I’m a big fan of music. When Napster came around I was all over it, when that got shut down and Grockser and Limewire emerged, I quickly joined the fun. In high school I downloaded loads of music, most of which I never listened much to, but occasionally enjoyed perusing my own collection yet unheard music. After I became a Christian, it wasn’t long before I stopped downloading music from the free programs and moved to more law-friendly services—such as itunes.

Unfortunately, itunes and its contemporaries aren’t too friendly on the pocketbook. But what’s more important than that, it’s difficult to sift through and find really good music. It’s easy to peruse the itunes libraries, but it’s hard to feel confident enough about some unknown artist to drop $10 – $15 on an album which very well may disappoint. Most of the editors picks are new or rising stars on major labels, with tons of production money thrown at them. If there’s one thing music lovers can really agree on, it’s that popular doesn’t necessarily equal good. The bottom line is, the popular music download providers are too expensive to really explore new music and discover really good music, and their heavy affiliation with major labels makes it difficult to find the rare gems of the little known music universe.

Well, this week I discovered something outstanding. It’s a yet little-known company called eMusic. They deal only in independent labels. So if Beyonce is your thing, this probably won’t be for you. But if you’re like me and really love to explore new music and especially the lesser known stuff, eMusic is dream come true!

eMusic is a download service, fully legal and based in New York. They offer downloads at a fraction of the price you’d find them in their major competitors. A single song can be purchased for as low as about $0.25. However, unlike itunes or Amazon.com, eMusic is a subscription service. Which means that you fill up an account balance each month, then use it to download songs. $20 will get you 75 downloads. Spend the $20 up front, and download whatever you want until you’re out.

So, the pricing is right, but frankly great prices don’t mean squat if there isn’t also a great selection. Lucky for us, there’s an excellent selection! eMusic has a library of over 3 Million songs, all from artists signed to independent labels from all over the world. There is great music in every genre and editor picks from almost every genre.

Because of the vast number of songs and the likelihood that you’ll be exploring a lot of stuff you’ve never heard of before, eMusic has an excellent system for refining searching and browsing options. You can brows by genre, record label, artist, year, even what instruments are used. For someone who can usually describe what they’d like to hear, but not necessarily know who exactly it is that fits the bill, the browsing options are indispensable.

I signed up and have been having an excellent time browsing and downloading new music and I recommend you do the same. Here are just a few of the artists I’ve come to enjoy, thanks to eMusic.

Jah Cure

True Reflections… A New Beginning

Jah Cure is a combination of interesting Reggae, with some clear Indian influence. Most notable about the album is the vocals. While clearly fitting in the Reggae genre, there is also a unique tone or inflection in the vocals that bring something really fresh to the sound.

Jan Davis

Concert by the Sea

An entirely instrumental set of Latin tango guitar melodies. The rhythms are smooth and crisp. Every track proves excellent. I’m enjoying it even now, as I’m writing.

The Duhks

Migrations

Bluegrass in the same vein as Nickel Creek. The instrumentals have a traditional and often upbeat sound, but the vocals are contemporary enough to keep the less bluegrass-inclined crowd interested.

For more information on this edition of Reading Classics Together, swing by Challies.com or pick up the book, The Seven Sayings of the Saviour on the Cross by Arthur W. Pink.

This week in Seven Sayings, Pink explored Jesus’ declaration of thirst in John 19:28:

“After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), ‘I thirst.’ “

Pink spends a considerable time talking about the display of Christ’s humanity in the statement, “I thirst” as well as a considerable amount of time discussing the fulfillment of prophecy in his statement. But I thought what was most interesting was in his bringing up the idea that Jesus is not a priest who cannot relate to our own sufferings. It was the briefest of sections in the chapter, so I decided I’d just share the whole section.

The problem of suffering has ever been a perplexing one. Why should suffering be necessary in a world that is governed by a perfect God? A God who not only has the power to prevent evil, but who is love. Why should there be pain and wretchedness, sickness and death? As we look out on the world and take cognizance of its countless sufferers, we are bewildered. This world is but a vale of tears. A thin veneer of gaiety scarcely succeeds in hiding the drab facts of life. Philosophizing about the problem of suffering brings scant relief. After all our reasonings we ask, Does God see? Is there knowledge with the Most High? Does he really care? Like all questions, these must be taken to the cross. While they do not find there a complete answer, nevertheless they do meet that which satisfies the anxious heart. While the problem of suffering is not fully solved there, yet the cross does throw sufficient light upon it to relieve the tension. The cross shows us that God is not ignorant of our sorrows, for in the person of his Son he has himself “borne our griefs and carried our sorrows” (Isa. 53:4)! The cross shows us God is not unmindful of our distress and anguish, for becoming incarnate, he suffered himself! The cross tells us God is not indifferent to pain for in the Saviour he experienced it!

What then is the value of these facts? This: “For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted (or tried) like as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15). Our Redeemer is not one so removed from us that he is unable to enter, sympathetically, into our sorrows, for he was himself “the Man of Sorrows”. Here then is comfort for the aching heart. No matter how despondent you maybe, no matter how rugged your path and sad your lot, you are invited to spread it all before the Lord Jesus and cast all your care upon him, knowing that “he careth for you” (1 Peter 5:7). Is your body wracked with pain? So was his! Are you misunderstood, misjudged, misrepresented? So was he! Have those who are nearest and dearest turned away from you? They did from him! Are you in the darkness? So was he for three hours! “Wherefore in all things it behooved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest” (Heb. 2:17).

