With Thanksgiving: A Prime Dinner Out at Chadwick’s

We just got back from Chadwick’s restaurant in Old Town Alexandria. Hands down, I had the best meal out I have had in a long time.

I went ahead and splurged on one of the specials (but only $19.95, nevertheless): a queen’s cut of prime rib, complete with horseradish sauce, vegetables, and a baked potato. The prime rib was so unbelievably scrumptious and moist, and made even better when dipped in the au jus. And the horseradish sauce was thick with a sharp bite that was absolutely awesome. I topped it all off with a very good draft beer, even if the name wasn’t so desirable: Dead Guy Ale. I actually bought a second, it went so well with the prime rib. It was smooth and somewhat dark, slightly bitter — in the way the truly good beers are — and had a hint of, what was it, blackberry, perhaps? Now that I think of it, it was probably the malt. Anyway, a true treat. And I had the best of company eating with me. My wonderful wife and two delightful children. All in all, a most blessed night for a most undeserving man.

How can I not rejoice in the Lord my God for the bountiful blessings He continues to pour on me?! Thank you, dear God, for the butcher and the cook, the brewer and the wait staff, my wife and my kids, and the sweetness of your grace. Amen.

Jason Stark: The Most Potent Line-Ups in Baseball

A good pair of articles from Jason Stark on the most potent line-ups in baseball:

Jim Caple’s Humorous Report from Spring Training

Found a funny article “from” spring training written by Jim Caple today at ESPN’s Page Two: “News, notes and Barry’s heads”

Ah, it is good to have the boys of summer back!

Baptism “Jam”: What I Didn’t Say

In my previous post, I recounted my toast on the occasion of Samuel and Maggie’s baptisms. Like jelly or jam, though, there is so much more of God’s sweetness to be found in baptism than I had the time to include in my toast. Prior to Sunday, I had outlined several other points I thought worth making. However, due to time constraints and the fact that I was unable to smooth them out and incorporate them into the rest of my remarks to my satisfaction, I decided to drop them from my outline. Thankfully, though, I have a blog! What follows are some of those other comments — admittedly rough in spots — with which I intended to mark Samuel and Maggie’s baptisms:

… Though this is a special occasion for our family, the occasion itself is not simply a private matter — it is a most public and corporate affair, and so it is most appropriate that we celebrate this together with you, our dear friends and family.

In earlier times, families would celebrate special occasions such as weddings and baptisms with feasts that would last for days. These were not closed feasts, but feasts open to much of the larger community. Today is immensely special to me and my family. And though we can’t keep you for more than a few hours, today is made much more special because you are all here with us.

Though today is a big day for Samuel and Maggie, their baptisms are not just about them. The day is not just about Bonnie and I. That is because the sacrament of baptism is also about the Church Catholic.

It is true that God meets each of us individually. He desires, for instance, that not one of His sheep be lost. But it is also true that He redeems a People. Jesus calls forth His bride, the Church.

Jesus, of course, is not a polygamist. He did not betroth Himself to myriads of individual believers. The Church as one body is His bride. In a very real sense, then, we are saved corporately. Bonnie and I, Samuel and Maggie, and believers everywhere through all time are merely part of His body.

You see, there is a reason that we don’t baptize our selves in the bathtub, or each other behind closed doors. Rather, believers and their children are baptized in church — and by the church. Such is the case today with Samuel and Maggie.

In this way we are all — Maggie and Samuel included — made one people, one bride of Christ, just as there is “one Lord, one faith, one baptism for the remission of sins.” The Old Testament nation of Israel was saved together through water. The New Israel, the Holy Church, is saved through those same waters.

Today marks the beginning of Samuel and Maggie’s lives as part of the Church — both the Church Universal and the church as it is locally manifest in Alexandria Presbyterian. And just as God’s presence continued to feed and nurture His people in the Old Testament (1 Corinthians 10:1-4), Samuel and Maggie must continue to feed on Christ by faith, and seek by that same faith sanctification through the Holy Spirit as He works through Christ’s body.

