What does Paul mean?

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. (Ephesians 5:25, NIV)

So my question is, what does Paul mean by "just as Christ... gave himself up for [the church]"? Is he talking about when Christ died on the cross? But the church didn't exist at that time... What does Paul mean by Church then?

Google It

When somebody asks you how to do something, it is good practice to encourage them to take their query to Google. Don't just feed them, teach them how to fish so that they can survive on their own. Have we started sending people to Google too much though?

I think so.

Recently when I've been Googling things, I've noticed a trend.... this solution has started creeping into the top search results "Try Googling it". These responses are usually on forums where somebody asks a question, and somebody else tells them to Google it.

As much as I'm sure the responders are sending the questioners to Google in good faith, little do they know that their "Try Googling it" is going to end up being the top result on Google....

Now this may be Google's fault for picking this page as the top search result, or perhaps mine for not reading further down the forum for better solutions. I still think though that people should start thinking a little first about whether it's an appropriate place or time to suggest that the query should be taken to Google.

Imagine how many people will get trapped in the infinite recursion... =P

Married

So since I last wrote I graduated and got married, which is a pretty big deal. Our honeymoon was in England, which as unconventional as it was, was a TERRIFIC honeymoon.

The plan now is to move to Japan, but we're back in Canada now. Why are we in Canada? Well originally we thought we had to be back for Tamara's Grandpa's 80'th birthday party, but they moved it to right after the wedding. By then we had already booked the tickets. We may have had other reasons too but that was the main reason.

We had a place to stay over the summer lined up too, but that fell through right before the wedding, so we looked for and found another place, but that fell through during the honeymoon. Right now we're at Tamara's parents' place looking for jobs and a place to stay in Japan.

Tomorrow we will be house sitting for a week for friends from Tamara's church. That will be nice to have time alone together for a week. Today we dropped by Old Navy where Tamara used to work, and it looks like they will take her back over the summer starting next week. That will be nice to have the income, since though we are blessed with having no rent for the moment, student loan repayment is ever looming, and we need to fund our trip to Japan, which will hopefully occur around September.

We have two weddings for friends we're booked to attend as well, which is exciting. Congratulations to Nate and Maja as well as Jenna and Julio! Just like us they are moving on to foreign countries which are home to one of the couple (Denmark and Peru, respectively). We must have started a trend!

Another thing going on in the background is Tamara's JET application. She applied to teach English in Japan, and was accepted but put on the alternate list. This means she's qualified but is on a waiting list until positions become available. This is a little odd since our family has friends in the JET program who are aware of job openings right now. But who knows how the system works... At least we know of friends who have been accepted after waiting for a while as an alternate.

So if the JET program accepts her, then they take care of her VISA, the living arrangements and rent etc. which is really nice. If not, well we want to go to Japan anyways so we'll have to figure that out on our own. Right now we're doing all the tedious work required in that process but are hoping that the JET program will work out. Please pray that God's will will be done either way.

Well I'm writing this blog post because I was getting sick of writing my resume for a job in Japan. I'll get back to that tomorrow I think. I think I'll go hang out with Tamara now and maybe watch a movie. Toodles!