A crew of friends took a trip across the Bay Bridge today to go on an adventure into the woods. I thought it would be fun to bring everyone along with me today. Six minutes of excitement awaits you! Enjoy!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wEVwEQxCmY]

On a secondary note, I’ve never realized just how bad YouTube compression is, especially compared to the superior but yet unsupported blip.tv. Oh well, make well with what I’ve got, right?

I was thinking about sin today. Well, I guess I’m usually thinking about sin—circumstance is really the definer. In any case, I was reminded of one of the most important sentiments a person can receive; it comes from the Scriptures, through the puritan, John Owen’s great discernment.

“Do you mortify? Do you make it your daily work? Be always at it whilst you live; cease not a day from this work; be killing sin or it will be killing you.”

I forget this often. Daily. It’s funny how regularly a person can court sin openly; or abandon one sin only and think well of themselves, but all the while silently picking up some other sin. But the truth remains that all sin is out to kill us. All sin will see us dead, if given its way. And all men are prone at all times to give themselves to this well adorned mistress.

Through the work of Christ on the cross it is every Christian’s duty and joy to put to death the deeds of the body. Because Owen is right in his noting: “Be killing sin or sin will be killing you.”

Over the past three days, my mother and I have watched the whole Lord of the Rings trilogy, extended versions, on DVD. I’d seen the first one several times and the second one two or three times, but the third one I hadn’t seen since the theaters, and hence never seen the extra footage from the extended DVD. My mother had never seen any of them, and after recently watching the new Indiana Jones movie and Prince Caspian, felt like she wanted to catch up some.

Most everyone is familiar with the movies, and the creature Gollum. The skinny, big eyed, schizophrenic, ring-of-power withdraw patient. Now, I’m sure that many have made this comparison before me, perhaps that was even the original intention in designing such a character—but of all the characters in the entire set of movies, I think that I identified with Gollum the most closely. Of course there are plenty of other characters anyone would rather see themselves as, but in the soberest of realities, Gollum is the closest comparison.

There are some times when my own conversations with myself, about sin, mirror the creature’s debates over how to get back his beloved ring. It’s a striking parallel sometimes.

I can see, again, Paul’s inner struggle in Romans 7:14-24:

For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?

However, unlike Gollum, who’s divided person met his end in flames, clutching his ring in hand, I can say with Paul, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:25) I will not share in Gollum’s fate.

John Piper’s When I Don’t Desire God is hands down one of the best, most well balanced, theologically on-point books I have ever read. It is my opinion that most Christians, especially in America, especially who deal day in-day out, with a stale spiritual life, should read this book.

Although I am a subscriber to the Desiring God blog, on which Piper is a regular author, and besides having seen Piper speak on several occasion, this is only the second book from Piper that I’ve read all the way through. He has a somewhat peculiar writing style that takes a chapter or two to adjust to and I hadn’t managed to do it in the past. But this time I did and it was well worth it.

Piper sets out in the beginning of the book to relay some ground work for folks who aren’t already in tune with the idea of Christian Hedonism. It’s essentially the idea that a person should do absolutely whatever is necessary to make themselves happy. So, to be a Christian Hedonist would be to believe that knowing God and enjoying God is essentially the only real way to be happy. He relays the foundation of biblical truth spoken of extensively in other works that “God is most glorified in us, when we are most satisfied in him”. The ideas are laced together to create a framework to teach the weary and the bored that we must “rejoice always in the Lord”. (Philippians 4:4).

Throughout his text, he stays strikingly well balanced. Teaching, from the scripture, many profound spiritual truths—however abstract they may be. But scarcely does he introduce a spiritual truth without pairing it with a practical implementation. The best example of Piper’s skill here is during his discussion of the word of God and it’s place in our lives. He spends one chapter discussing the spiritual truths and implications of the word of God, but then follows immediately with an entire chapter of helpful, time tested ideas of how to live out those truths.

Finally the last chapter focuses on the occasion that a person seeks hard to enjoy God and be satisfied by Him, but is not. In that discussion I found great encouragement and strength for my own soul. That chapter alone perhaps was worth the entire book.

When I Don’t Desire God finishes out at 234 pages and spans across 12 chapters. In addition to that, each chapter is broken up into a dozen or so subsections that make picking it up and putting it down very easy. It effectively removes excuses for not reading by making sure that you don’t necessarily have to read for more than just a few minutes, if that’s all you’ve got available to you.

All in all, I recommend this book to all believers. It’s affordable and valuable and is likely to stir you in unexpected ways.

Perhaps
At the game;
For the man in the stands with the Handycam.

Maybe
The classroom;
For the man when he stands with his belt in hand.

Certainly
In the home;
For the man understands that life must go as planned.

But caution:
For likely a burden
To heavy to bear,
When energies down here,
And not up there.

Forever
Pay attention;
For while father may be pleased—Father may be grieved.