I just read an essay. It was good, but it was in the Acadamian dialect, and my Acadamian is not even as polished as my Shakespearean and my Essayese. It was more than fifty years ago that George Orwell, in his famous essay “Politics and the English Language,” created the standard example of Acadamian by [...]

Not being an excellent observer, I do not know how common this phenomenon is, but I do know that it happens to people besides myself. I will start a conversation with a warm, sincere smile, and in a few minutes its heart will dissolve, leaving only a pasted, empty shell of a smile on my [...]

The Economist recently published a good article about the fortieth anniversary of Israel’s Six-Day War.
My grandparents are in Colorado right now, visiting from California. Both grew up in Palestine and were forced out of the country when the Jews occupied it in 1948. The other day, during my grandfather’s morning walk, he told me, “I [...]

A few months ago a young man in my church got saved. I had never known him too well, and, to tell the truth, I haven’t really had any good, deep conversations with him since. But everyone around him knew of the change. His zeal and passion flowed from him in words, attitude, and expressions. [...]

“Cast all your cares upon Him,” exhorts Peter. “And lay all of your burdens down at His feet,” adds a song I once heard. Yesterday morning I read from Tozer’s The Pursuit of God, which called attention to Jesus’ command to find rest in Him. The Savior called to Himself the “weary and heavy laden,” [...]

Now, don’t get me wrong. Byron is usually a rather rough writer, and I go to other poets for smoothness and memorability. But I cannot get the opening stanza of “The Bride of Abydos” out of my head. Here are a couple of excerpts and a link:
Know ye the land where cypress and myrtle
Are [...]

Hey, here’s a new wallpaper I made in a funny mood.

Everyone, I suppose, evaluates the world from a certain set of values. Sometimes the values are broad–pretty much any action is considered fine–and sometimes the values are narrow. Broad or not, everyone’s value-base leads them to disapprove of some things, however few.
If a person will not evaluate or accept new ideas, he is close minded. [...]

Today I slept through a morning prayer meeting, so I thought I’d post a thought that has come to me lately from sermons and such. Christian, in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, walks from his conversion with a light heart and a new zeal that is roused by the sight he is immediately greeted with: three [...]

Welcome to the brand new Abdiel Blog. Here I hope to create a more personal counterpart to my existing website, Abdiel Press. I’ll be posting thoughts here, probably from my journal, about once a week. I would love any to have feedback.