Timothy's Thoughts

W hat is love? I remember a teacher in grade school asking that question. I remember it appearing to be something that wasn’t very clear and I can’t say that it’s much clearer now. Some people say love is a feeling. Some people say that love is sexual desire. There are many things that people say love is. The Bible says that God is love. But it also shows love to be an action. We are commanded, for example, to love our neighbor as ourselves. That doesn’t mean that we always have to like our neighbor as much as we like ourselves. What it does mean is that we are to do those things that will benefit our neighbor. The Bible tells husbands to love their wives like Christ loved the church. In other words, husbands ought to be willing to die to save their wives. That’s not just when a husband feels loving toward his wife, that’s something he’s supposed to be willing to do, no matter what. Most husbands fail in that regard, but that’s the example Christ gave. I’ve kind of been trying to wra...

S ometimes, when you read the Bible, you miss some things, but then they come back as shining jewels when you look at the passage later. My pastor pointed out a verse on Sunday that I hadn’t paid much attention to before. It isn’t that I haven’t read it, I just hadn’t noticed it. The verse is Galatians 6:6. In the KJV it reads, “Let him that is taught in the word communicate unto him that teacheth in all good things.” In the printed KJ21 that I took to church with me it reads, “Let him that is taught in the Word minister unto him that teacheth, in all good things.” The KJ21 version available on Bible Gateway reads, “Let him that is taught in the Word share with him that teacheth, in all good things.” (Don’t ask me why Bible Gateway’s copy of the KJ21 doesn’t match the printed version.) But whether you translate the word as communicate, share, or minister, the original word conveys the idea of someone coming along side and assisting another person. In other words, the people who are ta...

D o you believe miracles can still happen? Most Christians would probably say yes. They wouldn’t be wrong because the same God who worked miracles in the past is more than capable of working miracles now. But some people have the idea that God should just show up when they have a need, wave his hands and poof, all their troubles are gone. Some people might even struggle with their faith when he doesn’t. That’s a shame because, when you think about it, which is more amazing? That the God who created the Universe could speak and work a miracle or that God could provide for a person’s needs without the use of a miracle? I’m sure you can guess that I think it is the latter. In books and movies, a wizard can show up on the scene when things are bleak, say some magic words and crush the enemy with a mountain. That seems like an amazing power, but it’s nothing compared to God’s ability to use the actions of our enemies to our benefit.

P lants don't like coffee, not much anyway. It's poison to their leaves. To the plant I gave too much coffee: I wish you a speedy recovery.

I feel sorry for the people in heaven. It’s not because I think heaven’s a bad place or because they’re separated from their loved ones who are still here. But as I was eating a plum the other day (one of the best I’ve ever had), I got to thinking about the tree of life and how it has fruit for every month. And I got to thinking about how good that fruit must taste and how that no matter how good fruit may taste here, it will be better in heaven. And then I thought about how the people in heaven are already there beneath the shade of that beautiful tree. I thought to myself, “they must be enjoying that fruit.” But then I realized, that can’t be the case; they don’t have their bodies yet. So I feel sorry for the people in heaven. There they are, beneath the oldest tree in the Universe, the granddaddy of them all, the tree that other trees can only imitate, and they can’t eat the fruit. Not being there to know what it’s like, that seems cruel to me. So I feel sorry for the people in ...

A lright authors, do you read your reviews? I’ve heard other authors say they don’t and before now, I’ve kind of dismissed that as silly, since reviews are part of how we get feedback from our readers, but I may have been wrong. Someone asked me a question that caused me to look for one of my books on www.BN.com. While there I happened to see that someone had written a review of the book. It wasn’t a bad review, but it wasn’t as good as I might have liked. I understand where the reviewer was coming from, but looking back at the my original goals for the book, I’m not sure I could have produced a book to his satisfaction and met those goals. Here’s the thing: I look at the review on Sunday evening. Sunday was an amazing day. I hadn’t been scheduled to teach our Sunday school class that day, but I got to teach anyway. We have five visitors in our Sunday school class and many more in church. We learned about a member of our youth group accepting Christ while they were on mission trip...

A reader of this blog recently asked me to address the question, “What is it that separates the 1% from the 99%, how does an author by choice, cross over that line?” It was too interesting of a question to pass up, but it’s one that doesn’t have an easy answer. Another way of wording the question is “What’s the magic fairy dust that gets authors published?” I think if someone knew what the magic fairy dust was, they would’ve bottled it up a long time ago and they would be selling it on eBay. But look around; there are people more qualified to answer the question than me who have some good suggestions on what an author needs to do to get published—write better, read agent blogs, attend conferences, write better query letters—but most of the people who do those things still aren’t published. By all means, do those things, but there has to be something more if we’re going to be intentional about crossing the line into the 1%. And what of the self-published authors? That’s actually where ...

W hen I was in college, I decided I would buy a new tool every month. Some I didn't need. Some I did. But now I'm glad I have them and it didn't really cost me that much every month. I don't do that anymore. If I did, I probably wouldn't have room for all my tools. Now I buy tools when I need them, but I've been thinking that it might be good to start something new. Instead of buying a tool every month, I think perhaps it would be good to make an improvement to the house every month. It doesn't have to be something big. This month's improvement was that I put a nicer flush handle on one of the toilets. I'm just thinking that instead of letting the house get in more and more disrepair over time, every month I could fix something or make something better and it will improve over time.

