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!!! note "Isaiah 26:3"

Romans 8:24-25 24 For in hope we were saved, but hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what he sees? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we await it eagerly with patient endurance. Q: What does it look like for you to actively but patiently wait for God right now? “What does it look like” often causes me to think about hwo someone else might observe my life in relation to the question. This comes up a lot in theology/fellowship discussions “what does it look like for…” and then we talk about practical things that humans can do that we can see with our eyes. But in my faith journey, as I have seen God’s faithfulness to me and my family, my mind is not immediately going to outward looking things… For example “What does it look like for Christians to live differently than others?” and the answers are always the same “we love our enemies”, “protestant work ethic - Christians should work harder since we work for an audience of One”, “We don’t cuss”… etc. Things that someone…

Romans 8:20-21 20 For the creation has been subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself also will be set free from its servility to decay, into the glorious freedom of the children of God. I honestly do not spend a lot of time thinking about the specifics of god’s fully liberated and healed world… I do get emotional pretty much every time this passage and related ideas come up - freedom from sin and death certainly has specific consequenes for what daily life will look like. But I don’t actually want to think too much about what that life will be and here’s why… It’s like the “don’t meet your heros” mentality… It’s not that they’re actually a let-down, but we build up heros in our head only to realize that they’re just people too… Seems like this is a pretty common Canon event for a child in one way or another… Well let’s swap out my thoughts about my childhood hero with my thoughts about Heaven… What do I reasonabl…

Today I saw a random IP hitting an app server I had open via and it got me thinking that I need to take some precautions against these real world threats. So I’m starting with my blog… basically you can reference Jim Nielson’s Blog on Malicious Traffic and then I more or less put similar files in similar places on this site to waste malicious actors’ time The Files # Note that some are empty, we just need them to exist since this is all for a bit of fun and low-effort internet tomfoolery These get shipped with my site at

1 Peter 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, Q: How does Jesus’ resurrection from death shape your hope for both the future and life today? Coming off the heals of a somewhat tense conversation with a good friend yesterday, this verse and question have brought me to a point of thankfulness to Jesus for this… My friend and I are in the middle of a discussion on the interpretive framework that’s appropriate for Genesis 2-11. Yesterday that convo did get a little tense, but it honestly only got there out of the history of our friendship together. And we could only share the disagreement due to the strong foundation of our friendship. AND EVEN BEYOND THAT we only have this friendship because of Jesus… The punchline for me on this reflection question is that Jesus beat death and invites me into new life - an amazing thing about that…