How many of y’all have sat through an all-hands meeting? Having spent the greater part of a decade in the Nashville corporate scene, I’ve been in my fair share. For an hour (or more if you’re particularly unlucky) a stream of people come across the stage (or these days your screen) to, nominally, share with you “exciting” news and to “inform” you about all the “good” things on the horizon. But, we all know the reality. It’s spin. A reorganization is going to be announced. Layoffs happened in a part of the org. The company is moving its focus to a new product or industry.
Read more...One of the many luxuries of being able to do a large portion of my jobs from home, is that I get to be an active participant in the daily lives of my family. Recently my wife has started the practice of reading real chapter books aloud to the kids at lunch and before bed. Over the course of the last several months, I’ve had the opportunity of listening to “The Lion Witch and the Wardrobe”, “Because of Winn-Dixie”, and “The Wizard of Oz” read aloud by my wife and experienced for the first time by my children. — Please don’t spoil the end of Winn-Dixie for me. I missed the ending because I had to work and I don’t know if everyone at the party finds him or not. — The current book we’re reading is Oz. There’s no telling how many times I’ve watched that movie. It was in constant rotation in my house growing up. I’d conservatively guess I’ve watched the movie 25 times. But, despite having seen the movie many times, I’ve never once read the book. To be honest, until I married my elementary school librarian wife, I didn’t even know Oz was a book. So, this read-aloud experience has been really cool for me. I’m getting to experience the book of The Wizard of Oz for the first time.
Read more..."I am the Lord your God, […] you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them […]" Exodus 20:2-5a ESV
The election of Donald Trump as president of the United States' federal government has already caused many millions of words to be written in blogs, Tweets, postings, newspapers, texts, and all the various other means of communication of our modern world. I'm hesitant to add my words to the fray, but I've observed things over the last several days that I feel must be spoken to.
Read more...Whether we realize it or not we all have expectations. When a football player enters the end-zone after a game-changing interception we expect a big team celebration. Presidential candidates are expected to kiss babies. When an application gets updated on your phone you expect new features and a new look. These and so many of the expectations of our daily lives are unspoken. No one really notices they even exist until they are not met. If a team casually walked away from the end-zone after a touchdown or a presidential candidate refused a baby, it would make the news. Take a moment sometime and read the reviews on the App Store. There are lots of unmet expectations being communicated – at varying degrees of eloquence and rationality – there.
Read more...Mary Magdalene and the other women disciples with her had followed the dead body of their Rabbi from the foot of the cross to the tomb on that Friday. On the Sabbath they mourned the loss of their great friend and teacher and prepared for the task of making Jesus’ body ready for burial at the new week. Early the first Sunday morning after the death of Jesus Mary expected to find the tortured body of her great mentor. She expected the difficult task of preparing a loved one’s body for burial. Though she was a disciple of Jesus, though she had seen him do many miracles, though she called him Lord, Mary did not fully understand who Jesus was. In the garden where the tomb Joseph of Arimathea had provided lay, Mary’s expectations of Jesus collided with the reality of who he truly was and her entire world changed.
Read more...The interrogative parable found in Luke 11:5-71 is best interpreted not only in the assurance given in v. 8 and Jesus’ sayings about the Father’s faithfulness in answering prayers in vv. 9-13, but also by Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer in vv. 2-4. Snodgrass notes that the parable and the Lord’s Prayer are connected because in each a request for bread is made.2 The connection goes much deeper than bread. The parable is used to connect the words of Jesus’ prayer to the mode they should be prayed in.
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