CORRECTION: I was totally busted on my song selection. Tried to remember words from memory. Ben in the comments busted me. The song is Day Tripper. Video here.

The term “Day Tripper” may have been most popularized in the Beetles song, Baby you can drive my car. It is a common expression here and often defines a person who makes a day trip into London. I had a friend in town today who has been through London on many occasions but never to London so I gave him what I’ve come to call the walking tour.

Basically it is the train to London’s Victoria Station, walk the six blocks to Buckingham Palace, through Green Park to Piccadilly then several blocks to Piccadilly Circus, to the Texas Embassy for lunch (which is actually in the building that was the headquarters for the shipping line that owned the Titanic), to Trafalgar Square, down the hill on Whitehall (which is where 10 Downing Street is, to Big Ben and Parliment with a view across the River Thames to the London Eye, around the corner to Westminster Abbey, then a double-decker bus back to Victoria and the train home. Here’s some shots from the day.

I listened with shock (but without surprise) to Pat Robertson‘s latest proclamation of idiocy (viewed here) regarding the events in Haiti.”How can you be so matter-of-fact in speaking for God and declaring His judgment on the people of Haiti hours after an

earthquake destroyed its capital?” I asked as I watched the clip. (Fortunately there are high profile Christians like Michael Horton who put into perspective this type of prophetic pandering.

(NOTE: for a healthy biblical perspective on God and disasters listen to this NPR interview with John Piper on the heels of the 2005 Tsunami that devastated Indonesia and parts of Thailand).

Is Robertson’s declaration that this is God’s judgment on Haiti for having made a pact with the devil an appropriate response? It’s a question I’ve been wrestling with for the past few days as I’ve watched clips, read stories and followed photo essays coming out of Haiti. My response is no, it is not appropriate and here are a few things I’ve concluded about being a Christian at times like these.

NO ONE has a right to presume to know the mind of God, let alone speak with an air of authority regarding that presumption. I do know that NOTHING happens in this world without God’s approval and He has a purpose – His purpose – for all He allows (Isaiah 46:9-10). Only God sees all of history before Him at once and knows exactly how this quake fits into His eternal plan. To cherry pick a prophesy is to reveal theological shallowness.

I must feel compassion for the suffering of the people. The Christian who is not moved to compassion  – and worse yet allows the thought that this is somehow deserved – is a legalist at best and heartless at worst, and I’d seriously question that person’s claim of salvation.(“…Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.”)

My compassion must motivate me to do something. I may not be in a position to give or go, but I can certainly pray. Pray for the people, for workers trying to help, for suffering to be assuaged, for the Gospel to be preached and for God to save thousands.

My actions of compassion must NOT be devoid of the Gospel. There is no way to alleviate all the human suffering of this world and especially in a situation like this. Physical suffering in this world is a visual representation of a spiritual reality: Sin causes suffering; has from the beginning and will until the end. God has placed the earth under a curse (Romans 8:19-23). Nothing man does is going to change that reality but we are called by God to apply ourselves to good works while seeking to share a remedy (the Gospel) for man’s greatest need (forgiveness of sin to be reconciled to God). Failing to do this is not compassionate. In fact it is cruel. To be so close as to extend clean water to someone yet not share the Gospel is to alleviate a temporal need while withholding  hope that quenches his or her eternal need.

Every Christian should watch the news coming out of Haiti with a great deal of soul searching, a healthy amount of compassion and a deep desire to see Jesus become very real in the lives of the suffering masses.

I love language, more specifically the use of it. I’m not sure when this love affair began but I remember way back to when I was about six years old and my dad read to me The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I could see ol’ Huck and Jim floating the Mississip’ on their raft.
At some point I graduated to sports writers like Red Smith, books like The Great Gatsby and essayists like John McPhee and his incredible look at Princeton’s Bill Bradley (A Sense of Where You Are).
And then there was William Safire.

Safire died in September (2009) ending a life of language. I began reading his column, “On Language” when I was in high school and followed it through college. His giddiness over words was contagious. Safire was the first person I thought of when I read the column below in a local publication (sorry, would credit the author but there was no byline). One of the things I LOVE about Brits is their use of language. Many have a broad vocabulary and put combination of words together that make this English speaker feel like the language gods have rolled in a buffet of fresh catch and invited this mortal to a word feast. It’s sometimes like living in a Monty Python movie.

Hope you enjoy this as much as I did.

The English Language Lesson

We’ll begin with a box and the plural is boxes, but the plural of ox become oxen, not oxes.

One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese, yet the plural of moose should never be meese.

You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice, yet the plural of house is houses, not hice.

If the plural of man is always called men, why shouldn’t the plural of pan be called pen?

If I speak of my foot and show you my feet, if I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?

If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth, why shouldn’t the plural of booth be called beeth?

Beware of a heard, a dreadful word, that looks like beard and sounds like bird.

If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

(You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which an alarm goes off by going on.)