now create an account on the site. This will be useful to those of you who comment regularly. The account will mean you can sign in and not have to continually enter your username, email address, and so on. It also gives you the ability to track your old comments, to track other people’s comments, etc. The page where you do all of this is still be perfected, so you’ll have to give me some time in that regard.

The front page has been simplified a little bit (since it was getting a bit cluttered). I removed much of what was there and replaced it with a poll/survey and ActionStream (which tracks what I do in other places on the web—Digg, Twitter, and so on). I removed A La Carte from the sidebar and it is now in the same time line as the other posts.

There are quite a few other changes that are sufficiently insignificant that they are probably not worth mentioning.

Beyond these changes, I expect things to continue here pretty much as they have for the past six years.

On Wednesday evening I was coaching first base when, from behind me, I overheard a chat between two of the parents from other team. “That first baseman was so nice. He would tell our guys, ‘Nice hit!’ even though he is on the other team. What a nice boy!” With just a bit of pride I smiled, knowing they weren’t talking about just any first baseman; they were talking about my boy.

It was a bit of a tough season for Nick. It started off well enough, with him collecting a few hits over his first couple of games. This year his team was facing a pitching machine flinging the balls at 40 miles per hour. It was a big adjustment from the year before when the boys saw nothing more than soft tosses from their own coaches. But once they made the adjustment, they began to hit well. I worked hard, with the other coaches, to help them work on their swings and by the end of the season we saw some remarkable progress. But Nick struggled. Around the mid-point of the season our team was playing the Red Sox when one of their players, a friend of Nick’s from school, was hit by an errant pitch (though, honestly, the machine threw it straight—it was the kid who stepped in front of the plate and hence in front of the pitch). There was no great damage done to the boy, but something clicked in Nick’s mind and he determined that the machine was out to get him. For the rest of the season he struggled to hit, subconsciously stepping away from every pitch, obviously worried that he would be hit as well. He collected a few hits through the rest of the season but mostly he flailed away, striking out time and again.

We prayed with him a lot. We assured him that God cares even for things as silly as little league baseball. We did not want him to become too discouraged with striking out and prayed that God would let him hit, at least occasionally. Nick is an above average fielder and loves playing defense. He often wished that his team could have a designated fielder just like American League teams have a designated hitter. But if he wanted to play, he would have to bat. And so he did, facing that machine three or four times every game. Mostly he struck out.

If Nick became discouraged, he did not often let it show. The boys on the team would occasionally tease him about his inability to hit, but he would brave it out. He was the boy on the team with the best head for the game and he was the one with the most enthusiasm. While his teammates were goofing off behind the bench, Nick was cheering for the one at bat and the one or two on base. When the boys came off the field after striking out, Nick would give them a high five and tell them, “Nice try!” He cheered the loudest and the longest. But still he struck out.

With only a couple of weeks left in the season, the head coach announced that he was going to hand out three team awards. He wanted the boys to vote for one another to decide who would win the award for the Most Valuable Player, the Most Improved and the Most Sportsmanlike. He gave no stipulations—just that the boys could not vote for themselves and that they had to realize that these awards meant a lot because they came not from the coaches or the parents but from the boys themselves.

Wednesday’s game was a tough one. It was the last game of the season and one we would need to win to have any hope at all of making the playoffs. Even then it was a long shot. The boys played well but faded at the end, unable to hold off a stronger offense. Twice Aileen heard boys on our team making fun of Nick, laughing at him or calling him names for his inability to hit. Twice Nick choked back tears and put a brave face on, continuing to cheer for his teammates.

At the end of the game, a loss, the coach handed out the awards. The MVP went to the obvious candidate—a boy who was our best hitter and among our most skilled fielders. The Most Improved went to a boy who had a lot of trouble throwing and catching at the beginning of the season but, who by the end, was hitting regularly, making solid contact; his fielding had improved significantly as well. And then it came time for the Most Sportsmanlike award. I’m not one of those parents who values sportsmanship above all else; I don’t adhere fully to the “as long as we all have fun” philosophy. I figure that if we are going to play sports, we ought to try our hardest and do our best. If I held to the “as long as we all have fun” philosophy in web design, I would not run a successful business! When Nick plays baseball, I expect that he will give it his best effort. Yet sportsmanship matters. It is the award that reflects character more than skill. And as a Christian parent, I value character much more highly than skill.

