Tom Stipe recently said
"Consumerism, in the context of relationships, is when you are trying to extract happiness from one another. That mentality will kill a marriage, a friendship, a small group, and even a church."
Fulfillment/Happiness found in anything other than God steals our affections from Him. It also creates codependent train wrecks.
So if someone were to analyze your life right now, what or who would they say you are most seeking to find happiness in?
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Catalyst 2010
Shaina and I will be making our second pilgrimage to Buford, Georgia next week for Catalyst Conference. There is something neat about the synergy/creativity that happens at this conference. Thousands of next generation leaders, joining together to hone in on effective leadership. Andy Stanley and his gang do a wonderful job of challenging the status quo. Can't wait to drink from the hydrant next week.
This year's theme: "The Tension is Good"
I will probably come back with a top 10 ideas/lessons from the trip next weekend. Appreciate your prayers to encounter God in significant ways next Tuesday-Friday!
This year's theme: "The Tension is Good"
Catalyst 2010 | The Tension is Good from Catalyst on Vimeo.
I will probably come back with a top 10 ideas/lessons from the trip next weekend. Appreciate your prayers to encounter God in significant ways next Tuesday-Friday!
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Confession = Refreshment
I know confession is often deemed a hard, undesirable task. No one gets too excited when they acknowledge their own sinfulness and seek forgiveness and redemption for their brokeness.
But, confessing is refreshing. In a world of cover up and deception, blameshifting and justifications, confession is just what people need. People who actually take ownership for where they have fallen short is winsome.
So my hunch is that if the church would be quicker to own where they have been wrong rather than pointing out to nonbelievers where they are wrong, we'd see more people drawn to grace. It's amazing how many people of the second chance refuse to offer second chances to those outside the faith.
So the Church has a way to go to get this, but you know who has discovered the power of confession?
These guys:
Now it could be as much a strategic promotional approach as it is honest confession, but there's no doubt that people at least were curious at the ownership of a bad product and the promise to do better.
So...what does God want you to confess? How about the Church universal?
But, confessing is refreshing. In a world of cover up and deception, blameshifting and justifications, confession is just what people need. People who actually take ownership for where they have fallen short is winsome.
So my hunch is that if the church would be quicker to own where they have been wrong rather than pointing out to nonbelievers where they are wrong, we'd see more people drawn to grace. It's amazing how many people of the second chance refuse to offer second chances to those outside the faith.
So the Church has a way to go to get this, but you know who has discovered the power of confession?
These guys:
Now it could be as much a strategic promotional approach as it is honest confession, but there's no doubt that people at least were curious at the ownership of a bad product and the promise to do better.
So...what does God want you to confess? How about the Church universal?
Saturday, September 25, 2010
A Great Event
Today Empower Worldwide Outreach hosted its annual Road Rally. It is built much like CBS' Amazing Race.
17 Teams competed for bragging rights. Groups solved clues, sunk 25 foot putts, fished in a lake for hula hoops and visited a house where an axe murderer made his mark.
The whole point was to raise awareness about the tremendous need to financially support this organization and the ministry they are supporting in Kenya.
42% of Kenya's population is under 15 years old. The need to vastly improve education, along with HIV/AIDS prevention, and bringing the gospel into the dark places of Kenya is so so important.
There is a Kenyan national program/campaign that is supported by U.S. that advocates the use of condoms as the preventative standard for HIV/AIDS. Can I just say that on so many levels this is not working!? If teens are already in impoverished circumstances and can't afford secondary education or basic needs like food and clothing, what maes us think they can magically be able to affod condoms. So we hear stories of teens using used trash bags and other terribly unhealthy, unsafe methods to have sex.
The need for a stand for abstinence and fidelity goes beyond a religious agenda...It is spiritually, physically and emotionally vital, both in Kenya and the U.S.
The onus is on us.
17 Teams competed for bragging rights. Groups solved clues, sunk 25 foot putts, fished in a lake for hula hoops and visited a house where an axe murderer made his mark.
The whole point was to raise awareness about the tremendous need to financially support this organization and the ministry they are supporting in Kenya.
42% of Kenya's population is under 15 years old. The need to vastly improve education, along with HIV/AIDS prevention, and bringing the gospel into the dark places of Kenya is so so important.
There is a Kenyan national program/campaign that is supported by U.S. that advocates the use of condoms as the preventative standard for HIV/AIDS. Can I just say that on so many levels this is not working!? If teens are already in impoverished circumstances and can't afford secondary education or basic needs like food and clothing, what maes us think they can magically be able to affod condoms. So we hear stories of teens using used trash bags and other terribly unhealthy, unsafe methods to have sex.
