Steve (and Jane, and Gary with his pointer) gave me such wonderful help that I feel an awful ingrate for going a direction different from that which he commended to me — but as I worked with the apocalyptic urgency of the readings for tomorrow, I found myself making some strong (and probably pretty obvious) connections between the texts and the conditions at St. Luke’s. I pulled and pushed for a while, but at this point (around 3 PM) I’ve got about two-thirds or three-quarters of a sermon that takes up the scriptural tone of eschatological peril, and situates the congregation’s ups and downs in that context. The hook, I think, involves the Hebrews passage’s invocation of the recipients as having “endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to abuse and persecution, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. For you had compassion for those who were in prison, and you cheerfully accepted the plundering of your possessions, knowing that you yourselves possessed something better and more lasting.”
St. Luke’s has seen hard times, and right now is in a precarious position relative to the diocese’s intervention in parish life, and the parish’s own capacity to keep itself pulled together. But all along, the parish has sustained a variety of lovely, admirable ministries; awful as the present moment may be, the spirit that energizes the congregation’s work on behalf of hungry people, kids who need mentoring, visitors who are touched by the celestial music that resounds in our halls, and especially the many refugees whom St. Luke’s has sponsored over the years, that spirit of self-denial on behalf of others stands to sustain the parish through its present struggles, if only we can treat one another with the selflessness with which we treat our neighbors. . . .
Posted by AKMA at November 15, 2003 04:44 PM | TrackBackI don't mind. :)
Out of curiousity, does St. Luke's (or do churches generally) notify the congregation what the readings will be for a given Sunday ahead of time? I was just wondering if it works like a seminar in which everyone arrives to consider together something they've already considered individually, or if the readings are a surprise upon arrival. I'm trying to remember from my own church-going days, but at that time I couldn't bother doing homework for school, let alone church.
Posted by: steve at November 15, 2003 04:59 PMSt. Luke’s (along with many other culturally-established churches) uses a standard lectionary, a pre-defined set of readings out of a three-year cycle (this is Proper 28, Year B). An interested party can look up what the appointed readings are for a given week at This Test, This Week. This Text, This week also provides links to sermons, sermon helps, films whose themes may cohere with the week’s readings, paintings that depict the readings, commentaries on the readings from historic theologians, and other goodies.
Posted by: AKMA at November 15, 2003 05:24 PMPreaching scripture as it applies to the people hearing it can hardly be seen as ingratitude. In fact, I'd call it doing precisely what you're called to do-- and quite well, I might add.
Glad you found the Word to bring (or it found you!), and I hope you post it when it's done, please.
Posted by: Jane Ellen at November 15, 2003 11:03 PMThanks for the reminder that good work can go on at the ground level even during times of organizational chaos.
Posted by: laura at November 16, 2003 10:38 AMNote the new asterisks whenever we reference favoriteNumber, except for that new line right before the return.
Posted by: Faith at January 12, 2004 09:26 PMInside each stack frame is a slew of useful information. It tells the computer what code is currently executing, where to go next, where to go in the case a return statement is found, and a whole lot of other things that are incredible useful to the computer, but not very useful to you most of the time. One of the things that is useful to you is the part of the frame that keeps track of all the variables you're using. So the first place for a variable to live is on the Stack. This is a very nice place to live, in that all the creation and destruction of space is handled for you as Stack Frames are created and destroyed. You seldom have to worry about making space for the variables on the stack. The only problem is that the variables here only live as long as the stack frame does, which is to say the length of the function those variables are declared in. This is often a fine situation, but when you need to store information for longer than a single function, you are instantly out of luck.
Posted by: Reginald at January 12, 2004 09:26 PMLet's see an example by converting our favoriteNumber variable from a stack variable to a heap variable. The first thing we'll do is find the project we've been working on and open it up in Project Builder. In the file, we'll start right at the top and work our way down. Under the line:
Posted by: Helegor at January 12, 2004 09:27 PMNote the new asterisks whenever we reference favoriteNumber, except for that new line right before the return.
Posted by: Bridget at January 13, 2004 09:55 AMA variable leads a simple life, full of activity but quite short (measured in nanoseconds, usually). It all begins when the program finds a variable declaration, and a variable is born into the world of the executing program. There are two possible places where the variable might live, but we will venture into that a little later.
Posted by: Marian at January 13, 2004 09:55 AMThis code should compile and run just fine, and you should see no changes in how the program works. So why did we do all of that?
Posted by: Eli at January 13, 2004 09:55 AM