Cuban jazz
Luke in his new PJs:
Pen sitting up and having some Mommy & Daddy time:
Both outfits were purchased by the extended family, look wonderful and we are so grateful for them.
Luke is really, really turning into a bonafide boy, not just in terms of energy levels (the boy runs EVERYWHERE. RUNS), but also in that he is beginning to be really amused by bodily functions, the start of a lifelong source of amusement for us. We can make little jokes now about “peepee” and “caca” and he laughs uproariously. It’s fun.
His fascination with the world continues as well. We scored a couple of great placemats at Wal-Mart over the weekend: the world and the USA. Also, last night he and I drew our own map of the world, complete with oceans, continents, rivers and mountains. Luke helped me with the oceans and placement of several key mountain ranges. Lukia is the largest country, obviously, and it split into North, South and West Lukia, the second of which borders the smaller country of Penelopia. To the west is Momia, and an island to the northwest is Dadia. Further south are miscellaneous nations like Granddadland, South Aunt Maralynia (near Uncle Joshia), Grandma Country and Nanaland, among others. We need to find a bigger sheet of poster board (all we had were two sheets of letter-size paper) so we can do it justice.
I’ve been asked to teach Sunday School again this coming Sunday. The rest of the church classes are going through the book of Matthew, and I could and will probably do so as well, in the spirit of maintaining continuity. There are, though, many other topics to explore, among them one I’ve been keen on lately: the problem of evil; or theodicy, the defense of God’s goodness, omnipotence and sovereignty in light of the ubiquitous evil in the world. I’m not in the least doubting such things, only trying to work out an apologetic based on the Word and reason. It always seems to boil down to the mystery of how God can be sovereign over every event in the world, down to the smallest, causing everything to happen, but not be morally culpable for the evil in the world. It’s an instance where Scripture clearly tells us both are true (God is sovereign yet not guilty of evil), and as the foundation of our worldview it has the final word. Still, the desire to know, to understand is very strong. But it will remain in its proper place.
A sign of my growing disconnection from popular culture (not like I was ever really connected in the first place, nor did I make an effort to be) is my recent discovery of the phenomenon known as “ghost riding.” Apparently this involves playing bass-heavy rap music in one’s car at some ungodly volume, exiting the vehicle while it is still in “drive” and letting the car creep forward while one dances beside it or on the hood or roof or other suitable location near the car. One of the definitions for this in urbandictionary.com is, “Yet another way that natural selection is working its way into pop culture,” and I would have to agree. For a send-up of this trend, see Rhett & Link’s podcast.
We are now the proud owners of sufferndesign.com. I hope there’s some way to have that domain and this one redirect to independent pages instead of to a common index.html file, otherwise I’ll have to put together that site and go back to referring to this page as suffernfamily.com/blog/ instead of just the domain name. I’ll get it sorted out. In the meantime, things are progressing nicely and I’m pleased.