Crumpled Notebook

John 15:2

“Every branch of mine that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.”

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I spent a long time not pruning my branches, whether they were bearing fruit or not. It’s easy to see when you need to prune branches that aren’t bearing fruit. Yet, it’s so much more rewarding to prune branches that are bearing fruit if they are getting in the way of bearing more fruit. Lately I’ve tried to start pruning those branches, both kinds. I could go on about some of the ways I’ve pruned branches that were and weren’t bearing fruit, but I won’t do that here to sake of space, and so I don’t become critical of things I had to prune. If you’d like to know, you can email me. Otherwise, just take it for what it’s worth, a statement about how rewarding it is to try and follow God’s will instead of my own. Perhaps there will be even more pruning going on soon. I hope so.

This was something written by one of our teens from church.

Salvation
by Omar Alexander Ortiz

Salvation is meant for sinners, and salvation is granted to those who ask for it. I just want everyone here to know that it’s never too late to see salvation. Jesus Christ will grant you salvation anytime–you just have to ask him. You don’t have to clean up your life first either. Jesus Christ doesn’t care; he just wants you to be saved! So don’t ever think it’s too late for you because it’s never too late for anyone. After you receive salvation, you will still be yourself, still be restless sometimes, and afraid. But don’t worry–you’ve got Jesus Christ on your side, and no matter what, he will never leave you for dead. He’ll listen to you anytime of the day. So don’t be afraid. Just go to Him, He’ll be waiting for you. Also get the Holy Spirit. Let us fill our hearts with Jesus. He is the only one that can grant salvation!

I noticed this today as I was using eBible.com (Yes, it’s still in Beta. No, I don’t have anymore invites). It’s the Parallel feature. I don’t know if its new, or if I just noticed it today for the first time. At any rate, you can look at two different translations right next to each other (parallel) at the same time. It would be quiet a good study guide to understand the literal translations versus the paraphrased ones. Here’s what it looks like:

I had screenshots in my other eBible review, but accidently deleted some files off my server the other night and lost them. I could re-do it, but there are plenty of other places that have screenshots available.

I watched this video today, thanks to "http://beyondthepixels.com">Jeff. Very interesting stuff. Made
me kind of sick actually to actually consider the possibility. It’s
one video but in two different parts. If you want to watch it all
together, check it out "http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8260059923762628848&q=loose+change">
here on Google Video. I used "http://youtube.com">YouTube because not everyone has the
Google Video player installed. Regardless of what you think about
9/11 (I’ve never had too much an opinion), the video makes some
valid points, especially about the Pentagon crash, which I always
seemed to have the most trouble making sense of. Here’s the
website about the
video as well. (click more to see)

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I found out about this new website earlier this week called eBible. It’s “A new approach to the Bible. Easy to use, understand and share the goodness.” I’ve used BibleGateway primarily the past couple of years for my online Bible resources, and I like it, but I wanted to give this a try since it uses AJAX and also seems a lot less cluttered. Right now the site is in Beta, so you have to have an invite to join in on the fun. Once you are a member, you get one invite to send to a friend (I’ve already given mine away).

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