I miss that bass.

Five Iron Frenzy was a great Christian band that I had connections with on several levels. But I stumbled on this video after not seeing it for a long time, and it reminded me of this really cool bass that we used to have in our youth band in Colorado that we ended up selling to Keith, the bassist from Five Iron Frenzy. You can see the really cool silvery glittery bass in the below video. I don't think it still has all the stickers we put on it though.

Why Hockey Rules.

Why Christians Should Read Fiction

Well, I finished reading "The Dumbest Generation" and it was very informative, interesting and of course, sobering.

One of the main points of the book is that younger generations are descending into an almost "anti-literacy" mindset. This comes in several different forms:

1) The younger generations only read books and periodicals that will keep them in tune and in touch with their own peer groups, i.e. teen magazines, Harry Potter books, etc.

2) The younger generations do not read for the sake of reading (and learning). They will read only what gets them by on a test. They will only read classic literature if they have to in school.

3) The younger generations aren't interesting in learning facts and memorizing historical data; after all, if the information is at a click of a mouse (Wikipedia), why keep that stuff in your head? You can find it just as quickly on the computer.

I'm sure I'll have more thoughts on this topic in the future, but for now, I'll focus on a great article from BreakPoint WorldView magazine on why Christians should read fiction. Unfortunately, a lot of Christians shy away from reading fiction (which the author of this article gives several pushbacks that Christians use), or they read really bad fiction pushed on them (like the Left Behind series). Here are the ten reasons she gives for reading fiction - you can read the descriptions for each in her article.

1. Our view of the world beyond our door widens.

2. We learn empathy as you walk in a character’s different-sized shoes.

3. God uses stories to heal.

4. Fiction unmasks us.

5. God’s redemptive story permeates.

6. Novels allow for paradox, causing us to ask the kinds of questions that help us search for God.

7. Reading novels critically helps us navigate the Scriptures better.

8. Reading a novel connects us to the Creator

9. Reading a novel builds community.

10. Reading stories brings us face to face with Jesus, the grand storyteller.

Baseball Card Generator

I thought this site was kind of fun, you just upload a picture and pick your design and you can make a baseball card of yourself, your kid, your boss, etc.

Have fun!

June 11, 1996

Thirteen years ago today was a very special day for me.

Why?

The Colorado Avalanche won their first Stanley Cup! I had watched the first three games (well, I watched the whole playoffs), but couldn't watch this one. I was listening to the radio when Uwe Krupp scored and I had to stop the car I was driving and run around like a crazy man for a few minutes.

That seems like a long time ago.

Debby and I were not married yet. (We were engaged)
I was a youth minister at my home church.
I was driving a 1988 Ford Bronco II.
I was living in an apartment with a friend of mine near the University of Denver.
My little brother had not graduated from high school yet.

A lot has happened in the last thirteen years, no doubt.

The Dumbest Generation

I'm starting to think that there's a lot of truth to the idea that every generation distrusts the generations younger than them. I remember thinking in college and in my early twenties whenever I had to deal with a crotchety, critical old person, "I will never be like that. I will not think younger people are going to ruin the world."

Well, I'm not exactly old, but I find myself thinking along the same lines as the old people I dealt with at a younger age. I would say at least once a day there is something that happens - whether I'm driving, or in a restaurant, or sad to say, at church - where I think, "Once these kids (read: anyone younger than me) take over the country, we're screwed!"

Of course, I don't have any facts to prove my fatalism towards the younger generations. Now I do.

I picked up a book from the library called The Dumbest Generation, by Mark Bauerlein. In this book, he does use facts to attempt to prove that young people under 30 only excel when it comes to social networking. Everything else they are failing at: reading, working reliably, voting, making decisions, etc.

We'll see if his facts back up his assertion. To be honest, I'm not worried about the generations under me, because I also see evidence to the contrary. Plus, as young people grow older, they will I'm sure become more responsible - just like me, right? Ha! However, this book I'm sure will give some insight as to what the problems are now and what needs to be done to fix them.

Life After God

Douglas Coupland has written a lot of great books, one that even defined my generation, for awhile at least (Generation X).

I checked most of his books out of the library, although I did end up buying one of them, called Life After God. I think I bought this in Arizona when I was in between jobs and didn't know what was next.

Anyway, I love his writing style, and I'm rereading Life After God after finding it in a box the other day. Two quotes have been stuck in my mind all day long:

"And then I felt sad because I realized that once people are broken in certain ways, they can't ever be fixed, and this is something nobody ever tells you when you are young and it never fails to surprise you as you grow older as you see people in your life break one by one. You wonder when your turn is going to be, or if it's already happened."