The need for a stand for abstinence and fidelity goes beyond a religious agenda...It is spiritually, physically and emotionally vital, both in Kenya and the U.S.
The onus is on us.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
wow
How would you like to know as a 10 year old that you're likely on your way to millions of dollars and a life of world fame?
Saw this girl on Leno tonight...pretty fantastic. Just hope she is allowed to be a kid.
Saw this girl on Leno tonight...pretty fantastic. Just hope she is allowed to be a kid.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
95 Theses: The Issue of Mary's perpetual virginity
So I am going to start something new to the mustard sphere today. I have a really good friend named Mike who has a blog as well. Mike is in his final year studying to be a Catholic Priest. Prior to meeting him and his roommate I had a conviction that Catholics were heretical heathens. I hadn't met anyone in my short time as a Christian who was anything more than Catholic by name association only. However, Mike and Josh showed me that there is indeed a love for Christ in the Catholic Church and their devotion to Jesus has convinced me that they are not heretical heathens...at least not the heathen part. (I kid)
So Mike or I will from time to time bring up issues or discrepancies in beliefs between Protestants and Catholics and suggest why I am troubled by a Catholic belief and then Mike will post his reponse on his blog as a sort of bridging dialogue (or vise versa). We are not being malicious or intolerant. We are trying to create discussion and hopefully by the end either we are able to agree to disagree and have a better appreciation for why each side believes what they believe...or Mike and all his Catholic blog followers will be persuaded to Protestantism. (I kid)
Here is a doctrine that bewilders me. Catholics contend that Mary's virginity was and is perpetual. I believe they contend that Jesus was birthed in such a miraculous way as to not exit the birth canal. Then, after the birth of Jesus, Mary and Joseph never had sex.
Here is my take. This is simply not biblical. Here is just a glimpse to help me make my case below.
John 2:12 "After this Jesus went down to Capernaum with his mother, his brothers, and his disciples; and they remained there a few days."
John 7:3-5 "So his brothers said to him, “Leave here and go to Judea so that your disciples also may see the works you are doing; for no one who wantsc to be widely known acts in secret. If you do these things, show yourself to the world.” (For not even his brothers believed in him.)"
There are a few explanations that Catholics have used to try to refute the passages that mention Jesus' brothers. One is that, 'brothers' is another term for disciple. But John would be not only unique to the New Testament in using this term, but also unique to 1st century Greek and rabbinical traditions...rabbis have disciples...not brothers. Further, if John was referring to disciples as brothers, then why in 2:12 would the two be listed side by side as if two separate entities?
Another explanation I have heard is that John is using brothers to refer to Jesus' cousins as a term that means 'close familial bonds'. I think the owner of this theory came from West Virginia (I kid). There is a common word in the Greek that literally means cousin and John's writing style in his gospel suggests that he is not simply working with a limited Greek vocabulary. So the cousin argument holds no water.
A third argument is that Joseph was much older than Mary and had kids prior to their union. While this makes sense in a 21st century context when marriage and remarriage is almost the norm...I am not sure that its as feasible in a 1st century context (though I'd have to look into it more). The Bible doesn't lend any insight into this theory so we can't bank too much on it either.
Another component to this argument is that Jesus must have been an only child because when he was on the cross in John 19:25 and following, Jesus says to Mary and John, the beloved disciple, "Woman, here is your son." Then he said to the disciple, "Here is your mother." And from that hour the disciple took her into his own house." This is a decent argument, just reading this passage...but when we read it next to the rest of the gospel of John, we see that Jesus' brothers did not believe in him (7:5-above). If they rejected him but Mary didn't, I think it is safe to say that there'd be a wedge placed in that family. Jesus knows that his mom's family has rejected him and her and so he entrusts her care to his right hand man, John.
My last contention with this theory of perpetual virginity is that it would seem to blatantly disregard the sacred bond of marriage that is so central to the Judeo-Christian belief system. It is a mystery and a miracle that 2 flesh can become one. And the theme of that union can be traced from Creation accounts in Genesis, all throughout the Hebrew Bible and then culminating with that union embodied between Jesus and his Bride in the New Testament. To say that Joseph and Mary never participated in that union is troubling to me and leaves things a bit inadequate.
So that is my take on the issue of Mary's perpetual virginity. Check in with Deacon Mike periodically this week to see his response.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Monday, September 20, 2010
osu debacle
I'm pulling for OSU a little bit this year...though i think college football is pretty average and that the Browns could easily beat at least half of the collegiate level teams in the country...but if the esteemed mascot can't even hold serve on home turf...it may be a bad omen.
