Good parenting, good detective work
I’m in Ohio, visiting my Mom. It’s a bit more snowy here than in Tennessee. Today Mom told me a fascinating story…
When my Dad died, my Mom had a lot of trouble sleeping. Not surprising, but thankfully, she lives in a safe neighborhood surrounded mostly by older folks. But one night Mom was awakened around three in the morning by someone ringing the doorbell about 12 times quickly. She ran to the door and opened it. She was shocked to see some things she couldn’t identify piled on her porch. No one was there.
Mom was terrified. She locked herself in the bathroom and called the police. When the deputy sheriff arrived, Mom came out and he showed her that her yard had been thoroughly rolled with toilet paper. The things piled on her porch were her lawn ornaments.
The deputy, much to his credit, did a little looking around. By following some footprints in the dew, and by ringing the doorbell of the house where they ended, he eventually found the three teenage boys who rolled Mom’s yard (and who did more serious vandalism elsewhere).
When Mom got up the next morning and looked outside, the yard was normal. Had she dreamed the whole thing? Then she saw a pick-up truck pull up. Someone’s dad (who also had his doorbell rung at 3 am - by the deputy sheriff) sat in the driver’s seat while a couple of teenage boys dragged a ladder out of the back and carried it across Mom’s yard to get a few remaining high strands of toilet paper.
Some time later, Mom’s doorbell rang again - this time during the day. A middle-aged man stood on the porch with his teenage son. The son had been brought by to issue his official apology. His father assured Mom that if she ever needed any work done around the place, she could call his son and he would definitely be right over.
We have all done stupid things without thinking about what kind of harm we might causing. The lucky ones had someone to call us on it.
“He who spares the rod hates his son,
but he who loves him is careful to discipline him.” Proverbs 13:24
Sunday Seven
- Consumer Consequences. A quick little interactive game that tells you how many earths we’d need if everyone lived like you. I scored a 6.6 - and I recycle! From American Public Media.
- Barbershop auditory illusion. If you have a few minutes, put on your headphones and listen to this very realistic recreation of being in the barber’s chair. The other illusions on the page aren’t that good. From New Scientist via BoingBoing.
- NFL OKs church Super Bowl parties. In a rare sane move regarding copyright enforcement, the NFL reversed its opposition to churches showing the Super Bowl on big screens. ‘Course it’s about three weeks late. From ESPN.
- Great design is a wonder to behold. I wade through lots of uninteresting articles at Signal vs. Noise to occasionally get to a photo-story like this one which showcases some great design. Wish I were artistic.
- Heroes and Villans. I include this link about a new movie not because of the film’s Christian themes nor because I expect it to be good but because the star is Dolph Lundgren, who plays a Roman soldier investigating Christ’s resurrection. Does he say to Peter: “I must break you”? From Christianity Today.
- The smart car is coming to Knoxville. But why does my Civic get better mileage than this teeny thing? From Wired.
This young woman ran the Myrtle Beach Marathon on February 16 in an admirable time. Oh, and when Cindy and I started at MHCC, she was a regular in the church nursery. Congrats, Holly.
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Serve God, Save the Planet, Sweeten Your Life
I first heard of Matthew Sleeth, Christian, physician, and environmental activist when he spoke at Rob Bell’s church. It wasn’t his passion for earth-care that made me want to read his book. It was when he said that he had reduced his electric bill to $20. I figured that unless he was living in his car, he might have something valuable to teach me.
He did. But it wasn’t earth-care OR energy savings – not primarily. It was the sweetness of a simpler life.
Sleeth begins Serve God, Save the Planet with a litany of problems you may have heard elsewhere: The dramatic increase in cancer among young people; our addiction to oil; skyrocketing rates of depression in the midst of plenty. But he doesn’t linger on the gloom, because he believes that doing so leaves us feeling powerless, which is a strangely comforting way of avoiding responsibility for action. The tone of this book is upbeat and positive – joyful, in fact.
Sleeth spends some time educating us on the interconnectedness of things. He shows us the pollution created to bring us cheap food. He describes how what we throw away today, we drink tomorrow. He talks about how our over-consumption of nearly everything results in scarcity for millions of other people. But the larger focus of this book is on living a life that is simpler and sweeter. Sleeth has learned the joy of funneling all of life through a question: “Does this action, saying, movie, purchase, etc. bring me closer to God?” He says that “simplifying means having less, wanting less, being satisfied with what you have or less than you have”. Sleeth inspires you to reassess not just your recycling habits but your entertainment, hobbies, use of technology, your family time and the size of your house.
Serve God, Save the Planet is both practical and inspirational. It’s practical because the applications are at the family level rather than the global. It’s inspirational because Sleeth finds so much joy in this journey that it’s contagious.
It’s now or never…
The blog of unnecessary quotation marks caught my fancy a few weeks ago. Then this sign popped up near my house, advertising catering at the edge of a temporal disturbance.
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Sermon: Getting beyond surface religion
SERIES: All I Really Need to Know…is in the Sermon on the Mount
4. Getting beyond surface religion - Matthew 5:17-32
Listen (stream)
MP3 (right-click to download)
Sunday Seven
- Forgiveness isn’t a spare tire you drag around in your trunk and hope you’ll never need it. It’s a way of looking at the world with deeper understanding. So says Martin Doblmeier, the director of a new documentary on forgiveness in this Christianity Today interview.
- On the other hand, I’m not sure I want to forgive copper thieves like the ones who stole the copper name plates off the Hacketts‘ gravestone. The first link is to a Roane County News story about local copper theft.
- Ten handy numbers to save in your cell phone. Your car insurance hotline, a locksmith…I shoulda thought of these. From Mark and Angel via Lifehacker.
4-7 (I’m cheating again). Wake up Cat. My wife’s current favorite video…
Ben Hackett
Our church lost a great friend this week. Ben Hackett, one of our founding members, passed away Friday morning at age 91.
Everyone who spoke at his funeral talked about Ben’s optimism and his ability to encourage. That’s my main testimony about the guy too. It was my privilege to serve as his minister for the past twenty years. But Ben always acted like the privilege was his.
Sermon: Salt and light
SERIES: All I Really Need to Know…is in the Sermon on the Mount
3. Salt and light - Matthew 5:13-16
Listen (stream)
MP3 (right-click to download)
Happy trails
Today at MHCC we began (and made significant progress on) a new trail on some of our unused and more rugged property. Below are some pictures. Maybe you’d be interested in continuing and improving upon this project.
The trail head - Click to enlarge
Click to enlarge
Click to enlarge
So where is this trail? Here’s the view from the trail head:
Sunday Seven
- The 2007 critics’ choice awards for films from Christianity Today.
- Fast food: Ads vs. reality. The picture below come from a site called The West Virginia Surf Report. It shows advertising photos of fast food side-by-side with the real products, which were taken home and photographed immediately. Interesting, even if not useful. Via Signal vs. Noise.
- What killed Ryan Shay? When elite marathoner Ryan Shay died suddenly during the Olympic trials in November, an autopsy report and toxicology screen were expected within a week. Three months later, there is only this promise of news soon. From WCSN.com via Runners’ World.
4-7. Cletus take the reel by Tim Hawkins (via Al Perry)…
