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Part of me wants to keep secret spaces secret, but my grandmother always says to give away what I love, so I'm entrusting fellow ramblers with one of my best-kept. Over in Omar Shrine Temple land, just before the Patriots Point ball fields, a little-known path meets the road. Park in its tiny slip of a lot, and the trail—0.8 miles tip to tail—welcomes you into a verdant, cool cocoon lit by dappled sunlight that spills down when breezes stir the canopy overhead. It wends behind a series of high-octane sports fields, but the dense flora muffles kids hollering and bats and balls cracking and refs whistling—it reminds me of being a girl, sneaking between hedges and garden walls like a little rabbit, thrilled to eavesdrop on folks nearby but ecstatic about my invisibility. Other bonuses: The path is well-manicured and covered in pea gravel, so both my sweetheart in his loafers and my mom with her bum leg have navigated it with ease. And when I go it alone, the sporty types just a yell away keep it from being creepy.
One-story observation decks with benches and railings crop up all along the way. Ostensibly for bird watching—the area's on the migration route for seabirds, buntings, and more in spring and fall—the forts make cool rest stops and picnic platforms. But my favorite place to park it is at the trail's ocean end. This last stretch curls around a swampy area, where I've seen rabbits scoot past and turtles play slip and slide when my pup tears by. Just beyond a little learning area (it looks like a scout camp classroom with rough-hewn benches), the trail leads up a ramp to a final lookout platform that offers a killer view of Crab Bank, Shem Creek, Castle Pinckney, and the harbor. If I've got my Wellies on, I'll slosh through the marsh to the waterline to scavenge bleached oyster shells for garlands.
To cobble together a world-class ramble, some day I'll pair the trail with the Charleston Water Taxi, as the latter stops off at the nearby Charleston Harbor Marina, just a scoot away from the path's entrance. The taxi is bike friendly, dog friendly, and just plain friendly all around, and it offers a cheap way to cruise the harbor, so it'd be super to string the two trips together. Plus, the combo would help me play outside during our hot-as-Hades months—think chilling on the water (read: breezy) and hiking a covered trail (read: shaded). Add a good dousing of bug spray, and it's a secret slice of Lowcountry heaven.
For a trail map and details, visit www.sctrails.net.
Charleston Water Taxi: Charleston Maritime Center, 10 Wharfside St.
Charleston Harbor Marina, 20 Patriots Point Rd., Mount Pleasant.
Daily, 10 a.m.- 6:30 p.m., hourly departures. $8 round-trip; $5 one-way; free for child under six.
(843) 330-2989, www.charlestonwatertaxi.com


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Curve Fitting Toolbox
Curve Fitting Toolbox™ provides an app and functions for fitting curves and surfaces to data. The toolbox lets you perform exploratory data analysis, preprocess and post-process data, compare candidate models, and remove outliers. You can conduct regression analysis using the library of linear and nonlinear models provided or specify your own custom equations. The library provides optimized solver parameters and starting conditions to improve the quality of your fits. The toolbox also supports nonparametric modeling techniques, such as splines, interpolation, and smoothing.
After creating a fit, you can apply a variety of post-processing methods for plotting, interpolation, and extrapolation; estimating confidence intervals; and calculating integrals and derivatives.
Get Started
Learn the basics of Curve Fitting Toolbox
Linear and Nonlinear Regression
Fit curves or surfaces with linear or nonlinear library models or custom models
Fit interpolating curves or surfaces, estimate values between known data points
Fit using smoothing splines and localized regression, smooth data with moving average and other filters
Fit Postprocessing
Plotting, outliers, residuals, confidence intervals, validation data, integrals and derivatives, generate MATLAB® code
Construct splines with or without data; ppform, B-form, tensor-product, rational, and stform thin-plate splines

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Aerospace, Ordnance, & Marine (AOM) Sensors
200 FW Series
One-piece 5/8 in Hall-effect proximity sensor. Shielded sensing face. Normally open/closed, current sinking
Environment-proof self-contained proximity sensor enclosed in a rugged stainless steel housing, designed to meet the requirements of aerospace, ordnance, marine, mass transit and high performance industrial equipment. Operation by Hall Effect principle, which is used to detect magnetic fields passing in front of the sensing face. Once a target metal is detected, a trigger signal is produced which is then passed through the output conditioning circuitry to give a high or low output, depending on the sensor application.


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kaip jos mokė S. N. Goenka
pagal Sayagyi U Ba Khino tradiciją
Day One Discourse
Initial difficulties--the purpose of this meditation--why respiration is chosen as the starting point--the nature of the mind--the reason for the difficulties, and how to deal with them--dangers to be avoided
The first day is full of great difficulties and discomforts, partly because one is not accustomed to sit all day long and to try to meditate, but mostly because of the type of meditation that you have started practising: awareness of respiration, nothing but respiration.
It would have been easier and faster to concentrate the mind without all these discomforts if, along with awareness of respiration, one had started repeating a word, a mantra, a god's name, or if one had started imagining the shape or form of a deity. But you are required to observe bare respiration, as it naturally is, without regulating it; no word or imagined form may be added.
They are not permitted because the final aim of this meditation is not concentration of mind. Concentration is only a help, a step leading to a higher goal: purification of mind, eradicating all the mental defilements, the negativities within, and thus attaining liberation from all misery, attaining full enlightenment.
Every time an impurity arises in the mind, such as anger, hatred, passion, fear etc., one becomes miserable. Whenever something unwanted happens, one becomes tense and starts tying knots inside. Whenever something wanted does not happen, again one generates tension within. Throughout life one repeats this process until the entire mental and physical structure is a bundle of Gordian knots. And one does not keep this tension limited to oneself, but instead distributes it to all with whom one comes into contact. Certainly this is not the right way to live.
You have come to this meditation course to learn the art of living: how to live peacefully and harmoniously within oneself, and to generate peace and harmony for all others; how to live happily from, day to day while progressing towards the highest happiness of a totally pure mind, a mind filled with disinterested love, with compassion, with joy at the success of others, with equanimity.
To learn the art of living harmoniously, first one must find the cause of disharmony. The cause always lies within, and for this reason you have to explore the reality of yourself. This technique helps you to do so, to examine your own mental and physical structure, towards which there is so much attachment, resulting only in tensions, in misery. At the experiential level one must understand one's own nature, mental and physical; only then can one experience whatever there might be beyond mind and matter. This is therefore a technique of truth-realization, self-realization, investigating the reality of what one calls, oneself'. It might also be called a technique of God-realization, since after all God is nothing but truth, but love, but purity.
Direct experience of reality is essential. "Know thyself'-from superficial, apparent, gross reality, to subtler realities, to the subtlest reality of mind and matter. Having experienced all these, one can then go further to experience the ultimate reality which is beyond mind and matter.
Respiration is a proper point from which to begin this journey. Using a self-created, imaginary object of attentions word or form-will lead only in the direction of greater imaginings, greater illusion; it will not help one to discover the subtler truths about oneself. To penetrate to subtler truth, one must begin with truth, with an apparent, gross reality such as respiration. Further, if a word is used, or the form of a deity, then the technique becomes sectarian. A word or form will be identified with one culture, one religion or another, and those of a different background may find it unacceptable. Misery is a universal malady. The remedy for this malady cannot be sectarian; it also must be universal. Awareness of respiration meets this requirement. Breath is common to all: observing it will be acceptable to all. Every step on the path must be totally free from sectarianism.
Breath is a tool with which to explore the truth about oneself. Actually, at the experiential level, you know very little about your body. You know only its external appearance, the parts and functions of it that you can consciously control. You know nothing of the internal organs which operate beyond your control, nothing of the cells of which the entire body is composed, and which are changing every moment. Innumerable biochemical and electromagnetic reactions are occurring constantly throughout the body, but you have no knowledge of them.
On this path, whatever is unknown about yourself must become known to you. For this purpose respiration will help. It acts as a bridge from the known to the unknown, because respiration is one function of the body that can be either conscious or unconscious, intentional or automatic. One starts with conscious, intentional breathing, and proceeds to awareness of natural, normal breath. And from there you will advance to still subtler truths about yourself. Every step is a step with reality; every day you will penetrate further to discover subtler realities about yourself, about your body and mind.
Today you were asked to observe only the physical function of respiration, but at the same time, each one of you was observing the mind, because the nature of the breath is strongly connected to one's mental state. As soon as any impurity, any defilement arises in the mind, the breath becomes abnormal; one starts breathing a little rapidly, a little heavily. When the defilement passes away, the breath again becomes soft. Thus breath can help to explore the reality not only of the body, but also of the mind.
