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| The title of this entry is actually from an album by one of my favorite Christian artists - Chris Rice. I didn't realize that there is actually a phenomena that describes the apparently nonsensical clause "Smelling the Color 9."
Smelling the color 9 is an example of what a synesthetic person might experience.
How did I start thinking about synesthetic people?
I was listening to some classical music I had just bought off iTunes, and came across Rimsky-Korsakov. I decided to Wikipedia him, and found that he most likely had synesthesia, which allowed him to have extraordinary orchestration skills.
Synesthesia is a condition where "a neurologically based phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway."
In other words, one sensation will trigger another sensation in your body.
For example, every number 9 a synesthetic sees will be in the color green, and every number 5 in the color red. Another synesthetic might see the color gold whenever he hears a harp, or see the color blue whenever he hears rain drops.
One guy could actually taste different flavors when he said different words.
Talk about trippy. Literally.
Some synesthetics are very self-conscious about their condition, but many others use it to their advantage in drawing correlations or memorizing facts. Those in the latter group enjoy having their condition.
Imagine the kinds of experiences we could have if we had groovy synesthesia. Sweet.
I remember my pastor speaking about how in heaven, it will be very possible that our glorified bodies will be able to sense the entire chromatic spectrum, including infrared and ultraviolet. I bet synesthesia is something like that.
The "normal" person would both view and perceive the image on the left.
The synesthetic would view the same image but perceive the image on the right.
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| There is an "Air Wick" appliance plugged into my wall in the bathroom. I love the smell - country cinnamon, or something like that. I've always been a scent person, and when my pastor's wife bought some for me as a gift, I was hooked.
Recently, I got one for my apartment in L.A. and I stuck it in the bathroom. It was nice to walk into the bathroom and always have this warm, cinnamony scent regardless of how recent my roommate had been in there.
I loved the scent so much that I transferred it into my bedroom. I plugged it into the socket nearest to my desk, where I spend most of my time. This way, I was getting as much "whiffage" as I could throughout the day.
The other night, my landlord and landlady (who live in the same apartment complex) had some guests over. One of them remarked "What's that smell? It's so wonderful!"
I just so happened to be making some Chinese dumplings, and they were definitely not "so wonderful!"
"I don't know, what do you smell?"
"It's like an air freshener."
"Oh..."
I hadn't actually smelled the scent for a couple of weeks now. I had totally forgotten that it was there. Why? Because it was constantly under my nose. Instead of placing it in my bathroom, which is shared with my roommate, I had hoarded it, and in hoarding it, had actually become unaware of it. It was actually sweeter when in the bathroom.
That's often what happens with the gospel in our lives.
We "hoard" it in the sense of not sharing it with others. We may say that we enjoy and love the gospel, but in keeping it to ourselves, the scent of the gospel fades, and we forget its sweetness.
Have you been hoarding the gospel?
Is this why it's not been as sweet to you recently?
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| But that I would be this man... God have mercy.
Fling him into his office. Tear the “Office” sign from the door and nail on the sign, “Study.” Take him off the mailing list. Lock him up with his books and his typewriter and his Bible. Slam him down on his knees before texts and broken hearts and the flock of lives of a superficial flock and a holy God.
Force him to be the one man in our surfeited communities who knows about God. Throw him into the ring to box with God until he learns how short his arms are. Engage him to wrestle with God all the night through. And let him come out only when he’s bruised and beaten into being a blessing.
Shut his mouth forever spouting remarks, and stop his tongue forever tripping lightly over every nonessential. Require him to have something to say before he dares break the silence. Bend his knees in the lonesome valley.
Burn his eyes with weary study. Wreck his emotional poise with worry for God. And make him exchange his pious stance for a humble walk with God and man. Make him spend and be spent for the glory of God. Rip out his telephone. Burn up his ecclesiastical success sheets.
Put water in his gas tank. Give him a Bible and tie him to the pulpit. And make him preach the Word of the living God!
Test him. Quiz him. Examine him. Humiliate him for his ignorance of things divine. Shame him for his good comprehension of finances, batting averages, and political in-fighting. Laugh at his frustrated effort to play psychiatrist. Form a choir and raise a chant and haunt him with it night and day—“Sir, we would see Jesus.”
When at long last he dares assay the pulpit, ask him if he has a word from God. If he does not, then dismiss him. Tell him you can read the morning paper and digest the television commentaries, and think through the day’s superficial problems, and manage the community’s weary drives, and bless the sordid baked potatoes and green beans, ad infinitum, better than he can.
