Is Google Too Powerful?

Not to Be Understood

Recently came across this famous Prayer of St. Francis again in a new context, and it struck a new chord. I have tended to think of this prayer as a cry for help in reaching outside of my circles with God's love. But how would our churches and youth groups change if we carried this desire with us every time we entered the building?

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;

where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,

grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;

to be understood, as to understand;

to be loved, as to love;

for it is in giving that we receive,

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen.

46 Million Aborted

Good news last week that the number of abortions performed in the U.S. has dropped (as of 2005) to 1.2 million per year, the lowest number since 1976.

Still, that's over a million aborted babies in this nation every year — and many more around the world. And it's tough to celebrate with too much enthusiasm when we realize that 46,000,000 pre-born infants have been killed since abortion was legalized in the U.S. in 1973.

Can't picture that number? Me neither. Here's a page meant to help us get some kind of visual clue to just how many people we're talking about. (HT: Between Two Worlds)

Praise God for His justice. Praise God for His mercy. May God bring an end to the carnage and all people to repentance.

Doom Funnel Chasers

Finally got our review of The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: A VeggieTales Movie up on the Movies page. (Check out reviews for Cloverfield and Juno while you're there.) Big news: The VeggieTales film just got an Oscar nomination for longest title!

Anyway, "research" drove me to the VeggieTales web site and stranded me there playing some cool little Flash games branded to the various shows the Veggie Tales guys make. If you're looking to lose some time, stop by the joint. I know it's supposed to be for kids, but my favorite is Doom Funnel Chasers. You have to sling shot a big ball of duct tape into a giant space funnel -- but the path of the ball is affected by the gravity of the planets scattered about. Still not past Level 9.

Unchurched: Willing to Listen

Really interesting results from a survey of people who don't go to church -- or at least have not attended any kind of church service in the previous six months. The folks at Lifeway Research asked what they thought about Christians, Jesus, and Christianity. Here's the thumbnail:

"A full 72 percent of the people interviewed said they think the church 'is full of hypocrites,'" [LifeWay Research director Ed] Stetzer said. "At the same time, however, 71 percent of the respondents said they believe Jesus 'makes a positive difference in a person's life' and 78 percent said they would be 'willing to listen' to someone who wanted to share what they believed about Christianity."

The whole article is interesting -- including the stat that 89 percent of these unchurched people said they have close friends who are Christians. If the numbers are right, that should be enough to nudge us to bring up our faith with unsaved friends. Knowing that most are willing to listen (even if they think we're one of the hypocrites) takes some of the fear out of opening up and pointing to the source of our hope.

More Evidence of Nehemiah

An Israeli archaeologist mentioned here before has turned up even more concrete evidence in support of the reliability of the Bible's book of Nehemiah as a historical record. According to a story in the Jerusalem Post, she has uncovered a "2,500-year-old black stone seal." The rock is from ancient Babylon and features a carving of two Babylonian priests burning incense with hands raised in worship to the moon god Sin.

Under the image, a Jewish name is carved. Dr. Eilat Mazar claims that name is Temech.

The Temech family name is specifically mentioned in Nehemiah 7:55 (read in some translations as Temah) as temple servants who were taken into captivity by Nebuchadnezzar and then released to return to Jerusalem. The stone was found just outside the old city walls. According to Dr. Mazar:

"The seal of the Temech family gives us a direct connection between archeology and the biblical sources and serves as actual evidence of a family mentioned in the Bible," she said. "One cannot help being astonished by the credibility of the biblical source as seen by the archaeological find."

That a Jewish family returned from Babylon would have as their seal a scene of the worship of a false Babylonian god is not surprising. One of the things Nehemiah and Ezra did was to lead the people in confession for their sins, including the sin of worshiping idols.

As we've said before, we don't wait for archeology to confirm our faith in God, but it's exciting when it does. Nehemiah and Ezra and the other "returners" were real people. They left behind evidence of their existence. What evidence in our lives might point people to the reality of the God we serve?

(HT: Between Two Worlds, Bible Places)

Slippery Happiness

This BBC story from last April made one of their best-of-'07 lists. It reveals that the fine people of Denmark regularly come out on top of an annual happiest people of Europe survey. Why? The story kicks around ideas, including Denmark's shiny socialism. You've got to read through the whole thing to get to the most likely answer: Danes tend to expect the worst -- and then feel really great when it doesn't happen.

Researcher Kaare Christensen looked back over three decades of surveys that had created the legend of the "happy Dane".

"In countries such as Italy and Spain, people have much higher expectations for what the coming year will bring, but they're not especially happy or satisfied with their existence."

But Danes take a more realistic view of life, he suggested at the time.

"Year after year we're just happy that things didn't go as badly as we'd feared."

A good friend of my brother wrote this in his high school yearbook: "Low expectations leads to few disappointments and many surprises." Maybe it's the national motto of Denmark.

As negative as it sounds, it's not a bad way to approach life. This story (also from the BBC) reveals that one of the great marriage-killing questions of our time is, "Am I really happy?" Here's the story tagline: "The key to a happy relationship could be accepting that some miserable times are unavoidable, experts say."

It turns out that happiness is a really lousy goal in life. Mostly, when people hope or expect some life scenario to make them happy, it doesn't. But often, happiness smacks you right in the face when you're busy doing things that really matter (and expecting obstacles along the way).

For Christians, the Bible doesn't promise much in the way of happiness on earth -- or demand it as a sign of being a "good Christian." We're commanded to "be joyful" in the hope of heaven and the eternal happiness we'll find there. We're also offered peace of mind and contentment -- both in the face of hard times. Those things are all like happiness, in a way, but that particular blue-sky-and-sunshine feeling seems to be beside the point, available mostly when you give up looking for it and settle down into doing what's in front of you.

That makes sense when you read Ecclesiastes. Solomon, the Preacher, says over and over how meaningless life on this side of heaven really is. Nothing fully satisfies the longing of a man's heart on this fallen orb. We're built to be with God forever, and we're not, yet. So give up the search for meaning in the here and now (apart from eternity through Jesus) and -- wait for it -- "I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live." (Eccl. 3:12)

So here's an idea: Let's all take the "how happy am I?" guage off of our dashboards and replace it with the "look at all the unexpected good stuff that happened today while I was doing my work" dial. Just don't expect it to make you happy -- or it won't.

Nature Sounds

And now for something completely different: a little clip from a movie I've never heard of about a Swiss performance artist named Roman Signer.


(HT: swissmiss)

A Handy Funeral Home

Can't really blame some of the residents of a senior center in Idaho for protesting the building of a new funeral home right across the street. Who would want to spend their golden years staring at a reminder of the inevitable?

Still, I liked this 81-year-old lady's attitude: ""We're old here. We're all ready to go," she said. "I think it will be handy."

She's not afraid to look reality in the face. King Solomon said we all need reminding sometimes that the clock in ticking -- more than we need to party: "It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of every man; the living should take this to heart." (Ecclesiastes 7:2)

Maybe a nice view of the funeral home isn't such a bad thing once in a while if it keeps us from living only for the days on this side of heaven.

Human Tetris

I don't usually enjoy watching other people play video games — but I can't stop watching this hugely popular YouTube vid. The guy who made it must have the most patient friends in the universe.



Like it? Catch Swiss artist Guillaume Reymond's whole people-as-pixels "Game Over Project" on his web site.