One reality of mind, which you began to experience today, is its habit of always wandering from one object to another. It does not want to stay on the breath or on any single object of attention: instead it runs wild.
And when it wanders, where does the mind go? By your practice, you have seen that it wanders either in the past or in the future. This is the habit pattern of the mind; it does not want to stay in the present moment. Actually, one has to live in the present. Whatever is past is gone beyond recall; whatever is future remains beyond one's reach, until it becomes present. Remembering the past and giving thought to the future are important, but only to the extent that they help one to deal with the present. Yet because of its ingrained habit, the mind constantly tries to escape from present reality into a past or future that is unattainable, and therefore this wild mind remains agitated, miserable. The technique that you are learning here is called the art of living, and life can really be lived only in the present. Therefore, the first step is to learn how to live in the present moment, by keeping the mind on a present reality: the breath that is now entering or leaving the nostrils. This is a reality of this moment, although a superficial one. When the mind wanders away, smilingly, without any tension, one accepts the fact that, because of its old habit pattern, it has wandered. As soon as one realizes that the mind has wandered, naturally, automatically, it will return to awareness of respiration.
You easily recognised the tendency of the mind to roll in thoughts either of the past or of the future. Now of what type are these thoughts? Today you have seen for yourselves that at times thoughts arise without any sequence, any head or tail. Such mental behavior is commonly regarded as a sign of madness. Now, however, you have all discovered that you are equally mad, lost in ignorance, illusions, delusions (moha). Even when there is a sequence to the thoughts, they have as their object something that is either pleasant or unpleasant. If it is pleasant, one starts reacting with liking, which develops into craving, clinging (rāga). If it is unpleasant, one starts reacting with disliking, which develops into aversion, hatred (dosa). The mind is constantly filled with ignorance, craving, and aversion. All other impurities stem from these three basic ones, and every impurity makes one miserable.
The goal of this technique is to purify the mind, to free it from misery by gradually eradicating the negativities within. It is an operation deep into one's own unconscious, performed in order to uncover and remove the complexes hidden there. Even the first step of the technique must purify the mind, and this is the case: by observing respiration, you have started not only to concentrate the mind, but also to purify it. Perhaps during today there were only a few moments when your mind was fully concentrated on your breathing, but every such moment is very powerful in changing the habit pattern of the mind. In that moment, you are aware of the present reality, the breath entering or leaving the nostrils, without any illusion. And you cannot crave for more breath, or feel aversion towards your breathing: you simply observe, without reacting to it. In such a moment, the mind is free from the three basic defilements, that is, it is pure. This moment of purity at the conscious level has a strong impact on the old impurities accumulated in the unconscious. The contact of these positive and negative forces produces an explosion. Some of the impurities hidden in the unconscious rise to the conscious level, and manifest as various mental or physical discomforts.
When one faces such a situation, there is the danger of becoming agitated, and multiplying the difficulties. However, it would be wise to understand that what seems to be a problem is actually a sign of success in the meditation, an indication that in fact the technique has started to work. The operation into the unconscious has begun, and some of the pus hidden there has started to come out of the wound. Although the process is unpleasant, this is the only way to get rid of the pus, to remove the impurities. If one continues working in the proper way, all these difficulties will gradually diminish. Tomorrow will be a little easier, next day more so. Little by little, all the problems will pass away, if you work.
Nobody else can do the job for you; you have to work yourself. You have to explore reality within yourself. You have to liberate yourself.
Some advice about how to work:
During meditation hours, always meditate indoors. If you try to meditate outside in direct contact with the light and wind, you will not be able to penetrate to the depths of your mind. During breaks you may go outside.
You must remain within the limits of the course site. You are performing an operation on your mind; remain in the operating room.
Resolve to remain for the entire period of the course, no matter what difficulties you may face. When problems arise during the operation, remember this strong determination. It can be harmful to leave in the middle of a course.
Similarly, make a strong determination to observe all the discipline and rules, of which the most important is the rule of silence. Also resolve to follow the timetable, and specially to in the hall for the three one-hour sittings of group meditation each day.
Avoid the danger of overeating, of allowing yourself to succumb to drowsiness, and of needless talking.
Work exactly as you are asked to work. Without condemning it, leave aside for the course period anything that you may have read or learned elsewhere. Mixing techniques is very dangerous. If any point is not clear to you, come to the guide for clarification. But give a fair trial to this technique; if you do so, you will get wonderful results.
Make best use of the time, the opportunity, the technique, to liberate yourselves from the bondages of craving, aversion, delusion, and to enjoy real peace, real harmony, real happiness.
Real happiness to you all.
May all beings be happy!


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On Sale
Power to the People Bucket Hat
Combine practicality, comfort, and fashion in one. Keep the sun out of your eyes with this 100% cotton twill bucket hat. Cotton fabric and sewn eyelets are sure to help you stay cool during any activity, be it a stroll in the park or an intense game of sports.
• 100% cotton twill
• 3 ¾″ (7.6 cm) crown
• 2 ¼″ (5.1 cm) brim
• One size fits most
• Sewn eyelets for breathability
This product is made especially for you as soon as you place an order, which is why it takes us a bit longer to deliver it to you. Making products on demand instead of in bulk helps reduce overproduction, so thank you for making thoughtful purchasing decisions!
Size guide
A (inches) | B (inches) | C (inches) | |
One size | 22 | 3 | 2 |


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Publish your catalogs, magazines, brochures and other publications online.
Convert your PDF into a dynamic Flipbook (HTML5) that works on both desktop and mobile devices!
Pageflip is an easy to use PDF to HTML5 flipbook converter. Its using powerful HTML5 & CSS3 technology and no flash plugin is required.
Flipbooks are a new way of publishing brochures, catalogues, magazines, books, photo albums, annual reports, calendars, …
A flipbook combines the simplicity of reading a book with all the new multimedia technologies the internet has to offer.
Working from a pdf source file, Pageflip produces a dynamic online 3D Flipbook that has the look and feel of a printed publication which can be read on any browser, OS or platform (Windows, OSX, Linux, Apple iOS and Google Android).


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Since we switched to Slack as the primary means of communication at work, Slack has grown to be my favorite chat application. Not only does it have a very pleasant interface, but it also offers great ways to integrate it with your application. As a matter of fact, their API is among the least restrictive ones in my experience. As a result of the joy of working the Slack API, Slack chat module was born to serve as a proof of concept for embedded Drupal-to-Slack chat functionality.
A blog about web development and Drupal.


text:
Nordic Pet Bed
Nordic Pet Bed
Please allow 2-3 days to process your order. Expect an email within that timeframe to let you know your order is on the way!
For calculated shipping rates: Shipping charges for your order will be calculated and displayed at checkout.
Shipping option |
Estimated delivery time |
Price |
Standard Shipping |
7 to 10 Business Days |
Express Shipping | 3-5 Business Days | $26 |
Returns & Exchanges
Returns & Exchanges
We have a 14-day return policy, which means you have 14 days after receiving your item to request a return.
To be eligible for a return, your item must be in the same condition that you received it, unworn or unused, with tags, and in its original packaging. You'll also need the receipt or proof of purchase.
To start a return, you can contact us at email@example.com. Please note that returns will need to be sent to the following address: contact us for the return address.
If your return is accepted, we'll send you a return shipping label, as well as instructions on how and where to send your package. Items sent back to us without first requesting a return will not be accepted.
You can always contact us for any return question at firstname.lastname@example.com.
Damages and issues
Please inspect your order upon reception and contact us immediately if the item is defective, damaged or if you receive the wrong item, so that we can evaluate the issue and make it right.
The fastest way to ensure you get what you want is to return the item you have, and once the return is accepted, make a separate purchase for the new item.
European Union 14 day cooling off period
Notwithstanding the above, if the merchandise is being shipped into the European Union, you have the right to cancel or return your order within 14 days, for any reason and without a justification. As above, your item must be in the same condition that you received it, unworn or unused, with tags, and in its original packaging. You'll also need the receipt or proof of purchase.
We will notify you once we've received and inspected your return, and let you know if the refund was approved or not. If approved, you'll be automatically refunded on your original payment method within 10 business days. Please remember it can take some time for your bank or credit card company to process and post the refund too.
If more than 15 business days have passed since we've approved your return, please contact us at firstname.lastname@example.com.
Please note: all sale items are final sale. You may exchange for items on sale!


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DnD Character Classes all have some observable sources and influences:
In the Oriental Adventures books there are a bunch of new classes, including Samurai and and Wu Jen.
But what are the inspirations for some of these classes? In particular, the Wu Jen has always made me wonder. Are they just (dare I say it...) based off Asian stereotypes an given funny nonsensical names or are they inspired by mythological and literary sources like their more Western counterparts?


