I worked a couple extra hours today, because I knew Christina would be home late. After 10 hours at the desk, I needed some fresh air, so I grabbed some Bible study material and went out to walk around the park and read. I saw some kids I know playing basketball (they're both in 8th grade), one of them being the son of a friend of mine from church. I approached to shoot around a little while and found out they had an unexpected guest sharing their court.

Apparently, a man high on drugs and drinking some Olde English (which smells horrid if you don't what it is) had decided to instruct them in some moves. I didn't know what to expect, but I put down my things to join them. He was "teaching" them a good hook shot and showed me how to guard him, and honestly he played a lot better than I expected. In any event, one of the kids, Christian, said he needed to tell me something, and this man (who didn't really respond when I tried to introduce myself) caught on and wouldn't leave him alone. "Just say it right now." "I don't like whispering." "Why are you trying to lie?" These in response to Christian just trying to whisper to me that the man was high. Now he's faced with having to fend off a grown man who could easily turn abusive... you just never know. If I tried to intervene, would that help matters or make them worse? When he drives in for a lay-up, should I try to block him or just try to be polite like the kids and half-heartedly stay out of his way?

I can't believe our children have to grow up tip-toeing around men strung out on crack while they try to shoot some hoops after school. The least I could do was stay until he left (mercifully, after the first game of 21). But this isn't just a chance occurrence. They didn't know to be polite because they've never been bothered by addicts in the park. It's intimidating for me as a grown man. I can't imagine being still a child and having to experience this day after day.

I'll continue to pray for the children's safety and the addicts' salvation, and I certainly invite more men to move into the cities and show boys what it means to be men.

Aside from getting messages like these from a very supportive community, one of the coolest things about working with Drupal and Ubercart is seeing the end result of someone else's job well done. He hasn't been tooting his own horn, but I can't let his work pass by unnoticed. As such, I'll happily advise you to check out the latest beauty from JaceRider and give him some feedback or a pat on the back.

The site is called Transformetrics and includes quite a bit of solid content, a sharp looking store/custom catalog (powered by Ubercart but much prettier than anything I could ever come up with), and a nice little SMF integration. This is all packaged up in a very sharp theme with plenty of polish and pizazz. It's quite a testament to the developer's ingenuity and the flexibility of Drupal in making it all possible. So, my hat's off to folks like JaceRider who can take all the pieces floating around drupal.org, add some personal flair, and churn out such incredible sites.

My pastor preached a sermon this morning on the fear of the Lord. More specifically, it was a word from Joshua 24 on ways Joshua endeavors to cultivate the fear of the Lord among the Israelites and how he doesn't shy away from challenging their response. I won't go into much more detail, but his message did remind me to put together a few pieces of the Scriptures I've seen to grow in my understanding of the Lord.

It can be dangerous blogging about a topic like this, read by people from various faiths or understandings of Christianity, without providing a robust definition of what it means to fear God. However, for the sake of this post, I'm going to point out one of the most easily understood definitions I use. Proverbs 8:13 says, "The fear of the LORD is hatred of evil."

That's simple enough... no caveats required. To fear God means to hate what is evil, specifically what God has declared is evil. This includes things ranging from pride and arrogance to immorality, hatred, and murder. When the concept of fearing God becomes a little heady or non-practical, this definition gives it feet. It's immediately applicable... if I want to discern whether I'm living in fear of the LORD (as we're called to do, for example 1 Pt. 1:17), I can look at my life and ask whether or not I'm hating what is evil or partaking in it.

Just a quick plug for an article I read entitled How Free is "free"? by a fellow Drupaller. Some of the points and ideas she discusses are a passing concern of mine... unfortunately just a passing concern, as I'm generally too busy to boil it all down and decide on a course of action.

The basic premise is that the free services we enjoy and find useful don't require payment in money but do require payment in time, attention, and personal information (advertisements!). I won't say we shouldn't use these services, but I will say we should view our time and personal information as actual resources that should be managed at least as closely as we manage our bank accounts.

