Last Sunday I completed a teaching series on "Pursuing a Life of Purpose." Although all the principles presented are biblical, many of the ideas were inspired from Stephen Covey's book, First Things First. You can listen to or download these messages in the audio player in the right sidebar. I have embedded the presentation (made on prezi.com) below if you want to see the main points and scripture references as you listen.
N. T. Wright on Fox News
N. T. Wright appears on Fox News discussing his new book, Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters. What is impressive to me about Dr. Wright's discussion is that he presents an intelligent and rational view of Christ without compromising the spiritual truth of his identity. Also, he is able to articulate who Christ is without the traditional, religious terminology that much of the world has already dismissed.
Graduated Two Years Ago!
Thanks to Dave Black, who was my Ph.D. mentor, for posting some excerpts from my dissertation, The Authority of Church Elders in the NT. I graduated around this time two years ago! I often think of how glad I am to be done; but I am even more glad I did it! The privilege of working with Dave Black was one of the highlights. I could say many positive things about his scholarship and how he challenged me academically, but the most profound influence he has had upon me is the love for Christ and his church the he and BeckyLynn have LIVED OUT! He posted our picture taken just after my Ph.D. oral exam in 2006. Dave is all the way on the left.
The Monster in the Hollows!
Organizing Books
I enjoyed Dr. Bush's (an old high school buddy of mine) reviews of LibraryThing.com and Goodreads.com. He tested these along with others and recommends LibraryThings as the best place to organize your books and Goodreads as a good place for book social networking. I have already started my accounts and look forward to using them.
Diligence
I found an old book in my Dad's library, Watchman Nee's The Normal Christian Worker. I know Mr. Nee is criticized a good bit, but he also has some great things to say. Here are some of his comments from a chapter on the quality of diligence:
- “A person who regards everything as a burden cannot be a faithful servant of the Lord” (14).
- “Every faithful servant of Christ buys up the moments, and when he is not outwardly engaged he is inwardly active, waiting on the Lord in real heart-exercise” (15).
- John 4:35 – “The time to work is now, not some future date. ‘Lift up your eyes and look’ He said, indicating the kind of workman He needed—one who does not stand waiting for the work to come to him, but one who has eyes to see the work that is already waiting to be done. . . . Never put off till tomorrow what can be done today” (15-16).
- “Diligence is primarily an inward matter and is not measured by outward busyness” (16).
- “Oh, that we might awaken to the weightiness of our responsibility, the urgency of the need around us, and the fleeting nature of time! . . . Let us, as dying men, give ourselves with all our powers to the dying around us” (19).
Augustine's Confessions
We are reading Augustine's Confessions in the Medieval History class I am teaching high school homeschoolers. According to the Omnibus II textbook, Aurelius Augustine (354-430) was “one of the greatest minds of the ancient and medieval worlds (in a way he ends one world and begins the other ).” In the Middle Ages, “other than the Bible, the two [books] that were probably most read and influential were Augustine’s City of God and Confessions.” “Confessions is the story of Augustine’s journey from his rough and rowdy youth to his conversion.”
I was immediately gripped by the quality of writing and depth of understanding in Confessions. It is a worthy read. I will be sharing a number of quotes as I read it.
Manly Missionary Monks
This Fall I will be teaching Medieval History (and Theology) in the Blue Ridge Teaching Cooperative in our local homeschool association. It will be based on the textbook Omnibus II: Church Fathers through the Reformation. We will be reading and discussing the following primary sources: Eusebius, The Church History Augustine, St., Confessions Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People Geoffrey, The History of the Kings of Britain Luther, Martin. The Bondage of the Will
Today I have been reading about the monk Bede, who wrote the Ecclesiastical History of the English People.
"A common misconception about early medieval monasteries is that they were places where monks went to escape from civilization. But the opposite is true: monks boldly went into untamed places and carved out fresh civilization by establishing monasteries. In doing so they carried literacy to place where people could not read, food to where people were underfed, medicine to the sick, and most importantly, they carried the Christian gospel to people who had not heard of Jesus” (Omnibus II, 90-91).
I also found it interesting that Bede was the first to mark time with reference to the birth of Christ. In Latin he wrote, “ante vero incarnationis dominicae tempus” (“the time before the Lord's true incarnation”). This was translated into English and popularized as “Before Christ” and abbreviated B.C. Bede also used and popularized an earlier time marker, the Latin phrase anno Domini, “the year of our Lord,” abbreviated A.D. (Omnibus II, 95; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Before_Christ).