Wow,

6 Months since my last entry... Lots has changed..

New job (Promotion) new camp (Mission trip to Guatemala) new home.

No wonder I haven't been on here in a while.



LOVE PEOPLE AND USE THINGS -
NOT LOVE THINGS AND USE PEOPLE

The Update is Here! The Update is Here!

FINALLY!
Mary is so happy that I have AT LAST, FINALLY, updated my dinosaur blog!
She is so giddy with excitment that she feels like moving all the remaining boxes in our house elsewhere (where? you know, ELSEwhere!).
 
And, I, Frank, have discovered I can email my blog and it will update automatically!
 
(Yes, you can thank me-Mary-for this coolness!).
 
I think I've said enuf!

 

Time Travel ... is it really possible?

I would so so so love to do this... !!

So, where do we start? How about time? What is time? The Oxford English Dictionary defines time as "a limited stretch or space of continued existence”, or “as the interval between two successive events". We glance at our wristwatches and notice the second hand slowly counting the passing seconds. We are in our own time machines: Our hearts are pumping blood, we're breathing; we are existing through time (at least until our own personal time machines seriously malfunction).

What are the possibilities of moving through time at a rate different to one day per day? Common sense tells us that it's all nonsense - time travel is impossible. However, common sense is not always such a good guide. Some hundred years ago common sense said man could never fly; now we travel all over the world.

The commonest objections to time travel are the so-called paradoxes. For example, if we could travel through time, imagine what would happen to a time traveller if he (or she) travelled back in time and killed their own grandmother at birth. In theory the time traveller will therefore never be born, so the journey could never have been made in the first place; but if the journey never occurred then the grandmother would be born which means the time traveller would have been born and could make the journey ... and so on and so on. This is a paradox.There are two possibilities to resolve this paradox.

The first is that the past is totally defined, i.e. everything that has happened or must happen, including the time traveller’s attempt to kill his grandmother, cannot be altered and so nothing will change the course of history. In other words, the time traveller will experience endless "mishaps" in trying to kill their grandmother and will never achieve the murder, thus keeping time (or at least events) intact.

The second possibility is more complex and involves the quantum rules which govern the subatomic level of the universe. Put simply, when the time traveller kills their grandmother they immediately create a new quantum universe, in essence a parallel universe where the young grandmother never existed and where the time traveller is never born. The original universe still remains. Stephen hawking believes he can explain the origin of our universe as a variation of this parallel worlds theme.

Having explained these paradoxes how does one travel through time? The secret is to travel at speeds close to the speed of light. The main text of the web site explains this in greater detail. The obvious problem with travelling very near the speed of light is that as you approach C (the speed of light) time slows down until at C time stops. How can you go faster if time has stopped? The answer involves a complex process called quantum tunnelling and is discussed at length in the main text of this web site. Then once the velocity becomes greater than C time moves backwards and the traveller has entered the realms of negative time.

Now I'll show you what a Nerd I am....

This was tested & proven by Einstein!!!

Albert Einstein was the first to show in his Theory of Relativity that time was not, in fact, a smooth river, constant in its flow, but something that could be affected by motion and by gravity - an effect known as time dilation.

Einstein did not consider time and the three spatial dimensions as being separate, but as being linked to form a four-dimensional quantity known as space-time. Einstein's theories of relativity have been proved by numerous experiments, including one in 1971 in which highly accurate atomic clocks were placed aboard two high-speed aircraft, with another one at an airbase.

Despite staying in the same location, the ground clock was not stationary, since it was travelling at the same rate as the Earth spins. One aircraft flew eastwards from the base, travelling in the rotational direction of the earth and so moving faster than the ground clock, while the other flew westwards and so moved relatively slower. After the flight, the eastbound aircraft's clock had lost time relative to a ground-based atomic clock, while the opposite was true of the westbound aircraft's timepiece. Amazing eh?

Yeah I know, I need to go find a Delorean & look for Doc Brown.. Wish me Luck !!


LOVE PEOPLE AND USE THINGS -
NOT LOVE THINGS AND USE PEOPLE

God of the Morning

So I don't know how many of you HAVEN'T seen LOTR FOTR (Lord of the Rings - Fellowship of the Ring for those not in the know). No I'm NOT that cool my wife & the wackey neighbor girl have learned me on this cool acronym to use...

But there was an awesome moment in the movie when Bilbo Baggin (Not Frodo) said something I could relate with. It goes with being tired & worn out, ask me if you want to know!

