God for Geeks

Simple Scrum Diagram

I think it helps people have a good relationship with God if they create a personal metaphor that gives them a more direct perspective on His work, and His plan.  In the case of most of the faithful I know, they also happen to be passionate about writing computer software.  One of them even gave me a great idea for helping me shape my personal understanding of God a little better, which could easily turn into multiple blog posts spanning several paragraphs.  See, something I'm extremely passionate about is the concept of agile software development, specifically in the desire of moving towards continuous delivery.

I was having a faith conversation regarding predestination and free will with a fellow developer who I'm also working on agile practices with, and came to an interesting theory.  God, to me, is like the ultimate agile developer - He definitely gave each and every one of us the free will to work on his Life product however we so choose, and while he has every single epic perfectly planned, the sprints that we go through do not get planned until it's implementation time.  He even has a great backlog of user stories that he has certain individuals assigned to.

I italicized some terms that are part of the concept of agile development, I can, and will, write about God as a Product Owner (another one of those buzzwords), about how Life is a product, not a project - also an important distinction - and all kinds of other things that combine agile development theory with my strongly increasing faith.  I don't know yet how long this blog series will carry me - I'm not really doing it for me, I'm doing it because He assigned this user story to me, and He wants me to carry it out.  I'm going to do my best to move out of His way, and let Him work through me and my understanding of software development to explain His purpose for me, and for Life.  I don't know yet exactly where this journey will take me, nor do I know all of the technical implementation details of the user story.  All I know is that the final result will be His story, told through the eyes of a developer that loves Agile practices.

I'm not sure yet what a good starting point would be.  Scrum is a simple concept, with so many complex and interacting components that each one could certainly grab my attention for the length of one, or possibly many, blog posts.  I guess I just need to move out of the way and let Him give me some guidance on where to start first, seeing as He is the Product Owner (He owns Life) and His Son is the ultimate Scrum Master (Jesus removed Sin as the ultimate impediment).  Maybe that's a good place to start - explaining what a Scrum Master is, or what a Product Owner is, and explaining why I see God as the Product Owner of Life.  I'll pray about it a little bit, but I've been inspired by the Holy Spirit to keep working on this - and while He is patient, He also has a reason for calling people to action.  Thank God for his inspirations!

Mashed Potatoes

Short side rant: Shame on Facebook and YouTube for their initial response to this movie trailer.  Glory to Him, humans can't take away His message, no matter what. God wanted this message heard, YouTube and Facebook are not big enough to get in HIS way. That trailer is obviously now back on YouTube, after originally being banned.

This has nothing to do with my mashed potatoes post, and yet it also has everything to do with my mashed potatoes post.  I was working on preparing potatoes for becoming mashed potatoes.  As I peeled them, cleaned them, and then cubed them, thinking about God along the way, it struck me as a fitting metaphor for The Christian Church (or The Body of Christ).  Every potato (human) is a little different.  Preparing potatoes to become mashed (humans for heaven) requires peeling (saving).  Christ is the potato peeler, the peels are the Sin of humans.  As the potatoes become peeled (saved) - some of the dirt from other peels gets on the peeled potatoes.  When Humans come into contact with Sin, we once again become tempted to Sin (potatoes get dirty again).  Jesus is also the faucet that washes off the dirt - He's multifaceted like that ;).  Once the potatoes get mashed, it becomes a uniform (tasty) mass that all support one another.  However, the cook (God) notices when one of the potatoes is missing, the body is incomplete!

I apologize if the metaphorical mind of mine went on a really wide tangent that I'm doing a terrible job explaining.  However, Kirk Cameron is a potato.  So am I.  Someday, we'll all be a part of the Body of Heaven, mashed together for eternity in one quite scrumptious future!

Code Life Review

So, one of the wonderful things that I get to do at work these days is take part in code reviews. I show off my code, good, bad, or otherwise, to people that have an interest in the code I'm writing. They show their code to me. And, we can point at things in the code and actively direct attention to good code, and code that could use some constructive improvement.

 The thing we get to do with code reviews is make changes, in almost real-time, to correct mistakes. We can append additional changed files to the ones we originated a review on, so that we can show exactly where we improved anything somebody listed as a "defective" portion of code. We get do-overs, and it works well to make our code significantly better. The code we write tells a better story about the team we are on when code reviews are included.

 When we sin, we are showing the human defects in our lives. God is the primary code reviewer in our lives - he knows exactly what it is that we've done that doesn't "follow standards" and he definitely knows all about the "unsafe practices" or "pattern violations". The thing is, His people didn't get a chance to do a code life review, sin became a permanent part of their lives. Then Jesus came along. Guess what, even when we do screw up (we are human after all) He goes through and makes our code lives clean. Sure, the evidence of our sin sits on our soul. But, we get to apply a change-set any time sin happens. Jesus gives us that chance and that love. How about that :D. Amen.

