I have recently finished reading a good book by Timothy Keller called “Counterfeit Gods”. The book says that we all have idols. However, our idols are rarely bad things and almost never are they statues that we bow to or worship. They are usually good things in our life that our heart has made into ultimate things. It is often hard to identify these things because they seem so normal, acceptable, and ordinary. For me, one thing that is an idol of the heart is secure and comfortable circumstances. Another is the security I get from money and my possessions. As I was reading this book, I had and experience with pecans that made it very clear to me how these things are true.

 As I have mentioned previously, I have enjoyed gathering and collecting pecans. I have a big tub that I keep in the garage where I store them. Here is a picture of the tub filled with pecans.

You can see that I have a lot of pecans. However, every few days, I go out and collect some more. One day though, I came home and there was a stranger who was in my front yard picking up my pecans. I couldn’t believe it! What was he doing! Those were my pecans! I didn’t know what to do but I was thinking about talking to him. Fortunately, when he noticed me, he left so there was no confrontation

As I was stewing inside about the thief stealing my pecans, I realized that they weren’t really my pecans. You see, I don’t own this house where we live. There is a church who owns it and they are graciously letting me live here. The pecans really belong to the church. In addition, I already have many more pecans than I could ever eat myself. Why should it bother me if someone else picks up a few pecans here? The reason is that my heart is never satisfied and always wants more. My heart wants to collect a lot of stuff and protect it. It doesn’t matter that the things I collect are not really mine and it doesn’t matter that I already have much more than I need. My heart wants more and more and it doesn’t want anyone else to mess with MY stuff. Ouch.

This is what pecans have taught me about my heart.

My next post will be about pecans again but today I would like to list links to a couple of websites that have some interesting information. I visit both of these sites regularly and find them very useful. Interestingly, both of them currently have information regarding how to answer the big questions in life.

The first site has a question and answer session with Dallas Willard who is a Philosophy professor at USC. He is asked thing like :

Aren’t all religions basically the same?

How can thinking people believe in miracles?

How can God be all good and all powerful given the pain and evil in the world?

What evidence is there for the existence of God?

I think he does a good job on these big questions which cannot be answered easily or concisely. Here is the link to his video response to these questions and others.

http://www.mppc.org/series/can-smart-people-believe-god/smart-people-tough-questions-dallas-willard

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The next link is a blog which I regularly read. The writer will be exchanging a few letters with someone who is a former christian and now writes a popular atheism blog called Common Sense Atheism.  I think that you will find the first round of their exchange of letters quite interesting.

http://www.challies.com/archives/articles/a-letter-to-an-atheist-i.php

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I have really enjoyed having some large pecan trees around our house. First of all, I really like to snack on pecans. They are delicious. We keep a bowl of cracked pecans in the house and we snack on them often.

Secondly, I actually enjoy gathering pecans. They can be a little difficult to see so it is kind of like an Easter egg hunt for adults. One time, I fashioned together a rope with weight on the end and I threw it up into the tree branches and tried to snag it around one of the upper limbs. Then I shook the branches to release many pecans at one time. This is kind of like gathering candy from a broken Pinata.

As you can tell, pecans have meant a lot to me this fall. Tomorrow, I will write about something interesting I learned about myself from the pecans.

You will notice that my last blog entry was in June. I wrote that just a short time after we returned to the U.S. My life was so boring during the summer and our future plans were so uncertain that I took a break from blogging. Well, now I’m back.

Quite a bit has happened since my last post. For one thing, we moved to Garland. Here is a picture of where we live now.

Also,we are planning to return to Greece at the end of January. We will be busy in the next month preparing for that.

The house where we are living has several large pecan trees. I have always loved eating pecans but I have learned more about them in the last month or so. I will be writing my next few posts about pecans.

We have been getting settled in Brenham. A church here has graciously let us stay in the house pictured below for a few months. We have an extra bedroom if you would like to come and visit us. If you come, we will take you to the tour of the Blue Bell factory. We went yesterday and it was very interesting.

The car in the photo is our new ride. We bought it last week. It is a Toyota. It is the sixth different model of Toyota that we have owned.

We have been back in Texas for one week now. It has been busy because we have been getting settled in our house and trying to get our sleep patterns on the new time zone.

I have been thinking about whether or not I will keep writing the blog. I’m not sure whether or not I will have anything interesting to say. Maybe I just won’t write as frequently. We’ll see.

We depart for the U.S. on early Sunday morning, May 31. We will arrive in Austin very late on Sunday night. This week, and the last couple of days in particular, have been filled with packing and saying goodbye to everyone. This picture was taken at a gathering we had with many of the guys who have become our friends through the English class.

This past week at church, there were a few more African songs during worship. Here is one of them. (The audio is not too good so believe me when I say that it is much better in person).

Next Sunday, we will be out of town so this was our last time at Glad Tidings International Fellowship. The following Sunday is the day we fly back to the U.S.

I went on a bike ride yesterday to a new place that I had not been before. I was on a dirt road on the side of a mountain in a fairly secluded place. Fortunately, I brought my camera because I came across a small chapel out in the middle of nowhere. It was clean and in good shape so I know that it is being taken care of. However, since it is in such a remote place, I doubt that it gets much use.

There seems to be a tradition here to place small chapels in remote places. I will research that and find out more details but here is the photo I took.

We go to an International Church that is in English. There is a large group on people from the Philippines and a large group of Africans.

During the worship time, we usually sing songs that we are familiar with. However, sometimes the Africans are responsible for worship and it is REALLY good when that happens.

Here are a couple of clips from the worship today. It is better in person than the video illustrates but you will get the idea.