Well, C.J., I'm still delinquent on answering your questions, but I've not given up hope yet. However, the Twin Lakes Fellowship gathers here tomorrow through Thursday, so who knows when I'll get the answers posted. Meanwhile, what about Florida? I'm stunned. I would have guessed UCLA after what they did to LSU. The game was so in control Noah was winking at the cheerleaders the last eight minutes. Wow.

Mark, David Wells says hello, and was asking about Connie and the family. I gave him a quick update (and, per your instructions, on your behalf, invited him to preach soon at CHBC!). He seemed amused at the ecumenicity of a Presbyterian, asking a Congregationalist to preach at a Baptist Church at the behest of a Southern Baptist pastor!

By the way, Mark. Your post on the Apparent Piety of Numerical Goals was simply brilliant. Thanks.

On an entirely different note, a heartbreaking pastoral situation here has had me thinking about God's kind, though sometimes inscrutable, providence (especially as I have watched a hurting family demonstrate Gospel trust in a sovereign God in the most difficult of circumstances). Calvin reminds us:

"It is essentially necessary, if we would fortify our minds against temptation, to have suitably exalted views of the power and mercy of God, since nothing will more effectually preserve us in a straight and undeviating course, than a firm persuasion that all events are in the hand of God, and that he is as merciful as he is mighty. The man who disciplines himself to the contemplation of these two attributes, which ought never to be dissociated in our minds from the idea of God, is certain to stand erect and immovable under the fiercest assaults of temptation; while, on the other hand, by losing sight of the all-sufficiency of God, (which we are too apt to do,) we lay ourselves open to be overwhelmed in the first encounter."