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WASHINGTON — When Kamala Harris returned to the Senate this week for the first time as vice president-elect, her Republican colleagues offered their congratulations and Sen. Lindsey Graham greeted her with a fist bump.
It was a sign that many Republicans have privately acknowledged what they refuse to say openly: Democrat Joe Biden and Harris won the election and will take office in January.
The GOP's public silence on the reality of Biden's victory amounts to tacit approval of Trump's baseless claims of election fraud. That has significant repercussions, delaying the transition during a deadly pandemic, sowing public doubt and endangering Biden's ability to lead the portion of the country that may question his legitimacy.
"The real-world consequences are perilous," said Eddie Glaude, chair of the Department of African American studies at Princeton University. "The long-term implications are calcifying the doubt about the election and what that means for the body politic. It could lead to half the country not just being deeply suspicious of the democratic process but also actively hostile toward it. It becomes difficult to imagine how we move forward."
Republicans are closing the Trump era much the way they started it: by joining the president in shattering civic norms and sowing uncertainty in institutions. But their efforts to maintain a public face of support for the president began to deteriorate on Wednesday.
Backroom whispers about the futility of Trump's legal fight have become louder after Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani appeared in a Pennsylvania courtroom making wide and unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud in seeking to undo the election results. Asked about the case, Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., said, "Let me just say, I don't think they have a strong case."
And when White House chief of staff Mark Meadows visited with Senate Republicans, he encouraged them to "make the most" of their remaining time with Trump, according to two senators.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said the message from Meadows was "basically just that we got about 45 days left of the president's term." Meadows told them the administration wanted to make sure that if the senators "had ideas of things that the White House could and should do during that period of time, that we got them to him."
But even then, there remained a glimmer of denial.
"But he did, I have to be honest with you, he did say whether it's 45 days or four years and 45 days," Cornyn added.
Despite the private admissions, there has been no public effort to nudge Trump toward the exit.
Trump has declined to concede the presidential race and is mounting legal fights in several states, but there has been no indication or evidence of voter irregularities or widespread fraud in the election. The Trump-appointed head of the General Services Administration has held off on formally beginning the Biden transition to the White House, slowing the incoming administration's ability to prepare to grapple with a worsening pandemic that has already killed 250,000 Americans.
The election disputes my linger for weeks
Trump's refusal to accept the results means the election disputes could drag on for weeks as states certify their tallies or push to mid-December, when the Electoral College is set to vote. And baseless claims about election fraud have filled conservative media without any rebuttal from Republicans, potentially undermining the Biden presidency before it even begins.
A Monmouth University poll released Wednesday showed that while 95% of Democrats believe the election was "fair and square," only 18% of Republicans do, while 70% of GOP voters believe some voter fraud took place.
A sense of paralysis has set in at the White House.
The West Wing has been hollowed out, with staffers quarantining after COVID-19 exposures and others actively looking for new jobs. The president has remained in the Oval Office well into the night but has stayed out of the public eye, tweeting baseless claims while largely giving up on governing and not taking a single question from a reporter since Election Day.
Republicans have said privately there's not much they can do except wait, giving the president the time and space he needs to see the results for himself. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, perceived by some Republicans as the one man who could urge Trump to cooperate with the Biden transition, has instead steadfastly backed the president, saying he's "100% within his rights" to legally contest the results.
GOP lawmakers have pointed to the more than 70 million votes that Trump garnered as well as his overwhelming popularity with Republicans, including among their respective bases of support back home. The chatter that Trump is already eyeing a 2024 campaign has also frozen Republicans wary of his Twitter account, and they have also expressed fear that being perceived as forcing the president to the exit may trigger the temperamental chief executive to make further risky decisions, such as troop drawdowns or more dismissals on the national security staff.
And, of course, there is Georgia.
Republicans need to win one of the two runoff elections set for January in the state in order to hang onto their Senate majority and prevent a Democratic sweep of Washington. Although Trump has not yet signaled much interest in helping with the races, Republicans have made the calculation that keeping his base fired up may be their best chance to secure a victory in a state where Biden has a narrow lead. (The Associated Press has not yet called that race.)
"Trump is behaving exactly as everyone should have expected he would do. Nothing he has done in the last two weeks is out of character," said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist who advised Florida Sen. Marco Rubio's 2016 presidential bid. "And Senate Republicans are responding to him the same way they always do: Ignore him and focus on the Senate calendar."
"But there's no guarantee this works out well for Republicans."
Follow Lemire on Twitter at http://twitter.com/JonLemire and Mascaro at http://twitter.com/@lisamascaro


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BusinessWeek published an interview last week with Scott McGregor of Phillips Semiconductor. Phillips is a leader in developing radio frequency identification (RFID) technology; Mr. McGregor breezily waves away concerns about the impact RFID use would have on privacy.
EFF's Chris Palmer took a quick look at the article; below, he responds to Mr. McGregor's assertions:
McGregor: "When I buy a garment, one of the first things I do when I get it home is cut off the tags. You can cut off RFID tags the same way."
RFIDs are tiny and will only get tinier. How do you cut them off when they're
embedded in an item? Sure, you can still zap them--but why should people have to zap all of their new purchases to avoid shedding data?
McGregor: "When the laser scanners were coming out [in supermarkets], everybody was saying, retailers are going to collect information about what you
buy. And none of that happened."
All of that happened.
McGregor: "Medical identification: Your medical information is stored on a chip, so if you have an emergency and are in a hospital, doctors can read your medical history in a secure way."
Your private medical information stored on a chip? How will it be secure? Is the
data to be encrypted? Cryptographic key management is a total debacle (DeCSS, anyone?).
And if the tag only stores and reports an index into a database, then the database itself becomes a giant book of keys. Is this database intended to be available on the Internet? If so, it's an open book.
McGregor: "Plus, contactless payments are cool--and Visa, when it implements them, will be able to give customers a higher-end, interesting product."
Having your card charged by some random thief because he doesn't require your signature is neither "cool" nor "interesting."
McGregor: "RFID could replace your keys, too. Most car manufacturers we're talking to will have a card you keep in your wallet or embedded into your cell phone. You get in your car, push start, and the reader in the car will read the card in your phone to make sure you're the car's owner."
Forged RFIDs will make car theft easy. Simply scan someone's RFID from a distance, then make an RFID that responds with the same information that theirs did.
But perhaps that problem would be solved with the use of cryptography--by having the host computer/cell phone perform the cryptographic protocol. But when it comes to cryptography...
McGregor: "We're the only company that can do high-level, triple DES encryption in a contactless RFID tag."
As Bruce Schneier and Niels Ferguson point out in Practical Cryptography, triple DES encryption is nothing to write home about: "3DES has a larger key [than DES], but it inherits both the weak keys and the complementation property from DES, either of which is enough to disqualify the cipher by our standards. It is also severely limited by its 64-bit block size, which imposes severe restrictions on the amount of data we can encrypt with a single key."


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Written and Directed by: Scott Stewart
Starring: Keri Russell, Jake Brennan, Josh Hamilton
Reviewed by: Brett Gallman
Once you've been chosen, you belong to them.
The latest low budget venture from Blumhouse Productions might be cobbled together from the studios most recent hits, but its done in the service of a concept we havent seen a whole lot of lately: the alien invasion horror film. While extraterrestrials were a genre staple during the height of UFO hysteria, they were co-opted for blockbuster action flicks somewhere along the way (I mostly blame Roland Emmerich for this and many other things). Since then, horrors mostly been left with scraps of pod people and body snatcher riffs, so its nice to see a low-key, suspenseful take on alien visitors even if Dark Skies isnt nearly a definitive one.
Lacy and Daniel Barrett (Keri Russell and Josh Hamilton) have settled into a suburbanite lifestyle thats started to fray at the seems a bit; even though theyve got a nice house and two well-adjusted boys, Daniels recent job loss has led to some dire financial straits. Even worse, the oldest boy, Jesse (Dakota Goyo), has been hanging out with an older kid thats suspected to be a bad influence. But even that pales in comparison to the strange disturbances that begin to haunt the family on a nightly basis; the events start innocuously (some alarms go off, the kitchen is wrecked, etc.) but soon escalate to malicious levels when its apparent that the family has been targeted by alien visitors.