The Black Spot

Though not perhaps the most well known of all literary devices (possibly more popular thanks to Disney), The Black Spot represents, in most cases, a curse, an imperfection, or some sort of other ill will.

As I was working on a drawing I am doing, sitting with my daughter as she colored on her dry erase easel, somehow or another a little black dot from one of her markers made it onto my very carefully planned and worked pencil drawing.  It's obvious.  It's gaping.  It's a black spot.  And, it's beautiful.  Because, it reminds me that God - a much better creator than I - knows about each and every one of the black spots in His creation.  That's what we call Sin.

I plan on using all of the capacities I have as an artist to make the black spot go away.  Most likely, nobody but me will know it was even there, once I'm finished.  But - the spot happened.  The great healer - Jesus Christ - came to get rid of all of the black spots in the creation of His Father, and our Father.  Most of the black spots we have, He knows about, but His eraser - the Son, got rid of them for us so that we can be with Him again.

I'm thankful for the reminder that even black spots are an integral part of creation.  They can be managed, they can be dealt with appropriately.  But, only through the great eraser that is Jesus, can they be erased and forgiven.  I'm still learning how to draw around black spots.  And, I'm still learning how to accept forgiveness for my sin.  But, through Him, we are all forgiven.

Amen.

God Trusts Us

Whoever is faithful in small matters will be faithful in large ones; whoever is dishonest in small matters will be dishonest in large ones.” (Luke 16:10)

God implicitly trusts us with many responsibilities as we live out our mortal lives.  Some of them will be obvious to us, such as parenthood, careers, friendships, all stemming from some of the most important relationships we have.  However, sometimes we have to remember that He trusts us with all kinds of things, even the not-so-obvious ones.

The best example I have of this right now comes from my workplace.  We just recently stared down the throat of a lion, and the lion decided it was better just to leave us alone.  Working in the  software industry, sometimes we come across "show stopping" changes, sometimes they are bugs, sometimes they are software features that "got missed".  Our project is 1 week away from being production ready.  A show stopper showed up at our doorstep earlier this week.  God trusted me to handle this issue with integrity and dignity, hopefully I made him proud.  We've decided on a 2 step process.  We'll put in a quick fix now, and then follow up with a more in depth solution once our original solution is successfully seated in our production environment.

I slipped up a little bit while dealing with this show stopper, because I forgot to open my ears and shut my mouth.  God helped me get through the whole situation, though - and gave me the strength, courage, and wisdom to keep the team members I'm leading from having to deal with significant overtime and / or a missed deadline.  I also thank God that the project manager on the project helped us to mitigate any major scope explosions, as it could have easily turned into that.

Compared to dealing with a family health situation, dealing with a conundrum at work is simply one more test that God trusted me to pass.  Dealing with the family health thing was a little bit anxiety riddled, too - but it is now behind us as well, and His strength did not fail to see us through it.

I'm sure there's lots of little things I don't know about that God trusts me with. Thank God for His trust in all things.

God is in Boston

Something really bad just happened.  Be warned, some of the imagery on that link is a bit graphic, so don't go there if you've got a weak stomach.  For those who have not yet heard, an apparent act of terrorism has taken place in Boston, taking place during the Boston Marathon.

My prayers go out to those that were injured, those that were witnesses, emergency responders, and everyone else that will have direct or indirect involvement with regard to this tragedy.  Our government once again needs God's direction to know how to react to the situation appropriately.  Family needs God's hand to talk to their loved ones, and mourn losses, appropriately.  At a moment like this, I hope that our nation turns to God.  For, I know He is present and working hard in this aftermath, even if right now the situation seems the worst of cruelties.

On a more specific and intimate level to my life, I can speak of a near tragedy that turned into a miracle.  I eat lunch with a student every week at a nearby elementary school.  He got really sick at the beginning of this year, badly enough to get airlifted by helicopter to a specialty hospital.  His road to recovery will take time, but God has His hand in the recovery.  For, even though he got so sick, he also got some desperately needed attention in the form of one-on-one education.  In the three months between the time I last saw him before he got sick, and the first time I saw him after his illness, his academic ability increased significantly.  Some people call that a silver lining.  I call it God.  While it may seem silly to point out an event specific to my life during a national tragedy, I find it a compelling story similar enough in nature to this one to remind everyone God can do work here.

I know God is present to make this kind of things, and many other miraculous ones, come out of such a horrendous event.  I do not wish to downplay the tragedy that the massacre certainly was, and is.  However, I do hope everyone remembers, God is present, there, too.  Take a moment to pray for the victims, whether directly or indirectly impacted.  And, remember, we're all people - and all of us hurt when something this terrible happens.  Now is not a time for hate to blossom, but instead to remember to find a way to love.

Eat Your Donut

This story about faith certainly warrants being retold.

http://www.thylacineslair.com/MindRetreat/Donuts.htm

Have you eaten your donut yet?