I t's interesting to hear people's concept of heaven. I've got to admit that I wish I knew what we're going to do there and what life will be like there. The Bible gives us some idea, but some people either ignore what it says or they read more into what it says than I think is really there. One idea that people have is that we're going to be spirit beings in heaven. The Stargate television series had this view of heaven with the concept of the Ancients' ascension. Some people have the idea that as spirit beings we'll be in a state of eternal bliss. And even if that isn't how people view heaven, it amazes me that some people think it is obvious that there will be no time in heaven. Granted, I don't have a complete understanding of heaven, but I don't find any of this to be obvious. I realize the Bible uses the phrase "that there should be time no longer" (Revelation 10:6), but the Bible also tells us that we will have resurrected b...

Y esterday, I opened up Google Reader, looked at all the unread posts and decided not to read them. These days, we get so much information coming at us and lately I've had more than I can handle. In school, I remember reading about a battle that was fought after the end of a war. It's sad to think that people died for no reason, but sometimes I wonder if we wouldn't be better off if information too longer to come to us, like it did back then. For all the information we have, most of us are just as powerless as we ever were. My brain is full and it needs time to rest.

I had this weekend off. I needed the time away from work because we've been working a project that is mentally draining. I needed some time to do something other than look at computer code from morning til night. So what did I do this weekend? I looked at computer code from morning til night. There's a tool that I use that allows for the development of plugins to extend its capability. There's a feature that I've wished the tool had for a long time, so I decided to try adding it. It seemed like a simple task. I thought I would just mess with it for a few hours and see where I got. I don't know what I was thinking. I ran into problem after problem. The first problem was in figuring out how to get a plugin to work in the first place. There is documentation online about how to do it and I found a simple "Hello World" example, so I thought it would be easy. Unfortunately, the tool and the documentation are not in sync. So after several hours of messing ...

I ’ve been reading a book titled Code Complete . It’s the kind of book that if you write any computer code at all, from a simple webpage to a large software project, you ought to read. For the rest of you, you would find if very dull. But as I was reading it I thought about the similarity between software development and writing a novel. There is a debate, if you will, among novelists between the plotters and the pantsers. The plotters say you ought to outline the book first, then begin writing. The pantsers just grab a few interesting characters and jump right into writing. Which is better? One of the things Steve McConnell talks about in Code Complete is that no one ever develops software completely using a top down or a bottom up approach. The top down approach is similar to what plotters do, in that you start at a very high level of abstraction and subdivide it over and over until you reach the point where it is manageable chunks. The bottom up approach starts with the parts and...

T ears come. All throughout life they come. There’s always something to make us sad. Friends die. Plans fall through. Wishes are unfulfilled. That’s life. And yet, some people have this idea that if we really wanted what God wants then we would never cry. That sounds spiritual, but I’m afraid it is unrealistic. Even Jesus wept. He knew how things would turn out and he still wept. Sadness is part of life, so while we don’t like to be sad, let’s not something we can avoid. The fact is, this world is cursed. People die. Bad things happen. We desire things we can’t have. The end result is that tears come. But I think there’s more to it than that. God could wipe away our tears now, rather than later, but we learn from times of sadness. It is during the sad times that we learn to depend upon God. If things always went the way we wanted, we wouldn’t understand how much we need God. So he allows bad things to happen and we learn from those things. We may not understand why some things happen...

I ’m shocked sometimes by how lax Christians are concerning right and wrong these days. Now I realize that the Bible doesn’t out and out prohibit the consumption of alcohol, but the other day I was listening to a young man that I believe to be a Christian who was talking about plans for his brother’s bachelor party. He mentioned one idea which is what is called a “Grand Slam.” You know, of course, that a Grand Slam is a menu item at Denny’s, but this Grand Slam was quite different. The idea is that you go from bar to bar and eventually end up at Denny’s where you eat a Grand Slam, but you aren’t supposed to remember any of the bars you went to. I wasn’t in the conversation, but as I listened from some distance away, I couldn’t imagine why anyone would consider that fun. What’s the point if you’re so wasted that you don’t remember what you did? Not only that, but consuming that much alcohol is dangerous. Whatever your thoughts on Christians drinking alcohol, the Bible makes it very ...

I ’ve been working on a story lately. I love the concept and I think it will do well on the back cover. But I have a problem. I haven’t settled on the motive of one of the main characters. Unfortunately, that motive is central to the story. It not only drives the story, it drives the motives of some of the other characters. It defines who they are as characters, so the choices I make there could change who they are significantly. In this case, the character did something as a teenager that most of us wouldn’t do. That’s not to say that we might not have considered it, but if we’d gone through with it we would’ve come to our senses and realized that we’d made a bad choice. We would have turned around and undid what we did. But in this story, the character doesn’t attempt to undo it for fifteen years. She’s committed to what she has done. That means her motive has to survive even after she’s had a while to think about it. If I can find a great motive, I think this story will be good....

A t the beginning of every story, there is a point at which we realize that if something doesn’t change, the hero will die. Often, this is a figurative kind of death more than a literal death, but the hero also comes to the realization and makes the necessary change that takes us into the meat of the story. That makes for interesting storytelling, but so often we find that life isn’t that way. How often do we come to that point in life where we feel we have the weight of the world on our shoulders and if something doesn’t change we’ll surely die under the load. But unlike the heroes of our stories, we don’t often have the option of choosing to change things. It will surely kill us. But the thing about real life is that when you come to the realization that we’re on the verge of death and it is hopeless, we also come to the realization that death isn’t an option. Oh, death will come soon enough, but no matter how much junk life dumps on you, you don’t have the option of giving up. No ...