My grandmother died this morning in her home. I’d appreciate your prayers. We were very close and I’ll be officiating her funeral on Saturday.
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Withdrawals have been pretty bad. I was trying to open a program that I needed today which has a green icon. Without even thinking I double clicked a green icon. It wasn’t the one I needed but my instant messaging program. It was so automatic. I had to take Firefox and Safari out of my dock so I wouldn’t be tempted to click on them. Lord, help me, a sinner!
Well, at least there is iTunes! My sister gave me a $15 iTunes card and I’ve struggled to come up with that many songs that I want. I looked at a collection for “cardio” and since I need to flavor my running mix with some new tunes I took their advice and purchased a song with this line in it:
Look, if you had one shot, or one opportunity
To seize everything you ever wanted-One moment
Would you capture it or just let it slip?
That’s been eating at me all evening. It says a lot about my hesitancy to do what I need to do in this life for the kingdom. And they were rapped by none other than Eminem. Interesting 
I’ve read a couple of chapters today with more hopefully tomorrow. Today was terribly long. Fortunately I have a retreat this weekend with about a four hour break in the middle of Saturday so I figure I can get a lot of Bible reading in.
So far today I’ve noticed a couple of things: God is orderly. Far more orderly than I am. Makes me wonder if I got left out in the whole “image of God”. I also reconnected with the idea that God’s image is expressed in male and female. Distinct and different but complementary and awesomely divine. Lastly, I’m not sure if I ever noticed this before, but God warned Adam of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil before the woman came along. Adam was more aware of what not to eat than the woman. And he blames her. Century after century, generation after generation.
More soon.
During Lent 2006 I gave up TV and the internet (except for E-mail and the rare occasion I needed to get on-line for work) and did nothing but read. The four books I read are #6 and #1 on this list. That was a lot of reading if you’re keeping count. My wife was pretty happy even though I only distracted my attention from digital entertainment to paper entertainment. (I might be revealing too much of myself by counting N.T. Wright as ‘entertainment’.)
This year, I’m going to do the same thing except that instead of reading a set list of books I’m going to read the Bible from beginning to end.
I will be giving up TV and internet again but I will be posting on my progress since I use a blog client called ecto. I don’t have to use an internet browser to do my blogging so I’ll consider this a journal of my journey through the Bible.
Anyone want to join me? Respond by Tuesday at midnight
(I’m cross posting here and at my other blog)
As the IMN Cohort went through the character matrix last week, one of the things that stuck with me was a short saying about wisdom. Wisdom is doing the right thing at the right time in the right way with the right spirit.
All my life I’ve done what I want, when I want, the way I want, if I felt like it.
Wow. I feel sick.
I woke up this morning at 3:10 Central time and even though I slept on both legs of my journey, I’m still very tired.
One of the things that I remember hearing during the IMN Immersion was a sentence that roughly states “character trumps talent.” As I was driving home this afternoon I was suddenly shocked into reality by hearing “You have been trying to get by on talent your whole life.”
Thud.
That hurt. It’s still hurting. I started thinking back and sure enough, whether it’s been school, work, or life, I’ve been trying to get by on talent rather than character. Go back and look at the evidence with me. Chemistry, Physics, Calculus: I never had the character to really do the hard work required to excel. I only relied upon my talent to make mediocre grades. Papers I turned in that were rough drafts and were enough to get B’s and A-’s. What if I had turned in a third or fourth draft? Let’s not get started on my last minute sermon prep and my laissez-faire attitude toward just about everything, including my marriage.
God help me, at 30, to develop the kind of character that puts to death the old man and embodies what it means to be human.
Unless Google has failed me, the post subject means “My name is Thor” in Norwegian. That’s also going to be the name of this Vox blog from now on.
Today, on the last day of the IMN immersion, I mentioned that I was probably more “Post Evangelical” than evangelical. We really didn’t get a chance to discuss that much but here are a couple of posts by my friend Michael Spencer (aka The Internet Monk) which lay out his thoughts on Post Evangelicalism.
What Do I Mean By Post-Evangelical?
What Is a “Post-Evangelical” (Part 2)?
As always, my regular blog is here.
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