Still...bad mascot or not the best football teams in the state rank this way.
1. Mount Union
2. Cincinnati
3. Cleveland
4. OSU
Just waiting for a D-1 school to take a crack at the Purple Raiders.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Top 10 Things From Our Cruise
Well, we're back to the grind! Got back yesterday evening from a 7 day cruise that went to Nassau, Bahamas...Half Moon Cay...and Grand Turk Island. Here's 10 things I've learned from the trip:
10. September is the perfect time to cruise...Very few kids...good rates because of hurricane season and still hot sunny weather.
9. Shaina and I slept about 8-10 hours every night and still managed to take between an hour and two hour nap each day. I think that may be an indicator that we were running at an unsustainable pace for awhile and our bodies were reacting to that.
8. Never have I ever seen such a combination of 400 pound people, 80's mullets, and deaf people in one setting. Apparently there was a deaf vacationers group that had to comprise at least 10 percent of the 2000 person cruise.
7. I am not built for 100 degree weather. Combine extreme hairyness with extreme sweatiness and mix in my ever so delicate pasty white skin, and it can make for a pretty rough time. Even with sunscreen applied and reapplied, both Shaina and I got pretty toasty.
6. Half Moon Cay, Carnival's privately owned island is quite possibly the most beautiful beach area in the world. White sand and crystal clear water make for a fantastic experience.
5. Top deck of the ship at about 10 p.m. = more stars than you can count...and because of the extreme fascination with booze and gambling, there was virtually no one who knew about it!
4. The Carnival Cruise Staff are some of the nicest people. Dinner every night was perhaps the highlight of the trip. Delicious 3 course meals, amazing, attentive service and a 5 foot, Turkish maitre'd made for some great laughs.
3. Good entertainment. We saw a few shows, a ridiculous juggler and a pretty funny comedian.
2. 400 minutes of nap time on vacation is great...400 unread emails in the inbox when you come back...not so great.
1. 7 days apart from everything is great for my health, my marriage and my ministry.
10. September is the perfect time to cruise...Very few kids...good rates because of hurricane season and still hot sunny weather.
9. Shaina and I slept about 8-10 hours every night and still managed to take between an hour and two hour nap each day. I think that may be an indicator that we were running at an unsustainable pace for awhile and our bodies were reacting to that.
8. Never have I ever seen such a combination of 400 pound people, 80's mullets, and deaf people in one setting. Apparently there was a deaf vacationers group that had to comprise at least 10 percent of the 2000 person cruise.
7. I am not built for 100 degree weather. Combine extreme hairyness with extreme sweatiness and mix in my ever so delicate pasty white skin, and it can make for a pretty rough time. Even with sunscreen applied and reapplied, both Shaina and I got pretty toasty.
6. Half Moon Cay, Carnival's privately owned island is quite possibly the most beautiful beach area in the world. White sand and crystal clear water make for a fantastic experience.
5. Top deck of the ship at about 10 p.m. = more stars than you can count...and because of the extreme fascination with booze and gambling, there was virtually no one who knew about it!
4. The Carnival Cruise Staff are some of the nicest people. Dinner every night was perhaps the highlight of the trip. Delicious 3 course meals, amazing, attentive service and a 5 foot, Turkish maitre'd made for some great laughs.
3. Good entertainment. We saw a few shows, a ridiculous juggler and a pretty funny comedian.
2. 400 minutes of nap time on vacation is great...400 unread emails in the inbox when you come back...not so great.
1. 7 days apart from everything is great for my health, my marriage and my ministry.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Paid in Full
I checked the status of my college loans this morning.
Loan One. Paid in Full
Loan Two. Paid in Full
Loan Three. Paid in Full
We are officially debt free. No car payments. No school loan payments. No credit card payments.
I love the way Dave Ramsey puts it: "If you're willing to live like no one else now, then you'll get to live like no one else later."
We are set up now to do whatever God wants us to do next. We've got goals of paying cash for the next car we purchase, beginning the adoption process, and just having a financial strategy to gain some savings over the next few months.
I want to be clear. If you want to be debt free, it will demand that you 'feel it' in the way you live. You don't really need DVR, 100+ channels, the cell phone that serves as basically a laptop, that car that will keep your kid from going to college, etc.
