JADDOG

Earlier this year my laptop battery died. I had to remove it from my laptop to get my laptop to even boot. Through quite a fiasco I hope the battery is on the way and I’ll have it soon. I’ve been without for over a month now. In the mean time my system clock needs updating every time I boot. I guess the laptop needs the battery to keep the system time accurate when the machine is not running. For a while my machine would boot with the date as Feb 06 2009 10pm. Today it seems that my clock boots to Feb 17 2009 10pm. When I forget to run ntpdate to update my system clock all my git commit timestamps are wrong.

Today is the second time I’ve have to fix my dates so I’m blogging this fix so it’s easier to find when/if I ever need it again:

git filter-branch --env-filter \
    'if [ $GIT_COMMIT = 119f9ecf58069b265ab22f1f97d2b648faf932e0 ]
     then
         export GIT_AUTHOR_DATE="Fri Jan 2 21:38:53 2009 -0800"
         export GIT_COMMITTER_DATE="Sat May 19 01:01:01 2007 -0700"
     fi'

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/454734/how-can-one-change-the-timestamp-of-an-old-commit-in-git

I just thrown the above command into a little bash script and called it fix. If you run this more than once you’ll get an error:

$ ./fix
Namespace refs/original/ not empty

To fix the broken “fix” script just rm -rf the directory it’s refering to:

$ rm -rf .git/refs/original/*
$ ./fix
Rewrite 6b37ac946f9b2af3a0e66657038a1c4cafaeab89 (63/63)
Ref ‘refs/heads/master’ was rewritten

As I’m writing this I’m told my manager has tried to ping me in irc to tell me my new battery is in. I didn’t get the message because my client has disconnected for some reason. Now I will have a new battery, hopefully no system time problem and a new irc problem. Such is life.

I just finished chapter 7 in John Stott’s Basic Christianity. I can’t do a better job of depicting the meaning of Christ’s death on the cross than he’s done. This quote is from pages 117-118.

… “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Jesus Christ had no sins of his own; he was made sin with our sins, on the cross.

As we look at the cross, we can begin to understand the terrible implications of these words. At twelve noon “there was darkness over the whole land” which continued for three hours until Jesus died. With the darkness came silence, for no eye should see, and no lips could tell, the agony of soul which the spotless Lamb of God now endured. The accumulated sins of all human history were laid upon him. Voluntarily he bore the in his own body. He made them his own. He shouldered full responsibility for them.

And then in desolate spiritual abandonment that cry was wrung from his lips, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” It was a quotation from the first verse of Psalm 22. No doubt he had been meditating during his agony on its description of the sufferings and glory of the Christ. But why did he quote that verse? Why not one of the triumphant verses at the end? Why not, “You who fear the Lord, praise Him!” or “Dominion belongs to the Lord”? Are we to believe that it was a cry of human weakness and despair, or that the Son of God was imagining things?

No. These words must be taken at their face value. He quoted this verse of Scripture, as he quoted all others, because he believed he himself was fulfilling it. He was bearing our sins. And God who is “of purer eyes than to behold evil” and cannot “look on wrong” turned away his face. Our sins came between the Father and the Son. The Lord Jesus Christ who was eternally with the Father, who enjoyed unbroken communion with him throughout his life on earth, was thus momentarily abandoned. Our sins sent Christ to hell. He tasted the torment of a soul estranged from God. Bearing our sins, he died our death. He endured instead of us the penalty of separation from God which our sins deserved.

Then at once, emerging from that outer darkness, he cried in triumph, “It is finished,” and finally, “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit.” And so he died. The work he had come to do was completed. The salvation he had come to win was accomplished. The sins of the world were borne. Reconciliation to God was available to all who would trust this Savior for themselves, and receive him as their own. Immediately, as if to demonstrate this truth publicly, the unseen hand of God tore down the curtain of the temple and hurled it aside. It was needed no longer. The way into God’s holy presence was no longer barred. Christ had “opened the gate of heaven to all believers.” And thirty-six hours later he was raised from death, to prove that he had not died in vain.

Tonight a couple of buddies of mine and I saw the new Clint Eastwood movie. Not at all what I expected. The movie had a religious flavor to the underlying story. While there was absolutely no accurate depiction of salvation, there was a strangely touching sacrificial message delivered. Stop reading here if you don’t want the end of the movie ruined. The movie ends with Eastwood’s character, Walt, being shot an excessive amount of times by a gang. This brutal murder is witnessed by many people and has the gang arrested to be locked up for a long time. One of the gang members cousins lived next door to Walt and through out the movie is befriended by Walt, not really intentionally.

I don’t think that the movie was trying to depict the sacrificial death that Christ dies for the sake of believers. Though, the movie does a  fairly good job of it. Christ died for sinners, of whom he owed nothing to. He died that they would be freed from the wrath they deserved for their sins. Walt dies for his next door neighbours, of whom he owed nothing to. He dies that they would be freed from the pain and suffering the gang was inflicting on the family. A fairly important difference is that this family did not necessarily deserve to be mistreated by the gang. Sinners deserve eternal  death.

I’ll admit the parallel isn’t perfect. Though, it was and unexpected ending to an unexpected story. An ending that reminded me of and unexpected sacrifice that Christ made. A sacrifice that those who  believe and follow will live eternally with Christ.

Tonight, in a marriage class my wife and I are taking, one of the pastors of our church said a quote worthy line:

In the Christian life we experience moments of victory and seasons of defeat.

- Daniel Baker

I feel I’m in one of those moments of victory, as I’m about to complete reading a book in its entirety. The first in quite some time. I’ve picked up, read a couple chapters and put down a number of books over the past season of defeat. I pray this moment of victory would turn into a life long passion. I’ve always struggled to desire to read, anything. What better reason to put that weakness to rest than seeking to be more like Christ.