Love, Joy, and Translations

I was reading the NLT Bible translation on my trip to India, because we have a small version that is easy to travel with. I have come to conclude that it is good to read different translations of the bible sometimes, especially with passages that you are familiar with. It seems that the wording often gives a new emphasis to get my attention. I'm obviously not the first person to think this as it's quite a common practice in inductive study methods, etc, but I just had a good, practical encounter with it.

As I was praying this morning, I felt a prompting to read John 17. Since I just got back from my trip, the NLT was sitting right next to me. So as I read John 17, I found a verse that I hadn't paid that much attention to in the past: John 17:23. In the NIV translation, I just blow right past, May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

That's great, the Father loves Jesus and he loves me too. But the NLT reads, May they experience such perfect unity that the world will know that you sent me and that you love them as much as you love me.

What a concept! Certainly the Father loves Jesus perfectly, as they are one. But to consider that he loves me just as is incredible! Hallelujah!

While on the subject, a while back I experienced another example where reading another translation was helpful. Technically, Eugene Peterson's The Message isn't a translation, but it can still help in this way.

Luke 10:20 tells us that our joy comes from the fact that our names are written in heaven, not because great things happen in our presence. Great things don't always happen in our presence, and if that's the thing that brings us joy, it's only fleeting joy. But if our joy comes because our names are written in heaven, or as the Message says it, All the same, the great triumph is not in your authority over evil, but in God's authority over you and presence with you. Wow.

As for me, when great things happen in my presence, I'm going to practice thanking God for it, but also remembering that my joy comes from the fact that he brought me into his presence and wrote my name in the book of life.

Isaiah 55 part 2

Where should my eyes be fixed? God says:

• Listen to me (v2)
  
• Come to me (v3)
• Hear me (v3)

If somebody says something to me that is not in line with what God says, I can't listen. But God says that he will make a covenant with me, the same faithful love that he promised to David via Moses (Exodus 34:6).

Who is the "him" in verse 4? It has to be Jesus, because in Acts 8:32, the Ethiopian is reading the Isaiah scroll, in chapter 53, which is part of the same discourse. And who is "you" in all these verses? It must be anyone who is thirsty (verse 1). So what's our role? It's to be so endowed with the splendor the Lord that nations want to be part of what we have. How can we be endowed with splendor? By seeking the Lord, forsaking wicked ways and thoughts. If I do that, God will bless me with splendor, which I read as a holy, contagious joy! When people come seeking the Lord, he will freely pardon and show great mercy!

We can show mercy and our own efforts. I hope that doesn't sound like heresy, but certainly people who have no belief in God can show mercy. But to show the kind of mercy that God shows is beyond our thoughts.

And the rest of Isaiah 55 just flows off the tongue! I'm no poet, but even translated into English, verses 8-13 are so beautiful.

Isaiah 55 part 1

I'm reflecting on Isaiah 55 tonight as it's come up for me several times in the last few weeks.

I always thought verse 1 was talking to those who did not know the Lord. But I've been pondering that everyone is thirsty, no matter their spiritual state, that we might drink from the living water that Jesus talks about in John 4, and long for it as the deer pants for water. Jesus says in Matthew 5:6, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled." My goal is to always be hungry and thirsty for righteousness that I might always be eating and drinking of the Lord (in a figurative sense) to be filled!

How often I spend money on what is not bread and I labor on what does not satisfy! If I vow to live a life of righteousness, how I seek to live by that vow, even as God cuts to my heart in Ecclesiastes 5:4. I'm so glad for the second part of Isaiah 55:2, where it says, "then my soul will delight in the richest of fare." I've heard of people who have turned their back on God because they just feel guilty all the time and want to talk away from God so they can feel good. How I pity those people, because they think God looks at them constantly wagging his finger. I think these people confuse the wagging finger of "religious people" with the wagging finger of God. God absolutely seeks holiness ("Be perfect...as your heavenly Father is perfect" -Matthew 5:48, as well as dozens of other places) from those who would confess to know him. But mercy triumphs over judgment (James 2:13). He will pour out his blessing in greater measure toward those who are holy and pure, but he will show mercy to all who call on his name (see Acts 16:31 but also 1 Corinthians 3:12-15). God loves to bless those who bless him, and I want to bless God, and if I do so with a heart of purity, my soul will delight in the richest of fare!

Holy smokes, that's quite a preachy first blog post. And I'm only through the first 2 verses of Isaiah 55. I'm new to this blogging thing so we'll see where it goes from here...

Peace!

IPv6 and You (and me)

A whole lot of articles have been written about IPv6. I'm just now starting to take seriously the importance of knowing it, as more and more sites are predicting the impending depletion of public IPv4 addresses. My take, and I'm certainly not unique here, is that it will be more important at the Internet edge than on internal corporate networks.

I think that internal networks will run parallel IPv4 and IPv6 for a long time. I think the IPv4 stack will be used for almost all internal communication, while IPv6 will start to get used for communication to Internet-based IPv6-enabled hosts.

If I were a company, I would start to bug my ISP for a block of IPv6 addresses to tinker with. Set up the routers and the Internet firewalls for starters. Put an IPv6-only test server or two on a service network and see about getting them functioning. Once some of those tests are done, see if you can get a few hosts on the internal network connecting to that server using IPv6.

One of the problems, at least for a lot of small/medium-size Cisco customers I know, is having layer-3 switches that support IPv6. Many customers of this size rely on the IP routing capabilities of switches such as the 3560 and 3750. Even the base image is capable of static routing (as well as RIP and EIGRP stub). However, to route IPv6, one needs to upgrade them to Advanced IP Services, a significant cost. So, what are the options?

• Don't allow IPv6 on the internal network.
• Cough up the money to upgrade all switches doing routing to Advanced IP Services.
• Hang a router or routers off a "core" switch that can route IPv6 between VLANs; this isn't viable if any kind of hierarchical scheme is in place.
• Take the opportunity to replace the hardware for all switches doing routing to a model that supports IPv6.

Then of course you have to assign the addresses. You can use the IPv6 stateless address autoconfiguration (SAA), but that doesn't give out information like DNS server addresses, etc. Perhaps it could be used for servers where you statically assign its DNS servers, but leave the rest to SAA. If this is done, certainly care needs to be taken because my understanding is that the 64-bit prefix is combined with the 64-bit interface identifier. If this is the case, the server's address would change if the MAC address of the NIC changed. So then perhaps static addresses are better. But wait, IPv6 has a slick built-in feature for magically renumbering a network. I must still ponder this... Obviously clients can just use DHCPv6 or a SAA in combination with DHCPv6...

I've written enough now to prove how much more I have to learn. The process goes on...

Cheers.