Okay, this post might be a flop, or it may invoke some fun conversation.  I just thought we needed a new post, and I think these kinds of things are interesting.

Last weekend I was sitting in a hotel room watching The Travel Channel’s Most Haunted and tried to get into a conversation with my sisters (whom I was staying with) about their thoughts on ghost sightings.  Given that we all were suffering from a severe lack of sleep, nobody else really cared and the conversation died quickly.  One sister did say, though, that the American Institute of Paranormal Psychology dubbed Savannah, GA (where she lives) America’s Most Haunted City (according to Google, it’s the American Institute of Parapsychology).

There are LOTS of (normal-looking) people out there who claim to have seen ghosts, and there are apparently relatively intelligent people out there who study this stuff for a living (and probably spend taxpayer dollars to do so).  Do we put them in the same category with UFO chasers and Elvis sighters, or does the spirit world (in the sense of ghosts) truly transcend the dimensions of Earth?

And do ghosts at all line up with scripture?  One would be hard pressed to find scriptural evidence of tormented spirits roaming the hotels and B&B’s of biblical times.  But Jesus did ask Thomas to touch him so he could be sure he was flesh and not spirit, which leads me to assume that they did have an understanding of spirit forms. 

So I ask you, our loyal but few readers, what’s up with the paranormal? 

Okay, I’ll admit to being a little bit frustrated as of late by the seemingly increasing references to the happy, healthy, “victorious” life that is supposedly due to those of us who choose to follow Christ. Never mind the fact that it just doesn’t add up Biblically speaking. (Check out John 9 and the man who was born blind and healed “so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.”) It doesn’t jive with reality. Ask anyone whose child was killed by a drunk driver. Ask anyone whose loved one died of cancer (or any number of awful diseases they did nothing to deserve). Ask anyone who lost it all a year ago when Katrina hit. Ask anyone. Life does not verify - even contradicts! - the theology.

Simply saying the name Jesus (or even saying it the right way) does not mean that we win the grand prize of all Christianity - the Holy Bubble Suit complete with Teflon coating. So-called leaders of the church are doing us a disservice by hiding behind plastic smiles and picture-perfect family perceptions. If you claim to have no struggles or pain in your life, you are a liar. If you are a Christian and you make the same claim - or worse yet, give Jesus the “credit” for such a claim - you are misrepresenting the Gospel.

Why is it so hard for us to admit that we really are sinners and we really live in a rotten world? The Good News - the Gospel - is not that God raises us above all of this yuck. The Gospel is that He Himself walks with us through it, changing us along the way to be more like Him. And, at least for me personally, when I think about my life in those terms - on His terms - all that other stuff that is supposed to make me “prosperous” just doesn’t matter. I want more of Him, not more of anything else, and I trust Him to know what will transform me into His image.

I ask you neither for health nor for sickness, for life nor for death; but that you may dispose of my health and my sickness, my life and my death, for your glory….You alone know what is expedient for me; you are the sovereign master; do with me according to your will. Give to me, or take away from me, only conform my will to yours. I know but one thing, Lord, that it is good to follow you, and bad to offend you. Apart from that, I know not what is good or bad in anything. I know not which is most profitable to me, health, or sickness, wealth or poverty, nor anything else in the world. That discernment is beyond the power of men or angels, and is hidden among the secrets of your Providence, which I adore, but do not seek to fathom.

Ahhhh, thank you, Blaise Pascal, for voicing so eloquently what I want to scream from the rooftops today. Now that is victorious living.

My friend Clarissa tagged me on this meme, and I’m one who tries to always accept a challenge - especially when it means I can procrastinate something I don’t want to be doing!. So without further ado, I present to you a book meme…

1. One book that changed my life: That’s saying alot. How about one that made a big impact? Gosh, even then, it’s hard to narrow it down. Tozer’s The Pursuit of God is up there along with some C.S. Lewis and Lover of My Soul, by Alan Wright

2. One book you have read more than once: Sadly, I read very few books more than once - at least as a grown-up. I read aloud Charlotte’s Web, by E.B. White, a blue-million times as well as several from the Ramona series by Judy Blume  Beverly Cleary every year to my class when I was teaching.

3. One book you would want on a desert island: The Complete Calvin and Hobbes. No explanation needed.

4. One book that made you laugh: Phillip Gulley has a couple of great, short little books (Front Porch Tales, Hometown Tales, and For Everything a Season) which Brian and I read aloud to each other while travelling in the days before kiddos.