Sure enough, when the coach announced the winner, he announced Nick’s name. Taunting comments were forgotten, at least for a few minutes, as Nick accepted his trophy and accepted applause from his team, his coaches, and the parents. Though his teammates may have made fun of him at times, they had to acknowledge his love for the game, his loyalty to his team, and his character. As we walked off the field and headed home, Aileen and I told him how proud we were. We told him that we would much rather have a son who shows character—who stands brave in the face of trials and who is encouraging to his friends—than a kid who can hit the ball all over the diamond (though we wouldn’t complain if he could do both!).

It was a tough year for my boy, but a good one in which he showed a lot of growth. As Aileen said afterward, Nick is learning a skill, and that is being encouraging teammate with a good attitude and strong character. And really, that is going to get him a lot further in life than hitting a baseball out of the park. Of course this won’t keep us from spending some time in the batting cages during the off-season…

Last Saturday Aileen and I watched as some friends of ours were married. First was a beautiful ceremony at a historic Baptist church in the heart of the city and this was followed by a lengthy, enjoyable reception at a nearby reception hall. We enjoyed ourselves a lot and rejoice with our friends, praying for God’s blessing on their new marriage.

As I was sitting in the church and as I sat at the reception, eating great food, talking to friends, listening to speeches and just looking around and observing, I began to think back to other weddings I’ve been to. I saw that there have been phases in my life—different ways I’ve enjoyed wedding ceremonies.

Before I was married, I would attend wedding ceremonies and think about my own future wedding. Even before I knew Aileen and had a real ceremony in mind, I would look at the bride and groom and transport myself into the future, just wondering what it would be like to stand up there and to be the one marrying that beautiful bride. What does a groom feel? What would my bride look like? When would my time come?

After my own marriage, weddings became an occasion to reminisce about my own wedding ceremony, now an event in the past. I would sit with Aileen beside me and remember how I felt when I saw her standing in the back of the church and how I felt as I kissed her for the first time as husband and wife. I would feel again those swells of emotion as I remembered that momentous day. And what a day it was.

But now something has changed. Perhaps I am getting old; perhaps life has changed me; probably both. As I watched Alicia walk to the front of the church on the arm of her father and as I saw Nick’s face change as he gazed upon his bride (he later confessed, in a most unromantic way, that he was so excited he almost threw up when he saw her); as I heard Nick’s mother say, “It seems like only yesterday” and as Alicia’s father proclaimed his affection for his daughter and his regard for his new son; as Nick’s brother shared stories from Nick’s childhood and as Alicia’s sister shared memories from their younger years; as Nick and Alicia sang a first song (in place of dancing a first dance); as I observed all of these things, my mind was drawn to my own children, and to my daughters in particular.

My wedding is now ten years in the past. While it remains the best day of my life, already the memories are growing hazy. Once again I am gazing forward rather than backwards. I am gazing to the future and seeing myself not as the groom, but as the father, the man who will stand at the front proclaiming “I do,” not as the man receiving the bride but as the one giving her to another. And it’s almost too much to take. The words, “it seems like yesterday,” haunt me. My daughters are five and two, my son eight. There are so many wasted yesterdays that have already gone by and there are only so many tomorrows left. When it is my turn to give that speech, when I look at my daughter sitting beside her new husband or my son beside his new bride, will I think back to all those yesterdays with fondness, knowing that they were used to the fullest extent? Or will I, like so many fathers, look back with regret at day after wasted yesterday?

May God grant grace…

Yesterday Aileen and I celebrated our tenth anniversary; today we have the privilege of enjoying the wedding of some good friends. We are thrilled for them and are looking forward to spending the day with them and with their friends and family.

I thought about weddings this morning and was reminded of my cousin’s wedding I went to last year. It was a beautiful, classy, simple wedding. While the service was great from beginning to end, I particularly enjoyed the brief sermon which drew a startling contrast between the wisdom of the world and the wisdom of God; between the love of the world and the love of God.

