Press Release
Here is a link to AFA's press release regarding the essay contest in which Caleb placed Runner-Up.
Contemplations on the Anniversary of My Father's Passing
Today is the
first anniversary of my father’s passage (though this being a leap year, the
one year mark was technically passed yesterday). The occasion of this anniversary gives me
pause to contemplate the whole of my experiences with his illness and death and
our family’s grieving process.
It should be
clear from the existence of this blog that my father and I were close. Furthermore, the contents of many of the blog
entries make it clear that I consider him a hero, worthy not only of emulation
but also of a greater place than history will likely afford him. He was very dear to me; that is no secret.
In
consideration of these things, there are some aspects of his loss which my
reader may find surprising, especially those readers not as devoutly Christian
as I am. I would like to mention three aspects
of losing my father which run counter to our culture’s understanding of the
thoughts and events that should surround the loss of a loved one.
Note Card: Those That Love Are Worth Everything
Written on a 4x6 note card by Stan Julin.
[Blog Author's Note: My father's reference to "Circle" is a reference to his church, Circle Community.]
June 7, 2001
Suppose I had at Circle six friends. Everyone else there either ignored me or despised me, and those who despised me despised also my friends. Would I go there to see my friends? The Lord endures this creation for the sake of His friends, hoping to gain more of them. His strategy is to put himself right in the middle of things so that people have to do something about Him. He will endure the hate to gain the love. The ones that hate do not matter. The ones that love are worth everything.
[Blog Author's Note: My father's reference to "Circle" is a reference to his church, Circle Community.]
June 7, 2001
Suppose I had at Circle six friends. Everyone else there either ignored me or despised me, and those who despised me despised also my friends. Would I go there to see my friends? The Lord endures this creation for the sake of His friends, hoping to gain more of them. His strategy is to put himself right in the middle of things so that people have to do something about Him. He will endure the hate to gain the love. The ones that hate do not matter. The ones that love are worth everything.
Note Card: On Battles of the Mind
Written on a 4x6 note card by Stan Julin.
June, 2001
Why fight a war in my own mind? It can neither be won nor lost. It makes no difference, affects no one but me, and that I am not sure how. Sometimes I am like those holdout Japanese troops who, unaware that the war was lost, endured years of subsistence apart from all others before they were discovered and told they could resume life now.
June, 2001
Why fight a war in my own mind? It can neither be won nor lost. It makes no difference, affects no one but me, and that I am not sure how. Sometimes I am like those holdout Japanese troops who, unaware that the war was lost, endured years of subsistence apart from all others before they were discovered and told they could resume life now.
Note Card: The Magnificence of the Cure
Written on a 4x6 note card by Stan Julin.
[Blog Author's Note: The sacrifice my father refers to as the sweet savor offering can be referenced in Leviticus 1. The sin offering is found in Leviticus 4.]
April, 2002
[Blog Author's Note: The sacrifice my father refers to as the sweet savor offering can be referenced in Leviticus 1. The sin offering is found in Leviticus 4.]
April, 2002
When a man offered a sacrifice, he put his hands on to signify transferal of himself with his sins to the beast, and slew and offered it. If a sin offering, symbolizing the sins, blood and fat was put on the alter, and the beast burned outside the camp as unfit. If a sweet savor offering, all was burned on the alter. All the offerings together signify Christ's sacrifice, for both the sins are taken by Him and the man himself is accepted, as in sweet savor offerings.
Note Card: Safety Lies Not at a Distance
Written on a 4x6 note card by Stan Julin.
Date Unknown
When you're at the top, as God is, it can be very lonely, especially if you're a good guy. Can't He sit in the sunshine and play with a cat too? Or watch children play? ...not to trivialize God. He did mention playing with leviathan as a man would play with a bird. [Also Psalm 104:26] What did He do on that one seventh day? Does He take pleasure in us?
Date Unknown
When you're at the top, as God is, it can be very lonely, especially if you're a good guy. Can't He sit in the sunshine and play with a cat too? Or watch children play? ...not to trivialize God. He did mention playing with leviathan as a man would play with a bird. [Also Psalm 104:26] What did He do on that one seventh day? Does He take pleasure in us?
