Timothy's Thoughts

The morning started off pretty an sunny, but by the afternoon there was a chill in the air and the sun was hidden behind the clouds. While I was in Missouri for the Christmas holiday, we spent a few hours at Mingo National Wildlife Refuge, near Puxico, Missouri. In the video you can see some of the wildlife we saw. We saw an armadillo, about twenty or thirty deer, hundreds of ducks, and other things. We saw what I believe is a young bald eagle. I even got to see him fly. I saw a turkey in flight also, but I didn't get as good of a picture of him. I did manage to get video of him and his hundreds of brothers sitting in the tree tops, roosting for the night. A great blue herin was eating when I filmed him. It started raining before we left.

I don't know when I will post again. I am officially on vacation until after the first of the year. During part of that time I will be in the wilderness where the Internet is more of a concept than a reality. So, I wish you well until we meet again. I hope that you have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

One thing I have often struggled with is my own concept of right and wrong versus other people's concept of right and wrong. They seldom agree completely. It seems simple enough when we can go to the Bible and find a clear understanding, but what about those times when it seems the only thing we find to help us come to an understanding is the statement "honor thy father and mother?" So often, our concept of right and wrong is based on what our parents have taught us. What are we to do when what one person learned as a child is different from what another learned as a child and it isn't clear which is right?

Sometimes you get to feel like an expert. Today I received two e-mail messages from people I don't know. As far as I know, these two people do not know each other and yet they asked questions about the same subject. Really, the only reason these people had for contacting me was because I was fairly vocal about the subject several months ago and they were interested in further input. I was happy to be able to respond to their inquiery, but I was a little surprised that they contacted me.

I have been giving some thought to writing that talks about and engages the readers emotions. It occurs to me that one of the emotions we see the most in modern works of literature is lust. Many of the books that pass as romance novels are not about love at all but about how two characters can both get what they want. Some of the more graphic scenes fail to show love between the two characters. Instead, they engage the reader by evoking feelings of lust. The reader desires to have what the character is getting. Even the covers on some novels are designed to encourage people to experience lust. We know that lust results in sin and sin results in death (James 1:15). I wonder, does God look at the work of those who produce these novels and record the death they have to their credit?

One thing I don't like is when a website has a broken back button. If I go up and click "Back" then I want the browser to go back to the previous page. What I don't want is for the page I am on to refresh so I can see the content once more. In most cases, the content isn't worth seeing anyway. There are a few things that will break the back button. Some site owners do this on purpose, I suppose they are so afraid that site visitors will not return that they try to keep them as long as they can. The other thing that will break a back button is a lot of this kitsch that we see on so many websites. Some of the third party web applications will cause the page to reload. The only solution for that is to refuse to use those third party web applications. The developers would probably find a solution for the problem if people refused to use their stuff because of it. An occassional exception is okay, but a broken back botton helps nothing and convinces people to s...

Words are important. God used words to create the world. He could have waved a wand and everything would have known were to go, but God used words. Still, there are times when words fail us. Words can teach, but people often learn more from actions than what they learn from what we say.