Command him not to come back until he’s read and reread, written and rewritten, until he can stand up, worn and forlorn, and say, “Thus saith the Lord.”
Break him across the board of his ill-gotten popularity. Smack him hard with his own prestige. Corner him with questions about God. Cover him with demands for celestial wisdom. And give him no escape until he’s back against the wall of the Word.
And sit down before him and listen to the only word he has left—God’s Word. Let him be totally ignorant of the down-street gossip, but give him a chapter and order him to walk around it, camp on it, sup with it, and come at last to speak it backward and forward, until all he says about it rings with the truth of eternity.
And when he’s burned out by the flaming Word, when he’s consumed at last by the fiery grace blazing through him, and when he’s privileged to translate the truth of God to man, finally transferred from earth to heaven, then bear him away gently and blow a muted trumpet and lay him down softly. Place a two-edged sword in his coffin, and raise the tomb triumphant. For he was a brave soldier of the Word. And ere he died, he had become a man of God.
( John MacArthur, Rediscovering Expository Preaching (Dallas: Word Pub., 1997, c1992), 348.)
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| If you have more time: IssueDictionary.com: a great place to read the issues for 2008.
If you have less time: 2Decide.org and Wikipedia.
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| A friend was over tonight who is a missionary in China.
He was traveling through Tibetan territory where the men carry around short
swords, and when passing into another's territory, hands are quick to the hilt.
Some Christian Tibetans were with my friend, and they went ahead to meet with
the locals. The usual positions were assumed: feet braced, arms cocked, words
flying. Then arms relaxed, and a brother called turned to my friend:
“Teacher!” he called out “Quickly – pass through! We have
peace.”
Were it not for the Tibetan brothers, my friend’s life could
have been in danger. He said that it isn’t uncommon for Tibetan men to enter
into Chinese provinces to take wives back to Tibet for themselves. Another
time, he heard of a conflict between a Tibetan and man from another minority tribe.
The second man stabbed the Tibetan in the chest, then ran off, thinking he had
killed the Tibetan. The Tibetan pulled the knife from his chest, chased down
his would-be-murderer for a kilometer, and slew him before taking himself to
the hospital.
Another man, thirty years prior and three hundred miles
south was submerged two thousand feet in the dark abysses of the South China
Sea.
He wielded an amphibious rifle and donned a powerful light in
search of downed Communist planes and missile fragments. Anywhere in the expansive
darkness across from him could be Communist Russian soldiers who were there to send
him to Davy Jones’ locker.
This man now works for my father, and he related these
stories bit by bit over the last six months as my father became familiar with
him. Joe (name changed) had been found by the Americans when the Vietnam war
began, and when they discovered that he was willing and able to dive deeper
than any American Navy Seal, they shipped him to the states to be trained as an
elite diver to work directly for the CIA in recovering Communist technology. As
Saigon toppled to the Viet Cong, he was among the last of American troops to be
pulled out during Operation Frequent Wind, popularly epitomized by the
departure of a helicopter from a rooftop in Miss Saigon.
The China Court Net (中国法院王), the People's Net (人民网), and CCTV
International (央视国际) have collaborated to produce lists of last year's
top ten legal news stories, law cases, and people in the legal news.
Here's their list of top ten legal news stories.
Some of them might seem less than earthshaking, but I'm only the
reporter. Readers are encouraged to add their own stories in the
comments. (Remember that comments don't get published immediately, so
don't worry if you don't see yours right away.)
- Hu Jintao's Oct. 15, 2007 report to the 17th Party Congress
stresses the rule of law, mentioning terms such as "law," "rule of
law," and "according to law" no fewer than 85 times.
- Property Law (Law on Real Rights) (物权法) goes into effect on Oct. 1, 2007.
- Labor Contract Law (劳动合同法) passed on June 29, 2007.
- Death penalty review power fully re-centralized back to Supreme People's Court as of Jan. 1, 2007.
- Cabinet-level State Bureau for the Prevention of Corruption (国家预防腐败局) established on Sept. 13, 2007.
- State Administration of Industry and Commerce leads crackdown on
illegal sex toys, sex medicines, and associated advertising (Nov. 2007).
- Slavery in Shanxi brick kilns (山西黑砖窑) exposed in May 2007.
- The story of the Chongqing "nail household" (钉子户) hits the media in March 2007.
- Lanzhou municipal authorities issue controversial order on June 25 putting a ceiling on the price of beef noodles (牛肉面).
- Pregnant woman Li Liyun (李丽云) dies in hospital because husband
refuses to sign consent and hospital refuses to operate without it
(Nov. 2007).
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