The waiter opens a bottle of wine and presents the cork for the couple seated at the table. Clearly they are supposed to take a sniff of the cork and respond to the waiter, so that the pouring of the wine can actually begin...

But what exactly is it they're supposed to be trying to smell?

I only recently learned that this traditional sniff-test is not about judging the quality of the wine or differentiating the merits of a particular vintage (which is, honestly, kind of what I assumed it was all about). Rather, it's a simple quality control procedure to make sure that the cork hasn't rotted and spoiled the wine. Did you know that?!? I totally didn't, until a friend explained it for me over the weekend.

So actually, the sniff test is simply a "good" or "bad" / "yes" or "no" kind of test. I feel kind of embarrassed to have not known this sooner -- to think of all the times that I've pretended to be some kind of wine connaisseur in lingering over the traditional sniff test, when it really should be obvious any time the cork comes within breathing distance of one's nose. But we live and learn... and that's a good thing.

With more and more wines being bottled with twist-off caps, the sniff test is becoming increasingly irrelevant. But that doesn't matter. There's always something to be said for tradition and pageantry -- which leads me to perhaps the greatest wine-tasting film scene of all time, featuring a frog, a pig, and a very young Steve Martin in some sort of lederhosen. Cheers!

I was recently talking with some (female) friends about hair, and I had a sudden memory of some legendary hair from the Bible. I couldn't remember the specifics of the story until I got home and looked it up, but it was amusing to get the full story again.

It was Absalom (David's son) who had the über-hair that I remembered. He was evidently quite proud of it, but it also caused some practical problems for him. 2 Samuel 14:25-26 says that his hair would regularly get too heavy for him, so he'd cut it off and weigh it -- and it came in at 200 shekels, which is about 5 pounds or 2.3 kilograms! Now that's some hair, isn't it?!?

As I was sharing the story with Elliot this morning, he actually helped remind me that it may have been Absalom's hair that led to his eventual downfall and death. Ironically -- or perhaps appropriately -- Absalom's vanity eventually pushed him to rebellion, and his rebellion eventually pushed him into the flight of a fugitive. While retreating from royal forces one day, his head (including his hair) got stuck in a tree -- at which point he was finally captured and killed (see 2 Samuel 18 for the whole story).

Isn't that a great hair story?!? I challenge you to come up with a better one...

So we're at the Keizersrace, watching heat after heat of head-to-head speed-skating on natural ice in the heart of Old Amsterdam. The temperatures are well below freezing, but we're in high spirits together with 10,000 other Amsterdammers. It's a massive celebration of Amsterdam and the Classic Dutch Winter with people crammed along the sides of the canals, crowded up on raised stoops, and hanging out of windows overlooking the scene. A local celebrity serves as commentator for the races. In between heats old-school music, featuring accordians, organs, and the deep-throated warblings of Johnny Jordaan and Tante Leen, rings out from every side. The whole scene is lit up like a Christmas tree, with a dozen television cameras covering the event, complemented by thousands of amateur documentarians holding up their iPhones and Androids to take in the action.

The boys, the girls, and the women have all completed their races. The Keizer and Keizerin (Emperor and Empress) have been crowned for each class except the men, who are warming up with laps around the 160-meter race-track, situated between the Nieuwe Spiegelstraat and the Leidsestraat. I keep looking across the canal, off to the sides, and behind me, trying to get a visual on my friend Jim, who left our party some fifteen or twenty minutes ago with ice-hockey skates slung over his shoulder, determined to see if he could somehow finagle a last-minute registration for the race. I told him it would be impossible; after all, we had tried calling some 30 or 40 times during the open registration window on Thursday night -- and even when we finally got through on Friday morning, we were specifically lectured that there was no way for him to get into a race that was already overflowing with registrants eager for their chance at the crown that had not been up for grabs since 1997. Still Jim thought he had a chance to sweet-talk his way into the race. And as the time of his absence grew to half an hour, I was starting to wonder if he had managed to do just that.

"The Poorman Powers of Persuasion" are truly a wonder to behold. I've known Jim for over fifteen years, and I've seen it in full effect on several different occasions. He's figured out ways to get us into jam-packed, sold-out concerts and sporting events. He's worked his magic to gain access to back-stage areas and personal encounters with numerous celebrities. He's garnered unprecedented favors from airline officials, waitresses, and hotel managers. He's managed to buy items that were absolutely, positively not for sale; and he's managed to sell items that were absolutely, positively not sell-able. Marci and I started kidding Jim and Allison about "the Poorman Schmooze" several years ago (though we've more recently rebranded it as "the Poorman Powers of Persuasion" to eliminate the slightly-negative, scuzzy, manipulative suggestion from the terminology). But even though it started as a joke, it's a well-documented -- albeit somewhat inexplicable -- phenomenon. They just ask the questions that no one else dares to ask, and they find themselves frequently rewarded for their friendly finagling and pleasant persistence. That being said: I still find it inconceivable that the Poorman Powers of Persuasion might actually go so far as to grant him last-minute admission into the prestigious Keizersrace.