The most important piece to Shaina and I's success in getting out of debt has been that we have tithed faithfully for 7 years of marriage. 10 percent of our income goes back to the Giver of our income. We've tithed when we've made $9000 in a year. We've tithed when we've lost jobs. We've tithed when we weren't sure how ends would meet. It's not a superstition. It's simply biblical. You will never outgive God. We've had crazy things happen along the way like checks for seminary books being placed in our mailbox, by anonymous contributers, or checks from unforeseen places coming at just the right time in just the right amount to be able to pay off a washer and dryer.
$$ is one of the biggest stressors in marriages...But it doesn't have to be. And you're never too young to understand the way to financial peace. Just ask Elijah
Loan One. Paid in Full
Loan Two. Paid in Full
Loan Three. Paid in Full
We are officially debt free. No car payments. No school loan payments. No credit card payments.
I love the way Dave Ramsey puts it: "If you're willing to live like no one else now, then you'll get to live like no one else later."
We are set up now to do whatever God wants us to do next. We've got goals of paying cash for the next car we purchase, beginning the adoption process, and just having a financial strategy to gain some savings over the next few months.
I want to be clear. If you want to be debt free, it will demand that you 'feel it' in the way you live. You don't really need DVR, 100+ channels, the cell phone that serves as basically a laptop, that car that will keep your kid from going to college, etc.
The most important piece to Shaina and I's success in getting out of debt has been that we have tithed faithfully for 7 years of marriage. 10 percent of our income goes back to the Giver of our income. We've tithed when we've made $9000 in a year. We've tithed when we've lost jobs. We've tithed when we weren't sure how ends would meet. It's not a superstition. It's simply biblical. You will never outgive God. We've had crazy things happen along the way like checks for seminary books being placed in our mailbox, by anonymous contributers, or checks from unforeseen places coming at just the right time in just the right amount to be able to pay off a washer and dryer.
$$ is one of the biggest stressors in marriages...But it doesn't have to be. And you're never too young to understand the way to financial peace. Just ask Elijah
Elijah Offering Video from Elevation Church on Vimeo.
Monday, September 6, 2010
Thank you Jesus
I have made it to vacation. I may or may not get out of bed before noon tomorrow.
Blogging will be sporadic.
Have a good couple weeks.
Shaina and I leave Friday morning to head to our cruise! Can't wait.
Blogging will be sporadic.
Have a good couple weeks.
Shaina and I leave Friday morning to head to our cruise! Can't wait.
Friday, September 3, 2010
NFL Preseason Picks
Well, I looked at the ESPN predictions for the NFL this year...Jake Delhomme is named by John Clayton as the 33rd best starting quarterback in the league...Considering that there aren't even 33 teams in the league, that is not particularly optimistic. The Browns are projected by pretty much every analyst to finish dead last in the division. Here's my predictions:
AFC North
Baltimore 10-6 Baltimore has an abundance of offensive weapons, which is new territory for the evil dark forces of Art Modell. Their secondary is riddled with injuries, but their front 7 is as nasty as any in the league. They win the division because of Joe Flacco's breakout year (He's my fantasy qb!)
Cleveland 9-7 It's not so much about Cleveland's talent as it is about their style of play. The running game and a revamped secondary are going to have NFL analysts admitting they were wrong by year end. Cleveland is a bubble team to get the wildcard. They have to start the year 2-0 for this prediction to come true.
Cincinatti 8-8 Their starting 2 wideouts are a combined age of 146, though I will admit, I'm hopeful for something amazing to happen between the two endzone celebration specialists this year. But, aging wideouts are not good in a division that kills wide receivers...With Polamalu in Pittsburgh, Ed Reed (when healthy) in Baltimore and TJ Ward (you heard it hear first) in Cleveland...Cincy's passing game looks more and more suspect.
Pittsburgh 7-9 Its not that I hate Pittsburgh that has me picking them dead last in the division (though hatred I do have), it is simply that Pittsburgh is not very good. Particularly without Roethlisberger for 1/4 of the season, they are relying on an unproven, though potentially electric qb in dixon. Their D is solid and Polamulu is simply a game changer, but offense will be the challenging part...though if Mike Wallace wants to have a great year...my fantasy team will not complain.
AFC North
Baltimore 10-6 Baltimore has an abundance of offensive weapons, which is new territory for the evil dark forces of Art Modell. Their secondary is riddled with injuries, but their front 7 is as nasty as any in the league. They win the division because of Joe Flacco's breakout year (He's my fantasy qb!)
Cleveland 9-7 It's not so much about Cleveland's talent as it is about their style of play. The running game and a revamped secondary are going to have NFL analysts admitting they were wrong by year end. Cleveland is a bubble team to get the wildcard. They have to start the year 2-0 for this prediction to come true.