Anyhow.. This devotion came ab0out 16 hours later in response to my revealing my connection with that scene.

I hope you enjoy it too...

BTW www.PlanetWisdom.Org is awesome !!!

Humans hadn't been invented, yet, but I would love to have been there. I guess it would have been what we might call Thursday morning of God's creation week -- after he completed the work on Wednesday:

"And God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth." And it was so. God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day." (Genesis 1:14-19)

Can you imagine it? Being there to witness the first morning with a sunrise, as the "morning stars" faded and that burning ball of fire broke over the horizon for the very first time in a brand new world untouched by sin and cynicism and short attention spans? I'd guess that witnessing such beauty would yank the praise for its Creator from the deepest parts of a person.

Again, no humans. God made that point to Job with these sarcastic questions. He also revealed just who was there that morning:

"Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone -- while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?" (Job 38:4-7)

I don't know what that means, but what a sound it must have been -- the morning stars singing together and all the angels shouting for joy at the beauty, craftsmanship, and wisdom of God's incredible act of creation. They witnessed the beginning of "evening and morning," "evening and morning," "evening and morning" that continues to this day.

Of course, the beauty remains, but it has also faded on this sin-soaked, suffering planet. Now, all of creation groans as it waits for the redemption day. (Romans 8) The worst happens again and again and again. And on the darkest of nights, some wish they'd never had a first morning, at all. Job felt that way about his own life:

""May the day of my birth perish. . . May its morning stars become dark; may it wait for daylight in vain and not see the first rays of dawn." (Job 3:3,9)

We can understand why someone who has lost his family would feel that way, but when God showed up to answer Job he didn't let him get away with that wish. God made it clear (with such imaginative poetry) that all the mornings belong to Him. He will not let it be night forever. Wickedness will end.

""Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place, that it might take the earth by the edges and shake the wicked out of it? The earth takes shape like clay under a seal; its features stand out like those of a garment." (Job 38:12-14)

We still praise God in the morning, even on the painful and mundane ones. We praise him because he created each day new. And we praise him because each morning is a reminder that one day night will end forever.

"Sing to the LORD, you saints of his; praise his holy name. For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime; weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning." (Psalm 30:4-5)

Thank you Mary, Mark & John

LOVE PEOPLE AND USE THINGS -
NOT LOVE THINGS AND USE PEOPLE

Parachutes (Who has yours?)

Charles Plumb was a US Navy jet pilot in Vietnam . After 75
combat missions, his plane was destroyed by a surface-to-air missile. Plumb ejected and parachuted into enemy hands. He was captured and spent 6 years in a communist Vietnamese prison. He survived the ordeal and now lectures on lessons learned from that experience!




One day, when Plumb and his wife were sitting in a restaurant, a man at another table came up and said, " You're Plumb! You flew jet fighters in Vietnam from the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk . You were shot down!"





"How in the world did you know that?" asked Plumb.




"I packed your parachute," the man replied. Plumb gasped in surprise and gratitude. The man pumped his hand and said, "I guess it worked!" Plumb assur ed him, "It sure did. If your chute hadn't worked, I wouldn't be here today."





Plumb couldn't sleep that night, thinking about that man. Plumb says, "I kept wondering what he had looked like in a Navy uniform: a white hat; a bib in the back; and bell-bottom trousers. I wonder how many times I might have seen him and not even said 'Good morning, how are you?' or anything because, you see, I was a fighter pilot and he was just a sailor." Plumb thought of the many hours the sailor had spent at a long wooden table in the bowels of the ship, carefully weaving the shrouds and folding the silks of each chute, holding in his hands each time the fate of someone he didn't know.
Now, Plumb asks his audience, "Who's packing your parachute?" Everyone has someone who provides what they need to make it through the day. He also points out that he needed many kinds of parachutes when his plane was shot down over enemy territory -- he needed his physical parachute, his mental parachute, his emotional parachut e, and his spiritual parachute. He called on all these supports before reaching safety.


Sometimes in the daily challenges that life gives us, we miss what is really important. We may fail to say hello, please, or thank you, congratulate someone on something wonderful that has happened to them, give a compliment, or just do something nice for no reason. As you go through this week, this month, this year, recognize people who pack your parachutes.

LOVE PEOPLE AND USE THINGS -
NOT LOVE THINGS AND USE PEOPLE