ok, so i’m watching this little clip and thinking to myself… # speechless#
how anyone on earth can believe that LIFE came together **randomly** … from a chimp and before that, whatever. Way too much dope.
Month: March 2007
from time to time, you hear stories from the baby’s scan like: “he waved at me” or “she smiled at me” or “J yawned” 🙂 Now for those who are not present at a scan, you probably think… yeah yeah. Emotional parents just reading into things… well, maybe- but see for yourself.
we did it. why not? and besides, it was a saturday. so who needs a PC on a saturday, anyway? 🙂 we survived, but looking back at how people spent their day “off”… yikes. :sigh: ah well. as for us, it was pretty much on the beach all morning. i’d definitely say that was time well spent…
for a .net “junkie”, migrating technology skills can be quite daunting- well, that is for me at least. after too long a delay, i finally decided to start shifting some of my stuff across to Linux. i like the community drive behind Ubuntu and so… here i am. I guess there are lots of reasons for finally getting going with this… thing is, i’ve always enjoyed having an eclectic knowledge of sorts about technology in general and after so long into .net, it feels like i have an ecelectic .net grasp of all things microsoft. not that it’s a bad thing, it’s just not what i _really_ wanted 🙂 anyways, it’s also hard to be technology-agnostic and objectively equipped to recommend a strategy you can actively be involved in when the last line of Java code you wrote was… erm… *then*. and as great as some of the .net stuff is [and 3.0 and upcoming LINQ… oooohhhh] i can’t help but think i could be _selling out_ if i don’t make a decent effort to stay even half-decently current across the board. now if i can get my wireless card to work, i could start blogging from my new desktop 🙂
Categories
Prophecy
depending on many things, this word can mean a lot of things. and if you’re a post-modern western society christian [and even if you’re not, but i dunno since i can only speak from one perspective here], the word prophecy conjurs all sorts of “special” things. being a propet just sounds so much more appealing than being an ordinary [fill-the-blanks].
of course, there’s a lot in the Word about the office of prophecy, and being prophetic. and of course, the idea of “foretelling” comes into the picture and being able to divine the future makes you some sort of prophet. oh-hum. more pagan ideas and too many errors and half-truths to bother engaging with…
Joh 7:37 On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.
Joh 7:38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.'”
Joh 7:39 Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.
Joh 7:40 When they heard these words, some of the people said, “This really is the Prophet.”
Right. So what is a prophet exactly? Both the original Greek and Hebrew usage conveys, quite simply, an inspired speaker. And by extension, a poet. And it’s not unreasonable to imply, given the context, that we’re specifically referring to being inspired _of God_. It does make the above scenario in John suddenly a lot more accessible. It also highlights an important aspect about being a prophet.
Everytime we, as post-modern western society Christians start quoting the Word as a form of encouragment or rebuke, our intention is to provide inspiration, or act out of inspiration. In fact, many times, i have heard [and said this myself]… “i just had a scripture come to mind” and we speak that into the situation. We’re being prophetic. Let’s make sure that what we speak “comes true”. We know what lies in store for false prophets….
There’s another dynamic which i personally struggle with when it comes to this sort of inspiration. There’s practically an expression and piece of wisdom/advice for just about every situation. And they could go advise different things, based on context. There are no formulas with God [read about how Jesus healed blind men. Just about every time, He used a a different method]. So, there being no formulas combined with “a season for everything”, how do you know which advice is meant to be offered as inspired advice?
The answer to that lies in knowing all the possible scenarios. How many times have you debated/prayed about a situation and held two [or more] scriptures against each other to find out which one applies to the situation you’re dealing with? And they can both be applied quite differently with opposite effects. You need more understanding, that is to say, you need to understand more possibilities. But how is that ever going to be possible when the only thing you ever read is Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? And then for measure, you’ll occasssionaly read Acts. Romans is a stretch. Ephesians is a quick read and James is pretty cool. The other 75% of the Word is old-fashioned, right? So we struggle with situations because of our lack of knowledge of God and then wonder why the Spirit isn’t bringing anything into remembrance. There’s nothing there to begin with to remember.