Cincinatti 8-8 Their starting 2 wideouts are a combined age of 146, though I will admit, I'm hopeful for something amazing to happen between the two endzone celebration specialists this year. But, aging wideouts are not good in a division that kills wide receivers...With Polamalu in Pittsburgh, Ed Reed (when healthy) in Baltimore and TJ Ward (you heard it hear first) in Cleveland...Cincy's passing game looks more and more suspect.
Pittsburgh 7-9 Its not that I hate Pittsburgh that has me picking them dead last in the division (though hatred I do have), it is simply that Pittsburgh is not very good. Particularly without Roethlisberger for 1/4 of the season, they are relying on an unproven, though potentially electric qb in dixon. Their D is solid and Polamulu is simply a game changer, but offense will be the challenging part...though if Mike Wallace wants to have a great year...my fantasy team will not complain.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Goal Setting
At the close of our summer sunday school series, Chase the Goose by Mark Batterson, each young adult was challenged to make a list of 30-40 life goals that they want to accomplish in their lifetime. They are all ideally to have some significance spiritually. I have my list...one goal of which is to read the top 50 novels of all time. This doesn't sound particularly spiritual but it has a couple purposes...One is that I need to read leisurely and not read only theological treatise and books on leadership and church life. This shows that I am able to disconnect from the constant demand of ministry. Another reason is that I think that reading those whom God has gifted with the ability to paint with words is a way to encounter His presence. Whether the author uses his or her gift for God's glory or not doesn't change that the gift of writing comes from the Giver. Third, should provide my life with some culture.
So, the process begins. I'm using this list. I'm going to start at number one and simply work my way down. Going to pick up the first for my two weeks of vacation. I am hoping that I reach this goal fairly easily and keep going beyond 50 because there are a few I'd really like to read just beyond 50. So anyone read Don Quixote?
1 Don Quixote 1605, 1630 Miguel de Cervantes Catholic
2 War and Peace 1869 Leo Tolstoy Russian Orthodox
3 Ulysses 1922 James Joyce Catholic (lapsed)
4 In Search of Lost Time 1913-27 Marcel Proust Jewish Catholic
5 The Brothers Karamazov 1880 Feodor Dostoevsky Russian Orthodox
6 Moby-Dick 1851 Herman Melville Transcendentalist
7 Madame Bovary 1857 Gustave Flaubert Catholic
8 Middlemarch 1871-72 George Eliot Anglican; agnostic
9 The Magic Mountain 1924 Thomas Mann Lutheran
10 The Tale of Genji 11th Century Murasaki Shikibu Buddhist/Shinto culture
11 Emma 1816 Jane Austen Anglican
12 Bleak House 1852-53 Charles Dickens Anglican
13 Anna Karenina 1877 Leo Tolstoy Russian Orthodox
14 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 1884 Mark Twain Presbyterian
15 Tom Jones 1749 Henry Fielding
16 Great Expectations 1860-61 Charles Dickens Anglican
17 Absalom, Absalom! 1936 William Faulkner Presbyterian
18 The Ambassadors 1903 Henry James Anglican
19 One Hundred Years of Solitude 1967 Gabriel Garcia Marquez Catholic
20 The Great Gatsby 1925 F. Scott Fitzgerald Catholic
21 To The Lighthouse 1927 Virginia Woolf Neo-pagan
22 Crime and Punishment 1866 Feodor Dostoevsky Russian Orthodox
23 The Sound and the Fury 1929 William Faulkner Presbyterian
24 Vanity Fair 1847-48 William Makepeace Thackeray
25 Invisible Man 1952 Ralph Ellison
26 Finnegans Wake 1939 James Joyce Catholic (lapsed)
27 The Man Without Qualities 1930-43 Robert Musil Catholic
28 Gravity's Rainbow 1973 Thomas Pynchon Catholic; agnostic
29 The Portrait of a Lady 1881 Henry James Anglican
30 Women in Love 1920 D. H. Lawrence
31 The Red and the Black 1830 Stendhal Catholic
32 Tristram Shandy 1760-67 Laurence Sterne Anglican (Church of Ireland clergyman)
33 Dead Souls 1842 Nikolai Gogol Russian Orthodox
