Soul Winner!

“Jesus says, ‘Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men;’ but if you go in your own way, with your own net, you will make nothing of it, and the Lord promises you no help in it. The Lord's directions make Himself our Leader and Example. It is, ‘Follow Me, follow Me. Preach My gospel. Preach what I preached. Teach what I taught, and keep to that.’ With that blessed servility which becomes one whose ambition it is to be a copyist, and never to be an original, copy Christ even in jots and tittles. Do this, and He will make you fishers of men; but if you do not do this, you shall fish in vain.”

• from Charles Spurgeon's book Soul Winner

T. Dungy!

Religious news blogger dpulliam over at getreligion.org has this great Father’s day feature update on Tony Dungy. It is his take on a recent ESPN.com piece about the Indianapolis Colts football coach and older brother of one of my good friends to be aired tonight (06/18/06).

Dpulliam says, “The article is rich with theology and even concludes with a Scripture reference. Many of Dungy’s words are unrecognized paraphrases of the Bible and one I’d like to highlight in particular comes from Mark 8:36: What profit is there for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?”

For a good dose of Dungy and his faith follow the links in the getreligion.org story. Or click, here and then here and here.

Happy Father’s Day!

Photo courtesy of Flickr.

Koheleth!

I’m preaching through the book of Ecclesiastes this summer. You talk about vanity! What an adventure.. been there done that is written throughout this book. Interestingly, Koheleth not only did what he said but liked doing it and did it better than all before him. Is this ever a book for our time. One blogger calls it a Woody Allen film flanked by Cecil B DeMille epics. In our postmodern age where absolute meaning is no longer necessary for life, our personal quest for eternal significance in the face of hebel* has never been more bewildering or compelling.

*Note: the Hebrew word used to describe “life under the sun” in Ecclesiastes is HEBEL, meaning breath or vapor. Hebel is meaningless, futile, vapid, fleeting.

Bob is Back!

The announcement came just a few days ago!

In August this year, Bob Dylan will be releasing a new album entitled Modern Times - his first original album since the dark, eerie and ugly 11 September 2001. "This is a sad and lonesome day." (Bob Dylan, "Lonesome Day Blues", Love and Theft: released that day)

The apocalyptic Dylan has long been prophesying the end of the world - but if it doesn’t end before the release of Modern Times, you’ll find me with head phones, unreservedly and enthusiastically, listening to Dylan’s lyrical take on the postmodern world.

Beauty!

“It was in the vocabulary of the language of beauty that Edwards expressed his most important theological and philosophical ideas.... For Edwards, [God] was the ‘foundation and fountain’ of all beauty. The triune God was seen to be a society of love and beauty. God’s Holy Spirit was beauty. All beauty, indeed all creation, was the overflow of God’s inner-trinitarian beauty. Beauty was, for Edwards, the very structure of being.”

Louis J. Mitchell, Jonathan Edwards on the Experience of Beauty (Studies in Reformed Theology and History, New Series No. 9; Princeton: Princeton Theological Seminary, 2003), p. 105.

Sunset!

Once a young man was sitting on a bench and an old man, a preacher, sat down too. The old preacher looked at the beautiful sunset and sighed the sigh of the delighted. The young man said to him, "what was that?" The preacher replied, "I'm stricken by the beauty of God's handiwork". The young man scoffed, "God, there is no God. This all just evolved." The preacher looked at the young man and said, "will you be here again tomorrow?" The youngster said "yes".

The next day the preacher was sitting on the bench when the young man returned. Out of a satchel the old man pulled a beautiful painting depicting a glorious sunset. He passed it over to the boy who gasped at the work. "Who painted this?" he asked in excitement. "No one", said the preacher, it just evolved that way.

The young man said "that's stupid." "Yes", replied the preacher, "it really is, isn't it."

"The fool says in his heart, 'There is no God.'” - Psalm 14:1

You're outa here!

enjoy!