The task set before Bonnie and I primarily, and secondarily before our brothers and sisters in Christ gathered here and at Alexandria Presbyterian, is to raise Samuel and Maggie in the fear and admonition of the Lord, and to constantly remind them of the great hope they have in Christ, as represented in their baptisms. We are to present to them the warnings of God to those who would separate themselves from Christ. But we are also to remind them of the promises of God, sealed as they are in the sacrament of baptism, to His covenant children.

Thank you for your help in this holy task. May God bless and sustain us as we boldly follow Him and make Christ and His bride known to Samuel and Maggie throughout their lives. …

A Toast: On the Occasion of Samuel and Maggie’s Baptism

The following are the comments and the toast I delivered (more or less — my delivery wasn’t the best!) to our gathered friends and family at South Austin Grill in Alexandria, Virginia following the baptisms of Samuel and Maggie on Sunday, February 21:

A week or so ago, I was talking with Samuel and Maggie, as I often do, about how much God loves us.

At one point I asked Samuel, “How do you know Jesus loves you?”

I expected him to say, “The Bible tells me so,” because Samuel has the song largely memorized and that is the answer I have been teaching him.

But Samuel proved wiser than I. He said, “Because Jesus baptizes me.”

“That’s right!” I replied.

As God’s covenant people, we are called — Bonnie, myself, Samuel, Maggie, and all Christians everywhere — to look back in faith to our baptisms as a proof that Jesus loves us. This is a great gift from God — to provide through the Holy Spirit assurance of salvation to the saints — to encourage us to persevere in our walks of faith.

What a wonderful testimony, I thought, that Samuel was already looking forward in faith to his baptism. Well, that day has arrived. Now, by God’s grace, we trust that Samuel and Maggie shall always look back to their baptisms as proof that God loves them.

I think there are a couple lessons here for all of us.

First, this day is first and foremost about God, who calls forth His people, the Church, through the waters of baptism. Samuel didn’t say, “I’m being baptized for Jesus.” He said, “Jesus baptizes me.” The primary subject of the sentence is rightly the Lord, and it is God who acts. The second lesson is this: through our children, the Lord teaches each of us — who are often doubtful of God’s promises and prideful in ourselves — to emulate the faith of our littlest ones.

Bonnie and I want to thank each of you for joining us today to celebrate the baptisms of Samuel and Maggie. We couldn’t imagine this day without you being a part of it. Today is made much more special to us because you are all here with us. Thank you.

And so, please raise your glasses with me, and let us joyfully drink -

to the Lord of the Harvest, may He be most glorified;

to Samuel and Maggie, may you always know and treasure God’s mercy and grace;

and to our friends and family, may God bless and keep you.

May the Spud be with You!

Found this at ABCnews.com today and couldn’t resist posting it:

“When Mr. Potato Head falls to the ‘dark side,’ you get Hasbro’s Darth Tater — complete with lots of silly parts including lightsaber and helmet. The sci-fi spud for kids and ‘Star Wars’ fans aged 2 and up will be available this spring for about $8.” 

Economic Morons, or Why Lefties Hate Walmart

This is the kind of stuff that drives me nuts. I just read the following from a liberal columnist at the Washington Post:

Wal-Mart hires its smock-clad “associates” at $7.50 to $9 an hour in an expensive metropolitan area such as Washington, less in smaller towns. It charges them so much for health insurance that only about half can afford it. If you’re surviving on public benefits, getting hired at Wal-Mart doesn’t automatically get you back on your feet. (”The Price of Low Prices” by Eugene Robinson)

Now, what is the key word there that Robinson and so many Walmart-haters miss? These workers were “hired.” Got that? No one forces them to work at Walmart. They freely choose to work there because they receive a better deal at Walmart than they would have elsewhere. $7.50 to $9.00 an hour is better than less or nothing at all. Who does Walmart hire? Unskilled labor, the handicapped, seniors looking for additional income, students trying to pay their way through school — all people who are unattractive to other industries or who would not attract as large an employee benefit package from other work options. This is a net benefit, folks — a bona fied good. And we the consumer benefit from the lower prices and increased choices that Walmart brings to us directly — and indirectly through the competitive pressures they place on other outlets. Everyone’s money thus goes further, giving us greater freedom and material quality of life.