34 Tess of the D'Urbervilles 1891 Thomas Hardy
35 Buddenbrooks 1901 Thomas Mann Lutheran
36 Le Pere Goriot 1835 Honore de Balzac Catholic
37 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 1916 James Joyce Catholic (lapsed)
38 Wuthering Heights 1847 Emily Bronte Anglican
39 The Tin Drum 1959 Gunter Grass Catholic
40 Molloy; Malone Dies; The Unnamable 1951-53 Samuel Beckett Church of Ireland (Anglican)
41 Pride and Prejudice 1813 Jane Austen Anglican
42 The Scarlet Letter 1850 Nathaniel Hawthorne Transcendentalist
43 Fathers and Sons 1862 Ivan Turgenev Russian Orthodox; agnostic
44 Nostromo 1904 Joseph Conrad Catholic; atheist
45 Beloved 1987 Toni Morrison
46 An American Tragedy 1925 Theodore Dreiser Catholic; Congregationalist; Chrisitan Science
47 Lolita 1955 Vladimir Nabokov Russian Orthodox
48 The Golden Notebook 1962 Doris Lessing
49 Clarissa 1747-48 Samuel Richardson
50 Dream of the Red Chamber 1791 Cao Xueqin
51 The Trial 1925 Franz Kafka Jewish
52 Jane Eyre 1847 Charlotte Bronte Anglican
53 The Red Badge of Courage 1895 Stephen Crane Methodist
54 The Grapes of Wrath 1939 John Steinbeck Episcopalian
55 Petersburg 1916/1922 Andrey Bely Russian Orthodox; Theosophy; Spiritualism
56 Things Fall Apart 1958 Chinue Achebe
57 The Princess of Cleves 1678 Madame de Lafayette
58 The Stranger 1942 Albert Camus Catholic; Existentialism
59 My Antonia 1918 Willa Cather Episcopalian
60 The Counterfeiters 1926 Andre Gide
61 The Age of Innocence 1920 Edith Wharton
62 The Good Soldier 1915 Ford Madox Ford Catholic; agnostic
63 The Awakening 1899 Kate Chopin Catholic
64 A Passage to India 1924 E. M. Forster
65 Herzog 1964 Saul Bellow Orthodox Jew (lapsed); Anthroposophist
66 Germinal 1855 Emile Zola Catholic
67 Call It Sleep 1934 Henry Roth Jewish
68 U.S.A. Trilogy 1930-38 John Dos Passos Catholic
69 Hunger 1890 Knut Hamsun
70 Berlin Alexanderplatz 1929 Alfred Doblin Catholic
71 Cities of Salt 1984-89 'Abd al-Rahman Munif
72 The Death of Artemio Cruz 1962 Carlos Fuentes Catholic
73 A Farewell to Arms 1929 Ernest Hemingway Catholic
74 Brideshead Revisited 1945 Evelyn Waugh Catholic
75 The Last Chronicle of Barset 1866-67 Anthony Trollope Anglican
76 The Pickwick Papers 1836-67 Charles Dickens Anglican
77 Robinson Crusoe 1719 Daniel Defoe Protestant Dissenter (Presbyterian)
78 The Sorrows of Young Werther 1774 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Deist
79 Candide 1759 Voltaire raised in Jansenism; later Deist
80 Native Son 1940 Richard Wright Seventh-day Adventist; Communist
81 Under the Volcano 1947 Malcolm Lowry Methodist; Anglican; agnostic
82 Oblomov 1859 Ivan Goncharov
83 Their Eyes Were Watching God 1937 Zora Neale Hurston
84 Waverley 1814 Sir Walter Scott Anglican
85 Snow Country 1937, 1948 Kawabata Yasunari
86 Nineteen Eighty-Four 1949 George Orwell Anglican
87 The Betrothed 1827, 1840 Alessandro Manzoni Catholic
88 The Last of the Mohicans 1826 James Fenimore Cooper Episcopalian
89 Uncle Tom's Cabin 1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe Episcopalian; Congregationalist
90 Les Miserables 1862 Victor Hugo Catholic
91 On the Road 1957 Jack Kerouac Catholic; Buddhism
92 Frankenstein 1818 Mary Shelley
93 The Leopard 1958 Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa Catholic
94 The Catcher in the Rye 1951 J.D. Salinger Jewish Catholic; Scientologist
95 The Woman in White 1860 Wilkie Collins
96 The Good Soldier Svejk 1921-23 Jaroslav Hasek Catholic
97 Dracula 1897 Bram Stoker Church of Ireland (Anglican)
98 The Three Musketeers 1844 Alexandre Dumas agnostic; Catholic
99 The Hound of Baskervilles 1902 Arthur Conan Doyle Catholic; Spiritualist
100 Gone with the Wind 1936 Margaret Mitchell Catholic
So, the process begins. I'm using this list. I'm going to start at number one and simply work my way down. Going to pick up the first for my two weeks of vacation. I am hoping that I reach this goal fairly easily and keep going beyond 50 because there are a few I'd really like to read just beyond 50. So anyone read Don Quixote?