Give the article a read and let me know if you have any thoughts.

James 2:15-16, "If a brother or sister is without clothes and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,' but you don't give them what the body needs, what good is it?" James is making the point that faith without works is dead by showing how good intentions aren't enough to clothe the naked and feed the hungry. Our desires must be backed up by actions if we ever want to convince anyone that we really do desire these things. Similarly, the mere recitation of a creed or doctrinal belief won't be enough to prove that you really believe it... at least not to God. Saving faith invariably produces change and motivates obedience in a Christian.

And so I speak to husbands, because I am one. "If your wife is tired or stressed from the pressures of work, keeping the home, or life in general, and one of you says to them, 'Just relax, babe. Remember, what matters is your attitude and not a day's agenda,' but you don't do your part to pitch in and take care of some of the things weighing on her mind, what good is it?"

Yesterday was an incredible day. The date was April 8th, and it consisted of an absolutely wonderful trip through northwest Oregon to the coast with two awesome pit stops. The country up here is sooo beautiful. I don't think I've been any place in the States that compares, though that's hard to say definitively since much of the country is gorgeous. Up here in Oregon, though, it's all so green if not a little soggy from the constant drizzle the helps keep up appearances. Hills rise up in every direction covered either by forests and grassland or nice houses. We even got to see some low, snow-capped mountains as we drove! The pit stops were just as exciting as the scenery...

After a lot of work from the development team and community, Ubercart has decided to stand on its own two feet and announce its candidacy for a 1.0 release. We're excited about Ubercart's non-partisan politics and history of improved e-commerce sites, but several pundits are worried about his lack foreign policy experience. Don't let them dissuade you! There was a time when Ubercart survived a DDoS attack as fierce as any sniper fire when deploying on a non-profit website in Bosnia.

Yes, Ubercart wants you to believe in the fierce urgency of now. Now is the time to update your existing sites to the latest release. Now is the time to post your feedback and bug reports. Now is the time to polish up this release so we can dream of a better future on Drupal 6 and beyond.

Feel free to read more if you want some of the details.

Thanks for reading, and Ubercart for President.

I'm always a little ashamed to answer Drupal surveys on third party sites, so a while ago I prepared and submitted a proposal to the Knight News Challenge to develop a beefed up survey module that would start getting some use. As part of the challenge, the module's specification included connecting survey results into geographical locations, allowing localized sites to create chart and map based presentations of the survey responses. I had fun dreaming it up and proposing it, and it didn't cost me any more than a few hours' time.

The proposal was denied. However, it did receive recognition through Knight's site as a top proposal for 2008. I'm sure other Drupallers have submitted applications, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a few of them be chosen for funding. The Knight Foundation has shown in the past that it has no qualms investing in Drupal as a news and community publishing system, so keep an eye out for the announced grants in May and consider what you might do to apply for a grant next year!

Well, my wife laid plans for March 31, 2008 and told me not to plan anything. I believe she told me almost a month in advance, and today I finally got to enjoy the surprise... she bought us tickets to go see Michael Card play a show in an intimate setting at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. As he's one of our favorite Christian musicians, we thoroughly enjoyed the show and had a quick chance to catch him before the show to give him a thank you card.

For those who don't know, Michael Card has been doing music for quite some time. He has the particular distinctions of being an excellent musician and an excellent theologian, and his songs often teach you more about Jesus than you'll learn in a book. I highly recommend him to you!

Catch him on his radio show via his website: http://www.michaelcard.com/archives.html

The weeks since the Drupalcon have been a blur, but now I'm fairly well without an excuse for not posting to the blog. I've kept quite busy with work, church, and home related activities, and I think I've started at least a couple blog posts that never saw the light of day. Perhaps for now I'll simply say a blurb about two books I'm reading, post a short poem I wrote for my pastor while he studied for tomorrow's sermon in the same coffee shop as Christina and me, and write a summary thought related to Easter.