Commentary: Not too much to say about this oldie. Fairly typical SkitZo stuff. I do like the look on SkitZo’s face, and part about the “tranq’s” (though that’s an unnecessary apostrophe, isn’t it?). The color and shading on the ground seem a little off to me, too.

This is my friend Hideki, from Osaka. The shot was taken back in May when we were visiting Nara. This was in a structure housing a huge bell. We were waiting for my fellow Canadians to finish up in the gift shop. I took the opportunity to take some photos; Hideki took the opportunity to relax.

This video was shot tonight at some friends’ house, and features the making of some delicious Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki. Please excuse the low quality. It was shot on my cell phone, on the “economy” setting in order to fit it all. But I think it’s got some good entertainment value anyway.

I’ve finally officially launched my new webcomic. Those of you wondering what I do in my free time can check it out at Doodze.com and read the first several pages of Doodze: A Tiny Epic. Feel free to tell your friends, too.

Commentary: This is one of my all-time personal favourites. Not only is it a delightfully contrived pun, but I like the clean, non-cluttered, well-laid-out look of this cartoon (unlike the one I posted last week). Also, my father and brother are both plumbers, so I’ve always had an affinity for plumber jokes. As for what I don’t like, not that I’m bragging, but there’s not a lot. Unlike a lot of the older SkitZo ‘toons, if I were to do this one again, I don’t think I’d change much. Maybe the shading could be better but that’s about it.

I’m not exactly sure what they call these, but in English they would probably be called “prayer sticks” or something like that. I took this pic outside a shrine in Nara back in May.

“They stoned Paul and dragged him out of town, thinking he was dead. But as the believers gathered around him, he got up and went back into the town.”
- Acts 14:19-20 (NLT)

These words really stuck out to me the other day as I was reading the passage. Paul is out sharing the Gospel, runs into opposition, has the stuffing beat out of him, and is dragged out of town and left for dead. And then what? He gets up and goes right back into town. Wow. He doesn’t run away. He doesn’t back down. He goes right back into the city he was just thrown out of. Back into the fray.

I’ve never been beat up for my faith. I’ve never faced anything remotely close to that kind of persecution, and I assume most of the people reading this haven’t either. But I have failed. I’ve been hurt. I’ve been disappointed by others. I’ve disappointed myself. I’ve sinned when I knew better and felt rotten for it.

But when I read this passage, I remembered that whatever failure I’ve had, whatever hurt I’ve experienced, it doesn’t have to have the last word. With God’s help, I can get up and go back. And so can you.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
- John 1:1 (NIV)

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about what the Bible means when it refers to Jesus as “the Word”. I’m sure there’s more depth to it than I’ve yet discovered, but here’s what I’ve got so far:

Jesus is God’s way of revealing Himself to us. He could have sent another prophet to tell us about Him. He could have shown us some sort of miraculous sign in the sky. Instead, He came to us in a form we could understand: He became one of us. Jesus is God’s most clear revelation of His own character. If you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus.

This has a huge affect on how we see God. And it should have a huge affect on how we view Scripture too. Jesus is the center-piece of the Bible. Everything in the Old Testament leads up to Him; everything in the New Testament is directly influenced by His life and teachings.

Beyond that, Jesus Himself teaches us how we should interpret Scripture: Himself (a pretty bold assertion to make, but if He’s really God, then He can do that). He tells us He’s the fulfillment of the Law. He replaces the sacrificial system with His own sacrifice. And He radically re-interprets a lot of Old Testament teachings by showing us God’s heart behind them (the letter versus the spirit of the Law).

I think a lot of the Church’s history of legalism, abuses of power and misuse of the Bible to justify political and personal agendas is rooted in a failure to interpret the written Word through the life and teachings of the Living Word, Jesus.

Christians often talk about “getting back to the Bible”. I say we get back to Jesus.

Commentary: This is the 30th strip I’ve re-run here on the new site, and we’re almost to the end of 2004. This is one where I can just picture the reader groaning — Wait, can you picture a sound? Is that another groaner? Anyway…

Personally I like the joke (Geoff’s idea like most of the good ones), and SkitZo and the other characters look pretty decent. The background, on the other hand, is pretty weak. The big, empty grey area is boring and doesn’t even make sense. Maybe it would have worked better if the train track was sitting at a different angle, more horizontal than diagonal, obscuring the background a bit so that I could have the distant stuff in there without having to worry about everything in between. Also, the roller coaster’s word balloon is not big enough for all the dialogue.

Lessons learned.

I went to Himeji Hikone yesterday, along with a van load from here in Nagoya, to visit our friend and former assistant pastor Hirase. After a “viking” (all you can eat buffet) lunch, we visited nearby Lake Biwa, the largest freshwater lake in Japan. That’s Hirase in the photo.