1 Don Quixote 1605, 1630 Miguel de Cervantes Catholic
2 War and Peace 1869 Leo Tolstoy Russian Orthodox
3 Ulysses 1922 James Joyce Catholic (lapsed)
4 In Search of Lost Time 1913-27 Marcel Proust Jewish Catholic
5 The Brothers Karamazov 1880 Feodor Dostoevsky Russian Orthodox
6 Moby-Dick 1851 Herman Melville Transcendentalist
7 Madame Bovary 1857 Gustave Flaubert Catholic
8 Middlemarch 1871-72 George Eliot Anglican; agnostic
9 The Magic Mountain 1924 Thomas Mann Lutheran
10 The Tale of Genji 11th Century Murasaki Shikibu Buddhist/Shinto culture
11 Emma 1816 Jane Austen Anglican
12 Bleak House 1852-53 Charles Dickens Anglican
13 Anna Karenina 1877 Leo Tolstoy Russian Orthodox
14 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 1884 Mark Twain Presbyterian
15 Tom Jones 1749 Henry Fielding
16 Great Expectations 1860-61 Charles Dickens Anglican
17 Absalom, Absalom! 1936 William Faulkner Presbyterian
18 The Ambassadors 1903 Henry James Anglican
19 One Hundred Years of Solitude 1967 Gabriel Garcia Marquez Catholic
20 The Great Gatsby 1925 F. Scott Fitzgerald Catholic
21 To The Lighthouse 1927 Virginia Woolf Neo-pagan
22 Crime and Punishment 1866 Feodor Dostoevsky Russian Orthodox
23 The Sound and the Fury 1929 William Faulkner Presbyterian
24 Vanity Fair 1847-48 William Makepeace Thackeray
25 Invisible Man 1952 Ralph Ellison
26 Finnegans Wake 1939 James Joyce Catholic (lapsed)
27 The Man Without Qualities 1930-43 Robert Musil Catholic
28 Gravity's Rainbow 1973 Thomas Pynchon Catholic; agnostic
29 The Portrait of a Lady 1881 Henry James Anglican
30 Women in Love 1920 D. H. Lawrence
31 The Red and the Black 1830 Stendhal Catholic
32 Tristram Shandy 1760-67 Laurence Sterne Anglican (Church of Ireland clergyman)
33 Dead Souls 1842 Nikolai Gogol Russian Orthodox
34 Tess of the D'Urbervilles 1891 Thomas Hardy
35 Buddenbrooks 1901 Thomas Mann Lutheran
36 Le Pere Goriot 1835 Honore de Balzac Catholic
37 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 1916 James Joyce Catholic (lapsed)
38 Wuthering Heights 1847 Emily Bronte Anglican
39 The Tin Drum 1959 Gunter Grass Catholic
40 Molloy; Malone Dies; The Unnamable 1951-53 Samuel Beckett Church of Ireland (Anglican)
41 Pride and Prejudice 1813 Jane Austen Anglican
42 The Scarlet Letter 1850 Nathaniel Hawthorne Transcendentalist
43 Fathers and Sons 1862 Ivan Turgenev Russian Orthodox; agnostic
44 Nostromo 1904 Joseph Conrad Catholic; atheist
45 Beloved 1987 Toni Morrison
46 An American Tragedy 1925 Theodore Dreiser Catholic; Congregationalist; Chrisitan Science
47 Lolita 1955 Vladimir Nabokov Russian Orthodox
48 The Golden Notebook 1962 Doris Lessing
49 Clarissa 1747-48 Samuel Richardson
50 Dream of the Red Chamber 1791 Cao Xueqin
51 The Trial 1925 Franz Kafka Jewish
52 Jane Eyre 1847 Charlotte Bronte Anglican
53 The Red Badge of Courage 1895 Stephen Crane Methodist
54 The Grapes of Wrath 1939 John Steinbeck Episcopalian
55 Petersburg 1916/1922 Andrey Bely Russian Orthodox; Theosophy; Spiritualism
56 Things Fall Apart 1958 Chinue Achebe
57 The Princess of Cleves 1678 Madame de Lafayette
58 The Stranger 1942 Albert Camus Catholic; Existentialism
59 My Antonia 1918 Willa Cather Episcopalian
60 The Counterfeiters 1926 Andre Gide
61 The Age of Innocence 1920 Edith Wharton
62 The Good Soldier 1915 Ford Madox Ford Catholic; agnostic
63 The Awakening 1899 Kate Chopin Catholic
64 A Passage to India 1924 E. M. Forster
65 Herzog 1964 Saul Bellow Orthodox Jew (lapsed); Anthroposophist
66 Germinal 1855 Emile Zola Catholic
67 Call It Sleep 1934 Henry Roth Jewish
68 U.S.A. Trilogy 1930-38 John Dos Passos Catholic
69 Hunger 1890 Knut Hamsun
70 Berlin Alexanderplatz 1929 Alfred Doblin Catholic
71 Cities of Salt 1984-89 'Abd al-Rahman Munif
72 The Death of Artemio Cruz 1962 Carlos Fuentes Catholic
73 A Farewell to Arms 1929 Ernest Hemingway Catholic
74 Brideshead Revisited 1945 Evelyn Waugh Catholic
75 The Last Chronicle of Barset 1866-67 Anthony Trollope Anglican
76 The Pickwick Papers 1836-67 Charles Dickens Anglican