Its easy to see the concept here, and its basically Blumhouses Greatest Hitsyouve got a dash of Insidious (complete with some creepy, possessed kid bits) and a healthy dose of the Paranormal Activity formula (theres even a sequence where Daniel installs a bunch of cameras and plays the footage back) which get lightly stirred together into something that still feels overly familiar despite the extraterrestrial twist. Much of its familiarity is owed to director Scott Stewarts clumsy handling of the material and his refusal to interject any sort of personality into the film; for much of its running time, Dark Skies is too content to recycle the same old beats to the point of nigh anonymitythis could very well be just another demonic possession or haunted house movie until the film finally gives up the ghost (which is actually an alien in this case, I guess). Stewart also takes the leisurely pacing of these films to an extreme; while this is preferable to sprinting right out of the gate and tripping all over oneself, Dark Skies just sort of lopes along without much urgency. Some food is spilled onto the floor. The aliens play their version of a prank by assembling stuff around the house into an elaborate structure (which the Barretts apparently dismantle before the cops arrivehuh?). Some streetlights ominously lose power, which could just as easily be shitty service from the local co-op.
Once Dark Skies shows some signs of life (and J.K. Simmons shows up to deliver the exposition), it also decides to lean in on the family drama. Even though the parents endure their own fair share of bizarre episodes, the kids become the obvious target. The younger of the two seems especially vulnerable and is the center of the films few memorable moments (theres a bedroom money shot that recall the nightmarish imagery associated with the Slenderman); meanwhile, the older one is just entering that teenage angst phase and awkwardly attempts to hook up with girls during some of the films more extraneous bits. Between the two of them, their parents are driven sufficiently nuts, particularly the dad, who (of course) aggravates the situation by refusing to believe in the alien menace until its too late. All the while, Dark Skies flirts around the edges of M. Night Shyamalans Signs until the climax makes it obvious, right down to a dinner scene that almost shamelessly recalls it. In a lot of ways, this feels like a direct-to-video rip-off of that film that arrived a decade too late, and theres even a bit of twist (albeit a woefully telegraphed one).
Conceptually, Dark Skies cant boast a ton of originality or ingenuity, but its solidly constructed. Stewarts presence probably doesnt inspire a lot of confidence after the likes of Legion and Priest, but this proves that smaller scale stuff might be more his speed. He coaxes some serviceable performances out of everyone, particularly Keri Russell; its a little disconcerting to see her slipping into the middle-age mom roles (was Felicity really over a decade ago?), shes a strong anchor in Dark Skies. The film might not be exactly set up like a found footage movie, but it operates similarly since the sparse plot and parceled scares require the characters to carry things a bit. In this respect, Stewart takes the correct approach; whereas a lot of haunted house flicks rely more on set pieces and sequences, this one feels like its going for an equal mix of character drama and spook show. The problem is that it might actually veer too much towards the former since its a little dry as an outright horror movie; in fact, Stewart shows so much restraint and reverence for the fear of the unknown that the aliens get less than a minute of screen time.
I like the idea behind Dark Skies more than Dark Skies itself, which isnt necessarily the worst I can say about a movie. More than anything, its a reminder that we still need a truly great, post-Fire in the Sky* film in this mold, and it actually stirs memories of one of cinemas biggest missed opportunities: Night Skies, the alien-horror movie Steven Spielberg proposed after Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The film was eventually aborted but found new life as both E.T. and Poltergeist, and it seems appropriate that Dark Skies seems to contain an obvious reference to the latter (the token familial tension also seems like a half-hearted callback to Spielberg as well). After all, this latest horror phase (can we unofficially dub it the Blumhouse Phase?) owes a lot to Hooper and Spielbergs film, so Dark Skies kind of brings it full circle as a love letter to both that film and another one that never was. Maybe its not the most flattering of tributes, but sometimes its the thought that counts. Rent it!
*I'm admittedly basing this on some hazy, nightmarish memories of watching that one on cable about twenty years ago, so forgive me if those abduction scenes aren't really that scary when you aren't ten.
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text:
The Kingdom of God
(What it is and is not)
by James M. Renihan
My procedure will be as follows: after we read two passages of scripture, I want to try to survey some of the information in the word of God that pertains to the kingdom. There is just too much to cover in anything but survey fashion. Then, I want to speak at more length about an issue that may trouble us. The brochure for the conference says that our theme is "Hope for the future: A Biblical Perspective." I have taken that theme quite literally in highlighting one crucial aspect of the Bibles teaching on the Kingdom, believing that it is very much pertinent to our lives today.
Please turn to Habakkuk 3: 1-19 "A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet upon Shigionoth. 2 O LORD, I have heard your speech, and was afraid: O LORD, revive your work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make known; in wrath remember mercy. 3 God came from Teman, and the Holy One from mount Paran. Selah. His glory covered the heavens, and the earth was full of his praise. 4 And his brightness was like the light; he had rays flashing from his hand: and there his power was hidden. 5 Before him went pestilence, and fever followed at his feet. 6 He stood and measured the earth: he looked, and startled the nations; and the everlasting mountains were scattered, the perpetual hills bowed: his ways are everlasting. 7 I saw the tents of Cushan in affliction: the curtains of the land of Midian trembled. 8 O LORD, were you displeased with the rivers? was your anger against the rivers? was your wrath against the sea, that you rode on your horses, your chariots of salvation? 9 Your bow was made quite ready, oaths were sworn over your arrows. Selah. You divided the earth with rivers. 10 The mountains saw you and trembled: the overflowing of the water passed by: the deep uttered its voice, and lifted its hands on high. 11 The sun and moon stood still in their habitation: at the light of your arrows they went, and at the shining of your glittering spear. 12 You marched through the land in indignation, you trampled the nations in anger. 13 You went forth for the salvation of your people, for salvation with your anointed; you struck the head from the house of the wicked, by laying bare from foundation to neck. Selah. 14 You thrust through with his own arrows the head of his villages: they came out like a whirlwind to scatter me: their rejoicing was like feasting on the poor in secret. 15 You walked through the sea with your horses, through the heap of great waters. 16 When I heard, my body trembled; my lips quivered at the voice: rottenness entered into my bones, and I trembled in myself, that I might rest in the day of trouble: when he comes up to the people, he will invade them with his troops. 17 Though the fig tree may not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines; though the labor of the olive may fail, and the fields shall yield no food; though the flock may be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stalls: 18 Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation. 19 The LORD God is my strength, and he will make my feet like deers feet, and he will make me to walk on my high hills. To the chief musician. With my stringed instruments."
And now please turn to: Hebrews 2:5-9 "For He has not put the world to come, of which we speak, in subjection to angels. 6 But one testified in a certain place, saying, "What is man that You are mindful of him, Or the son of man that you take care of him? 7 You have made him a little lower than the angels; You have crowned him with glory and honor, and set him over the works of Your hands. 8 You have put all things under his feet. For in that He put all in subjection under him, He left nothing that is not put under him. But now we do not yet see all things put under him. 9 But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that He, by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone." Please keep a marker at both of these places in your Bibles.
1. A Survey of the Scriptures Teaching about the Kingdom of God
"Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." With these words, John the Baptist preached to the nation of Israel in order to prepare the way for the Messiah. Matthew tells us, in the next chapter of his gospel, that Jesus went forth proclaiming the identical message: "Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." (4:17). And in chapter 10(:7), when Jesus sends out the twelve, he tells them that the message they are to preach is the same: "The kingdom of heaven is at hand." The synoptic gospels are permeated with teaching about the kingdom of God. It was a central theme in the earthly ministry of Jesus. But, not there alone. In the interval between His resurrection and ascension, Luke tells us that our Savior was with his disciples over a period of forty days "speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God." (Acts 1:3). The words at the beginning of the Great Commission, "All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth" point to this truth. Peters preaching on the day of Pentecost follows this same theme: Jesus, having been raised up, has been "exalted to the right hand of God." He said, "let all the house of Israel assuredly know that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ." (2:36) This is the language of the kingdom of God. When a persecution arose in Jerusalem, scattering the disciples, Luke tells us that Philip went down to Samaria and "preached the things concerning the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ." As Paul returned to several newly planted churches to strengthen and encourage them, Luke gives us one sentence in summary of the Apostles message to those young assemblies: "we must through many tribulations enter the kingdom of God." (14:22) When Paul came to Ephesus, we are told that "he went into the synagogue and spoke boldly for three months, reasoning and persuading concerning the things of the kingdom of God," (19:8) and when he says his final farewell to the Ephesian elders, he reminds them that his preaching has been about "the kingdom of God." (20:25). At the conclusion of his history, Luke portrays Paul at Rome, expounding and testifying to Jews, and anyone else who would hear him, about the kingdom of God. (28:23, 31). Even John the apostle, on the isle of Patmos, could speak of the brotherhood of the kingdom of Christ that he shared with his readers. The idea of the Kingdom of God is deeply entwined with the gospel itself. It was the message proclaimed by John and Jesus and his disciples, and continued to be the theme of the apostles throughout the New Testament era.