"Brent then said that humans are the only animal able to feel the pain of sorrow that has stretched out through linear time. He said our curse as humans is that we are trapped in time - our curse is that we are forced interpret life as a sequence of events - a story - and then when we can't figure out what our particular story is we feel lost somehow. 'Dogs only have a present-tense in their lives,' he continued. 'Their memories are like those carved ice swans you see at weddings, that look good but melt in an hour. Humans have to endure everything in life in agonizingly endless clock time - every single second of it. Not only this, but we have to remember having endured our entire lives, as well. What a drag, no? It's amazing that we all haven't gone mad.'"

Duck Pictures

One of these days I'll write about my duck adventure that took place this last month. But until then, here are some pictures of the eleven ducklings and the mama duck that we took care of.

Brooke Fraser.

If you haven't heard of, or heard Brooke Fraser, you're really missing out. She is a star in her home country of New Zealand, and she also sings with the Hillsong United worship band. I love her voice and she's a really good songwriter. Here are a couple of my favorites, in video form:

Below is "The C.S. Lewis Song":



Next is "Shadowfeet":



And this one is called "Albertine":



I would love to see her in concert, with or without Hillsong United.

God On Mute.

When I picked up the book The Search For Satisfaction, I also found an interesting book called God On Mute. I probably wouldn't have picked it up except I saw that it was written by Pete Greig, and I remember hearing his name associated with a 24-7 prayer movement (which was confirmed when I looked at the back jacket) and that he was an English "bloke".

This has been a great book so far. God on Mute is essentially about unanswered prayer and how we as Christians deal with God not answering our prayers. Greig uses his own story - watching his wife undergo brain surgery for a brain tumor - as the key narrative, although he uses a ton of other stories as well, stories that are...well...heartbreaking.

The new name for my blog comes from a chapter in this book called "Naked Prayer" (although I chose "Pray Naked" because that idea has intrigued me since a band called The 77's put out an album called that, and yet had to change the name to just The Seventy Sevens because of the outcry by Christians regarding the title. People, it means to pray with complete honesty...as in nakedness.) and at the end of this chapter, he shares a story that I thought was kind of amazing:

----

In 1842, an Irishman named Joseph Scriven graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, and promptly fell head over heels in love with a girl from his hometown. They got engaged and, with great excitement, planned their wedding and began dreaming about their future together as husband and wife.

The eve of their wedding arrived at last, and Joseph's fiancee saddled a horse to go and see him. Tragically, it was one of the last things she would ever do. A little later, Joseph saw his bride-to-be riding toward him, and he grinned. But suddenly, just as she was crossing the bridge over the river, her horse bucked and threw her like a rag-doll down into the river below. In blind panic, Joseph ran to the river, calling out her name. He plunged into the icy waters, but it was too late. His bride was already dead.

Heartbroken, Joseph emigrated to Canada, where eventually he fell in love again. In 1854, Joseph was due to marry Eliza Roche, but she fell ill and grew progressively worse. The wedding was repeatedly postponed until, three years later, Eliza died. Joseph Scriven would never again give his heart to another.

Back home in Ireland, Joseph's mother was deeply concerned for her heartbroken son, and he in turn was concerned for her. One night, Joseph penned a poem to comfort her, little knowing that it would become one of the best-loved songs of all time. Several years later, a friend found it in a drawer at Joseph's house and was deeply moved. "The Lord and I wrote it together," Joseph explained. That poem, forged out of so much disappointment and pain, continues to call millions of people in their own Gethsemanes to admit their grief, their trials and temptations, their sorrows and their every weakness to Jesus in the privilege of prayer:

What a friend we have in Jesus,
All our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry
Everything to God in prayer!
O what peace we often forfeit,
O what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry
Everything to God in prayer.

Have we trials and temptations?
Is there trouble anywhere?
We should never be discouraged
Take it to the Lord in prayer!
Can we find a friend so faithful,
Who will all our sorrows share?
Jesus knows our every weakness
Take it to the Lord in prayer!

These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things...

err, websites, that I look at for entertainment value.

#1 - Awkward Family Photos

There's just something about other people's family portraits that makes you feel good about yourself. And also helps you partially forget about those pictures of you with a mullet.



#2 - Fail Blog

Another website to remind you that when you do something really dumb, there are a lot of other people out there in our world that also do dumb things.



#3 - Graph Jam

Using the latest technology of graphs and charts, one can find hilarity in almost anything in life.



#4 - I Can Has Cheezburger

There's just something about cats and silly captions that is doggone funny.

Ecclesiastes Chapter Two

Well, I was planning on spending a day on each chapter of Ecclesiastes, but then I went to the library yesterday to return an overdue book. I of course then went and looked for other books to check out, and my eyes fell on a little yellow book in the Christian section. I picked up and started laughing, because the book is called The Search For Satisfaction: Looking For Something New Under The Sun. When I read the title, I knew it was going to be on Ecclesiastes. God certainly does have a sense of humor.

