Road Rage and Anger

He yelled at me. It was really quite unnecessary. I mean, it was a daring merge but I did nothing dangerous. He barely had to break. Of course I couldn’t hear him yell, only see his face turn red and his mouth rapidly firing. None of this bothered me. I was listening to the news. Only he was upset. And I suppose he was upset about much more than my meaningless merge. Usually my anger isn’t much about the thing before me, the slow cashier or the fifty deafening mopeds that seem to drive by my house each evening. Rage over traffic or tee ball games isn’t about the road or the field. It’s about something entirely different.

Risk and Fear of Failure

A few weeks back I interviewed Monday Night Brewing’s Jeff Heck. They are in the process of launching their company and we had some great discussion on risk and possible failure.

You can here the interview and the fifteen minute teaching I followed up with at the Center for Faith and Culture.

Here’s the conclusion: we must seperate our abilities from our value. We may fail at things, not get jobs or be fired from them, and this could possibly be a statement on our abilities. But our abilities don’t define us. Neither do our past behaviors or even present hindrances. We have value seperate from those things.

Value must come from some place strong and secure. From a place that is not effected by circumstances or as fickle as feelings. My recommendation is to find it in the one who created you. The one who created the heavens and knows your name.

Books for Christmas Gifts: Part 2

Here are some more books suggestions for Christmas gifts. Make the jump to Amazon for the book summaries. In my opinion they are all written with excellence and worth the read.

Nonfiction narrative:

The Places in Between by Rory Stewart
War by Sebastian Junger
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

Nonfiction theology:

The Prodigal God by Tim Keller
True Spirituality by Francis Schaeffer
Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott

My friend, David Zahl, over at Mockingbird put together this handy resource book on the Pixar movies, The Gospel According to Pixar. David takes each Pixar movie breaking apart scenes and storylines to communicate the redemptive messages threaded through each film. If you love Pixar, you’ll love this book. If your kids love Pixar, you should read this book.

If you’re looking for something deep and meaty try his dad’s book, Who Will Deliver Us?.

Books for Christmas Gifts: Part 1

As an attempt to help you with holiday shopping…

My good friend Jim Reimann just released his second Charles Spurgeon devotional book. Jim knows more about scripture than anyone else in my life. I’m privileged to know him, to shares meals and conversations about theology, life, and writing.

In the past decade Jim has revised My Utmost for His Highest, Streams in the Desert, and Morning by Morning. His latest book just released a month or so ago:

This new release is entitled Evening by Evening. Jim took the devotions written by Spurgeon, updated them, then added an additional insight to the end of each day’s devotion. Basically, what I’m saying is you should go buy it for yourself, and a few extras for Christmas gifts.

More books suggestions coming soon.

Quitting for the Good

Forgive me for the lack of blogs. The new baby girl is taking up time. We aren’t sleeping as much and I’m trying to make progress with a new writing project. Literary agent, Chip MacGregor, has been gracious to me over the past couple years, helping me form a couple manuscripts which we plan to sell to a publishers at some point.

Chip used to have a successful blog about writing and the publishing world. A couple hundred people read it each day as he gave out snarky advise on the art. A couple weeks ago he decided to quit writing the blog. He said he felt he’d said everything he knew about writing, and he was tired. He said he wanted a slower life where he focused on writers and forming good books. I was one of his regular readers, but I loved his quitting. I loved his reasons – a slower quieter life. I think sometimes it takes more faith to quit something than to continue it.

Baby Isabelle Mary

Two days ago Isabelle Mary – “Izzie” – joined our family in this great adventure. She weighs 9 pounds, 2 ounces, and is 21 1/4 inches long. She doesn’t do much. She opens her eyes periodically, and she makes purring noises when she is content. Despite having merited no accomplishments or right behavior I love her. She doesn’t have to perform, nor will she be required to pay me back for this love. It’s given. This is what parents do.

This human experience is a slight taste of the unconditional and unmerited love God extends to us through Christ. This is the Christian message – nothing more, nothing less. We are his created and he loves us.

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Being Apart of Something

On Sunday afternoon we get home from church, eat lunch, take a nap, and pretty much from the nap on I’m looking forward to 60 Minutes. Yes, I’m an old man. At the end of this week’s show one of the broadcasters talked about Jimmy. He was a coworker, someone who worked on the set of 60 Minutes up until recently when he died. Jimmy was 91.

Most people don’t work till there 91, but most people don’t adore what they do. I don’t think it’s realistic in a broken world for everyone to love their jobs or for anyone to love everything about their job. Work was created before the fall of man but work is now frustrated. But I think about Jimmy. I think about someone who loves what they do and what they are apart of so much that they trade in shuffleboard in Ft. Lauderdale. There’s this part of me that hopes I’ll be like Jimmy. I hope I’ll be apart of something so grand and fulfilling that I can’t imagine stopping.

Tags: work