I am on my way back home from New Braunfels. According to UPS my copy of Harry Potter should be arriving on my doorstep sometime this morning. I can’t wait.
Now I can finally read a HP book as fast as I want and not have the feeling that I should have paced myself better.
Before I have read them in a day or two and immediately thought, “Well… two more years until the next one. Way to go man.”
His hand closed automatically around the fake Horcrux, but in spite of everything, in spite of the dark and twisting path he saw stretching ahead for himself, in spite of the final meeting with Voldermort he knew must come, whether in a month, in a year, or in ten, he felt his heart lift at the thought that there was still one last golden day of peace left to enjoy with Ron and Hermione.
Tomorrow (July 17) at noon is your last chance for July 21 delivery of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
If you come looking for me on Saturday you shall not find me.
Just a few thoughts for this morning:
Dating: Here is some free, unsolicited marital advice. One of my favorite things to do is to go out on dates with my wife. They never get old. Any couple can stay at home and watch a movie but there is no substitute for picking your spouse up at home, driving to dinner, and then catching a flick at the theatre… on a Tuesday. Don’t even wait for the weekend. These dates keep our love life fresh and exciting. It gives us time to sit together and talk about the day instead of frantically throwing a dinner together after a long day at work. Let someone else do the dishes while you connect. So where are yu and your spouse going to go tonight?
Busy and a Stiff Necked Guy: I hesitate to complain about how busy I’ve been because the summer is right around the corner. That is when I fear my reference point for being busy will be blown out of the water in a matter of weeks. However, I have been extremely tired and worn out. Today is the first day in two weeks that my right shoulder feels ok. A combination of sleeping wonky, working a tiller, sleeping on the ground for the Global Night Commute, and general use has left my right side stiff and unmanageable. Driving has been difficult because I have struggled to turn my head to the right or left in order to check my blind-spots. The pain has been frustrating. However today is good day.
Reading: When I get busy I miss out on my reading. I have updated the On My Desk page and On My iPod page to better reflect what I’m reading and listening to right now. Yancy’s Prayer and Wright’s Justice of God have been on the list since Jan. 1. I want to just finish them but I want to be very Berean about reading them. My goal will be to finish those two book by Dec. 31!
Long Distance Phone Call: While I was writing this post I got a very special international phone call from my friend in London, England. He and his family will be coming back to the states very soon. Austin City Limits here we come!!!
Beethoven’s 9th: Fantastic! I get teary and overjoyed every time I listen to it.
Creativity Should Never Go to Waste: before being called into ministry I had a great desire to become an animator. I loved to draw and I loved being creative in everything that I did. Thankfully I can still use my artistic eye and my flair for the creative in youth ministry. I spent the better part of yesterday working in Photoshop creating posters for different events and had a great time. Most of what I’ve learned in Photoshop has been trial and error. I’m not great at it but it feeds by need to create. Below is a poster for our Spider-man movie event. Our ministry name is Element523 so I tried to incorperate the logo and our name. Again, nothing ground breaking but I had fun. What do you think?
Hope you all have a great day. It is beautiful here in the DFW area. Spring time rocks!
Peace.
(click to enbiggen)
Yes, I just referenced the newly revealed cover for the latest Harry Potter book with the Bible.
That should drive the ole blog counter up a notch I think.
I am not saying that Harry is Stephen or anything close to that. Don’t accuse me of being blasphemous. I am just drawing a parallel between the art work and the scene described in Acts. It was the first thing that popped into my head.
Many Potter fans believe that Harry will be martyred in this final installment. If that is the case, than maybe I’m not too far off.
What do you think?
Part of my job as a youth minister is to create an enviroment where teens can feel free to ask questions and a place that helps them answer their questions. While reading Youth Ministry Mutiny by Greg Stier, the protagonist provided 30 questions that his youth ministry centered all of their teaching around. The minister said that, “Every teen and adult should know, live, and own the answers to these questions as a result of our ministry in their lives.”
Here they are:
As I looked over these 30 questions I felt like they covered just about everything I’ve tried to pass along to my students. Of course this list isn’t/shouldn’t be exhaustive but they gave me a great jumping off point. What do you think? Anything you’d add? Anything you’d take away?
A Long Way Gone is proving to be one of the more difficult books I’ve ever read. It is hauntingly beautiful in the way the Beah writes his account but it is also vivid in its descriptions of the horrors witnessed and perpetrated in this West African nation.
My heart has been aching as Beah and his friends have been fleeing through the bush with little to no respite from the soldiers and their bullets.
Last night I read how Beah barely escaped death for what seemed like the third or fourth time in 43 short pages. I would finish a chapter and think, “Ok, I’ll just read one more.” In the end I had to stop reading because I was overcome with grief and anger.
“It was during that attack in the village of Kamator that my friends and I separated. It was the last time I saw Junior, my older brother.”
With that I rolled over but sleep did not come to me quickly.