The pastor began by discussing a marriage contract drawn up by Albert Einstein. With his marriage disintegrating and already participating in extra-marital affairs, Einstein made a last-ditch effort to keep his marriage somewhat intact, even if only for the sake of the children. This is the contract he sent to his wife:

A. You will make sure

1. that my clothes and laundry are kept in good order;
2. that I will receive my three meals regularly in my room;
3. that my bedroom and study are kept neat, and especially that my desk is left for my use only.

B. You will renounce all personal relations with me insofar as they are not completely necessary for social reasons. Specifically, you will forego

1. my sitting at home with you;
2. my going out of traveling with you.

C. You will obey the following points in your relations with me:

1. you will not expect any intimacy from me, nor will you reproach me in any way;
2. you will stop talking to me if I request it;
3. you will leave my bedroom or study immediately without protest if I request it.

D. You will undertake not to belittle me in front of our children, either through words or behavior.

His wife eventually agreed to them terms. When he received her response, “Einstein insisted on writing to her again ‘so that you are completely clear about the situation.’ He was prepared to live together again ‘because I don’t want to lose the children and I don’t want them to lose me.’ It was out of the question that he would have a ‘friendly’ relationship with her, but he would aim for a ‘businesslike’ one. ‘The personal aspects much be reduced to a tiny remnant,’ he said. ‘In return, I assure you of proper comportment on my part, such as I would exercise to any woman as a stranger.”

This comes from the pen (and from the heart!) of one of the brightest men the world has ever known. It’s a contract just shocking for its boldness and its polite disgust; its undertones of anger. Just imagine the state of the heart that would write such a thing.

What a contrast to the wisdom of the Bible. What a contrast to Colossians 3:5-17:

Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.

Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

What a contrast between the wisdom of the world and the wisdom of God!

Much of this was posted about a year ago. So if you recognize it, that would be why!

It is a holiday in most parts of Canada today. It is known as the “Civic Holiday” throughout the nation and may have other names assigned locally (such as “Simcoe Day” in Toronto). It is one of those holidays that seems to have been created mostly just for the joy of having a summer day away from the office. We’re not complaining. We’ve decided to make this a quiet day and we have no plans to run to any of the area’s tourist attractions, the only kind of businesses that will be open today.

Last week we actually made a rare venture to one of these spots. Marineland is Canada’s answer to SeaWorld. It combines roller coasters and rides with dolphins and whales. After riding the coasters and ferris wheels you can feed the bears and watch the dolphin and whale shows. (You can buy Corn Pops to feed the bears—throwing it down on them from about 15 feet up. Poor bears) It’s a fair bit of fun as it needs to be when it costs a family of four $160 to get in. I had no intention of riding the roller coasters or going on any of the rides. But we had a young Aussie guy hanging out with us for a few days and he wanted to ride a coaster—the world’s largest steel roller coaster, apparently. I told him I’d walk with him to the start of the ride to gauge how long the wait was going to be. After I walked all the way up there I was feeling too prideful to walk the pathway back, with all the people no doubt laughing at me as if I’d been too scared. So I rode the ride after all and even enjoyed it a bit. But my favorite part of the day was watching those whales and dolphins performing. It is amazing to me that with nothing but a whistle and a hand signal, humans can make whales and dolphins and seals and walruses and just about any other animal do the craziest things.

Throughout the summer those of us who attend Grace Fellowship Church have been enjoying a summer series on the book of James. The pastor’s assistant Julian is preaching in the absence of our pastor who is on sabbatical. In the last couple of weeks we’ve been studying the well-known words of James 3. “For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.” I couldn’t help but think of those words as I watched the whales jump and splash and kiss spectators. And I couldn’t help but think of those whales as we read the words in church yesterday morning. Human ingenuity has taught us to tame even whales so we can climb into a pool and swim with them and so with nothing more than a whistle we can make animals so much vastly bigger and stronger than we are do our bidding. And yet, as we saw those whales obey the command to splash the crowd, we heard swearing and cursing; we saw people lashing out in anger and frustration. Everywhere we looked we saw the evidence that James is exactly right.

Every beast and bird, every reptile and sea creature can be tamed. But that tongue remains a “restless evil, full of deadly poison.”

Today I continue posting memoirs (see here for more), little tidbits of my life experience.

