My Yemen Blog – Page 56 – A blog from my time in Yemen and thoughts about Yemen

I’ve always felt that Good friday was the main event of the Christian faith. Yes, Easter, is better news, but emphasizing that without admitting the cost seems disingenuous to me. People go around expecting to be resurrected because they are good. Quid pro quo is a lousy basis for not only faith, but for moral (as opposed to ethical) living in general. No, the reason you will be resurrected is because someone was crucified for you. The question isn’t are you good, the question is are you worth someone being crucified for you? The answer is no, there’s good and then there’s GOOD, and nobody measures up to what has been done for them. So why was it done and why promise anything after that at all? That is a mystery, that is THE mystery. For me, this is what faith boils down to, and there are no answers to be had other than the act itself. All we can do is try to live up to what has been done for us and be thankful for whatever life brings us.

Good Friday is always a day to just get through for me. This year isn’t so bad for whatever reason, maybe it’s because I feel like I’m doing something with my life for once. Or maybe I don’t have as many things to feel bad about this year LOL. In any event, this day is the only one that stays on my mind the whole time. It’s odd and sad that Good Friday here isn’t much different than it is back home. It’s not a big deal in most churches, it’s in 4th or 5th place in church attendance behind Mother’s day, Christmas, Christmas Eve, and Easter. Granted, if I went to church it might be different for me, but I really can’t bring myself to go (why will have to wait for another blog post). Anyway, have a thoughtful Good Friday and a happy Easter!

Isaac

Christian Easter good friday christianity Christ crucifixion salvation reborn ressurection

Soon I will have my new domain set up. Along with a new place for my website and a new email system, I’ll have a place for a new blog! Why? Well, there are some real advantages, not least of which is that I will have all of my posts at my fingertips. I don’t know how likely it is that my (former) blogging site will go under, but who knows what can happen. I’ll also now have an RSS feed and be linked in with some services that keep track of blogs. It’s also going to be easier to write and take care of things at home. Yes, I know I can write blogs in a WP, but it never worked real well for me. With this, I’m actually typing in the program itself and just have to update my webpage to post. Last, but not least, I do think this looks better, even with the customization tools available at Livejournal…

All of my old posts will be availible, I’ve relabeled the old link just in case any of you (or me) might want to go back and quote something I wrote to use against me:-) With any luck, I’ll have everything up and running in the next few days. That includes a new email address and website address. My RSS feed should be up too. I’m pretty excited, the new host (dreamhost) is a MUCH better deal than .Mac, it’s about half the price (after a coupon and a 2 year commitment), offers 15 times the storage space and absolutely sick bandwidth. What really got me with .mac was how buggy and slow the email was and the total lack of customer support. I wanted to complain about something so I went to their support page. I tried to log in but got the message that that support account had been suspended due to “security concerns.” That’s it, no info on how to get in touch with someone, no chance to confirm my identity, nothing. So goodbye .Mac, it’s the only Apple product I’ve bought that I was dissapointed in….

I’m hoping that the blog gets to more people now too. There are some background things going on that will make this blog more visable and individual posts come up through the search engines. One of my current housemates read my blog before coming out and I’ve had a couple of people email me about Yemen and studying Arabic. With any luck, this move will improve people’s chances of getting in touch with me to discuss things…

Wish me luck getting everything set up, if you’re reading this it means that I succeeded!

Isaac