Recovery Comes to the Broken Ones

Yes and yes.

Yesterday morning… gas at $3.67/gallon

Yesterday evening… proud owner of the above ‘86 Honda Spree which gets 100 mpg.

Last night, I was watching Indiana Jones in the Last Crusade with Holden, when the DVD got stuck…

Holden: Dad… fix it.

Me: Just wait a second buddy… it’ll catch up.

Holden: Leave the ketchup for the hamburgers and just fix it.

The joys of fatherhood… sometimes it’s like raising myself.

It’s Not Bothering Me
- Vigilantes of Love

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I have been keeping an office at San Jacinto Baptist Church for the past 6 months or so. It was supposed to be temporary while we were showing our house, and then when we moved, I’d move back into the house.

But, Chris Richey (pastor) keeps insisting that they love having me here, and that I am guaranteed a free office for as long as I want, so we decided that I should actually move in.

I was using their desk, and most of my books were packed up, so yesterday, I got their desk out, and cleaned out the closet. I moved my desk in, and removed the doors from the closet, transforming it into a bookshelf.

Here are some pics…

my old-school metal teacher’s desk w/solid wood top…

my meager pastor’s library (but it’s a start)…

These are the self-examination questions I said you should ask yourself during tonight’s sermon.

It won’t make much sense if you don’t listen, but you can do that in the pop-up player on the right.

Are you shallow in your understanding of the Christian faith?
Hebrews:5:12 says that by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God.
Does that describe you?

What interests you?
What do you give your mind to?
What do you spend your time thinking about?
What do you imagine and daydream about?
What books do you read? (If you read at all…)
Do you think about the great truths of God’s word at any time other than Sunday?
Do you apply yourself to growing in knowledge of the truth?
Can you articulate your understanding of the basics of the Gospel?
Can you give a defense of the hope that is in you?
Are you more interested in an experience of God, or in the character and attributes of God?

By Thursday I had created the entire website for my new business… but by that point, I had still not started working on the sermon(s) I am preaching tomorrow… one at Kaleo, and the normal Basilica one…

And this morning, we woke up to find that the window of our car had been smashed, and everything stolen. An old laptop, ready to be shipped to it’s ebay customer… every misc. piece of
electronics we own (mp3 to cassette/radio adapters, etc…)… Heather’s make-up… 40 or so CD’s…

Then, I get a call from Wells Fargo, the bank where Basilica does business, and they were concerned because someone was trying to activate a card without the account number, so they called me to find out what was going on… THE BASILICA BANK BAG WAS IN THE CAR! No money… no checks… but there was an unactivated Check Card for the Co-op account in my name in that bag.

Also in that bag was a Check Card from the old Basilica Account from Compass, but thank God, only $35 had been spent (at the store right next to my house) and now they have both been closed and marked as stolen.

Frustrating.

Almost a week to forget. Long hours staring at a computer… writing code… writing sermons… studying difficult passages of scripture… big fight with Heather in the middle of all of it…

So, instead of this week going down in the books like that…
I’ll record it as the week that I saw some of the best Movies/Television I have seen in a very long time.

Wednesday :: The Visitor

Heather and I got two passes to an advanced screening of The Visitor. You need to see this movie. It is fantastic and moving and all too real.

I think it’s only playing at the River Oaks theater downtown, but it’s worth the drive. I promise.
It reminded me a lot of the 1959 movie Black Orpheus. It’s nothing like it, but it’s a lot like it, if you know what I mean.

Here’s the trailer…

Thursday :: Lost

This was the best episode of season 4 so far. The best hour of Television since Lost’s episode Greatest Hits in season 3. The Jason Bourne-like opening sequence of Ben Linus’ flash forward alone was some of the best footage on the entire show.

Watch it online for free here.

Friday :: Lars and the Real Girl

I didn’t know what to expect from this movie. But I certainly didn’t expect to add a movie into my top-10 favorites when I sat down to watch it. But, that’s what happened.

Here’s the trailer…

Watch this one… the fear I had about this being full of raunchy and off-color jokes was unfounded. It is beautiful and wonderful. It is depressing and funny and sad and romantic and affirming and convicting all at once.

Here is one of my favorite scenes…

Carpe
- Russian Circles

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The Contemporary Calvinist posted the following this morning…

“The War Prayer” is a short story that was written during the aftermath of the Philippine-American War by Mark Twain and published after his death. In 2007, Markos Kounalakis, the president of The Washington Monthly, adapted the text for this animated short film.

This could easily have been written in response to the current “war on terror.” We really haven’t changed all that much.

Consider how many churches display the American flag prominently in their pulpits. Is it any wonder why we seem to have such a hard time drawing a distinction between loyalty to Christ and loyalty to country?

A couple of months ago, I heard a comment that saddened me deeply. In the context of discussing how the brutality of bin Laden and other Muslim thugs may be turning people away from Islam, someone mentioned that it’s good for Christianity to have the U.S. military involved in the Middle East, and that having Christian GIs in Iraq will help spread the gospel.

Oh. Is that why we invaded Iraq and killed hundreds of thousands of people? It was all part of furthering God’s kingdom?

What we did was commit a naked act of aggression against a sovereign nation that neither attacked nor threatened us. Our “liberation” of Iraq has since given rise to terrorist groups that weren’t there before and has resulted in a great amount of bloodshed. It has also displaced thousands of Christians who now face violent persecution from militant Muslims. Do American Christians now feel we must justify the actions of our government on the basis that it will help spread the gospel?

My friend Dave Black asks, “How is that we have allowed the Christian Right to be defined by delusional idealism and religious zeal? How is it that American evangelicals not only approved but actually glamorized the war as a form of Christian ‘mission’?”

As a Christian and a Calvinist, I understand that God controls all things and does ordain evil for good (Genesis 50:20). But we as Christians should never equate the spreading of the gospel with the use of military force. We are fighting a spiritual war (Ephesians 6:12-13) and our weapon of choice is the “sword of the spirit” (Ephesians 6:17). We should be prepared to give our own lives for the sake of the gospel (Matthew 16:25, John 12:24-25), not to take the lives of others.

Well, it took me a while to figure out how to rip an mp3 from a YouTube video, but I did it, so here is the latest installment of:

Arabella’s Song of the Month

Hallelujah
- as performed by Damien Rice at the R&R Hall of Fame

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Sick
- Lagwagon

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