Friday in the wild: November 4, 2005

Ouch.

For no apparent reason, last night my RSS aggregator seems to have corrupted my entire database of feeds, necessitating a complete re-install. This meant I lost all the posts I had flagged for this week's Friday in the Wild. Nonetheless, I plod along with this week's blog roundup.

On Girl Talk, Carolyn Mahaney made a touching post containing some excerpts from an article by Sam Storms, about seeing Joni Eareckson "dance" at the recent Desiring God conference:

Joni handles her wheelchair as deftly as any Nascar driver on a racetrack. No sooner had the music begun than Joni began to "dance." As much as a quadriplegic can dance, she danced. Joni has just enough movement and strength in her hands and shoulders to grip the controls on her chair and maneuver herself without the aid of others. Suddenly the chair began to move with the music. She thrust forward, then backwards, then forwards again, then backwards. Smoothly, and yet with obvious passion, she turned to the right, then the left, then the right again. . . .

How Joni moved and "danced" is secondary. What�s amazing is THAT she did. What struck me, as I trust it struck others, was that a woman who has suffered so horribly and painfully and persistently for 38 years so loves her God and finds him so utterly worthy of her trust and hope that she WANTED to dance.

[Read "I Saw Joni Dance]

Eric Svendsen is officially retiring from Internet apologetics and the Real Clear Theology Blog:

I have recently been commissioned by the elders of my church to revamp the church's educational program, and I am eager to get started on it. All the spare time I would otherwise have dedicated to Internet activity will be devoted to that task. I have enjoyed getting to know many, many fine people through this venue over the past decade, and I wish them well.

[Read It's Official]

Likewise, Eric. All the best.

Pecadillo and C-Train just moved into a new place and renovated it. Apparently there's a new version of feng shui that involves killing spiders with loaded paintbrushes.

Just for the record: Insofar as I don't believe that the practices we see in modern Pentecostal and Charismatic churches are the contemporary analogue of the miraculous sign gifts spoken of in the New Testament, I am operationally a cessationist. However, I'm not aware of a convincing theological case for cessationism. So I keep an open mind about the use of the charismatic gifts. So I am anticipating Phil Johnson's new blog series on the evangelical soothsayers.

Scott Adams has a decidedly non-pointy-haired blog now. Woo!

It was a pretty sane week on the Google front, except for this couple:

• george h bush child slaver ring: Highly doubtful.
• "make fun of asians": Um . . . OK, they're too small, and they wear those funny little sailor suits, and Hello Kitty makes me hyperglycemic.

Until next week: Enjoy . . .