I love these two pictures. On the left is a disassembled camera and on the right is a disassembled clock radio (click on them to see a bigger version). They elicit two responses from me:
One of the blogs I follow recently encouraged its fellow bloggers to create a blog promise. As he stated, there are two purposes for this:
So I decided to write out my own blog promise for this site:
“Tomorrow’s Reflection is a catalyst to engage your mind at the intersection of truth and the culture around us.”
So what do you think about it? Does it make you want to keep reading? Is it accurate to the site? Hopefully it goes along with my subtitle that I added to the site a few weeks back, “because someday you’ll look back on tomorrow.”
One of the things that is tough for me about Christianity in America is our desire for everything to have a happy ending and a feel-good feeling. The problem with all of the happy worship songs is that I often can’t relate.
Not that I don’t love the message or believe that it’s true. It’s just that in my own life I often have more questions than answers.
This got me thinking about how we view art. What emotion should good art draw us to? Happiness? Celebration? Contemplation? Sadness?
I heard this song from an upcoming movie trailer and immediately it resonated with something deep inside me. I looked it up and found that it is from Johann Johannsson and called “The Sun’s Gone Dim And The Sky’s Turned Black.” As I looked at what other people are saying about it I was surprised to see how many people didn’t like it because it was “depressing.” My wife even told me it “made her feel sick” when I was listening to it in our living room as I wrote this!
I recently finished reading through Brennan Manning’s book, The Ragamuffin Gospel. You may have heard of it as it’s become one of the modern classics of the faith. As with Divine Conspiracy, I came in with high expectations.
Overall, I thought it was average. It was a great explanation of the grace of God but I was left wondering how his ideas fit into discipleship. For me, grace is the easier part to understand and discipleship is the trickier part. In that light, I don’t think this book was in my wheelhouse but I did like how he developed his ideas on God’s grace. I believe that we collectively as Christians underestimate the grace of God today.
I recently read that on average, only 1% of readers will leave a comment on a blog. That means it takes 100 people to read a post for just one person to actually leave a comment! Thankfully my percentages are higher than this but this reality is the primary reason that I’ve seen for new bloggers throwing in the towel in discouragement.
So it may seem surprising that I’d moderate comments and potentially discourage people from interacting. You may have noticed if you’ve ever left a comment on my blog that it doesn’t get posted immediately. I personally approve (or don’t) every comment on my site. Make no mistake, this is a pain for me and slows things down. But it is something I’ve come to believe in. I’ve been asked about this a number of times so I thought I’d explain my 5 reasons for doing so.
My friend John recently sent me an email asking me about the correlation between God and the weather. Regardless of whether you are Christian or not, most people are quick to give God credit when it comes to control of the weather. The tougher question is does He control it in any strategic way or is it something He puts on “auto-pilot?”
The answer to this question is clear in the Old Testament by looking at God’s interaction with the nation of Israel. He directly states that He will give them good weather when they obey Him and bad weather when they don’t. Consider the following passages: (more…)