Chaffeys Locks is one of the most beautiful spots in all of Ontario. Perched between two small lakes that are part of the Rideau Lakes system, it is a historic town founded by William Chaffey in 1816. He established a milling business there, at the swift-flowing rapids that separated Indian Lake from Opinicon Lake. Sadly, in 1827 he died of malaria, leaving behind a thriving business. His wife sold the land and businesses to Colonel John By, the man tasked with building the Rideau Canal that would connect Kingston, on the edge of Lake Ontario, with Ottawa, far inland, and beyond that to Montreal. This would avoid the perilous St. Lawrence River route that was constantly patrolled by American ships. In 1831 work was completed on a lock that raises boast almost 11 feet as they pass from one lake to the next.

By the turn of the century, with the canal no longer integral to Canada’s national defense, the lakes became attractive to tourists from local cities. Around mid-century, a man with the last name Challies purchased the better part of an acre of land along the shores of Indian Lake. A short ways away from the existing house he built a log cabin. Family lore has long insisted that the logs for this cabin were pillaged from Ontario’s stocks of telephone poles. Because of the long, beautiful vista looking west over the lake, he called it Sunset Lodge.

I spend my first summer at our cottage at Chaffeys Locks the summer before I am born. Because mom has lost two babies between my older brother and me, she lies on the sofa every afternoon and will not budge until she feels her baby move. The 1976 summer Olympics are on. Someone has brought a television to the cottage and somehow it picks up the CBC broadcast. She lies and watches the broadcast until I oblige and race around her stomach, doing twists and backflips and somersaults. Mom never has long to wait.

I spend every summer of my young life at the cottage. Sometimes we are there for only a week or two and other times we are there for weeks at a stretch. While my family moves with fair frequency and we live in house after house, the cottage remains a constant. Nothing ever changes there. The furniture inside is the furniture that has been there since the day I was born. The neighbors are the neighbors that have lived there for generations. It is always the same.

There is only one summer that I do not want to be there. I have fallen in love with a pretty brown-haired girl. We may not yet have formalized our relationship as boyfriend and girlfriend, but already I can’t imagine being away from her for two weeks. My parents, wanting to have Aileen and I keep a little bit of distance and knowing that we will not have too many more vacations together as a family, demand that I come with them. After two days at the cottage I take matters into my own hands. It is a move of desperation, I suppose. I go looking for things I’m allergic to—dust, pollen and whatever else I can find. I inhale whatever I can and rub it in my eyes. Soon I’m gasping for breath with tears pouring down my cheeks. I explain to my parents that my allergies are just too bad. They agree that I should catch a Greyhound bus back home and I do just that.

In 2005, with the cottage’s three owners (my father, his brother and his sister) scattering to the four winds and no longer able to visit often enough to justify the expenses of maintenance, they decide to sell it. I spend my last summer in Chaffeys Lock, enjoying the beautiful location with my wife and my children, the fifth generation of Challies’ to vacation there. And then I bid a fond farewell to that spot on earth I have come to love more than any other. I leave the property whispering a quiet prayer that when the new earth comes, maybe, just maybe, God would be so gracious as to grant me that same little strip of lakefront property on the shores of Indian Lake.

My children have been behaving a little bit strangely at bedtime in recent days. My son tends to be melancholy in the evenings at the best of times but recently has been getting worried as soon as we tuck him into bed. Two nights ago he was concerned that the Sith were going to attack him (how he even knows who the Sith are is beyond me) and last night he was worried that the Japanese were going to invade Canada (I guess he has been reading about the Second World War). I assured him that the Japanese were not going to invade our country but he replied, “Well, they snuck up on Hawaii without the Americans noticing!” This much is true. His little sister feeds off his worries and almost inevitably ends up creating her own.

It generally happens that, by the time we tuck the children into bed, Aileen and I are ready to be done with them for the day. It may sound harsh, but by the end of a long day, we are more than eager to spend an hour or two by ourselves in the living room before also heading for bed. The last thing we want is a parade of children up and down the stairs and a chorus of cries asking us to come upstairs to mediate one problem or another.

Last night, a good hour after I put my daughter to bed, and as I settled into the couch to continue reading through Iain Murray’s biography of Martyn Lloyd-Jones, I heard a cry of “Daddy!” I went to the bottom of the stairs and asked what she wanted. “Will you come and cuddle me?” she called out. I thought about it for a moment and eventually told her that she should already be asleep and that I was not going to come up and cuddle her. Thankfully she soon drifted off and slept well.