We must assert that the kingdom of God is central to the message of the Scriptures. Its language is woven into the fabric of both the Old and New Testaments. Every time that we read of God as the Great King, of the Lordship of Christ, of divine sovereignty, authority and dominion, of command and obedience, of worship and honor, we are reading the language of the Kingdom. We cannot reduce the notion of Gods kingship simply to the occurrences of the Greek word basilea and its cognates or the Hebrew term malak and its derivatives. This topic is one of the pivotal themes of the whole Bible.
A. Defining the Kingdom of God: What the Kingdom of God is
What is the Kingdom of God? The idea is so pervasive in Scripture that it is very difficult to be comprehensive. There is much that can be said in trying to give a definition. It must be asserted that the kingdom of God is not a placethough we usually think of kingdoms in geographic terms. It is better understood in terms of the dynamic reign of God. Geerhardus Vos identified three strands which he called its essence: (1) the supremacy of God in the sphere of saving power; (2) the sphere of righteousness; and (3) the state of blessedness. Paul says, "The kingdom of God is . . . in power" (1 Cor. 4:20). The sermon on the mount is, in many ways, an explication of the nature of the righteousness of the kingdom, evident even in the blessedness promised in the beatitudes. The kingdom of God is the sphere in which he reignsthat isthe place where his sovereignty and dominion express themselves. When the Pharisees came to him and asked him when the kingdom was to come, Jesus could tell his hearers, that the Kingdom of God was in their midst. Imagine how confused they must have been when he said "The kingdom of God does not come with observation; nor will they say, See here! or See there! For indeed, the Kingdom of God is in your midst." It was present in the ministry of Jesushis teaching, his acts of compassion, his miracles. Isnt this what Jesus was intending when, after his temptations in the wilderness, he sat in the synagogue in Nazareth and read on the Sabbath Day from Isaiah the prophet: "18 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach liberty to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, 19 To preach the acceptable year of the Lord." Luke 4:18&19? These are the acts of the reign of Godproof that he had come on a divine missionthat he was the unique son, who fulfills the words of Scripture. The Pharisees were confused, because they did not expect this kind of kingdom.
We said that the message preached by John the Baptist and Jesus was the same. But we must assert an important difference in perspective between them. John preached as the forerunner, in a sense as the last sentinel of the night, proclaiming the dawn of a new day. Jesus was himself the light; he brought the day into existence. Was the kingdom present in Johns ministry? Certainly. But not in the same way that it was with Jesus. John was glad to point to the greater onegreat Davids greater sonwho was in himself the embodiment of the reign of God.
It is interesting to note that when the kingdom is preached, it is often associated with verbs of motion. Just in Matthews Gospel we read verbs such as enter, seek, cast out, suffers violence, come upon, gather out, and come (translating three different Greek verbs). The metaphoric language of a physical kingdom helps us to conceptualize the relationship humans have to Gods reign.
B. Defining the Kingdom of God: What it is not
One of the most helpful ways of defining something is by negationdemonstrating what something is not. The word of God does this in several places: We are told that the kingdom of God is not of this world. (John 18:36) Jesus clearly teaches us that his reign does not have its origin or primary definition in terms of this world. His own teaching on the kingdom was terribly misunderstood by his religious opponents precisely because they interpreted his teaching in terrestrial terms. His reign is heavenly. It has a divine origin and existence.
The kingdom of God is not in word, but in power (1 Cor. 4:20). Paul did not merely have some fine sounding religious wordspuffs of air audible to those who listen. When he came to the Corinthians, he could demonstrate to them the true spiritual power of the kingdom.
The kingdom of God is not meat and drinkfood (Rom. 14:17)but righteousness, and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Paul wants this understoodthe passing things of this life, such as food (which by the way is to be consumed to the glory of God, 1 Cor. 10:31) do not make up the substance of the kingdom. When Christians divide over such matters, when they cause others to stumble, they have misunderstood the very nature of what the kingdom is all about. They must pursue righteousness: conformity to the covenant standard, the Law of God; peace, the wholeness and wellness attending the presence of God; and joy in the Holy Spirit, the only demeanor appropriate for those who have been cleansed and adopted into the family of God. These things belong together, and are of the very essence of the kingdom. Listen to Hebrews 1:8&9: "To the Son he says, Your throne, o God, is forever and ever; A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of your kingdon. 9 You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; Therefore God, Your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness more than your companions." The son of God sits on an eternal throne, with righteousness in his hand. Because he himself has loved righteousness, because he has made it the object of his affection, he knows joy beyond his companions. Truly, holiness is happiness.
Six times, the kingdom is spoken of as an inheritance, but interestingly, only one of those times is the inheritance couched in positive terms, in Matthew 25:34. In that place, Jesus describes the great day of judgment, and welcomes his people into their inheritance. But in the other 5 occurrences (1 Cor. 6:9&10, 15:50; Gal. 5:21; Eph. 5:5), we are told that flesh and blood will not inherit the kingdom, and that those who commit a variety of sins will not inherit the kingdom. Similarly, we are told that there is another group who will not enter the kingdom: certain kinds of religious men. Listen to Jesus words, "Assuredly I say to you that tax collectors and harlots enter the kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him; but tax collectors and harlots believed him . . . the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing the fruits of it . . . woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in." (Matt. 21:31, 43, 13:13). These are part of an interesting cluster of verses in Matthews account of Holy Week, in which Jesus emphasizes the exclusion of religious formalists from the kingdom.
C. Defining the Kingdom of God: Its citizens
But if some are shut out or receive no inheritance, then who are the proper citizens and heirs? In reply to the disciples query about greatness in the kingdom, Jesus states that we must become like little children in order to enter. One of the key values of the kingdom is humility: "blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." The disciples missed it with their interest in greatness. In Matthew 19, Jesus rebukes his disciples for keeping the children away, and immediately uses an incident with a young man to teach his disciples that it is very difficult for a rich man to enter the kingdom. The famous interview between Jesus and Nicodemus provides us with some insight: only those who have been born from above, or born again, may see and enter the kingdom. The sons of the kingdom are not naturally born, but supernaturally born. This is the great point of Pauls ministry as recorded in the book of Acts. When Luke highlights his preaching about the kingdom, it is most often to persuade Jews (and Gentiles) to believe its message. Acts 19:8 "And he went into the synagogue, and spoke boldly for three months, reasoning and persuading concerning the things of the kingdom of God." 28:23 "And when they [i.e. the Jews of Rome] had appointed him a day, many came to him at his lodging, to whom he explained and solemnly testified of the kingdom of God, persuading them concerning Jesus from both the law of Moses and the prophets, from morning till evening." Again, Acts 28:30-31 "Paul . . . received all who came to him, preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching the things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence, no one forbidding him." Believers enter the kingdom. As we noted before, at the day of judgment Jesus welcomes the sheep on his right hand, those who have done the will of the father, into his kingdom. James puts it like this: "Has not God chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which he promised to those who love him?" (James 2:5). That is the bottom line: the citizens of the kingdom are those who have been chosen by God, regenerated by the power of the Holy Spirit, those who are rich in faith and whose lives demonstrate that the work of God in them is real. Age, social status, race are irrelevant. Not everyone who says to Jesus "Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he that does the will of his father in heaven." (Matt. 7:21). The difference between the tax collectors and harlots who entered the kingdom and the religious formalists who were shut out is very simple. The former believed, the latter did not.
D. Defining the Kingdom: Declaring a mystery
It is important to note that although the message of the kingdom is to be preached, it is still a hidden message. Jesus himself frequently spoke of the kingdom in parablesexplicitly stating that he did so because the "mysteries of the kingdom of heaven" have been given to his disciples, but not to outsiders. It is in some sense a secret kingdom, not like Tolkiens hidden kingdom of Gondolin, rumored to exist but sealed to visitors, but rather present in a very real sense, though invisible to the eyes of those without knowledge. Many understand its truths, because their eyes have been opened to understand them. But many others will hear the same words and walk away shaking their heads, wondering why some seem so interested and willing to take these words seriously. At root, we are thrown back to the sovereignty of God in this. He has chosen to reveal the nature of his reign to some, and allow them to participate, while others are on the outside. The Lord Jesus himself could rejoice that his sovereign father, lord of heaven and earth, had hidden the truth from the wise and prudent while revealing it to babes. Tax collectors and sinners crowd in, while the self-righteous are left out.
