Striving after wind

In ten years of driving, I have never owned a vehicle with working air conditioning. In Texas, A/C is virtually a must-have for a car. During the summer, your options are either functioning A/C, or sweat trickling down your back and soaking through your clothes before you've driven twenty minutes. So, when I got a new-to-me vehicle about two months ago, one of my first fixer-upper projects on it was the air conditioning. Buckle your seat belts; this one's a saga.

The land of my sojourning

Sojourn is a great word. It means to travel through a place, even live there temporarily, but not to make one's abode in that location. Throughout this season of Lent, I've been reflecting on sojourning, awaiting a future kingdom where moth & rust do not destroy and thieves do not break in and steal (Matthew 6:19; I've previously written about this concept here). Reading about Joseph's life, I've been struck by how God worked to bring about great good in a terrible situation, orchestrating His purposes when Joseph could not have possibly seen how good could come from being thrown in a pit by his brothers and sold into slavery.

Frozen: The Agendas and the Story

Over the course of the movie Frozen's theatrical release, it drew much acclaim and criticism, some of which I think was warranted, and some of which was nonsense. An alleged "gay agenda" was decried by a well-behaved Mormon grandmother and negated refuted quite well by a gay dad. It received several awards, and was labeled Disney's most progressive movie to date. Unfortunately, for all this buzz, little of praise or complaint was substantiated with evidence from the story itself. Certainly, "Let it go" and other elements of the film could be used to promote an out-of-the-closet mentality, a 3rd-wave feminist perspective, or a more general rebellion against parental authority. Whether or not Disney had these things in mind, I can't say. What I can say is that the story does lend itself to one approach with ease if you examine the flakes in the flurry, rather than allowing your biases to turn the snow of this story yellow. [Be warned: yer on the DVD-end of the release, so here there be spoilers.]

To serve in Heaven

     Through serving at church and much prayer, I am learning to see the genealogies of I Chronicles as something more than a delineation of family lines. Now when I come to chapters twenty-three through twenty-seven, I begin to see the lists of Israelites as a testimony to God's faithful servants...

bin Laden and the Bible

Why are people celebrating the death of Osama bin Laden?

Things were not always thus: Cynicism & Solipsism

Wow, it's been a while! Fortunately, even though I've not had time to blog, I've made notes of topics I want to write about.

Some time back, I was told that I am a "gung-ho kind of guy" and "not cynical." I had to pause in the conversation and gather my thoughts, because I'd become accustomed to priding myself on my sceptical outlook on life which the Austin College student ethos encourages.

Wishful thinking

Those of you who know me know how much I enjoy analysing movies, many of which are films about wars. For all the glorious battle-deaths and dramatic self-sacrifices on film that have moved me, it wasn't until today that I felt a genuine terror of death.