As I thought about it a little bit more I realized that I did not want to cuddle her, at least in part, because I had to. I was looking at it as a “got to” situation: “I’ve got to cuddle her.” And I rebelled. It didn’t take me long to regret my decision. She is going to be with us for so few years and for many of those she will no doubt have no desire to cuddle me. And is it so bad for a five-year old to want a cuddle (or another cuddle) before bed? The more I thought about it, the more this seemed like a “get to” situation: “I get to cuddle her.”

It’s funny the difference made by that one little letter. Throughout my life I’ve struggled with the got to’s and the get to’s. Church can seem like a “got to” obligation, but it is so much sweeter when I face it as if it is a “get to” privilege. My morning devotions can often feel like a “got to” but I enjoy them so much more when I treat them like a “get to.” Rather than having to face the Bible and prayer in the morning, I see them as an enjoyable privilege. It often makes all the difference in a mind as feeble and sinful as mine.

When Abby stumbled down the stairs this morning, squinting through barely-awake eyes, her hair all askew, I grabbed her up in a big hug and settled onto the couch with her for a few minutes of cuddling. It is something I get to do, at least for a few more years. It was my privilege and my pleasure.

It’s funny how Saturdays, a day of fun and relaxation when I was young, have turned into days of busyness. Early in the day I had to put on my coach’s hat to lead my son’s team through a baseball practice. No sooner had we returned home from that than Aileen had to run my daughter to a birthday party. This afternoon will be spent, least in part, preparing lunch for a crowd we’re having back to the house tomorrow. Saturdays are a good day, to be sure, but they sure aren’t quite as empty as I remember them being as a kid.

Here’s a quote I dug up recently. It is a good one and perhaps particularly so on such a busy day. It comes from a letter missionary Robert Moffat wrote to his wife.

It was only yesterday, after laying down the Bible, that I wondered what kind of mind I would have had if I had not the Book of God, the Book containing the astounding idea of ‘from everlasting to everlasting,’ the development of all that is worth knowing … One would think, that as I have critically and, I think, devoutly read and examined every verse, every word in the Bible, some a score of times over, I should not require to open the pages of that unspeakable blessed Book. Alas, for the human memory! I read the Bible today with the same feeling I ever did, like the hungry when seeking food, the thirsty when seeking drink, the bewildered when seeking counsel and the mourner when seeking comfort. Don’t you believe all this? For alas, I read it sometimes as a formal thing, though my heart condemns me afterwards … I am yet astonished at my own ignorance of the Bible!

We are at a strange and unique stage of human history. The combination of the Internet, electronic storage media, the rapid rate of technological progress and the fast-pace of our society, has given us unparalleled access to unparalleled amounts of information. Never in history have people had access to so much information. Consider just a few examples:

Google currently indexes billions upon billions of web pages and adds hundreds of thousands more every day (I was not able to find an exact count, but as of 2005 the page count was already well in excess of 8 billion). Almost every one of those pages contains at least some information. Amazon and other internet retailers sell hundreds of thousands of different books, videos and other sources of information. Newspapers, especially weekend editions, are obscenely large, often totaling hundreds of pages and weighing several pounds. In Spiritual Disciplines For The Christian Life, Don Whitney says that the amount of information contained in just one weekday edition of the New York Times contains more information than a man like Jonathan Edwards would have encountered in his entire life (though I can’t imagine how that is really measurable).

A 2003 study showed that print, film, magnetic, and optical storage media produced about 5 exabytes of new information in 2002. Ninety-two percent of the new information was stored on magnetic media, mostly in hard disks, meaning that much of it was readily available to others. (5 exabytes = 5 billion gigabytes, or the equivalent of 125,000,000 average-sized hard drives. This was a dramatic increase from just two years before when the total amount of new information was a “mere” 1.5 exabytes. “How big is five exabytes? If digitized with full formatting, the seventeen million books in the Library of Congress contain about 136 terabytes of information; five exabytes of information is equivalent in size to the information contained in 37,000 new libraries the size of the Library of Congress book collections.” And that is the total for just one year.

