Glorious Mud

So they took Jesus ... [and] they crucified him ... Pilate also wrote an inscription and put it on the cross. It read, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews” ... written in Aramaic, in Latin, and in Greek. (John 19:16-20 ESV) I am thoroughly enjoying reading Tim Keller's King's Cross .  In his chapter called The Turn , this sentence caught my attention, "In condemning Jesus, the world was condemning itself" (102).  This got me thinking. When Jesus was crucified, the inscription posted above Jesus head was meant to be ironic.  We don't know why Pilate posted it - was it Pilate's way of trying to completely humiliate Jesus?  Was it Pilate's tribute to Jesus, a man he knew was innocent but thought was insane?  Was it a passive-aggressive dig at the Jewish leadership for cornering him into crucifying Jesus out of self-preservation - an act he otherwise didn't want to do?  Who knows. While we can't say why Pilate hung that sign, we can say that...

Last summer I started a fence project in our yard. It took a year, but it is now mission accomplished! We had some unique challenges since we have an odd shaped yard. It's shaped like a baseball diamond sketched out by a drunk guy. And there is an easement running along the back, so we couldn't just go to the property line. Even so, we needed an area fenced for the dogs and our pool. We considered building a privacy fence all the way around the yard - but didn't like that because it made the yard feel too closed in. It would also have looked pretty dorky because of the way our yard is shaped. So Lauren came up with a great idea - fence off just less than half the yard with both privacy fence (along the back and front to keep the dogs from barking at people) and picket fencing facing the rest of our yard to open it up. She also liked the idea of building raised beds along the fence for her flowers and vegetable garden. It took me a little while to warm up to...