A Penny for Caleb's Thoughts
I wish to congratulate my son for taking 1st Runner Up in an Alzheimer's Foundation of America scholarship essay contest with almost 1800 participants. His essay, entitled A Penny for Your Thoughts: A Jar of Memories, interweaves his favorite memory of his grandfather with his
memories of the experience of losing his grandfather to Alzheimer's
disease. The essay is brilliantly written and marks Caleb as a writer
to follow in the years to come.
Click here to read this essay.
Other things Caleb has written about his grandfather may be found here and here.
Note Card: WWJD
Written on a 4x6 note card by Stan Julin.
[Blog Author's Note: What would Jesus do? Walk on water. What would Jesus do? Drive out the money changers with a whip...doesn't mean you should try it. The note card below is reflective of my own opinion on the trite little WWJD; so I will share it. Others may think this best left unsaid. They are welcome to that opinion, but if we redesign Christianity into a pop culture paradigm, the salt has lost its savor. Christians will never do pop culture as well as the pagan world does it.]
June 14, 2001
WWJD? Give me a break! You do not know what Jesus would do, probably not what you want to convince me that he would do. You have some screwy ideas, anyone who would ask WWJD; Jesus was too unpredictable to fit your scheme or mine.
[Blog Author's Note: What would Jesus do? Walk on water. What would Jesus do? Drive out the money changers with a whip...doesn't mean you should try it. The note card below is reflective of my own opinion on the trite little WWJD; so I will share it. Others may think this best left unsaid. They are welcome to that opinion, but if we redesign Christianity into a pop culture paradigm, the salt has lost its savor. Christians will never do pop culture as well as the pagan world does it.]
June 14, 2001
WWJD? Give me a break! You do not know what Jesus would do, probably not what you want to convince me that he would do. You have some screwy ideas, anyone who would ask WWJD; Jesus was too unpredictable to fit your scheme or mine.
Note Card: I Look For Men Like That
Written on a 4x6 note card by Stan Julin.
April, 2002
My tendency is always to estimate a man [or] an author by the estimate which he appears to have of the Bible. Is he for it or against it? Does he love the words of God? Is he jealous of God's words? Does he oppose the wicked who love to pick at it because it exposes them? I look for men like that.
April, 2002
My tendency is always to estimate a man [or] an author by the estimate which he appears to have of the Bible. Is he for it or against it? Does he love the words of God? Is he jealous of God's words? Does he oppose the wicked who love to pick at it because it exposes them? I look for men like that.
The Bridge to Moses
It is in the wee hours of the morning, and I have tried and failed to achieve a state of slumber. Illumined by a single lamp, I now sit on my couch, glaring grumpily at my coffee table and listening to the ambient sounds of my sleeping household. From the neighboring kitchen, a clock’s tick, normally lost in the hubbub of life, chronicles the steady march of sleepless time. The refrigerator compressor kicks on for a few minutes, then yields to the mournful sound of a distant train, penetrating the glass of a window behind my head.I am bored, and so I eventually rise and make my way to my empty guest bedroom where there awaits me a large bookcase filled with a wide selection of literature. Before this structure I plant myself and begin, somewhat absently, to scan the familiar, and somewhat musty rows of fact and fiction found thereupon.
Note Card: On Secret Thoughts
Written on a 4x6 note card by Stan Julin.
[Blog Author's Note: The thoughts that follow come from the book of Job, but they are not the usual lessons others have gleaned from this book.]
April 23, 2002
Lessons from Job: The really significant issues of a man's life are those that are beyond the view of other men. These are the things that God observes, and He Himself keeps them close to His own secret thoughts, all the while engaging Himself with others in other matters of heavenly business and activity. Since the secret thoughts of a man are the real measure of a man, we may, with some security, assume that God's secret thoughts are those that reveal who He is also.
If a person chooses to disclose to another the thoughts that he has to himself, that other person is in a privileged place of honor; and the more honorable the person is who tells his secret motivations, the greater the privilege of the person listing to his words...and not merely the privilege of being on the inner circle of a noble person, but one could not help but realized that he is considered to be able to appreciate and sympathize with the thoughts of that person. Who is man that God should open up His heart to him and want man to know Him as the angels never could?
[Blog Author's Note: The thoughts that follow come from the book of Job, but they are not the usual lessons others have gleaned from this book.]