The gospel of the kingdom is something that is to be preached throughout this age. When Jesus disciples were looking for information on the future, our savior included in his reply some teaching about the presentthe gospel of the kingdom must be preached throughout this agein all the world as a witness to all nationsbefore the end will come. Men and women live their lives as if there were no kingdom, as if in Peters words, nothing has changed "since the fathers fell asleep." They marry and are given in marriage, they work and play and eat and drink as if there were nothing beyond the tedium of their existence. But they must be called to see that they are fallen creatures in a fallen world, rebels against their rightful Lord, at every moment deepening their condemnation by failing to bow the knee before him. The nations rage, the people plot in vain. And all the while the King in heaven laughs, for his purposes can not be resisted, and his work shall conquer. This is what we must preach. God reigns. He is sovereign over all. His kingdom is an eternal kingdom. Unless men and women and boys and girls repent, they will perish. The kingdom of God exists. It is real. While it is not visible to the human eye, it may be discerned with the eye of faith. And that believing vision ought to captivate us for the service of God. We are his children, we are his representatives, we are his servants. All that we do, and all that we say, ought to be governed by this perspective. We must occupy until he comes. We must press on, confronting men with this message: God reigns. He is gracious, he is longsuffering, he is kind, and he commands you to leave your selfishness and become his servant. Are you weary and burdened? He will give you rest. This is true hope for the future.
2. The Kingdom of God is Always at Work, even when we do not perceive it to be so
Having said all these things, there is still one more fact that we must remember. It is found in the words of Hebrews 2 that we read earlier. While we know all of this truth about the kingdom of God, we do not yet see it in its final and consummate form. It is still, "the world to come." In fact, as we look around, we can hardly say that we see pervasive evidence of the presence and power of the kingdom of God in its glory. Neither did the writer of Hebrews. He said, "we do not yet see all things put under him." We live in a day of increasing wickedness, of the open toleration and even promotion of the most vile kinds of sin. Our society is saturated with addictions to pleasure, profit and power. The evening news and the daily newspaper recount over and over the terrible reality of sin in the world.
But it is not just out there. The professing church is departing, or in many cases, has departed, from any semblance of sober, Scripture-based religion. Post-modernism is invading even the evangelical church. Truth is not truth, sin is not sin, God is not God. Religion is based on emotion, truth is determined by opinion polls, sin is excused as a kind of psychological peccadillo, while God is becoming whatever He will be. We face everything from the blab and grab televangelists to Evangelicals and Catholics Together to the Jesus Seminar. When the news media reports on religion, it often does so in a mocking way. And, there is false religion, especially resurgent Islam. Someone has said that the greatest world-wide threat to the church is Islam. In a column published earlier this week, George Will stated that in any given week, there are more people in England who attend mosques than attend Church of England services. Here in America, there is a growing acceptance of Islam, and other non-western religions into the holy pantheon. Mormonism is also on the upsurge. The most recent fascicle of the Trinity Journal includes an important article on the lack of interaction between evangelicals and a growing number of well-trained and highly-equipped Mormon apologists. They are winning the battle. Dont these things trouble you? They are an utter contradiction of all that we have said. We seem to be regressing. Where is the kingdom of God? we ask.
This is not unusual. In every age, even since Jesus ascension to the right hand of God, the church has lived in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation on earth. To the eye of the casual observer, and perhaps even sometimes to the Christian believer, the reality of the kingdom of God may seem like a pipe dreama lot of nice religious slogans without any substance in the world of space and time. If we grapple with this, we should not be surprised. We are not alone, nor are we the first to wrestle with the contradictions present. Asaph struggled deeply with this in Psalm 73, as did the preacher in Ecclesiastes, Jeremiah in Lamentations, and the Psalmist who sat down by the rivers of Babylon and wept in Psalm 137. Perhaps most instructive is the experience of Habakkuk.
A. Habakkuks trouble summarized: Where is the kingdom of God?
His name means "embracer" or "wrestler" and that is what he did. He lived in a day of outward religion, but he knew that most of it was just a show and a sham. At the beginning of his book, he comes before God with a complaint full of strong emotion. He is perplexed, because he sees the holy city inhabited by idolaters, deceivers, adulterers, thieves, and murdererstreacherous, violent men. His perplexity might be reduced to this question: "Where is the kingdom of God?" And so he cries out to the LORD, asking him how long he will allow this to endure.
God responds, but not in the way that Habakkuk expected. The LORD tells him that he has plans to judge the wicked in the cityand he will do so by sending an invading army of Babylonians to sack it. The receipt of this information causes Habakkuk to be even more perplexed. Since God is a holy God, how could he possibly use such an unholy instrument to achieve his purposes? After asking his second question, he waits, knowing that the Lord will correct him.
The reply, recorded in chapter 2, has three threads: (1) God will judge Israel, and punish Babylon, while saving a remnant of his people ("the Just shall live by his faith," 2:4); (2) the kingdom of God will ultimately triumph"the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea" (2:14); and (3) most basically, the Lord is free to do whatever he pleases"the LORD is in his holy temple. Let all the earth keep silence before him" (2:20).
Throughout these encounters, Habakkuk is wrestling with the nature of the Kingdom of God. He knows that it is one thing, but what he sees is something quite different, and he cannot put these things together. In chapter 3, we see how he puts his perplexity into perspective. Please turn there briefly.
B. Habakkuks Worship: The Kingdom of God is real
The inscription to the chapter is of great importance. Notice that our English translations call this a prayer of Habakkuk. It is a special kind of prayer, a tephillah. This is a word describing a special kind of composition, in which the theme is proposed at the beginning, and then opened up in the following verses. Verse 2 provides the two-fold theme: revive your work in the midst of the years, in wrath remember mercy. Verses 3-15 expound the first of these ideas: Gods work in history; and verses 16-19 pick up the latter notion: mercy in the midst of wrath. Habakkuk humbly bows before the Lord, having heard His speech. Now he prays. His wrestling is over.
Notice how this works in the two parts of the prayer. In the first section, the prophet reviews the work of God in history, highlighting three great events: creation in verses 3b-6, the exodus in verses 7-9a, and the conquest in verses 9b-15. God rules over the earth as its creator, and he ruled over the exodus and the conquest in both judgment and redemption. Habakkuk is seeking to remind Gods people (this is a liturgical prayerapparently for public worship) that God has been active for Israeland this is what he asks him to "revive." To carry on this work whatever it may bewhether redemption or judgmentto show his holy power and his might.
In the second part of the prayer, the "wrestler" bows down before the Lord, accepting the reality of his wrath, knowing that it will be mixed with mercy. Notice how he expresses his fear in verse 16. He uses four expressions to describe the depth of his emotion: "my body trembled," "my lips quivered," rottenness entered my bones," and "I trembled in myself." We would say, "I was shaking from head to toe." Outside and inside, throughout all that he was, there was a tremendous fear. Why?
Notice the first words of 16a, "when I heard." Heard what? NOT the words of 3-15, but rather of 16bjudgmentthe terrible destruction of Jerusalem. He understood what was going to happen, and he was overwhelmed with emotion at the prospect. Can you blame him? How would you feel if you knew that a nuclear bomb would soon detonate near the home of your loved ones? Or if you looked up and saw a tornado on the horizon? Our author could envision the events of the future. Perhaps he imagined himself standing outside of the city, surveying its destruction. Plumes of smoke rising up to heaven; the walls breached and broken; the city gates smashed or hanging uselessly on their hinges. He sees dead bodies lying in the streets, hears the cry of the wounded and bereaved, and worst of all, contemplates pagans invading and desecrating the sanctuary of God. As he brings these things to his mind, his body is convulsed in reaction. What else but profound fear would be appropriate for a godly Jew?
The prophet does not stop with his fear. In verses 17-19 he says some amazing things about the work of God. Verse 17 is of great importance. We must not miss its significance. At first glance, it may only appear to be some words about agricultural failurebut it is really much morethese words have tremendous covenantal significance. Listen to Deuteronomy 8:7-10: "7 For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs that flow out of valleys and hills; 8 A land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey; 9 A land in which you shall eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper. 10 When you have eaten and are full, then you shall bless the LORD your God for the good land which he has given you." Here, the same type of terminology is used to describe the good blessings that belong to the land of promise. God intended that his people enjoy all the benefits of the land when they entered in. When Habakkuk used these terms, every Jew would have understood immediately his meaning. He was contemplating the end of all the good blessings of the land of milk and honey. Notice the "though" at the beginning of verse 17, and the "yet" of verse 18. Habakkuk is brought to the place in which he has changedthough all the holy land becomes a desert, yet, he will rejoice in the LORD. Nothing else matters: God is always the same Godhe is always Habakkuks God. He has taken his eyes off of others, and off of the confusion of the events of this earth, and has placed them on God. He can rejoice in the LORD, because he is God. He will do as he pleaseshe will always be our Godeven when we dont understand his purposes.