The nonsense spouted by the Walmart-haters is of the same flim-flam we hear from the anti-”sweatshop” crowd. They rail against the lower wages these foreign workers receive, but conveniently forget that they freely go to work there because it is a better deal than the slums they previously were forced to work in.

I am consistently amazed at the way bleeding-heart liberals care so little for the little people here and abroad who benefit from the likes of Walmart, Nike, and others. The explanation, I believe, is that they are idealogues — more concerned with proselytizing their twin socialist gospels of wage and price controls than the well-being of flesh and blood people.

Out of the mouths of babes … Faith!

There are many reasons for the biblical practice of infant baptism. Chief among them is the covenant status of the children of believers — that is, children should be baptized in recognition of the fact that they are covenantally holy (as opposed to being baptized in order to become holy; i.e. the sacerdotalist approach).

This morning, as Bonnie was driving me to work, I was talking with Samuel about how much God loves us, and how much Samuel’s Sunday School teacher, Deborah, loves him, and how much our pastor, Tom Holliday, loves Samuel and his sister Maggie, etc.

At one point I asked Samuel, “How do you know Jesus loves you?”

I expected him to say, “The Bible tells me so,” as Samuel has the song largely memorized and on past occassions I had reminded him of that answer when I had asked him such questions.

But Samuel proved wiser than I when he responded, “Because Jesus baptizes me.”

“That’s right!” I replied in utter amazement.

Two Sundays from now, February 20, 2005, Samuel and Maggie will be baptized into Christ by our pastor at Alexandria Presbyterian Church. As God’s covenant people, we are called — Bonnie, myself, Samuel, Maggie, and all Christians everywhere — to look back on faith to our baptisms as a proof that Jesus loves us. This is a great gift from God — to provide through the Holy Spirit assurance of salvation to the saints. It is a means He uses to encourage us to persevere in our walks of faith as we joyfully endure trials, persecution, and suffering for His sake.

What a wonderful testimony that Samuel is already looking forward in faith to his baptism. By God’s grace and through Bonnie’s and my faith in His promises, we trust Samuel and Maggie shall always look back on their baptisms as proof that God loves them.

This is nothing less than the faith of Abraham, and the faith that the prophets and the apostles spoke of:

Then God said to Abraham, “As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come. This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep … You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you.”
~Genesis 17:9-11

“My servant David shall be king over them, and they shall all have one shepherd. They shall walk in my rules and be careful to obey my statutes. They shall dwell in the land that I gave to my servant Jacob, where your fathers lived. They and their children and their children’s children shall dwell there forever, and David my servant shall be their prince forever. I will make a covenant of peace with them. It shall be an everlasting covenant with them. And I will set them in their land and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in their midst forevermore.”
~Ezekiel 37:24-26

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.
~1 Peter 3:18-22

Jesus called to Himself the children of believers, because, theologically-speaking, they are covenantally holy and “to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.” And, through our children, the Lord teaches us overly doubtful and prideful believers to emulate their faith (Matthew 18:2-4).

A Primer on Eschatology

Doug Wilson posted a helpful little primer on eschatology today over at his blog (Blog and Mablog) for those of us — like myself- who sometimes get confused by all the theories and terms floating around:

“Primer on Eschatology 1″

Federalism replaced by one-size-fits-all decrees from above

Various local municipalities in recent years have found their right to determine standards of public decency within their own jurisdictions superceded by federal judges. For instance, in Loudoun County, Virginia - not too far from my office - a federal judge struck down a local policy mandating installation of Internet filtering software on all public library computer terminals in order to protect children from viewing pornographic material at taxpayer expense.

Through a stretched interpretation of free speech rights that would have surprised James Madison, the Ninth and Tenth Amendments’ provisions guaranteeing a federal system of government and the division of powers between the national and state government have been - in this instance and in many others - relegated to the trash bin.

The above incident is the latest in an occasional series looking at concrete examples of how our fundamental rights as Americans — those specifically guaranteed to us through the Bill of Rights — are being steadily eroded. These examples were found as a result of research I’ve conducted in support of my role as Development Manager for Donor Relations at the Bill of Rights Institute, which includes writing informational letters and solicitations to our supporters.