Neil Postman, in a talk entitled “Informing Ourselves To Death” once spoke about the information facing Americans: “In America, there are 260,000 billboards; 11,520 newspapers; 11,556 periodicals; 27,000 video outlets for renting tapes; 362 million tv sets; and over 400 million radios. There are 40,000 new book titles published every year (300,000 world-wide) and every day in America 41 million photographs are taken, and just for the record, over 60 billion pieces of advertising junk mail come into our mail boxes every year. Everything from telegraphy and photography in the 19th century to the silicon chip in the twentieth has amplified the din of information, until matters have reached such proportions today that for the average person, information no longer has any relation to the solution of problems.” That was years ago and since then the amount of information has grown almost exponentially.

All of this points to the fact that we are facing much more information than humans did in days past. In fact, we are facing information overload. We cannot possibly keep up with the amount of information that is coming our way. Yet in many ways it is becoming increasingly important to our lives that we do just that.

Francis Heylighen, in a 1999 article entitled “Change and Information Overload: negative effects” writes about the problem of information overload as a condition that is becoming increasingly destructive in the workforce. He shows that the acceleration of change in our society has caused a dramatic increase in information, and thus an increase in the amount of information the average person needs to know.

The acceleration of change is accompanied by an increase in the information needed to keep up with all these developments. This too leads to psychological, physical and social problems. A world-wide survey (Reuters, 1996) found that two thirds of managers suffer from increased tension and one third from ill-health because of information overload. The psychologist David Lewis, who analysed the findings of this survey, proposed the term “Information Fatigue Syndrome” to describe the resulting symptoms. Other effects of too much information include anxiety, poor decision-making, difficulties in memorizing and remembering, and reduced attention span (Reuters, 1996; Shenk, 1997). These effects merely add to the stress caused by the need to constantly adapt to a changing situation.

Part of the problem is caused by the fact that technological advances have made the retrieval, production and distribution of information so much easier than in earlier periods. This has reduced the natural selection processes which would otherwise have kept all but the most important information from being published. The result is an explosion in often irrelevant, unclear and inaccurate data fragments, making it ever more difficult to see the forest through the trees. This overabundance of low quality information, which Shenk (1997) has called “data smog”, is comparable in its emergence and effects to the pollution of rivers and seas caused by an excess of fertilizers, or to the health problems caused by a diet too rich in calories. The underlying mechanism may be called “overshooting”: because progress has inertia, the movement in a given direction tends to continue even after the need has been satisfied. Whereas information used to be scarce, and having more of it was considered a good thing, it seems that we now have reached the point of saturation, and need to limit our use of it.

His conclusion is that the biggest problem facing our society is not that we are making too little progress, but that we are making too much! I think I know just what he means.

Christians are by no means exempt from the impact of information overload. Consider, for example, a pastor who lived in America in the early nineteenth century. What information was he privy to on a daily basis? If he lived in a large town he may have had access to a newspaper and perhaps even a library. He may have owned a few books, but generally he had very little access to significant amounts of information. He usually rose and went to bed with the sun, he never watched CNN, never listened to the radio, and if he lived outside of the city, may have only rarely had anyone to talk to outside of his family members. But consider a pastor today. We can be sure he has access to hundreds of television channels, hundreds of radio stations, billions of web pages, millions of books, newspapers, magazines and so on. The phone rings constantly, the cell phone interrupts his meetings and the computer beeps that a new email has arrived.

In many ways the nineteenth century pastor had a difficult life compared to what we experience today, yet, in the words of Don Whitney, “On the other hand, he never had to answer a telephone once in his entire lifetime! Despite his inconveniences, his mind, like the psalmist’s, was not as distracted by instant world news, television and radio, portable and car telephones, personal stereos, rapid transportation, junk mail, and so on. Because of these things, it’s harder for us today to concentrate our thoughts, especially on God and Scripture, than it ever has been.”

How can a Christian find time to just sit and think, or sit and memorize or meditate upon Scripture? I know first-hand how difficult it is to remove myself from this information overload, even for a few days or a few hours. I consider it a hardship to be disconnected from email and the internet, and often my job depends on having near-instant access to these technologies. It is such a temptation to begin my day with checking my email and checking my favorite blogs and news sites rather than beginning quietly with God. I have a difficult time turning off the phone and the computer so I can sit and memorize God’s Word, even for just a few minutes at a time. I have succumbed to the information overload, and have loved being a part of it. I have seen the data smog envelop my life. But, as with many other Christians, I know it has affected my spiritual life. While the information we are privy to is in many ways a blessing, in other ways it is a temptation and a curse.

