April 2009 archives

We've had the same ole design for our bearable light website since 2002. I loved doing that design. All my previous designs were done completely with tables and spacer gifs (and if you're a graphic designer you know what I mean). A few years ago when I discovered that tables were going to become the backwards way of doing things I immersed myself in relearning stylesheets. (At the time, there were lots of web standards gurus railing against the losers still using tables--but lo, even till a year ago google.com was using tables! I thought it was all a bit funny--people take these things so seriously,)

Derek and I love the circus and especially the old Vaudevillian posters and advertisements. Sprinkled throughout the old site you'd see a hodge-podge of old fonts I dug up, clip art of Russian dancers, Irish jiggers, rabbis, pieces from Polish cyrk posters. I wanted it to look old and wordy, like a proclamation from an itinerant preacher. And Derek had one of those in his family--he ran an ice cream truck and traveled throughout the country giving away pencils that said, "Jesus loves you". Archie Butts was his name.)

Most of us can't pinpoint the moment a disappointment becomes bitter. Many of us experience repeated disappointments in the same area, and we still recognize the pain of being disappointed, but often there comes a certain point where we believe the disappointment and it makes a home deep in our hearts. Bitterness is basically unresolved grief that is very buried.

From then on out, there is no person or situation that can prove otherwise. Perhaps from time to time we feel glimpses of hope and forget about our pain, but it won't be long before we are disappointed again in that area. Not just because life sucks, but because bitterness is an invisible ruler that sits on its own throne of our heart, ruling with its own interpretations. Bitterness is a stronghold. By nature bitterness takes root when we choose to stop hoping past our experiences. For most of us this starts in childhood.

Sometimes both space and time foreground a God-event. Such was the case in Czech Republic last week, where I attended and performed in the launching of our friend Sasa Flek's translation of the bible. This is the first modern translation since the nation was under communism. It was a sixteen year labour, and is a gift for all of Europe. Many ambassadors and leaders from various nations attended the launch, which was an artistic and cultural restorational event.

The launch happened in Jan Hus chapel, where Hus originally preached the seeds of the reformation for which he was intensely persecuted. He had a dream that one day he would return and see the painting of the gospel stories on the walls restored by artists! On this day, last week, that dream started to come true!