Alex Watt

About Hacks Recommendations

Solitude and Community

Let him who cannot be alone beware of community… Let him who is not in community beware of being alone… Each by itself has profound perils and pitfalls. One who wants fellowship without solitude plunges into the void of words and feelings, and the one who seeks solitude without fellowship perishes in the abyss of vanity, self-infatuation and despair.

– Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

Do we know how to be really alone and really in community? Or do we play pretend at both – e.g., browsing Facebook alone – and get neither?

Let him who cannot be alone or in community beware of both.


The Beauty of Fall

Summer and winter, and springtime and harvest,
Sun, moon and stars in their courses above,
Join with all nature in manifold witness
To Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love.

– Thomas Chisholm, Great Is Thy Faithfulness

Photo credit: Annie Spratt

Some of my friends were talking about beauty this morning and where we find it. We thought briefly about the beauty in sadness, in endings, which speak volumes about the goodness that really was and say something true to us about our own condition.

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ESV Text Expander (AutoHotkey)

One of the things I love about Crossway is how accessible they make the ESV text with great tools like ESV.org and the ESV API for developers.

I recently used their API to make a text expander for ESV verses, using AutoHotkey. (Note that AutoHotkey is a Windows-only utility, so if you’re on another OS this won’t be of much use.)

Demo using the script from Microsoft Word.

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Photos of 2016

I took hundreds of photos while I was in France, but recently selected and organized a handful of my favorites. Take a look!


Thanksgiving on New Year’s Eve

So 2016 draws to a close at last. For some of my friends, it is already over. As I spend the final hours of this year, I want to give thanks.

This year has not been an Instagram moment. There is a time for everything, including difficult and painful things. Even so, I am grateful for 2016.

Tomorrow is a new year. But it’s also a new day, and we have the promise that “his mercies are new every morning” (Lamentations 3:23).

You mustn’t wish for another life. You mustn’t want to be somebody else. What you must do is this: “Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks.” I am not all the way capable of so much, but those are the right instructions.

― Wendell Berry, Hannah Coulter