Verse 19 returns again to covenantal language. (CF. 2 Sam. 22:1, 33&34). The high hills were the places of triumph in the land. This was a figure in the OT for victorious possession of the land. The high places were the last and most difficult to conquer. Those able to walk on the high hills like deer are those who have conquered and who rule the land in peace. The prophet knows what God will do.
But, doesnt this contradict verse 17? NO! Here Habakkuk is enabled to look beyond the judgment of Judah by the Chaldeanshe sees the ultimate triumph of God and his people over all oppression from the powers of this world. He comes to see that temporal judgments are only part of Gods planbut they point to and ensure his victory. Though everything else may seem to fall to pieces, the LORD God will be his strength, and will make him a victor. Habakkuk is no longer a wrestler, now he is a worshipper, and a convinced believer in the ultimate victory of the kingdom of God.
Habakkuk reminds us that the reign of God works in two ways. While we tend to think of it in terms of visible expressions of his glory, it is just as much evident in the judicial judgments he sends upon men. Whether he calls them out of their darkness or allows them to proceed deeper and deeper into their sin, he is acting as he pleases. And our response is to bow down before him and worship. We must not interpret the greatness of the kingdom of heaven simply in terms of our own perception of its triumph. It is much more than that. The eye of faith sees a picture much different from the eye of doubt.
This is essentially the same thing that the writer to the Hebrews tells us. Turn again to chapter 2 of that book. We do not now see what we would likeall things placed under Jesus feet. But, with the eye of faith we see Him, and that ought to be enough. And this author immediately sets the work of Christ in a similar context: the son of man humbled himself "for the suffering of death." He had to be made perfect through sufferings. Gods plan was far different from anything that we might concoct. His experience sets the pattern for our own. In theology, or more properly Christology, we speak about the two states of Christsuffering and glory. He learned obedience through suffering, and then rose from the dead in great glory. Our experience is the same. Now, we suffer. We endure the opposition of the world, the flesh and the devil. But all the while, we focus our eyes upon Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. He endured the cross that was set before him, despising its shame, and now sits at Gods right hand. As we focus our attention on himas we become more and more Christ-centered, we will lose the confusion to which we fall prey. Do we see everything now the way that we think it should be? No. But that does not mean that the kingdom of God is inactive or impotent. To the contrary, we know that He is doing as he pleases. The opposition of the men of the earth is nothing to him.
The Kingdom of God is the Kingdom of Christ. He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. While we may not see all that is happening, we need not fear that he is asleep, or uninterested, or has been deposed. God is on the throne, and His plan is proceeding as he desires. We need not fear, but be comforted. Take your eyes off of the world, and place them on Jesus Christ. Alleluia, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigns.
So let us take comfort in the fact that we serve a great king. We may not see all that he is doing. The writer to the Hebrews frankly admits "we do not yet see all things put under him." But we see Jesus, conquering his enemies, one day to be recognized and confessed by all. Every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Our task is to bring this message to the people of our generationthe secular academics, the religious formalists, the party-loving beach dudes, all of our neighbors and co-workers and schoolmatesas well as the lost in other places. To preach the Kingdom of Heaven is to preach the Lord Jesus. It is to turn men and women and boys and girls away from themselves and their self-centered lives. It is to call them to turn from their sinsto receive forgiveness in Christto bow down before His lordship. His kingdom is realit is activehis enemies are being conquered. This is true hope for the future. Let us go forth with this message to a lost and dying world: "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." Amen.
James M. Renihan
Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies at Westminster Seminary in California
Reformed Baptist Church of North San Diego County
Escondido, CA.


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Jessica Dowling is back to gymnastics!
Canadian gymnast, Jessica Dowling, was out of competitions for a few years. She underwent serious surgeries. Nevertheless, she decided to come back to gymnastics. She did it greatly at Elite Gym Massilia meet in Marseille, France.
"Even with the surgeries and the state of my knee, I knew I would regret my decision later in life if I didn't try to come back," said Dowling, having mentioned troubles that kept her out of the sport since 2013.
Jessica Dowling has many outstanding achievements. She placed seventh all-around at the 2008 Canadian Junior Championships, 15th all-around at the 2010 Canadian Championships, first all-around in the Open division at the 2011 Canadian Championships, and 11th all-around at the 2012 Canadian Championships.
We hope to see her future victories as she is back to sport.
Read about her previous troubles and plans for the future here.
- You may also order bespoke tailoring of boys gymnastic clothing.
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Rapid growth. In the business world, it's generally thought of as a good thing — scratch that, a great thing. But when you're an ecommerce site, that rapid growth can also mean more hurdles to jump, especially when it comes to your SEO and information architecture.
In this episode of True North, you'll be given a firsthand look at how one company found a way to overcome the obstacles and unite their processes of search, discovery, and transactions.
Architecting a Unicorn – SEO & IA at Envato
Episode transcript
Ben Newton: "Hi. I'm a serial entrepreneur." We hear that a lot these days, don't we? I don't know about you, but when I hear a person say that, I kind of find it repelling, as though someone has blown cigarette smoke into my personal space. It didn't always used to be this way. Ten years ago, for instance, being an entrepreneur wasn't the buzzword it is today. Another thing that happened 10 years ago was the founding of a bootstrapped company called Envato.
Chris Thelwell: We're a marketplace for creative professionals. So we have people that produce assets for us like WordPress themes, like graphic assets, like photography and videos, and then we have people that want to buy that kind of stuff. And we're the marketplace that fits in between.
Ben: Unlike the many wantrepreneurs of today, Envato has actually helped to create thousands of real entrepreneurs who have been hugely successful.
Fiorella Rizzà: A lot of our authors were able to quit their day-to-day job and just focus on doing what they love. We have stories of authors that have built houses and were able to provide for their children and were able to stay at home and spend more time with their family or travel around the world. To me it's — we actually help people reach for freedom.
Ben: In the last six years, Envato has grown exponentially. Today, it has roughly 10 million assets available for sale through its network of websites. Some of their sites, such as ThemeForest, are among the most trafficked websites in the world. All of this is good news, but with a rapid growth fueled by user-generated content, problems are created. Many of these issues can be thrown into two main buckets: information architecture and search engine optimization, also known as IA and SEO.
Kate Hunter: We've got sort of two streams. We have new products. So when it comes to new products, it's about working with those teams prior to development and mapping out a structure that will allow it to scale and not run into architecture problems down the track, that will inhibit the ability to grow organic traffic. And then conversely on the marketplaces, if you architect for a small amount of categories or a small amount of content 10 years ago, and you now have a large amount of content and you now have to shoehorn that into the original structure you created, it's not necessarily the best fit.
Ben: So put yourself in Envato's shoes. You have a runaway success, which is only growing in momentum, yet you know some things have to change. The bones of Envato need to be altered to not only handle future growth, but also to get the most out of what is currently there.
There's no easy path here. And no step forward seems to be without two steps back, but they're not letting that stop them. Let's find out how they're planning for success.
Search, discovery, and transactions in one seamless experience
Hi, and welcome to True North. My name is Ben Newton and I'm from Loop11. This is the podcast where we share stories of discovery and innovation.
As we found out, Envato manages roughly a dozen websites which are geared towards connecting creatives, from around the world, with people who need their services or assets. Having millions of visitors pouring into their sites would seem like the kind of problem you want to have, and it is. They're not complaining.
What they are trying to do, though, is figure out how to give these visitors the best product, and this ultimately means wrapping search, discovery, and transactions into one seamless experience.
So whose problem is this? Is it an SEO problem? Or maybe it's IA. Maybe it's a UX or development issue.
Fiorella: From 2010 to 2015, the number of items that were uploaded to our marketplaces grew exponentially, roughly 50,000 items at the beginning of 2010 to almost 10 million items now.
Ben: That's Fiorella Rizzà. Her role straddles copywriting, search, and information architecture.
Fiorella: But of course, what happens when you get all this content coming through is you just want to put it out there and make sure that the users are going to see it. So we have this technical constraint where an item cannot fall under multiple categories. It might sound like it's not a big deal, but it's actually extremely . . . like it's a huge constraint, and it doesn't allow for flexibility.
So what happened was the easiest way to go was just create new categories that would accommodate for a new technology that would come up or a new type of item. But of course, the result of that is that the IA is, at the moment, extremely complex and not intuitive at all.
Ben: Often problems with IA don't become apparent until you're literally using the product and a completely rational use case exposes a severe limitation.