April 23, 2002
Lessons from Job: The really significant issues of a man's life are those that are beyond the view of other men. These are the things that God observes, and He Himself keeps them close to His own secret thoughts, all the while engaging Himself with others in other matters of heavenly business and activity. Since the secret thoughts of a man are the real measure of a man, we may, with some security, assume that God's secret thoughts are those that reveal who He is also.
If a person chooses to disclose to another the thoughts that he has to himself, that other person is in a privileged place of honor; and the more honorable the person is who tells his secret motivations, the greater the privilege of the person listing to his words...and not merely the privilege of being on the inner circle of a noble person, but one could not help but realized that he is considered to be able to appreciate and sympathize with the thoughts of that person. Who is man that God should open up His heart to him and want man to know Him as the angels never could?
Note Card: Beauty, Tranquility, Happiness
[Blog Author's Note: Happy Valentine's Day, Mom.]
Written on a 4x6 note card by Stan Julin.
December, 2006
Thinking of Connie and what she has done, and of how she has fulfilled the model role of a woman in her life...
She took whatever I could get and transformed it into beauty and tranquility and happiness. She strives to do that with everything she touches for everyone. She deserves much better than anything I could get for her.
Written on a 4x6 note card by Stan Julin.
December, 2006
Thinking of Connie and what she has done, and of how she has fulfilled the model role of a woman in her life...
She took whatever I could get and transformed it into beauty and tranquility and happiness. She strives to do that with everything she touches for everyone. She deserves much better than anything I could get for her.
Note Card: On Understanding Women
Written on a 4x6 note card by Stan Julin.
December, 2006
For a man to say he does not understand women is not true. Part of it is that he is not willing to understand them or that he has not tried to understand them.
Perhaps the reverse is true, that women do not understand men. But...women, being relational beings, try to understand men and often are successful.
December, 2006
For a man to say he does not understand women is not true. Part of it is that he is not willing to understand them or that he has not tried to understand them.
Perhaps the reverse is true, that women do not understand men. But...women, being relational beings, try to understand men and often are successful.
Note Card: The Jig is Up
Written on a 4x6 note card by Stan Julin.
[Blog Author's Note: When my father wrote this, he had 3208 days to get his house in order.]
August 21, 2002
I am beginning to understand why my mental outlook is changing in this last period of my life. Truly God has so arranged life that a man would be increasingly chuted into a pondering of who he is before the eyes of God. The whole experience often brings tears to my eyes. The jig is up, so to speak. Get thy house in order, for thou shalt die and not live. I have a lot of "getting in order" to do.
[Blog Author's Note: When my father wrote this, he had 3208 days to get his house in order.]
August 21, 2002
I am beginning to understand why my mental outlook is changing in this last period of my life. Truly God has so arranged life that a man would be increasingly chuted into a pondering of who he is before the eyes of God. The whole experience often brings tears to my eyes. The jig is up, so to speak. Get thy house in order, for thou shalt die and not live. I have a lot of "getting in order" to do.
Note Card: The Last Word
Written on a 4x6 note card by Stan Julin.
[Blog Author's Note: To avoid confusing readers of Catholic background, note that the word "saints" is used below as a reference to all persons who have appropriated redemption in Jesus Christ.]
May 22, 2006
Hebrews 9:28 - "...unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation." For saints, when Jesus comes (returns), no more will his purpose be for sins, as if he did not quite finish at Calvary, for never again will the issue arise as to our sins or our sinfulness, for all of that is gone.
Then why does it bother us? Because we know ourselves. If he will not mention it, why should we? If we think it, is he? Do we really assess Calvary adequately? If we entertain fear, is that unbelief? Or is it simply a residual flavor of this world and of the spirit of the age?
[Blog Author's Note: To avoid confusing readers of Catholic background, note that the word "saints" is used below as a reference to all persons who have appropriated redemption in Jesus Christ.]
May 22, 2006
Hebrews 9:28 - "...unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation." For saints, when Jesus comes (returns), no more will his purpose be for sins, as if he did not quite finish at Calvary, for never again will the issue arise as to our sins or our sinfulness, for all of that is gone.
Then why does it bother us? Because we know ourselves. If he will not mention it, why should we? If we think it, is he? Do we really assess Calvary adequately? If we entertain fear, is that unbelief? Or is it simply a residual flavor of this world and of the spirit of the age?
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