An estimated 300,000 child soldiers now fight in the more than 50 violent conflicts raging around the globe. Far removed from the world of pundits and journalists, policymakers and diplomats, a 13-year-old boy names Ishmael Beah became one of these young warriors in Sierra leone, Africa. Now in his mid-twenties, he courageously tells of the horrific road that led him to wield an AK-47 and, fueled by trauma and drugs, commit terrible acts. In poignantly clear and dauntless storytelling, Ishmael describes how he fled brutal rebal soldiers, traveled miles from home on foot and gradually regressed to a life of raw survival instncts. Yet, unlike so many of his peers, Ishmael lived to reclaim his true self, emerging from Sierra Leone as the gentle, hopeful young man he was at heart. (Reading Guide)
Childhood is a precious and sacred thing yet it can be taken away in one fell swoop by evil men intent on taking power by any means necessary.
Ishmael Beah and I were both born in 1980. While I grew up in the comfort and security of this country Ishmael and his family were living thousands of miles away in the African nation of Sierra Leone. While I was going through the supposed trials and tribulations of junior high, Ishmael was living through a very real hell fleeing from rebels in a land torn apart by war and unspeakable savagery. In 1993, Beah was kidnapped and forced into an army made up of his peers- mere children. The whole idea of children forced into fighting a war is despicable yet this evil happens everyday. The only way to stop this treachery is to become aware of it and to become vocal about its abolition.
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishamel Beah is his account, in his own words, of his capture, torture, and malipulation by the hands of his captors into becoming a child soldier. Beah was able to escape but the same cannot be said for the thousands of other young boys snatched from their homes and huts everyday. Beah story is harrowing and needs to be told.
A Long Way Gone is on sale now at your local Starbucks. Pick up a copy and get educated. There is also a reading guide bookmark available at the POS.
Over the next couple of days, I will be blogging through the book. I will be posting additional information on how you too can get involved. If you would like to read it with me drop me a line and let me know that you are interested. Also, on March 6, I am planning on attending the book signing and conversation with Beah at the Starbucks on Greenville Ave in Dallas. Let me know if you are in the area and you want to attend with me.
There are fires burning that need to be put out. It’s time to let your actions speak loudly.
Ralph Winter Prods. is producing a bigscreen adaptation of the C.S. Lewis novel “The Screwtape Letters” with Philip Anschutz’s Walden Media.
Pic will be produced via Walden’s Bristol Bay Prods. banner (“Ray,” “Sahara”).
Pic, which Walden hopes to release in 2008, is the company’s second Lewis collaboration following “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” which grossed $744 million worldwide. The sequel to that pic, “Prince Caspian,” is due out next year.
Like “Narnia,” “The Screwtape Letters” — which is described as a midbudget, primarily live-action pic — embodies Christian themes.
First published in 1942, “The Screwtape Letters” takes the form of a series of missives from a senior demon, Screwtape, to his wannabe diabolical nephew, Wormwood. As a mentor, Screwtape advises his protege on the finer points of undermining faith and promoting sin. His instructions are interspersed with observations on human nature and Christian doctrine.
Since taking over the publishing of “The Screwtape Letters” in 2001, HarperSanFrancisco has sold almost 1 million copies of the trade paperback alone.
Producing are Ralph Winter, Randy Argue and Lewis’ stepson Douglas Gresham.
Wow, this is pretty cool news. Winter produced a little franchise called X-Men. It didn’t make much waves at the box office… oh wait… yeah, it did!
“The Screwtape Letters” is a great book and I hope that it can translate well to film. With Winters behind it I’m sure that it will.
Sarah asked everyone to name the top 5 things that they would take with them if they were stranded on a desert island. She got her inspiration from a great episode of The Office last season (BTW, New episode tonight!!!!).
Here were my answers:
1) Name 5 books you want with you:
Good to Great by Jim Collins
The Jesus I Never Knew by Philip Yancey
Get Up Off Your Knees by Whiteley and Maynard (ed)
In A Pit With a Lion on A Snowy Day by Mark Batterson
TNIV Study Bible
2) Name 5 movies you would have:
The Godfather
The Godfather II
Almost Famous
School of Rock
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
3) Name 5 songs and 5 songs only that you would have on your iPod.
All Along the Watchtower- Hendrix
Where the Streets Have No Name- U2
All These Things That I’ve Done- the Killers
Baba O’Riley- The Who
Fix You- Coldplay
It is a little rainy and cold here in the Big D. I think our plans are to just curl up in front of the TV tonight. I can’t wait. Dunder-Mifflin was missed last week at our house I can tell you that.
Have a great day everyone.
I have updated the On My Desk Page and the On My iPod Page with fresh readings and listening tos for this, the first week of 2007.
See my summary of the introduction to The Forgotten Ways I posted yesterday. mDNA + Apostolic Genius= A powerful Jesus Movement!
An ad for Ministry Mutiny simply reads “IT’S WORTH IT!”
A forward by a new kind of Christian is fitting for a book entitled A New Kind of Youth Ministry don’t you think?
I am totally rockin’ the new Matt Redman. Beautiful News is another gorgeous worship meditation from one of our greatest hymn writers. Well worth a listen.
Revisiting Both Sides of the Gun this week. Harper is a genius.
Matisyahu Miller has covered the Police and gone home to Israel in a great CD/DVD combo.
I got the Racontours for Christmas and I’m giving it a spin. At least until the weekend is over.