Fiorella: So we have a top-level category on VideoHive that's called Stock Footage, which is pretty straightforward. You're going to go there, you're going to find Stock Footage. But then Stock Footage has a number of subcategories that — I'll give you a few examples: Holiday, Water, Nature, Hobby.
So there is an item where you can just see a boat on water, and that's it. That's all you see, and it's currently falling under the Water subcategory of Stock Footage. But there's also a Vehicles subcategory, a Hobby subcategory. All these categories would be okay for this video.
The problem there is that those pieces of information are all good to describe that item. The problem is they have been treated in the wrong way. It's not really about the content in this case. The content is fine. The problem is how we captured the information and how we presented it to the user.
So if you search for it from the homepage, then you're going to find it. But you click "Stock Footage" and then you click "Vehicles," and then you're inside the Vehicles category, and you search for a boat, you're not going to find that one because that one belongs to another subcategory. So you're not going to find it.
SEO is what happens when everything else is done right — including UX & IA
Ben: Although navigation and discoverability are arguably two of the most important facets for an ecommerce website, poor IA has wider-reaching implications. For a company like Envato, organic search is a massive source of traffic, and the level of your IA relates directly to your potential to perform in search engines.
Kate: To steal a quote from a conference I was just at, SEO isn't something you can sprinkle on or apply over the top of something. It's what happens when everything else is done right, and one of those things that has to be done right is UX and IA.
Ben: That's Kate Hunter. She's the Organic Performance Manager at Envato.
Kate: Search engines are trying to emulate human behavior. If it's hard for them to crawl, if it's hard for them to understand, then they're not going to rank you as high as possible because they don't think you're doing as good a job as you could.
So at the moment I can say we've mapped our click-through rates based on where you can possibly rank, and our content in some cases deserves to rank two positions higher than what it currently is, but it doesn't because search engines aren't able to crawl it efficiently. Which also means we're aren't allowed to distribute our PageRank efficiently between our pages, which means discoverability and authority is very hard to achieve and execute, which is why we don't rank those two positions higher.
So the other thing is competition. So sometimes if you were to launch a niche and you launch with a terrible IA and it stays that way, but no one ever competes with you, you'll always rank for that because you are still the best content. But the Envato business competes in a highly competitive field with a lot of money attached to them, and the reality is our competitors are building sites the way we would build them, if we built ThemeForest today, except we built ThemeForest 10 years ago.
Ben: So this cuts to the core of the problem Envato is facing. The direction that information architecture should head is clear, but how and when to implement those changes isn't. Their decisions are bookended by the urgency to stay in front of newer competitors and the realization that the old architecture takes a long time to change. It's the common scenario of too big to start again, but too important not to address.
Chris: Legacy is a huge issue, and you can sort of plan where you want to be. You can plan the future. It's a similar issue with design. We have, we could design a really great marketplace, but we can't deliver that. We're too big to just deliver. We have to deliver in little tiny steps, and we'll probably never reach that end goal.
Ben: That's Chris Thelwell. He's the head of UX and Design at Envato.
Chris: So that kind of vision idea of where you want to get to is really hard to achieve, and you have to kind of work out how we can take those little steps together. One of the examples is, who believes in clicking logos to go back to the homepage? Now, we've seen a significant amount of traffic that goes to our homepage. That's the exits on that page. The theory behind that is that people are clicking on that logo expecting to go somewhere different than where we send them. So it's kind of trying to understand why you get the results you do.
We've got a page with a very high exit rate. You're trying to understand, why has it gotten that higher exit rate? Where do the people come from to visit? And it's not necessarily a problem of the page, it's maybe a problem of where the link to that page was, and we're constantly trying to understand those things.
Ben: So knowing your product and the user data behind it is key to understanding the problems you need to address. We've also heard that SEOs are a big reason for getting your IA right, but can it work the other way? Can improving your SEO help your information architecture?
Can improving your SEO help improve your IA?
Kate: More and more importantly for SEO is tone of voice and authenticity. Google has always said it's trying to get its algorithms to understand results and websites in the same way that humans do. It's never been able to do that more so than it does now.
A great example is that, two years ago, best practice would be to not use stop words. So stop words being things like "on, a, by, from" because you've got character limits in your title tags and that's a waste of characters in that title.
Since Hummingbird, the difference is that these stop words are actually really, really important now because they're not a waste of characters because stop words help to define intent. So that's where copywriting comes in. So, example, in that page title, instead of using "WordPress templates" or "WordPress themes" with the pipe character and then the term "ThemeForest," it will now say "WordPress themes from ThemeForest," because we need to indicate that we are a platform that allows people to sell this.
If we say "buy," that would indicate that we make these ourselves, that we've made them. But we need to say they're from us because we are the platform. If you think about how people talk or use voice search, they wouldn't just say "WordPress themes ThemeForest", they'd say "WordPress themes from ThemeForest." So voice search is a good indicator. So how you'd search if you were verbally searching is a good indicator of how you should be looking at your on-page text.
Ben: What this can teach us is to keep coming back to what real people would respond to. How would normal people group or search for your information? This is easily forgotten, especially when the focus is on rankings and not the end user.
Now, Kate has said that good SEO is as a result of everything else being done right. But that doesn't mean that it's not constantly being monitored during each and every process of UX, design, and IA development. Both Kate and Fiorella are constantly forming benchmarks, running tests, and measuring results to ensure that the waves of constant improvement keep flowing.
Fiorella: When you create or change the information architecture, basically what you're doing is you are defining or redefining the discovery patterns of users. So whether they're going to be successful or unsuccessful is all up to how you structure the information. What we've found to be extremely useful is card sorting and especially tree-testing exercises. First we test the current structure and then we come up with a new proposed way of organizing the content, and we test it again and see how the results compare.
Ben: The way Fiorella executes tree testing is to use an online tool which is completely removed from their website's design and content, so as not to influence the results. Rather, it's an interface which shows just the categories and the subsequent subcategories as the user proceeds through the test. She then configures tasks for the user to complete which provides feedback.
For example, if she was testing the ThemeForest IA, the task might be for a user to pretend they were a restaurant owner looking for a new website template. They'd be asked to navigate the categories until they found an area which they believed would contain the content they were looking for.
Fiorella would then analyze the user data in aggregate, looking for the most common paths taken by users and what percentage of them found the right pages.
This example also acts as a counterpoint to the SEO monitoring and testing done by Kate. While IA can be done offline and removed from the actual website, SEO is a constant monitoring and tweaking process, based on what's actually happening out in the wild.
Kate: One of the first things I did coming into the business was put in place a rank tracking tool, which allows me to see in the current state for popular terms which were relevant for how we were ranking. And I now know where everything ranks and I know where I think we deserve to rank. For me SEO isn't about number one. Number one is a very old-school place to play, particularly because we're a global company. You have to be at the top. One of the best 10 results worldwide, so it's a very competitive game.
In WordPress for example, we're highly relevant to WordPress, but WordPress is not our business. WordPress is WordPress.org or WordPress.com. So ThemeForest ranks for number two in the U.S. for WordPress themes. We cannot aim to be any higher than that because we will never trump the original source.
So a business like ours which is, we don't actually have our products, in a lot of cases we can't be number one. The best we can hope for is number two, which is not a bad thing by any means. It's about we are not the most relevant in every case. So the goal is to improve and I have an idea in terms of where we deserve to rank, and that's my goal. Number one is not the goal.
Build with a vision of the future in mind
Ben: So as Envato moves forward, there are two clear and separate ways in which they're addressing the problem of IA and SEO.
Kate: We have, I guess, two streams. There's the one working with the existing aging platform which we're retrofitting, and then there's working with the new products. Baking in IA before development, so mapping out what the future looks like. If you're an online clothing retailer, you might only have pants and t-shirts to sell right now, but could you imagine where you sold all sorts of apparel in the future? And if so, what would the IA for a really detailed clothing store or online clothing store look like in 10 years? Map that structure and then build for that structure, but only populate the content you have now.
Fiorella: To me the thing that helped most was that we made the decision to go with the best-case scenario. Like imagine we don't have any constraints. What is this going to look like? Because this helps you have a vision. You know where you're going and what you're heading towards, and that helps you, prevents you from losing track of what you're doing and just wander off, thinking about other possible solutions, which it's very likely to happen.
Ben: To find out more about the team at Envato and how they're thinking about the challenges they face, go to inside.envato.com. If you have a story you'd like us to consider for the show, please visit our website and send us an email.
You can subscribe to our show on iTunes where you can also rate and review us. Or go to truenorthpodcast.com and join the community.
Our music is by the Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder.
True North is produced by Loop11. We'll see you next time.