My strength this next week:

"Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,' says the LORD Almighty"

Zechariah 4:6

The Lark Ascending - (excerpt)

Taken from a poem by George Meredith (1828–1909).

HE rises and begins to round,
He drops the silver chain of sound
Of many links without a break,
In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake,

For singing till his heaven fills,
’T is love of earth that he instils,
And ever winging up and up,
Our valley is his golden cup,
And he the wine which overflows
To lift us with him as he goes:

Till lost on his aërial rings
In light, and then the fancy sings.

Are we too pessimistic?

I was just watching one of those disaster shows on the History Channel. You know, those shows that focus on how the dinosaurs might have been wiped out and then shows how our planet might be obliterated by a comet, earthquake, hurricane, or super volcano eruption? It got me thinking -why does the modern world seem to have a fascination with our destruction? It seems like we have become incredibly pessimistic and cynical as people.

Sure there have always been stories of humanity's destruction. From biblical accounts of floods, plagues, and apocalyptic visions to ancient Greek mythology it seems there has been some history of this talk of pending destruction.

I just finished a great book called Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven, But Nobody Wants to Die. In this book, the authors David Crowder and Mike Hogan talk about how culture thinks of death and they explore the history of the soul. Reading this book I came to realize... we're afraid of death. Could it be that humanity has an acute sense of our own mortality and that causes much of the pessimism and focusing on how we might be destoyed?

In many ways, our planet is suffering from incredible brokenness: Wars, disease, famine, natural disasters, cultural shifts, the destruction or erroding of family systems. We can feel the destruction... the despair. It rocks us to the core. As we (maybe subconciously) consider our impending death, it causes us to express this dispair in various different forms: pessimism, depression, sarcasm, cynicism, selfishness, hedonism.

How has this pessimistic culture affected me? I'm noticing as I get older (and wiser?) that I have become increcingly a more cynical and sarcastic person. The weight of our world - the despair and harsh realities are stripping away my joy little by little. How do I avoid slipping down this dark path?

I think that it just shows our need for a redeemer. A God that can pull us out of the mud and mire and breathe life into our hearts and lives. If this death and pessimism is at it's root all about dying, then becoming more hopeful and joyful must come from embrasing eternal life. Jesus Christ.

Summer Movie Season is Upon Us

I'm looking forward to many of the summer movies this time around and one of those is the new Narnia movie: Prince Caspian. At the Switchfoot concert I went to recently, they played a new song they wrote for the movie and they just finished a music video for it, check it out:

I just got back from...

I just got back from seeing Iron man tonight. It was completely and utterly amazing. If you saw the movie, go ahead and post your comments below and let me know what you think. listen

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