Weekend lessons and Corte Madera

This past Saturday, participated in Canaan's Community Group Scavenger Hunt (see here for pictures), ate a few times with the fam since my bro was back for spring break, met up with Sam for disicpleship (went through the chapter on "Prayer" in Celebration of Discipilne by Richard Foster), and had some friends over to hang out, where somehow the primary discussion topic seemed to become the hypothesized effectiveness of having a "wingwoman" - i.e., a female friend accompanying a guy on his way to introducing himself to a gal, in order to make him seem less intimidating to the new person. Does this really work?

Oh, and Dr. Andy idly wondered (alluding to the stereotypical Asian shyness), "How in the world did Asians date each other before email?"

Sunday's service covered the Biblical principle from God's covenant with Abram/Abraham that we are blessed spiritually, materially, and personally, in order to be a blessing to others. The thing is, in a rich society like the Silicon Valley, it's so easy to compare myself to a richer person in any of those dimensions, and thus conclude that I am not that blessed - when the very nature of my circumstances shows that I'm probably among the top 0.5% blessed people in the world. That's both a great privilege to be enjoyed, and a heavy responsibility to perform.

In Sunday School, John and Sandra have been teaching an excellent series on Biblical principles of communication. This week, the primary admonition was to use our words wisely - knowing that we are called to bless rather than curse (Gal 3:14), that there is an unexpected power in the words we say both horizontally (to people) and vertically (to God), and realizing that we need to watch both what we say (blessings or curses of commission) or don't say (omission). The lesson reminded me of a friend back in college who gently let me know that my unrefined attempts at sarcasm and wit were instead coming across as bludgeoning words that were in fact breaking people down bit by bit. Ever since then, I've tried to rein my tongue in a little bit more, and I think I've been able to mature in this area. Clearly an example of how a wound from a friend can be trusted.

Sunday afternoon, God held back the rain long enough for us to get out to the courts and play for the first time in about a month. Couldn't make any shots, and my timing was all messed up (my brain would say, "Cut to the hoop now!" or "Guard the reversal!" yet my feet would say, "Nuh-uh, we're not going anywhere"). Most recent sign of aging: my quads were still sore today. Felt good to run around again though.

Monday, I took the day off from work and we had a family outing up north past SF to Corte Madera for some hiking. Here are a few pics I took off my dad's new camera:

It was unusually nice weather, despite warnings of rain coming in:


Golden Gate:


San Francisco downtown:


On the hike, we encountered plenty of wet patches that we had to slog through, but came across the occasional stream:


Dad cresting a hill next to an odd rock formation:



Shots of SF and the coastline: