Grandpa Ralph

this past weekend we went to houston to meet the newest member of our family, kaleigh (david's oldest sister had her first child!). but since we couldn't spend every minute of the weekend "staring at the baby" as david called it, we had to find other things to do. one afternoon, me and nancy went through some old pictures for a project i am going to do whenever we move. well, one thing led to another and the next thing i know, i'm copying tons of files from the computer.

i love family. i love family stories. i love old pictures. i love learning things i didn't know before. it's where we - and the people we love - come from. one of the saddest things in the world to me is that i never got to meet david's grandpa. i have been assured that i would have loved him. it has already been decided that our first boy will be named for him. and he sure did love david.

grandpa (ralph) on his honeymoon

grandpa with chuck (david's dad) and uncle steve (far right)

master angler

like grandfather, like grandson (one of my all time favorite pictures)

The Shocking Alternative

"...yet (and this is a strange, significant thing) even his enemies, when they read the Gospels, do not usually get the impression of silliness and conceit. still less do unprejudiced readers. Christ says that he is "humble and meek" and we believe him; not noticing that, if he were merely a man, humility and meekness are the very last characteristics we could attribute to some of his sayings.

" i am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that the people often say about him: 'i'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but i don't accept his claim to be God.' that is the one thing we must not say. a man who was merely a man and said the sort of the things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. he would either be a lunatic - on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell. you must make your choice. either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. you can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. but let us not come with any patronising [sic] nonsense about his being a great human teacher. he has not left that open to us. he did not intend to."

c.s. lewis on who Christ had to be: mere christianity (pg. 52)