Happy New Year!

I just read a great essay on New Year's Resolutions that I would recommend. Do you make too many resolutions? None at all? Or a careful few?

You can read the article on Justin Taylor's blog here. (which also mentions on December 30 several Bible reading plans ... my personal fave is the Bible Reading Plan for Shirkers and Slackers.)

Queen Elizabeth's Annual Christmas Message

All I Want for Christmas is My 2 Front Teeth

Merry Christmas from Spokane

A Model for Christian Community

Human communities vary throughout the earth, but what they all point to is the deep human need for a community in which each is accepted, plays a significant part, and learns from others. At its best, there is something deeply good about belonging to a family, to a neighbourhood, to a culture and nation.

Yet a cursory glance at any society shows that there are equally deep flaws in any human community... envy, theft, loneliness, divorce, abuse, dysfunction, or superiority.

This is why the new humanity created by the power of God (and spoken of in the Biblical book of Acts) is such good news: God redeems fallen folk who were enslaved to attitudes that, left unchecked, destroy relationships; and at best, leave us somehow unsatisfied. The Bible has convinced me that this mediocrity is not what we are meant for.

So the new humanity (also called the church or body of Jesus Christ) exists in freedom to explore relationships that are being repaired and restored to something joyful and authentic and deep. This process happens through the gospel. Not only do such real communities emerge, but they reproduce themselves.

One of the most compelling analogies in nature for this kind of phenomenon is the micro-organism called Volvox. This sphere is actually a colony of hundreds of individual algae who never live on their own... they are perpetually linked to the rest, and even give birth as a colony to daughter spheres. I liken this to a mother church planting a daughter community of Christians. How strange that something so small that it couldn't be seen until 1700 by Leeuwenhoek, all this time has existed as an eloquent symbol of community on a grander scale.

(photo courtesy of Wim Van Egmond)

The life cycle can be found at http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/artdec03/volvox.html.

Post-Thanksgiving Post

Hi,

The lethargic blogger strikes again! With the speed of a transatlantic sloth, my fingers hurtle across the keyboard one keystroke at a time.

For teachers like me, we love breaks because we get all the breaks the kids get; although we often spend part of our vacations catching up on our work. Yesterday I got a lot of work done planning the next few weeks of lessons till Christmas Break; but I have taken some time off. All work and no play makes Brian a dull boy.

My favorite book this month has been reading for myself the first time William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation.

To my few readers out there, please leave a comment on your favorite book or Scripture you have enjoyed reading in November.

The Cold Splendor of Fall

Today was the first day my walk home was in the dark. Cold, yet fresh like autumn; not like February. It feels good to walk up to my door, to our home and the warmth and the family and the love waiting for me. Isn't it strange how this simple pleasure is so easily missed by the common preoccupation with ourselves that prevents us from seeing what we truly have?

This November I am resolutely preparing for Thanksgiving all month.

Brian