And then I see Jim out on the ice, warming up for the race.

When he eventually digs in at the starting line, the announcer says (in Dutch that would be incomprehensible to Jim himself), "We actually have an international participant in Lane #1, wearing #51, which I didn't realize at first. Yes, we have an American guy from Florida. So Amsterdam, let's give an extra round of applause for Jim Poorman!" The crowd roars its welcome, and the announcer continues. "He was here visiting friends in Amsterdam this week. He brought his skates along with him, and he asked if he could join the race, and we thought, 'OK, why not?' So we went ahead and let him join the race. So... gentlemen, to the line... Ready... Go!" Half-way up the track, the announcer switches to English and calls out the rest of the play-by-play in Jim's native language. We're screaming our heads off the whole way. Other friends are watching the action on television and texting their astonishment. The whole crowd is cheering my friend in the Keizersrace. They're cheering him onwards, onwards, onwards, clattering up the ice in his hockey skates against a competitor in full bodysuit and long-bladed speed skates.

He ends up losing his heat by ten or fifteen meters... But his showing is nevertheless legendary.

Amsterdam is experiencing its hardest freeze in 15 years. The winter had been remarkably mild up until a couple of weeks ago, but all of the sudden, the city is frozen solid.

It's hard to understate the level of joy and fervor that such a hard freeze brings to the people of the Netherlands. It's an iconic part of Dutch culture -- the whole skating on the canals thing -- yet it happens so infrequently these days that it's both nostalgia and novelty at once. I can't completely explain it, but this classic Dutch Winter taps into a deep sense of sentimentality for an experience that very few of my generation (or younger) can actually tie to specific memories from personal past experience! I know it sounds silly or sappy -- but when we go skating on the canals of Amsterdam, we feel like we're living in a storybook or some kind of grainy sepia-toned antique postcard image.

For the first time in all my ten winters here in the Netherlands, there's skatable ice on the Keizersgracht and Prinsengracht, in the heart of old Amsterdam... And amazingly, this week also happens to be the first week of Dutch winter that our visiting friends from Florida  have ever experienced (it just so happens that they're also ice-hockey fanatics)! Suffice to say: it's really been a special week of experiencing Amsterdam on ice.

Like every other person with a digital camera here in Amsterdam, we've got lots of great pictures to show for the week.

The pictures from the Keizersgracht are probably the most beautiful -- or at least the most iconic.

But the ice and the lighting conditions were actually better when we visited the pond at the Oosterpark.

The skating itself is fun. But I think it's even more fun to watch the way other people respond to the experience and to enjoy the other experiences that go along with the classic Dutch Winter, like warming up with hot chocolate or pea soup, and eagerly discussing the possibilities for the epic Elfstedentocht, the "Eleven Cities Tour," in Friesland (which unfortunately, doesn't look like it's quite going to be able to happen this year).

I'm really glad for the opportunity to experience a classic Dutch Winter.

Depending on how many Facebook friends you have here in the Netherlands, you may have already seen a million-and-one photos of everyone-and-his-brother out on the ice. Even so, I couldn't stop myself from creating a collection of my own selected images here. There are more of my favorites posted in the Amsterdam Pictures section of my website.

Our church has recently been studying the Miracles of Jesus, as recorded in the Gospel of John. Over the course of eight Sundays, we're talking about eight major miracles or signs, as listed here below:

1. Changing Water to Wine at the Wedding Feast in Cana (Ch. 2)
2. Healing the Official's Son on the Way to Capernaum (Ch. 4)
3. Healing the Invalid at the Pool of Bethesda (Ch. 5)
4. Feeding the 5,000 at the Sea of Galilee (Ch. 6)
5. Walking on the Sea of Galilee (Ch. 6)
6. Restoring the Sight of a Man Born Blind (Ch. 9)
7. Raising Lazarus from the Dead at Bethany (Ch. 11)
8. The Miraculous Catch of 153 Fish (Ch. 21)

