The days are evil but my ipod isn't

A while back, I bought an 80-gig ipod. At the time, I really hoped it wouldn't be a waste of money; in fact, I had hopes of it being a help and blessing to my spiritual life. Towards that hope, I have delved into the world of podcasting: investigating, subscribing, unsubscribing and listening to a lot of different podcasts. In the end, I'm very happy with what I'm able to listen to every week. I thought some of you may be interested in this list of my regular downloads.

Preachers
-Joel Beeke
-Mark Driscoll
-Sinclair Ferguson
-Thabiti Anyabwile
-Ted Donnelly
-R.C. Sproul (Renewing Your Mind)
-Alistair Begg (Truth for Life)
-Several RPCNA Pastors (see reformedvoice.com)

Lectures
-Covenant seminary's church history
-Covenant seminary's preaching class
-Sovereign Grace Leadership Series

Fun/Humor
-NPR's Car Talk
-Best of YouTube

Culture/Music/Other
-This American Life
-NPR's live concert podcast
-NPR's All Songs Considered
-NPR's Science Friday
-Mahalo Daily
-Paste Culture Club
-National Geographic's Wild Chronicles
-Grammar Girl

What am I missing? What podcasts help you or encourage you in some way?

On Bloggery

Technology in general and blogs in particular have broken the dam and set loose a flood of words. Each of us could read blogs all day and never find the end of words being put forth. What to do? How, then, shall we read?

I began picking through a book of theological poetry by St. Gregory of Nazianzus this morning and found this gem:

Seeing many writing in this present life
words without measure, smoothly rolling,
who pass most time in drudgeries
producing only a hollow logorrhea,
and how they write so brazenly
things clogged full of idiocies,
as sand fills the sea or fruit-flies Egypt:
I've found this to be
the single sweetest counsel, that,
pitching out all other word, one hold
on only to those inspired by God,
as a calm harbor for those who flee the storm.

In other news, we had a great college conference this past weekend. David Hanson spoke from the book of Job and the Spirit was working, ministering through David to many students there. See Barry's comments here.

Sermons

Immanuel RPC has recently joined sermonaudio.com. Those who are interested can listen to our sermons at the new site. We're now also a part of reformedvoice.com, the sermonaudio mini-site where all RPCNA and RPCI sermons are collected.

This brings a couple things to mind. First is the great benefits technology can have for the church. Though we are a fairly "old-fashioned" (as in 2,000 years old-fashioned!) church, I'm glad for our churches to be thinking creatively about the use of technology. Not that I'm gunning for powerpoint sermons or anything, but in light of all the negative press technology receives - and often rightly so - it's good to seek out the good things and plunder the electronic Egyptians.

Second, the advent of recording technology should be a special encouragement to families with children. Since I have a better-than-front-row seat for worship every Sunday, I can testify that no matter how hard parents with young children work, they probably will not be able to listen to the whole sermon. I greatly appreciate parents working to train their children to worship alongside them, but I also worry about the spiritual health of parents who only get "sermon snippets" every week. If the weekly preaching of the Word is one of God's plans for our salvation (and I strongly believe it is), then any opportunity we have to catch the whole thing is a great gift. So if providence (or sleepiness - you know who you are!) kept you from hearing the whole sermon, use the technology providence has provided to keep yourself under the Word of God.