I started reading the book last night, and it's pretty good so far. The author, David McKinley, is a pastor at a church in Dallas they we used to go to for concerts when my wife and I lived there. It's called Prestonwood Baptist, but most people called it either "Prestonworld" or "the Baptidome", because it was a huge church.

Anyway, McKinley talks in the second chapter of his book (which is still about the first chapter) about a Satisfaction With Life test and scale that some psychologist developed. You are supposed to take the below five statements, and put a number next to it corresponding to these feelings: 1- strongly disagree, 2 - disagree, 3 - slightly disagree, 4 - neither agree nor disagree, 5 - slightly agree, 6 - agree, 7 - strongly agree:

_____ In most ways, my life is close to my ideal.

_____ The conditions of my life are excellent.

_____ I am satisfied with my life.

_____ So far I have gotten the important things I want in life.

_____ If I could live my life over, I would change almost nothing.

The scale then goes: 35-31---extremely satisfied; 26-30---satisfied; 21-25---slightly satisfied, 20---neutral, 15-19---slightly dissatisfied, 10-14---dissatisfied, 5-9---extremely dissatisfied.

McKinley then gives "Five Myths Of Satisfaction" that he gets from Ecclesiastes. In other words, Solomon developed his own test of satisfaction, things that he tried in order to be satisfied, and found that they failed:

Search #1: Progress
Search #2: Excess
Search #3: Success
Search #4: Possessions
Search #5: Impression (leaving a legacy)

I'm sure we all go through these searches in our lives; for some of us, these searches last several years; for others they may be shorter, but we repeat them over and over again.

I'm excited to continue on in the second chapter of Ecclesiastes, as well as this book I found in the library and Philip Yancey's thoughts on Ecclesiastes tomorrow. But for now, I leave a Yancey quote.

The whole tone of Ecclesiastes reflects the tenor of King Solomon's time, when Israel reached its zenith as a nation. And there's the rub. How can the bleak despair of Ecclesiastes issue from the era of Israel's Golden Age, when things were going so well? The days of slavery in Egypt might produce such a gloomy volume, I reasoned, but not the glory days of Solomon and his royal successors...curiously, I learned, existential despair, whether in the Teacher or in Camus, tends to sprout from the soil of excess...despair arises out of circumstances of plenty rather than deprivation. Indeed, I did not find alienation and despair in the grim, three-volume Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn; I found rage, a passion for justice, and a defiant will to survive...existential despair did not germinate in the hell holes of Auschwitz or Siberia but rather in the cafes of Paris, the coffee shops of Copenhagen, the luxury palaces of Beverly Hills.

EDIT: I changed this to Ecclesiastes Chapter 2, because the Search For Satisfaction book actually numbered this chapter wrongly - it's supposed to say chapter two!

Jelly Telly

Hmmm.

Jelly Telly is the new creation of Phil Vischer, the man behind Veggie Tales.

There are really only two things I can think of that Christians have created that the world has copied (as opposed to a billion things that the world has created and Christians have copied...hello, Mr. "I put 'Be Wiser' instead of 'Budweiser' on a T-Shirt and thought it was really creative" Christian) - the Jesus fish that some people put on the back of their car; and Veggie Tales. Veggie Tales was using computer animation way before most non-Christian media companies were using it.

Anyway, below you will see Phil Vischer explain what Jelly Telly is all about. Kind of. He actually doesn't really explain what it is. But he does tell us the vision of Jelly Telly. But is it a T.V. show? A website? What?

You can go to Jelly Telly's website for more information.

Ecclesiastes Chapter One

To read this chapter, go here. (I'm using the New Living Translation)

There has been much debate as to who the writer of Ecclesiastes is. He/She refers to themselves as The Teacher, but beyond that, we don't get a name. Some of the verses in Ecclesiastes would suggest that Solomon wrote this book; after all, it talks about a king who is wealthy and has lots of concubines. However, most scholars would say Ecclesiastes was written by a contemporary of Solomon, perhaps a little later in time.

There are some writers that take a long time to get to the premise of their book/novel. Using creative means, these writers make you wonder for awhile what's going on, and then they hit you with the theme.

Not Ecclesiastes.

Verse 2 pretty much sums up most of what this book has to say: "Meaningless, everything is meaningless!" The word "meaningless" is used thirty-five times, and only in the book of Job does this word occur elsewhere.

One of the things I like about the chapter is the idea that time is pretty cyclical. You may think that something going on hasn't happened before, but as Ecclesiastes asserts, it probably has. It doesn't mean it's happening in the same way, but time is cyclical and there are patterns in history and in civilizations.