Some days I thank God for the vast amount of information at my disposal. Other days I just wish it would all go away. In my more rational moments I know that this is impossible - the information is going to increase, not decrease. Therefore I am responsible before God to live a spiritually disciplined life in spite of this information overload. I am responsible before Him to carve time out of this information influx so I can just be alone with Him; alone with no telephone, no email, no internet. It is critical to my spiritual well-being that I find ways of removing and properly managing these distractions that keep me from spending the time He and I need to build a thriving, growing relationship.

There was a period in my life where I spent a good bit of time playing computer games. I developed a fascination with certain games and gained a lot of pleasure from playing them. Truth be told, if I was able to find a way of extending my days from 24 to 48 hours I might take up the hobby again. Unfortunately, as it stands now, I just have too many other responsibilities in life to be able to dedicate any significant time to gaming (though occasionally, very occasionally, I can scrape together a couple of hours and play something with my boy, who loves the games as much as I used to).

Of the games I played, my favorites were always strategy games (anyone who has played classics like Civilization or Railroad Tycoon will know the kind of games I’m talking about). Many of these games offered two different modes of play: campaign or sandbox. In campaign mode, the player would typically play an ongoing series of scenarios; finishing one scenario would unlock the next and would increase the options available to him in future scenarios. The campaigns were often very linear, but it was a pleasure conquering one area of the game before moving on to the next. This way of playing would slowly unlock the game’s features, all the while offering measurable goals. Sandbox mode, on the other hand, gave the player free reign to play the game however he liked; there was no formal structure and often no overarching point to the game—the player would have all options available to him and would simply play however he saw fit. Sandbox mode never appealed to me. I needed to conquer rather than just play the game open-ended.

I guess I’ve always been a campaign more than a sandbox kind of person. The desire to overcome and to conquer is built right into me. I love to form and then to pursue a series of defined goals and find great satisfaction in doing so.

Some time ago I found myself growing frustrated with my times of personal devotion. I would take time every morning to read the Bible, to pray, and to (at least some of the time) meditate upon the Word of God. But somehow it all seemed frustrating and almost pointless. There was little way of measuring or even sensing whether I was really benefiting from these times. Was I growing from these times? Was I benefiting? Was I making the best use of these times? I noted that on the few occasions that I was asked to preach, I would find greater joy in studying the Scripture in preparing a sermon than in simply reading it on my own. The goal at the end made a difference. It was around this time that I began to notice the parallel between my devotions and computer gaming. I was doing sandbox devotions! I would simply choose a book of the Bible and read through it, sometimes quickly and sometimes slowly. They were open-ended with little in the way of defined goals and I began to see that this was somehow in opposition to my personality type. It was not enough for me to just “spend time with Jesus.” Instead, I needed to put my devotions within a larger context, a story line that would bring some kind of cohesion.

So I began to change the way I did devotions. I set them within a larger context. I determined I would conquer books of the Bible, one-by-one. Most recently this has taken the form of what I’ve been thinking of as “conquering Genesis.” In this campaign I will be spending at least 90 days studying Genesis, not only reading the book and meditating upon it, but also relying upon good commentaries, theologies and other resources. The plan is to “conquer” the book—to study it until I really and truly understand it, both on a macro and, to some degree, a micro level; to learn how it fits in the sweep of redemptive history; and to learn how it applies to my life here and now. Meanwhile, my prayers will continue to be based around a “concentric circle” model I developed some time ago where each day my prayers have a different focus. I begin the week focusing on myself and in subsequent days focus on immediate family, extended family, church family, neighborhood, nation and world.

What difference has it made? It is still too early to tell, I suppose, but in the weeks or months since I changed my focus from sandbox to campaign, I’ve found a renewed sense of determination and interest in the Bible. Within the context of a campaign rather than a sandbox I am finding that I have found greater enjoyment in reading and studying the Bible and that I am gaining more from it. Suddenly there seems to be a wider story, a greater purpose. I’m out to conquer and somehow that seems to make a difference.