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Jennifer wins
Jennifer won a diaper giveaway from Nicki’s Diapers. How cool is that?
Television and Shared Experience
I was listening to NPR’s Laura Sydell yesterday as she and her guests were discussing media trends over the past 40 or 50 years as they connect to shared experience. 
One guest on the program was arguing that the development of global communications technology means that next-door neighbors may have few shared cultural experiences. In essence, by enabling a large fraction of the population to seek the television news that it wants to watch, the music that it wants to hear, and the political ideas that it wants to think, there are fewer cultural touchstones that we share in common.
Simple Table Of Contents in JQuery
I developed a handy Table of Contents script using JQuery for another project, now abandoned, and I decided to implement it on this website (which uses WordPress). This assumes that you have JQuery already loaded and are using WordPress 2.9 or newer.
Song: You Are Beautiful, My Love
I wrote this song in honor of my wife, Jennifer, on the occasion of our fifth wedding anniversary. It comes from my experience of realizing just how blessed I am to be married to such a good and faithful woman. It’s very easy to take the people we love for granted. Every once in a while, though, those scales fall from my eyes and I’m dumbstruck by the blessing I have in her.
I included You Are Beautiful, My Love in this video, but I also want to make it available for download. It is licensed CC-BY-SA (see below) so you can feel free to share it with others. I hope you enjoy hearing it as much as I enjoyed making it.
Listen and Download
Fifth Wedding Anniversary Video
Jennifer – you are such a blessing to me, and I thank God for our five years together. This song and video are in your honor. May we have at least 55 more!
100 Things Challenge
Ever thought about what it would be like to live with less? I’ve been thinking a lot about this article on Time.com from June about the 100 Things Challenge. Dave Bruno started this as an effort to reduce his number of personal possessions to just 100 Things. He has since posted a list of rules to guide the process. In the Christmas season, full of consumerism and consumption, this challenge represents an antidote.
A Sobering Experience
Occasion: Third Sunday of Advent
Text: Luke 3.7-18
This sermon was prepared for Wednesday evening worship at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Sterling, IL on 9 December, 2009.
The Axe at the Root of the Tree
Have you ever had a sobering experience? Here’s mine: I was driving from Kirksville, MO one night on the way to a Lutheran church camp in the south-central part of the state. We were going down there to do some service work and have a good time. It was dark, and I was driving faster than I should have been. Suddenly, out of nowhere, I got the immediate, pressing demand that I stop the car – right in the middle of that two-lane county road. Without thinking, I slammed on the brakes, and as we crested the hill, we came face to face with a six-point buck staring back into our headlights. I couldn’t have seen it coming, and another second’s delay would have spelled disaster.
Needless to say, after that I slowed down and took my time getting the rest of the way to camp that night.
Jesus is Going to Crash Your Party
Occasion: Second Sunday of Advent
Text: Luke 3.1-6, Malachi 3.1-4
This sermon was prepared for services at St. John’s Lutheran Church, Sterling, IL on December 2 and 6. The Gospel reading preceding this sermon was this video.
Siberian icon of John the Baptist
As we get started reading this passage from the Gospel according to Luke, we can see that we’re getting set up for something big.
- “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius…” Wow, that’s the Roman emporer!
- “when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea,” I know that guy, he’s famous!
- “Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene,” Other kings, other kingdoms. This is getting impressive.
Into the midst of these great kings, something big is about to happen. Then it goes on:
- “during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas,” Alright, something’s going to happen to Israel. The big shots at the top of the hierarchy are involved, this is going to be huge!
- “the word of God came to John son of Zechariah” Zechariah was a priest – his son must be something great, too!
- “in the wilderness.” Wait… what?
Why would he do that? And then we find out in other places in the Gospels that this guy lives outdoors, eats bugs and honey, and wears camel hair. Huh?
You see how St. Luke does that? It starts out with this monumental proclamation. We’re being set up for something big. And then at the end, we find that we’ve just been set up. We get closer and closer to the seat of power, Jerusalem, and then we abruptly veer away. What on earth is John the Baptist doing in the wilderness? Let me try to put the weirdness of this into perspective.
Luke 3.1-6 Google Earth Fly-Through
I wanted to illustrate the way that the text for the second Sunday of Advent zooms in on the seat of religious and political power in Jerusalem but then suddenly veers off to find John the Baptist in the wilderness. This video contains the entire text of Luke 3.1-6, as well as a prologue specific to Sterling and Rock Falls, IL. If you’re interested in using it in worship this Sunday, download a copy of Google Earth and use this KMZ file to make your own. (I used the trial version of Camtasia Studio to record the video.)
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