77 Robinson Crusoe 1719 Daniel Defoe Protestant Dissenter (Presbyterian)
78 The Sorrows of Young Werther 1774 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Deist
79 Candide 1759 Voltaire raised in Jansenism; later Deist
80 Native Son 1940 Richard Wright Seventh-day Adventist; Communist
81 Under the Volcano 1947 Malcolm Lowry Methodist; Anglican; agnostic
82 Oblomov 1859 Ivan Goncharov
83 Their Eyes Were Watching God 1937 Zora Neale Hurston
84 Waverley 1814 Sir Walter Scott Anglican
85 Snow Country 1937, 1948 Kawabata Yasunari
86 Nineteen Eighty-Four 1949 George Orwell Anglican
87 The Betrothed 1827, 1840 Alessandro Manzoni Catholic
88 The Last of the Mohicans 1826 James Fenimore Cooper Episcopalian
89 Uncle Tom's Cabin 1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe Episcopalian; Congregationalist
90 Les Miserables 1862 Victor Hugo Catholic
91 On the Road 1957 Jack Kerouac Catholic; Buddhism
92 Frankenstein 1818 Mary Shelley
93 The Leopard 1958 Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa Catholic
94 The Catcher in the Rye 1951 J.D. Salinger Jewish Catholic; Scientologist
95 The Woman in White 1860 Wilkie Collins
96 The Good Soldier Svejk 1921-23 Jaroslav Hasek Catholic
97 Dracula 1897 Bram Stoker Church of Ireland (Anglican)
98 The Three Musketeers 1844 Alexandre Dumas agnostic; Catholic
99 The Hound of Baskervilles 1902 Arthur Conan Doyle Catholic; Spiritualist
100 Gone with the Wind 1936 Margaret Mitchell Catholic
Shaking things up!
Shaina and I are back in the 'Real World' after a 48 hour prayer retreat. We went up to Marblehead, near Lakeside in the Sandusky/Cedar Point area.
We prayed our way through Fresh Wind Fresh Fire by Jim Cymbala, which is a great book.
One of the sections in the book focused on Acts 4:31. The church was crying out to God...not for protection, shelter, safety...they were praying for more boldness in sharing the Good News. And after they prayed..."the place in which they were gathered together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness."
Right after we read this section and prayed to God, the entire house shook somewhat violently. I thought earthquake. Then we remembered what we'd just read and prayed on and were pretty much freaked out. During lunch, I texted the woman who had hooked us up with the house for the retreat and asked if whole house shaking was a common feature of the place. She suggested that it may have been work being done at the Marblehead quarry...which very well may be, but the bottom line is that God wants to shake things up in us. It was a refreshing time and very needed to come down out of the frantic pace that Shaina and I had essentially lived in for the better part of the last 2 years.
We have more focus. More clarity. More direction.
Thanks for praying!
How has God answered your prayers?
We prayed our way through Fresh Wind Fresh Fire by Jim Cymbala, which is a great book.
One of the sections in the book focused on Acts 4:31. The church was crying out to God...not for protection, shelter, safety...they were praying for more boldness in sharing the Good News. And after they prayed..."the place in which they were gathered together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness."
Right after we read this section and prayed to God, the entire house shook somewhat violently. I thought earthquake. Then we remembered what we'd just read and prayed on and were pretty much freaked out. During lunch, I texted the woman who had hooked us up with the house for the retreat and asked if whole house shaking was a common feature of the place. She suggested that it may have been work being done at the Marblehead quarry...which very well may be, but the bottom line is that God wants to shake things up in us. It was a refreshing time and very needed to come down out of the frantic pace that Shaina and I had essentially lived in for the better part of the last 2 years.
We have more focus. More clarity. More direction.
Thanks for praying!
How has God answered your prayers?
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