Add undocumented, unreliable optimizations to the dangers of using custom Parcelable objects in bundles — tl;dr — If you create a custom Parcelable with a View.OnClickListener and send the object to a Fragment using a Bundle, the OS will pass the data copy-by-reference (not actually parceling the data) and the receiving fragment can access the original OnClickListener in nearly all cases. However, this is a…

A brief tutorial and a sample prayer through Psalm 103 — After making the case that Israel’s divinely inspired hymnbook (i.e. the Psalms) is an excellent “instrument for theological instruction,” Tim Keller goes further in his book entitled The Songs of Jesus to describe them as something to be experienced. He says, ‘Psalms, then, are not just a matchless primer of…

Two quizzes to test the accuracy of your conceptions about the two parts of the Bible — Is the God portrayed in the New Testament the same God portrayed in the Old Testament? The stereotypes of a “fire and brimstone, wrathful” old testament god and a “love conquers all” new testament god are prolific in our culture. Consequently, it’s very hard to believe they are the same…

Hallelujah #5: Like the End of a Song! — The fifth of five hallelujah psalms and the last in the book, this one feels like that moment at the end of the song when they are banging all of the drums and hitting the cymbals. Pretty epic — sustained then suddenly quiet. I had fun with the phrasing in…

Hallelujah #4 — Awe and Retributive Justice — The fourth of five hallelujah psalms, this one is half praise and half an intense call to action. To go from singing happy bedtime songs to God to “executing vengeance on nations” (as the English Standard Version says in verse 5 and 7) is kind of jarring. That said, an…

Hallelujah #3 — Hallelujah on Repeat — The third of the five hallelujah psalms, this one actually reminds me a lot of psalm 136 because of its repetition. Remember that hallelujah is a transliteration of the Hebrew way of saying praise yahweh (the personal name for God). Unlike the English Standard Version, which I recommend for a…

Hallelujah #2 — He does not find the most joy in the stomping of strong feet — Second in the last five ‘hallelujah psalms’, this one highlights God’s focus on the weak rather than the strong. The verse that is most clear and concise about this is verse six, which I decided to phrase really differently. Verse fifteen was hard to rewrite… what does it mean for…

Hallelujah #1 — Because other people are just people! — We are in the homestretch now. The final five psalms. They are known as the ‘Hallelujah Psalms’ because each of them start and end with ‘Hallelujah’, which actually is a compound word made up of two Hebrew words: hallel (meaning ‘praise’) and jah (a contraction of the personal name for…

David: I’ll be your hype man till the day I die! — David is so full of positive emotion in this one, and I think that contextualizes the sweeping promises of God’s protection and availability. Certainly I do not capture the poetic nature of the original text, but I do try to translate that emotion into modern language. When thinking how to…