Strumming on the ol’ banjo…
Banjo.
It’s happening.
I opened up this banjo, tuned it, and recorded a little sample with my iPad. I don’t know many chords yet, so I picked something simple in honor of olde tyme church….
Posts from the ‘hope’ Category
Sep 11
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the end of my world
I was waiting for the end of the world last night and I made you these flowers with a little painting app on my phone.
You’re welcome.
Consider this your little “reward” for surviving the first wave of earthquakes, zombies, and the deadly army of Justin Bieber clones. Read more
the monday after sunday
Bunnies, brunches, candy and crosses. Easter is a nice spring holiday we celebrate. It’s also the memorial date attached to an historical event.
Question is, what do we do with that event?
Apr 7
what or who?
Our hope is not in the promise itself but in the one who makes it. The foundation is not what we believe; it’s who we trust.
Death Cheaters
Armies march. Authors write. Artists craft. Scientists puzzle. Every profession lures practitioners to the pinnacle of achievement with an unspoken promise: The opportunity to make one’s mark on the world. To be remembered. To live forever.
We say we want money. We claim to seek love and long for peace. We really just want our names carved with diamond pen into the stone tablets of immortal memory. It doesn’t matter if we have to buy it, woo it, or fight for it. Eternal life has always been what it’s all about.
In less enlightened times, humankind turned to encantations for the power to live forever. Now we turn to prescriptions. Or, to the anticipated advances in technology. That’s the hope expressed in a new documentary called The Transcendent Man:
There’s something almost comical about the seriousness Ray Kurzweil (the subject of the film) brings to bear in his quest. That pang of humorous sadness comes from the jaring disconnect between the hope that technology can grant us immortality and the centuries-long experience we as a race have that tells us nothing lasts forever.
At least on this earth.
Despite our scientific advances, philosophical inquiries, and theological treatises, we humans still haven’t outgrown the notion that death is an unwelcome intruder into life. We somehow understand that what it means to be human is somehow not defined by our ending. This intuition persists despite the fact that death is an experience every person shares.
Death happens to everyone. So why do we still think we can somehow cheat it? Where to we keep coming up with this crazy idea?
It’s an incongruity that makes perfect sense if this world really isn’t all there is…if there’s more to us than just a bundle of molecules that generate electrical impulses…If eternity really is the foundation for hope and meaning.
So, maybe eternal life is what it’s all about. Maybe “the transcendent man” is a dream we all should share. But, maybe we’re looking for the right thing in all the wrong places.
Immortality can’t be conquered. It can’t be found in a novel, on a canvas, or at a lab.
Eternal life is a gift and it only has one Source.
media populates the great cloud
I was talking with a guy named Dillon today. He asked me: “How have you found media to be effective in mnistry.” Here’s what I said:
“The story-driven nature of media makes it a powerful vehicle for sharing the Story — and for encouraging believers with accounts of others’ faithful lives.
Hebrews 12 talks about the “cloud of witnesses” that surrounds and encourages us. Media can populate that crowd with fellow believers we’d never meet otherwise! To me, this is the value of media in ministry. It’s not a substitute for face-to-face human interaction, but media can widen our perspective and deepen our resolve to persevere together.”
It’s too bad Christian media doesn’t put more effort into telling stories about well-lived lives.