5. One book that made you cry: Nearly all Angela Hunt novels, but then again, it doesn’t take much! I know the meme is referring to books, but this category would not be complete without my favorite Christmas story, “Barrington Bunny,” which is found in a neat little book called The Way of the Wolf, by Martin Bell. Oh my, how the tears flow every time…

6. One book you wish had been written: How to Detect Sarcasm: Dealing with Your Supercilious Spouse (I love you, Bri!)

7. One book you wish had never been written: Oh, the list is long. My dear husband would shoot me, though, if I missed the opportunity to shed some light on Gary Ezzo’s Babywise. No trip to the bookstore is ever complete without paying a visit to the aisle containing this plethora of parenting poppycock for the sole purpose of hiding said books from sight.

8. One book you are currently reading: Llama, Llama, Red Pajama, by Anna Dewdney, is currently being requested nightly.

9. One book you have been wanting to read: Just one? Brian’s been talking big about Winter’s Tale, by Mark Helprin, for years and I’ve been wanting to try it out again. Also, I promised him that I’d really read Friesen’s Decision Making and the Will of God – well, at least scan through it somewhat thoroughly.

10. One book you would like to see made into a movie: Oh, I don’t know. I don’t get to go to the movies much these days. I guess maybe a kid book – maybe something Junie B. Jones would be cute to see with my girls.

11. One children’s book you always recommend: There are too many to mention here. I could go on and on and recommend one for each age group, but I won’t bore you. At the moment the aforementioned Llama, Llama, Red Pajama is a favorite, as well as Harriet, You’ll Drive Me Wild! by Mem Fox.

12. One young adult book you always recommend: The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis comes to mind first but I’m sure I could come up with more. I guess it depends on how you define “young adult.”

13. Booktag some other people: Any takers? Help yourselves…

Mockingbird - Derek Webb is offering his latest release as a free download. It’s about 68MB so don’t even think about doing it over dial-up. (HT - Doug)

Banners - Decent selection of web page headers if you’re like me and are a little, ummmm, aesthetically challenged.

PSPad - For something free, this has to be the best all-purpose editor I’ve run across. Macros, hex editing, templates for HTML, CSS, Unix Script, etc. I’ve been using it at work and it’s really come in handy.

Got something free you think other people might like? Leave a comment and I’ll add it to the list.

I should probabally come up with a catchier title than this, but for now this is what you get…

David looks at the whole death/sin canard as a “proof” for YEC :

Morris, as he worded his argument, is missing the clear teaching of Rom 5:12: Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned, namely that Paul is talking about the human species. Death came to man because of the sin of our representative, and death is defeated, for man, because of the work of another representative. That this applies only to mankind is evident from the fact that sin, in general, did not come into the world through Adam; it was already present thank-you-very-much in the person of Satan and his minions. (read more)

Communio Sanctoum takes a fresh look at O’Connor’s “Christ Hauntedness” :

Kierkegaard spoke often, if shrilly, of the need to recapture Christianity for Christendom. Such is the case today. “We in the South may be in the process of exorcising this ghost which has given us our vision of perfection,” wrote Flannery O’Connor. Good. Let us exorcise the ghost of the phantom Christ that comes to us on the last whispering remnants of the almost-completely-gone culture of the Bible Belt and renew ourselves in the concrete reality of nails, wood, bread, wine, flesh and blood: “the blunt assertion” of fact. “The Christ of faith over the Christ of history,” the neo-orthodox used to say, as if the a-historical phantom of a God was enough. It is not. (read more)

Kyle examines how “community” is missed when we view the church as an enabler towards personal holiness :

Most western Christians seem to think that their purpose in life, once they are part of the church, is to improve in Christian maturity and holiness until they die. Thus you get sayings like, “this life is just a practice run,” or “this life is just preparation for the next.” With this understanding, the purpose of the church is to help us, as individuals, grow in our Christian walk. The purpose of everything is my personal testimony when I die and go to heaven.

I’m coming around to the position that this is entirely backwards from what Christ intended. As I said in my last sermon, building yourself up at the expense of the rest of the church is precisely what God wants us to avoid. God is simply not as much of an individualist as we are. What he wants from us, I believe, is to form a community, the church, which, as a group represents God’s ideal for the human race. (read more)

Michael talks about Mark Heard and what it means to be a “real” Christian :

I don’t smile all the time. I don’t want to. I have darker moods and I feel the pain around me in ways I seldom show. Life with Christ is rich, deep and good, but it’s not always happy, and I’m not always happy. Sometimes God troubles me, and sometimes believing in God is harder than giving up. I think. I get inside myself. I don’t want to be entertained all the time. I want the smiles to count, and not be manufactured. (read more)