Tim Keller, at The Veritas Forum at UC Berkeley, discussing belief in God in an age of skepticism:
How do you justify then, belief in God, and especially the most perhaps exclusive of all religious claims – which is Orthodox Christianity which says that Jesus Christ is the one true way to God? How do you justify that kind of claim and how do people with those kinds of exclusive beliefs fit and operate in a free democratic society?
Most of my day has been spent running errands and doing early spring cleaning. I certainly haven’t been looking FORWARD to cleaning this deeply, but it needs to be done, and it will make coming home from Maryland next week much more enjoyable. For about three seconds, I imagined using the Periodic Table of Cleaning. But then I smacked my forehead and things grew clearer.
I will admit to abnormal sniffing as the lemony smell wafting about is addictive and probably also killing me slowly as it fills my lungs. Two funny things that occured are these: Each time I spritzed with Febreeze today, Drew would scream. He didn’t mind the bottle being near him – but he FREAKED out whenever I would spray it. And then each time I used the vacuum, he would scream again at the top of his lungs and I’d look at him and see rivers of tears pouring down his cheeks and splashing onto his belly (because I didn’t put any clothes on him at all today). This grew old quickly as I had much to vacuum and wasn’t enjoying making him wail. So, I brought him into the living room, sat him in his high chair and vacuumed all around him. I figured if he was scared of it, he might as well know what it looked like up close (something to remember when dealing with any type of monster).
Believe it or not, it worked! He was in awe of the vacuum cleaner. I even had to bring the vacuum cleaner over to sit beside us as we ate lunch. Drew has a new friend! And the house is about 80% deep cleaned!
In three weeks, Drew will be one year old. That’s so hard to believe. But what is more surprising is that during this past year, he has not been sick! He hasn’t even had a fever. Only once did he get sniffly, and that was when we were traveling and it appeared to be a case of allergies that went away very quickly. He hasn’t even had a cold! Well, until this weekend. He has fought a cold all weekend and it is finally almost gone.
And since today has been absolutely beautiful, and it’s so warm outside, I thought a nice drive through the country would do wonders for us all. After lunchtime, we three piled into the car and took a drive to see the miniature animals on a farm nearby. I thought Drew would really love to see the animals up close. Especially now that he’s feeling lots better.
But by the time we got there, he was SOUND ASLEEP. So Daniel and Drew stayed in the car while I took my camera and visited the tiny baby goats.
After coming home the other evening from an adventure of ice cream + my parents doting on Drew, Daniel and I came in the front door to a pile of Drew’s toys all over the living room floor. I hadn’t cleaned them up before we left so we plopped Drew in the floor, Daniel rested in the green chair, and I sat down and started putting the toys away.
I was tired. And I kept discovering that I was sitting on more toys than I realized. I finally thought I had all the toys put away when I felt something wet touching my leg. My first thought was that I had missed another toy, apparently one that Drew had been chewing on and perhaps that it was a wet, soggy, stuffed animal-friend. But a quick swipe with my fingers along the carpet proved there wasn’t anything there. I just thought it was my imagination.
I leaned over and put the green box that holds his toys on the shelf, and started to stand up when I felt something cold and wet SLITHER all over my legs.
AUGH AUGH AUGH AUGH AUGH AUGH!
I jumped up as fast as I can, danced really, really, really, really hard and began squealing like a little girl. To be honest, in hindsight, I’m surprised that I did that. If it had been a mouse that caught my eye, I think I would have been more intrigued as to how on earth had he gotten in the house and how on earth was I going to get him out. But it wasn’t a mouse.
As I was dancing, something fell onto the blanket at my feet and it SLITHERED and WIGGLED all the way over to the front door. I scooped Drew up so fast and literally slung him into his high chair and by this time, Daniel (who had been shouting at me to just simply TELL HIM WHAT WAS GOING ON!), ran to the door and saw the slithering thing.
It looked like a small snake to me. And that fact alone sent me over the edge. In one giant leap for mankind, I was on top of the green chair, SCREAMING. And left poor Daniel to fend off the Slithery Snake of Doom.
In a few minutes, we both realized that it was in fact, not a snake but a slimy lizard. Perhaps even a baby lizard. It was about 4-5 inches long and Daniel says he saw legs on it. I don’t know if I can believe it because it wasn’t running. It was wiggling its body back and forth.
It ended up crawling behind Drew’s bookshelf in the living room and Daniel and I got brooms and began pounding the floor to get it to run out the front door. All the while, Drew sat calmly in his high chair, watching us put on this freak show.
FINALLY, it scooted out the front door. To wait until we have our back turned and SNEAK BACK IN.
