Happy Mother's Day!

I'm not a huge country music fan, but sometimes you need a good country song to get your sentiments across. This goes out to all the moms out there who belong in the Mamas' Hall of Fame... especially mine! :-)

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Something for a weekend... Soylent Green humor!

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I discovered today that there is some whacky material that has been generated from Charlton Heston's classic sci-fi thriller Soylent Green. Here is the plot in a nutshell. Heston plays a police officer who finds out that the government's answer to overcrowding and food shortages is to produce a new miracle food that is made of processed human remains. "Soylent Green... it's made out of people!" I am a fan of cult classics and their associated humor, so here's some of the zaniest Soylent Green imagery and merchandise. For the record, Soylent Green doesn't really exist... or does it?  
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Ten essential Dallas Willard quotes

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This week the church has lost a great saint and a shining light. Dallas Willard succumbed to cancer. As John Ortberg says in a wonderfully written tribute , Willard was brilliant, but "his heart and his life were better than his mind." I thought it would be appropriate to bring out ten quotes that do a pretty good job of getting at what Willard spent his life teaching and working on. 1. This quote states the central problem Willard spent his career working on: "My hope is to gain a fresh hearing for Jesus, especially among those who believe they already understand him. In his case, quite frankly, presumed familiarity has led to unfamiliarity, unfamiliarity has led to contempt, and contempt has led to profound ignorance." (opening paragraph of  The Divine  Conspiracy ) 2. The central problem, restated: "The governing assumption today, among professing Christians, is that we can be 'Christians' forever and never become disciples." ( The Gre...
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A test of your relationship with God

Do you have the kind of relationship with God that is like a married couple, including fights and spats? That’s the biblical, Jewish picture of a person who really knows God.  At a certain point in life when I was dealing with some major disappointments, I came to the conclusion that it would be better to yell all my frustrations at God than go through a separation and live apart from him. That’s why I love this quote from Lois Tverberg and her quote of Peter Kreeft so much. Trust me, you’ll want to read to the bottom of this discussion of Job.  “Job’s friends were making the mistake that Western Christians do today when we don’t have a Hebraic understanding of the ‘knowledge of God’—da’at Elohim. A Westerner opens the Bible and wants to prove God’s existence and construct a theology to explain God’s nature. We would call that ‘knowledge of God.’ But in Hebrew, to ‘know’ someone was to be familiar with him through experience and relationship, as a wife knows her husband.....
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Military history and the Bible

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Last night I watched a show on the History Channel called "Bible Battles." The show is worth watching, but it has its limitations. Bible Battles was released in 2007 and presents the theories of Dr. Richard A. Gabriel, who wrote The Military History of Ancient Israel . The show starts with Abraham's liberation of Lot from an alliance of Canaanite kings who had captured him along with many others who had lived in Sodom. It ends with Israel's struggles with the Philistines during the era of David. Now I love history and the Bible, so I was hooked while they were talking about ancient Israelite approaches to warfare. And it's interesting to think of Abraham, Moses, and Saul as effective military leaders. Also, in the last major segment of the show when they were talking about the Philistines, I learned a lot about the Jezreel Valley and why both the Philistines and the Israelites wanted control of it. It makes me want to go back and reread the stories of the Bibl...
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Have safe places, but don't play it safe... post 2

In my last post, I pointed out that there are two sides to safety in the Christian life: have safe places, but don't play it safe . The last post dealt with not playing it safe. God didn't call us to play it safe. He called us to be changed and to change the world.  What about having safe places? My friend Tim Morey (former workmate, pastor of Life Covenant Church in Torrance, and author of Embodying Our Faith) said this to his congregation: We want to be... "the kind of community where God's grace is on display, where a person can be real about their junk and not feel ostracized, where you can be imperfect and not try to hide it." I couldn't agree more! I want that for Sanctuary Church too. Tim goes on to say, "Not that we don't fail one another on occasion -- as long as the church is full of people there will be mishandled feelings, dropped balls, inconsiderate words, bumps and bruises -- but I'm blessed by how often I hear the church referred...
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