Alan Patrick explains the issues behind the story of bloggers spending way too much time online trying to beat the other blog to the story. “One of the more ironic parts of the whole FreeConomics thing is that many of the people writing about, and strongly supporting the whole concept of FreeConomics, are those getting most nailed by it – ie Tech bloggers blogging for money.”
Grab a Book on Your Way Up
Look at this remarkable bookcase/staircase combo from a London flat.
Unkind
from James H. Cousins’ poem, “A Curse on a Closed Gate”
“BE THIS the fate
Of the man who would shut his gate
On the stranger, gentle or simple, early or late.
When his mouth with a day’s long hunger and thirst would wish
For the savour of salted fish,
Let him sit and eat his fill of an empty dish.”
New Book Club
Sherry has launched the Biblically Literate Book Club. “I hope the books will mesh in some way with the Bible readings to illuminate one another, especially the Bible illuminating the works of human authors.”
Favorite Poems
There’s a project on Americans reading their favorite poems. I found the one with Rev. Michael Haynes reading Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life” edifying.
I’m not very good at picking favorites, but apart from Psalms 23 and 139, one of my favorites is Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.” “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler, long I stood and gazed down one as far as I could to where it turned in the undergrowth.”
What’s your favorite poem?
Tags: favorite poem, poems, Longfellow, Frost
Have Gone Astray
All we like sheep in Te Kuiti, New Zealand.
The careful Searcher
Tonight, another insight from the bottomless, fetid pit of my wisdom.
I think of this insight as my own, but that’s probably just the result of ignorance. Likely thousands of real theologians said it before I did.
But I never read it in their books. I worked it out with my own tiny, smooth-surfaced brain.
So I think of it as my own.
Is there any saying that’s brought more comfort to sinners than this: “If you had been the only sinner in the world, Jesus would have died to save you”?
I suppose it’s a cliché, but I like it. It speaks to me.
And yet it always bothered me. Because it didn’t seem to actually rise from any biblical text. And I don’t take anything as absolute truth that isn’t either found in Scripture or plainly derived from a clear reading of Scripture.
And then I figured it out. Luke 15:3-7: “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?”
And just down the page, Luke 15:8-10: “Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Does she not light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it?”
The point of these parables is not (I believe), as some will think, that everyone will be saved. The point is the concern of the Searcher for each individual who is lost.
In other words, if I had been the only sinner in the world, Jesus would have died to save me.
My apologies to everybody who came up with this first (probably in preaching on Luke 15).
But it’s a comfort to me.
Have a good weekend.
How Novels Work
John Mullan, senior lecturer in English at University College London and using material from his “Elements of Fiction” column in The Guardian, has a book on novel called How Novels Work, from Oxford UP.
How Novels Work explains how the pleasures of novel reading often come from the formal ingenuity of the novelist, making visible techniques and effects we are often only half-aware of as we read. It is an entertaining and stimulating volume that will captivate anyone who is interested in the contemporary or the classical novel.
Some Books Take Too Long to Read
Guest blogger Fiona Maazel says she’s in the middle of about 400 novels at the moment. “Currently, I am still going at War and Peace, the Bible, Grant’s memoirs, Watership Down, Infinite Jest, American Gothic, Auto-da-Fe. I keep meaning to go back and finish these books, but I get sidetracked. Or I was getting sidetracked until one of my book shelves collapsed a few months ago.”
So What Does This Mean to You?
Michael Patton says, “What does it mean to you? This, I believe, is the most destructive question that one can ask of the Scriptures. The implication is that the Scriptures can mean something to one person that it does not to another.”
He has a good point, but I don’t think starting with this question or the subjective angle is bad for some groups. Starting with what a passage means to each of us gets us involved and thinking more than we were before. If you leave it at that, you won’t teach any truth, but starting there just puts ideas on the table.
Starting with this kind of question also respects the words of the Bible and intelligence of the readers. If someone suggests a ridiculous meaning for a verse, the group should naturally see it as ridiculous. The leader may need to help that understanding, but it can be done naturally without directly contradicting the one who suggested it. This is the idea behind a John study or a group discussion of the Gospel of John. The group gathers to discuss what Bible says about Jesus.
(via Kingdom People)