Anyways, back to being prophetic. When we comfort and encourage others, we are more likely to choose from our pool of most recently read [heard] scriptures [the fresh ones] as the ones we want to /need to speak. But what if that well-intentioned advice is the wrong one? You end up giving that person a false hope because what you’ve said doesn’t come true. If any advice, based on God’s Word is just just wishful thinking and convenient, and not led by God’s Spirit, are you not being falsely inspired? Hope delayed kills. And more harm has been done by mainstream psycho-prophets bullying people out of hope and ca$h. No wonder God wanted them stoned at the city gates.
So before you utter words of comfort and rebuke next time, be pretty sure they are inspired Words and not just convenient catch phrases and overused expressions designed to make people hope for something that will never happen. If it is God inspired, it _will_ happen. I say this to myself as well as general commentary to the greater community around me. Why? Because, quite frankly, i am weary of hearing these cliche’s phrases which never do come true. They got me all excited for nothing. And that burns!
And more… whatever you tell someone, are you prepared to put your head on a block for it? if we took this business of being prophetic as seriously as it’s supposed to be, there would be a lot less noise out there- and more of the clarity of God’s Word being spoken.
sometimes, the timing of an idea is more interesting than the actual idea. sometimes both are equally fascinating. viral communication aside, i did find it quite interesting that these 3 posts
- Udi Dahan, Paratechnological value
- Ayende @ Rahien, How are you keeping up with this deluge of technology?
- Sahil Malik, How are you keeping up with this deluge of technology?
should appear within days of each other. and yes, some are inspirations for others. but personally, the timing was interesting since i just started feeling a little overwhelmed by the plethora of technologies available right now.
just within .Net alone, there’s just so much that is going on it’s dang difficult to find the time to investigate the possibilities adequately. and that’s without even considering Ruby. and technologies aside, what about all the tools available within the confines of a “straight-forward” project? and then there’s the existing technology and the way it moves forward. and you really don’t want to specialize _too much_…
*shew*
it’s not just software requirements that suffer the problem of being vague, open-ended and non-descript. anytime we want to express anything we require, we speak a kind of short-hand which is just something we’re terribly used to, and rely on, in everyday communication.
Starting with birth, we express our requirements in one word “Mommy” meaning anything from food to nurturing to play. We grow up expressing one word “food” to mean anything from a sandwich to an ice cream.
What do you feel like eating? Mmm… Food 🙂
So unless we’re particularly motivated, and capable, we express our requirement in sufficient detail so as not to leave any room for interpretation. Like a food craving.
What do you feel like eating? Tuna sandwich on wholewheat with lettuce and onion.
Software requirements fall into the same communication trap. When the product manager has “an” idea of what is required, but is not particularly motivated, or capable, of expressing that requirement, it comes off in short-hand, leaving many gaps in the interpretation. On the other hand, when the same is particulalry motivated, and/or capable, the requirement usually comes through in one detailed description requiring very little formal “Requirements Gathering” interaction. It’s understood with accuracy. Job requirements are much the same.
Everyone wants a developer who:
has at least n years experience, is motivated, can work independantly, can work under pressure, can communicate both technically and commercially, is a team player, delivers on time, understands patterns, knowledge of databases, fill-in-the-technology [related to the position]. thing is, these specs don’t describe what the company actually wants. All that it communicates is that the company [or recruiters] have “an” idea of what they’re looking for and are prepared to shop around and see what they can find. And then very rarely, there are companies who post up their requirements in such a way that it communicates what you really need to know about the going position:
company culture and problem domain. Knowing that up front saves a lot of communicating. i guess that’s why you need to check out the website. but even that just reflects the marketing department’s image of the corporate and not what’s really going on :p