The Study

It seems like an incomprehensible mixture of words at first, but I assure there is an explanation to why these words ought to belong together and even arranged in this order.

Love, Music, and Blankets are the three most important things in life.  It is scientific and in this particular equation love must come first.  We only exist and act in life because love comes first.  It was there in our childhood in the form of hugs and kisses and attention.  It is there in our relationship with Jesus in the form of forgiveness and unconditional acceptance.  Love is the beginning of everything good and so it must come before music and blankets.  Read more…

I remember when I was a young boy reading under the covers of my bed at night with the help of a flashlight, worried all the while that the light may disturb my brothers sleeping nearby.  Only once do I recall staying up all night long and that was to read Leviathon by Thomas Hobbes.  It was not until a few years ago when I saw that this book was on a list of requirements on a college syllabus for political science, and thus apparently more than just a story about a dragon.  I remember that night well, and remember the book well even after a decade.  I find reading a book straight through helps the mind retain it better than reading parcels here and there.

When was the last time you read a book for the pure pleasure of reading?  When was the last time you had the time to read a book straight through?  When I finished my internship with Josh McDowell and returned to the reading of my books, I think they felt good to have me back again.

Read through the OT just a few chapters a day. But with the NT, read it repetitiously.

Take a section of a book of the NT of about 7 chapters. There are 28 chapters in Matthew for example, so you take the first 7 chapters. Read those chapters everyday for 30 days. I guarantee you at the end of that month if you have thoughtfully read through those 7 chapters for a full month, you’re going to know what’s in those chapters. Month 2 – read the next seven and so forth.

At the end of four months, you will have committed the contents of the gospel of Matthew to memory. You can go to Mark then which is half the length of Matthew and do the same thing and then Luke and then John. If you go through the NT like that, in 2 and half years you will have literally absorbed what is in the NT and at the same time you just kind of reading chronologically through the OT.

Question has been posed to me recently, “What do you think of making promises?”

The Bible shows when people make promises they inevitably fail to keep them. Moses came off Mt Sinai, gave the people the Commandments, and they’re optimistic response was, “this we will do.” What a lie! They didn’t do it. Does history teach us to trust in the promises of man? If anything, history teaches us to trust in the breaking of promises. To trust in the keeping of promises can be catastrophic. Stalin in WWII trusted Hitler when he promised not to attack Russia.   Read more…

I was reading C.S. Lewis the other day and came across some thoughts he had that I in turn share . . .

The idea of gift-giving above and beyond gifts to the poor and children is a modern phenomenon.  I dislike it for the following reasons:

1.    It gives more pain than pleasure.  Long before December 25th everyone is worn out – physically from shopping and mentally from having to think about so many people.  When Christmas roles around they are not ready to party or much less act in a serving way.  Families look far more as if there had been a long illness in the house.
2.    Most of it is involuntary.  Present giving is almost blackmail.  You feel obligated to give back to those who give to you and this forces many beyond their means.
3.    Things are given as presents which no person will ever use.
4.    It’s a nuisance.  Sending cards and presents is nice but when done all at once and only once it is drained of meaning.  We ought to send cards when the recipients least expect to receive anything from anyone.

I often wonder what my response to my parents will be when they grow old with age.  Apart from the fact that many young people have experienced the divorce of their parents and are aware of the statistical probability of their own divorce, there hardly seems to be an expectation placed on them to care for the elderly.  In fact, most young people probably do not expect to even see much of their elders when they grow old.

It is interesting to see the shift among young people when they leave their family.  It seems to me that this change is really the beginning of the end of his authentic connection with his family, although he hardly realizes it at the time.  When you go off to college, you are forced to look forward and outward.  You do not intend to be coldhearted; it is just the point of your interests lies somewhere else.  For most the family was spiritually and relationally empty anyways, and so the act of leaving is accompanied with new visions to the neglect of past experiences.  Read more…