This past weekend, we came to chapter six -- where we start to come across some very interesting parallels between this series of miracles or "signs" recorded in the Gospel of John and another series of identity statements spoken by Jesus throughout the Gospel of John. In these identity statements, Jesus makes rather bold declarations about who he is and what his identity means, philosophically and theologically. So it's worth listing these eight major "I am" statements as well, spoken by Jesus in the Gospel of John:

1. "I am the bread of life." (John 6:35)
2. "I am the light of the world." (John 8:12; 9:5)
3. "I am the gate for the sheep." (John 10:7, 9)
4. "I am the good shepherd... [who] sacrifices his life for the sheep." (John 10:11, 14)
5. "I am the resurrection and the life." (John 11:25)
6. "I am the way, the truth, and the life." (John 14:6)
7. "I am the true grapevine." (John 15:1, 5)
8. "I am (the one known as 'I AM')." (John 6:20, 8:28, 8:58)

Some of the parallels may be more obvious than others -- but look at the way the miraculous signs confirm or anticipate the identity statements! It's really remarkable to notice the way that they match up (though not always sequentially):

1. The first miracle matches up with the final identity statement: Changing Water to Wine at the Wedding Feast in Cana anticipates the statement "I am the true grapevine."
2. With the Healing of the Official's Son (who is near death) on the Way to Capernaum, Jesus demonstrates the statement, "I am the way, the truth, the life."
3. When he heals the Invalid at the Pool of Bethesda (situated directly next to Jerusalem's Sheep Gate), Jesus demonstrates his later statement: "I am the gate for the sheep."
4. When Jesus feeds (at least) 5,000 people with a full meal of fish and bread, here in chapter 6... It correlates very nicely with his identity statement later in chapter 6, doesn't it? "I am the bread of life."
5. The first time Jesus spoke the powerful identity statement, "I am" (implicating himself directly with the most sacred name known to any Jewish person), guess what he was doing: He was Walking on top of the Sea of Galilee!
6. When Jesus Restored the Sight of the Man Born Blind, bringing light and vision where there had only been darkness and blindness, it was a real-life enactment of his identity statement, "I am the light of the world."
7. Jesus Raises Lazarus from the Dead in chapter 11, and what identity statement does he make in chapter 11? "I am the resurrection and the life."
8. His post-resurrection appearance to the disciples -- in which he out-fishes the career fishermen with a Miraculous Catch of 153 Fish and then teaches Peter about the need to feed and care for his "sheep" -- closely parallels Jesus' statement that "I am the good shepherd... [who] sacrifices his life for the sheep."

Isn't that beautiful to notice the literary structure of John's Gospel? It's not always obvious at a first reading, but the more you look at the parallels, the more beautiful the story becomes! It makes sense, then, that John uses the word "sign," where we tend to use the word "miracle." Certainly, John wouldn't deny that the events were miraculous, but I believe he deliberately chooses to say that they were "signs" -- or indications of something else. Isn't that interesting? The miracles of Jesus were signs pointing us to the (deeper, more meaningful, more significant) identity of Jesus!

I just walked across the Ringvaart, here in Amsterdam Oost! A brave neighbor, Henk, was out shoveling this morning -- and he confirmed that the ice was already 6 centimeters thick, beneath the blanket of snow from yesterday. He said that he checked things out himself, together with two other grown men creating a combined weight of over 200 kilograms, and the ice was totally safe.

So a spontaneous ice party burst out with kids on skates and sleds, mothers taking pictures, and dogs chasing balls through the snow. It's the way Amsterdam winters are meant to be!

So I'm trying to collect some resources for finding out if / when / where one might be able to find naturally-frozzen waterways within the Netherlands. We have friends coming to visit from Florida next -- and believe it or not, they're really excited about the idea of getting to experience a real Dutch winter. I had my doubts that they would be fortunate enough to get the real experience, with the mild winter that we've been having; however, with the cold snap that we're currently experiencing, it's looking somewhat feasible. So I'm trying to prepare myself with some resources for judging where the natural ice action might be discovered.

So far, I've found a few decent internet resources, listed here below:

• www.schaatstochten.info
• www.schaatsen.nl
• www.schaatsforum.nl
• www.wintergek.nl/ijsdikte
• www.ijsdikte.priapisten.com/

But I'm still looking for more resources -- particularly information about where to find naturally iced-over waterways that would be safe for skating. If you let me know about any other information that you might be awaare of, please let me know (a comment to the Facebook version of this content or an e-mail) -- and I will add it to the list (crediting you for your help, of course), for posterity sake.