Church

This morning a commercial for Kaiser caught me eye. The tag line was "be your own cause" and was designed to encourage people to take responsibility for their health and wellbeing. But the phrase made me think of how often our culture encourages us to be our own cause ... look out for yourself ... do what makes you happy ... it's all about you.Yet it's not that bad of a tag line. There are times when we do need to see our lives as part of something significant -- a cause that extends us beyond ourself. The trouble comes when all of our causes extend no further than the shadow we cast.

By now, you’ve surely seen some of the coverage about the shootings at Virginia Tech. I was stunned as the news went from one shooting to a mass murder. My heart still aches when I think about the deep trauma suffered by those who lost a loved one and those whose lives were spared.Dramatic stories are beginning to come out about what happened. Liviu Librescu was an aeronautics engineer and teacher at VTU. The 76-year-old gentleman was also a survivor of the Holocaust. The professor blocked the door with his body while telling his students to jump out the window. He was eventually shot and killed.There are already critics and finger-pointers looking to place blame. There will certainly be a time to reflect and inspect – but hopefully we will move beyond the immediate cast of characters and look at the deeper issues.Issues like why we live in a culture…

We had a good morning at church -- the full band was back and was rocking. Doug has added a steel guitar to his reportoire and it's really cool. After church, we went over to some friend's house and had a BBQ. A bunch of people from church was there and it was really fun to just hang out and talk.

You have to love Microsoft's auto correct / auto fill-in features. As I was typing an email tonight, I typed "it would allow me more time for pastoring." Only Outlook changed it to "it would allow me more time for pasturing."How did they know!

"Astronaughty." That was the creative genius of some writer at Fox News. It was used as the story title for an update on the astronaut who drove to Florida in a diaper.