johnalex1

@astro_jaz I’ve waited my whole life for a moon base. I would go in a heartbeat.

with all of this artemis hype, i wanna know… would you ever go on a trip to the moon? 🚀🌕

You are not suffering from anything that a good resurrection can’t fix. — D. A. Carson

On the seventh day God rested in the darkness of the tomb; Having finished on the sixth day all his work of joy and doom. Now the word had fallen silent, and the water had run dry, The bread had all been scattered, and the light had left the sky. The flock had lost its shepherd, and the seed was sadly sown, The courtiers had betrayed their king, and nailed him to his throne. O Sabbath rest by Calvary, O calm of tomb below, Where the grave-clothes and the spices cradle him we did not know! Rest you well, beloved Jesus, Caesar’s Lord and Israel’s King, In the brooding of the Spirit, in the darkness of the spring. --The Challenge of Jesus

Seeing writers try to justify using AI “just to brainstorm” is like watching the death of creativity in real time.

_This_ is what AI can do. I'm using this photo of Golgotha in tonight's Good Friday service. I used Gemini to remove the glare. I won't compose with it, but I'll certainly use it to the hilt otherwise.

@astro_jaz Since I was only 3 when Armstrong stepped on the moon, I'm ecstatic. Thank heavens the launch went well.

is anyone else feeling insane that they’re actually alive to witness humans returning to the moon after over half a century

@jarsofKlay Actually, I agree with you. I’ve used AI for sermon research. I also use it for grading in the college courses I teach. I’m referring to using AI to compose, create, the manuscript. It’s a tool, but it’s not a crutch.

Generic statements like this really need to be qualified. What do we mean by "using AI?" If you mean doing the study for you and writing your content, yes, don't do that. But if I'm searching for a sermon illustration from history, there is no difference asking ChatGPT "give me stories of heroism from wars" and asking Google the same thing. AI is a tool. Just like using Logos for word studies is a tool. And before that, using A. T. Robertson's word pictures is a tool. You could only use physical books and be lazy in your study by just piecing together sermons from historic pastors. You could use AI and be applying wise and helpful study method. Use the tools rightly. Also, if you're super against AI but you spend most of your sermon prep time reading a billion commentaries (instead of spending time in the text), I don't take your view seriously.

@astro_jaz Yeah, and I’m a very nervous camper tonight. May not get much done tomorrow…

WE’RE REALLY GOING BACK TO THE MOON TOMORROW

I'll add this: every pastor using AI to compose a sermon manuscript should seriously reconsider the calling we accepted to the gospel ministry. Sermon preparation comes with the calling.

As I listened to the latest @presbycast podcast, this song from my youth ran through my head. youtube.com/watch?v=K16fG1…

@astro_jaz One of my coworkers admitted years ago that he didn't believe in the space station. I had to tell him about the iPhone app so he'd know when to look for it.

it’s genuinely shocking how many people don’t think we went to the moon

@Ricktastrophe @astro_jaz Nope. I've avidly followed every space program from the Apollo-Soyuz mission and Skylab to now. My generation thought we would die on the moon. I've waited decades for NASA to return to the moon. I lack faith in NASA's bureaucracy and the contractors.

@astro_jaz Because too many people are science-ignorant, poorly-educated, imaginationless, passionless morons, and their only mission in life is to crap on the next message in their feed?

it’s interesting to see how many people have negative views on artemis

@realmattcarr I once played a snippet of Bach's "B Minor Mass" for a Japanese guest at our home. Tears flowed as the music carried her away.

Thread

@astro_jaz Very, vary, wary: 1. I remember Challenger and the bureaucracy. 2. NASA hasn't done much on Artemis to bolster my confidence in the agency. 3. I'm old. I thought we would have had a moon base by 2001, but here we are, 20+ years later and nowhere near building a moon base.

if you were alive during the apollo era, how do the upcoming artemis missions make you feel?

@JoshuaTorrey @fredgreco Perhaps, but He uses iOS when He wants to guarantee the work gets done.

@fredgreco so God can even use android.

i was apparently in a friendly dinner and drinks RCS group chat during nom comm this weekend. i only got all the messages when i was leaving for evening bible study today. providence? or stupid android not providing consistent encryption group messages?

@bazaarofwar Jerry Pournelle was fond of saying, "You don't control the ground until you have an 18-year-old with a rifle on it." He may have heard this from someone else.

Intentionally or not, the past few weeks of the Iran war have served as a test for whether a sufficient volume of air/missile power can yet substitute for persistent ground presence. Extremely unlikely, but it raises an interesting hypothetical.🧵

@jeretics Don't encourage them.

Every time an overture springs an angel gets its wings.

From C.S. Lewis's essay, "Tolkien's Lord of the Rings:" "The value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by ‘the veil of familiarity’. The child enjoys his cold meat (otherwise dull to him) by pretending it is buffalo, just killed with his own bow and arrow. And the child is wise. The real meat comes back to him more savoury for having been dipped in a story; you might say that only then is it the real meat. If you are tired of the real landscape, look at it in a mirror. By putting bread, gold, horse, apple, or the very roads into a myth, we do not retreat from reality: we rediscover it. As long as the story lingers in our mind, the real things are more themselves. This book applies the treatment not only to bread or apple but to good and evil, to our endless perils, our anguish, and our joys. By dipping them in myth we see them more clearly. I do not think he could have done it in any other way."

Frodo leaving the Shire is one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking endings in all of literature. He won. The Ring was destroyed. The Shire was saved. And he couldn't stay. Not because he didn't want to. But because the journey cost him more than anyone around him could see. He carried the weight of the world's evil on his body and soul, and even though the Ring was gone, the scars weren't. That's Tolkien writing the truest thing he ever wrote: some suffering in this life cannot be healed in this life. There are wounds - spiritual, physical, emotional - that only eternity can restore. Frodo’s departure isn’t a sad ending, it’s the hope of heaven for someone who gave everything and was broken by it. It's about the promise that what was broken will be made whole. Just not here. And not yet.

@ZGroff Given I've waited my entire life for a moon base, I demand that Warrior Presbytery, the original geographic presbytery of the PCA, assume jurisdiction. I humbly volunteer to serve as the first missionary.

With the recent announcement of American moon bases being in development, several people have asked me if the new human settlements would fall under the jurisdiction of Mission to the World (MTW) or to Mission to North America (MNA). I can confidently say that because these will be AMERICAN bases, these will fall into the portfolio of MNA, in support of certain presbyteries (probably those in AL, FL, and TX).