Verse 11: "We don’t remember what happened in the past, and in future generations, no one will remember what we are doing now." Mike, the senior minister I work for, had an interesting statistic he threw out the other day. We are starting a series on family relationships, and he said that in most marriages, the problems that couples face in years 1-3 are the same problems that they face in years 10-12. The problems never really go away, it's how you work through those problems that determine whether your marriage will survive or not. That statistic reminded me of the above verse.

As I said in the above post, I also want to include a Yancey quote from his chapter on Ecclesiastes, so here you go:

Once I got over my sheer amazement about the message of Ecclesiastes, certain nagging questions set in. One struck me immediately, as I read the Old Testament straight through. How can Ecclesiastes coexist with its nearest neighbor, the book of Proverbs? Two more unlike books could not be imagined...Proverbs has life figured out: Learn wisdom, exercise prudence, follow the rules, and you will live a long and prosperous life. Its tone of worldly optimism reminds me of Benjamin Franklin's aphorisms, and in face today various industries produce early-American-style wall hangings featuring embroidered verses from Proverbs. Such industries, however, studiously avoid Ecclesiastes, for it depicts a world where none of the proverbs work out. The confident matter-of-fact tone - I've got life figured out and you need only follow this sage advice - has vanished, replaced by resignation and cynicism. Thrifty, honorable people suffer and die just like everyone else. Evil people prosper and grow fat, regardless of Proverbs' neat formulas to the contrary.

Ecclesiastes Experiment

In December, I blogged for a straight month about my thoughts and observations of the book of Proverbs. It was really tough, but I think I gained a lot of understanding by doing what I did in December.

There are a couple of authors who for me continue to challenge me through their books. One of those is Philip Yancey. I started reading his book "The Bible Jesus Read" again, and it made me remember how incredible Yancey is at examining an issue and looking at it from several perspectives.

So far I've read his chapters on Job, Psalms and just finished Ecclesiastes. His take on the last book so impressed me, that I decided to read through Ecclesiastes again. So last night I read through the first seven chapters, and really enjoyed reading it. Thus the decision to do what I did with Proverbs, only apply it to Ecclesiastes. So for the next twelve days (or so), I'm going to blog each day on a chapter of this great book. I'm also going to include each day an excerpt from Yancey's book, so you can see for yourself how great of an author he is.

The Cursing Psalms

One of my favorite authors is Philip Yancey - time and time again I read his books and am reminded of how similar his questions and thoughts reflect my own. I'm currently rereading a book of his called The Bible Jesus Read, which looks at the Old Testament. Right now I'm reading through his chapter that talks about the Psalms, and I included a part of what he wrote in my devotional thought on Sunday morning in church. Like Yancey, I have struggled at times with Psalms, because although I love some of the worship and praise parts of the book and appreciate the lament psalms, it's hard to understand what Yancey calls the "Cursing Psalms", where statements such as "Happy are those who take your infants and dash them on the rocks" happen.

However, Yancey reminds us that the Psalms are essentially flawed humans' prayer journals, and oftentimes these journals reflect my own journals. Lately I have struggled to write in my prayer journal; when I was leaving Colorado in a wave of confusion and heartache, I wrote in my journal much more frequently. I may deplore the words and attitudes of the cursing psalms; yet I guarantee you there are some sections of my journal I would be ashamed to show anyone, because they contain angry words (even some cursing), frustrations, lashings out at God, and more. It just happens that the writers of Psalms had their curses published and are read by billions of people. Thank goodness it's not the case for me.

New Changes To The NHL...

I thought this was rather amusing...


NHL Tries To Woo Fans By Increasing Scoring With Bigger Nets, 3-Point Line

Albi The Racist Dragon

One of my favorite Flight of the Conchords "bits".

The Continual Burnt Offering

I have a devotional book that I go through on an almost daily basis. It's called The Continual Burnt Offering and the copy I have is from 1944. Each day there is a short devotional along with a song or poem that corresponds with it. I thought that today's devotional was really good:

"I will also leave in the midst of thee an afflicted and poor people, and they shall trust in the name of the Lord" - Zephaniah 3:12

It is the troubled and distressed who find their relief in God. Ofttimes temporal prosperity proves to be a hindrance to spirituality. It need not be so but we are so constituted that when all goes well in this scene and we have abundance of the good things of life we are apt to forget the Giver and be more occupied with His gifts than with Himself. In our afflictions and needy circumstances, if we turn to Him we learn how marvelously He can satisfy our hearts and lift us above the trials of the way.

---

Considering that the average income in the U.S. was 22,000 in 1944 (in 2004, it was 43,000), this was even more interesting to me.

Apple Mac Music Video

I'm not the biggest Mac Evangelist, although I made the switch four years ago and definitely prefer macs to pcs.

I thought the below music video was very creative, although I really can't stand the song!