From the monthly archives:

September 2007

Britney from a Christian Perspective: Be the “Edit Button”

September 27, 2007

Today blog­gers every­where are writ­ing about putting an end to abuse in any form.

As a foun­da­tion, I present two short clips of Craig Fer­gu­son, host of The Late Late Show on CBS. On Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 19, 2007, Ferguson’s mono­logue was unique. Those of us watch­ing that night who were already fans gained new admi­ra­tion and respect for him. He also earned a lot of new fans. Con­sider his remarks:

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Wordless Wednesday #30

September 25, 2007

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In “other” Words: Alpha and Omega

September 24, 2007

If we could under­stand every­thing God does, then He’d have to be a small god — small enough to fit in our lit­tle minds.”

~ Randy Alcorn ~

I remem­ber sit­ting in church as a young child, hear­ing the pas­tor read Rev­e­la­tion 1:8 and being totally mystified:

I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.”

Alpha and omega. Begin­ning and end. And every­thing between. I recall mar­veling at how far back the begin­ning must have been and con­tem­plat­ing how far into the future the end would be. Even­tu­ally, I would decide that those con­cepts were beyond any­thing I could under­stand and busy myself with some­thing else.

As I grew, I stud­ied math, of course. We learned the con­cept of infin­ity. From time to time we would attempt to solve an equa­tion, only to learn that there was no defin­i­tive answer because the result was infi­nite, i.e., “the assumed limit of a sequence, series, etc., that increases with­out bound.” Invari­ably, I would be the stu­dent who tried to take the oper­a­tion of the equa­tion a cou­ple more steps, only to real­ize that yes, there was no end in sight.

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How to Get Back Into Your Blogging Groove

September 23, 2007

In the past cou­ple of week, I have not been in my blog­ging groove and unable to muster much enthu­si­asm. As part of the process of fig­ur­ing out why, I did a lot of read­ing and, in the process, dis­cov­ered quite a few blogs that I had never vis­ited before.

One of them was Susan Suarez: Online Jour­nal to Cre­at­ing a Suc­cess­ful Site. Her post, Re-energize Your Blog­ging Spirit, res­onated with me from the first sen­tence: “Many blog­gers expe­ri­ence time-to-time some dis­cour­age­ment that may make them want to stop blog­ging.” She offers four tech­niques for get­ting re-energized and inspired to con­tinue blog­ging pur­pose­fully. They are:

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Wordless Wednesday #29

September 18, 2007

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In “other” Words: Eternal Optimists

September 18, 2007

They gave our Mas­ter a crown of thorns. Why do we hope for a crown of roses?“ ~ Mar­tin Luther ~   But now he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sac­ri­fice of him­self. Just as man is des­tined to die once, and after that […]

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Wordless Wednesday #28

September 11, 2007

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In “other” Words: Living Well is the Best Revenge

September 11, 2007

The worth and excel­lency of a soul is to be mea­sured by the object of its love.“ Henry Scou­gal (The Life of God in the Soul of Man ), quoted by John Piper in The Plea­sures of God Today the object of our love, as well as our respect and honor, should be the vic­tims of September […]

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A Green Christmas

September 9, 2007

Sandy Carl­son at Writ­ing in Faith tagged me to par­tic­i­pate in this meme.

What is your favorite Christ­mas gift?

Any­thing that some­one has made them­selves. I love it when friends drop by with goodie bags filled with cook­ies they have baked, for instance.

What is your best mem­ory of Christmas?

Watch­ing my kids’ eyes light up when they saw what Santa left for them on Christ­mas morn­ing and lis­ten­ing to them read the let­ter he always wrote them.

What do you pre­fer in a tree? Fake or real?

Real. The more Char­lie Brown-ish the better.

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Thankful Thursday: Asking the Questions

September 5, 2007

His dis­ci­ples said, “Finally! You’re giv­ing it to us straight, in plain talk—no more fig­ures of speech. Now we know that you know everything—it all comes together in you. You won’t have to put up with our ques­tions any­more. We’re con­vinced you came from God.”

Jesus answered them, “Do you finally believe? In fact, you’re about to make a run for it—saving your own skins and aban­don­ing me. But I’m not aban­doned. The Father is with me. I’ve told you all this so that trust­ing me, you will be unshak­able and assured, deeply at peace. In this god­less world you will con­tinue to expe­ri­ence dif­fi­cul­ties. But take heart! I’ve con­quered the world.”

John 16:29–33

(The Mes­sage)

I don’t have all the answers.

To which ques­tions?” you ask.

Most of them.

And that’s per­fectly all right.

Because I do have the answer to the one of life’s most impor­tant ques­tions: Is the above pas­sage true?

Absolutely!

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Thursday Thirteen #10: Guest Blogger on the Horizon

September 5, 2007

Today I wel­come Larry Chouinard as a Guest Blog­ger On the Hori­zon! Larry writes Spir­i­tual Con­ver­sa­tions which I dis­cov­ered via Emerg­ing Grace. Both are well-written and thought-provoking. I highly rec­om­mend them.I found myself nod­ding my head in agree­ment and rais­ing my hand to exclaim “Absolutely!” “Right on!” or “You know it” about every one of the items on this list, so I am delighted to present:

You Might Be Mis­sional if …

1. You talk more about the King­dom of God than you do your local church.

2. You are more in awe of the rad­i­cal Jesus than you are the charisma of your pastor/preacher.

3. You feel a greater sense of com­mu­nity in the park­ing lot than in the pews.

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In “other” Words: “Come, Lord Jesus, Be Our Guest”

September 4, 2007

Pray­ing is no easy mat­ter. It demands a rela­tion­ship in which you allow some­one other than your­self to enter into the very cen­ter of your per­son, to see there what you would rather leave in dark­ness, and to touch there what you would rather leave untouched. Why would you really want to do that?”

~ Henri Nouwen ~

My first response to this quote was, “Why wouldn’t you?”

When I was grow­ing up, each night before sup­per we said a prayer that had no name. We learned to recite it from the time we could talk:

Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest,

Let this gift to us be blessed. Amen.

As I thought about the quote, mem­o­ries came flood­ing back to me of sit­ting around the table with my fam­ily, say­ing that prayer night after night after night … I changed, the color of the walls in the kitchen changed every few years, the table we gath­ered around was traded in for a newer model a cou­ple of times, my par­ents’ hair color changed and their faces aged … but the words never changed. Never var­ied. The grand­chil­dren learned it, too, and the tra­di­tion continues.

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Wordless Wednesday #27

September 4, 2007

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Super Simple Spiritual Sunday Edition No. 7

September 2, 2007

I wish there were more hours in the week avail­able to visit all the blogs owned by tal­ented and vision­ary writ­ers that I find when I start fol­low­ing links from one site to another. But here are some of the posts I read this week that I found most inter­est­ing, thought-provoking, inspir­ing and informative.

I urge you to visit one of more of these sites and, of course, let the pro­pri­etors know that you were referred by Hope­ful Spirit at On the Hori­zon! :grin:

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