Maybe I have a very strange sense of humor, but I thought this Coldplay video was hilarious. My favorite parts: the first time the pyrotechnics explode, Chris Martin stage-diving, the helicopter, smashing speakers, and those awesome motorcycle stunts!

Isaiah 45.1: “This is what the Lord says to his annointed [messiah], to Cyrus, whose right hand I take hold of…”

Sunday is the perfect day to eat a burrito. Trust me, I’ve been doing it for years. Since the earliest days of my childhood can I remember venturing out after church–my entire family like zombies lurching toward la hacienda–to enjoy the spoils of Mexican deliciousness. I say all this to say, today I am going to enjoy a fatty-fat Q’doba burrito. Here is my ode.

You can’t beat a good burrito.

You can include any type of meat, poultry or fish in a burrito–steak, pork, chicken, turkey, shrimp–and it always tastes delicious. If you’re a vegetarian, burritos are great meatless, too. Tofurritos!

Burritos have more vegetables than I eat in a typical day–lettuce, onions, tomato, sometimes corn. Isn’t cheese a veggie? I think so.

Not only do burritos come in a tasty tortilla pocket–the good ones also have rice and maybe even some taters for good measure. Carbotastic!

Then there is the cheese–who doesn’t like cheese? Oh my goodness, white queso. Not to mention the the sour cream. Dairy? Check.

Need more protein? Just pile on a handful or two of choice beanage. Black beans. Pinto beans. Refried beans. Do it up.

Then, to top it all off, there are the salsas. Hot salsas, mild salsas, green salsas, red salsas, corn salsas, guacs and pico. Mmm.

Burritos are clearly the champions of the food world. I defy anyone to make a case otherwise.

In the meantime, you know where to find me.

FOLLOW UP: Lunch was great. The sun was out. The burritos were huge. Thank you Tyler & Katherine, Jason, Clay & Christie, Armondo, Brooks & Allison, Jessica, and Q’doba.

Last November I had a conversation with a co-worker and what he had to say caused my mind to swell like a hot air balloon. He talked about cars (this was not something I would normally get excited about; however…). He wasn’t so much concerned about the bells and whistles and pistons and gears and whatnot. He had bigger things in mind, and what he began to share made me realize just how quickly the context of our lives has collapsed into itself.

Think of our ancestors. They inhabited a world completely other than the world we know today. And don’t think prehistoric ancestry. I’m not talking about the earliest ape-man on the evolutionary chart. Instead, think Great Grandpa (I apologize if Great Grandpa looked like the ape-man evolutionary chart guy). Think pre-scientific revolution, if you can. As science began to offer new explanations and technologies, we traded in the old contexts that informed us and bargained them away in turn for freedom, for liberation.

This is where cars come in.

Since the invention of the car human beings have not experienced such freedom of mobility. We can drive anywhere we can afford, whenever we want, and we can do this all by our lonesome. Eliminated the inconvenience of public transportation, cars drove families farther and farther and farther away. The car came at the cost of giving up the small, coherent physical communities they once depended upon.

It wasn’t just the car.

The invention of radio and television allowed the unlimited choices of a national or a global culture, but undermined the local life that had long persisted. What ever happened to the “neighborhood”?What ever happened to “visiting” your neighbors, friends, and family on a [near] nightly basis? NBC happened. CBS happened. ABC and Fox happened. “Freedom” comes with a price.

Whether all this was “good” or “bad” is an impossible question, and pointless. These changes came upon us like losing seasons for the Kansas City Royals. They were upon us before we could do anything about them. You can smash your radio and put your TV in the closet, but you still live in a TV saturated society. We live in a world that has welcomed these changes with open arms, and in the process we’ve traded the context of community for individual “freedom.”

Seeking individuality has reduced us to individuals–enabled, empowered, isolated, disconnected, individuals. In the search for freedom and liberation we wound up finding ourselves living lives without meaning, context, or community. Maybe that’s why Seinfeld resonated with our culture in such a profound way. A sitcom about nothing will inevitably resonate with a world that leaves us vulnerable to meaninglessness.

Divorced from the context of community, consumption is all that happens because there is nothing left that means anything.

And that’s pretty much all he had to say about cars.

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) is far more well known as a composer than a poet. But in fact he wrote some poetry, including this little ditty about pipe smoking.

Hands down, these are some of the greatest short-stories ever written:
A Scrap of Time and Other Stories by Ida Fink

You’ll never have to forgive me for recommending this read:
The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness by Simon Wiesenthal

For a deep and practical understanding of how the Gospel changes everything read:
Total Church: A Radical Reshaping Around Gospel and Community by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis

For a classic read on questions of epistemology, Schaeffer rocks an infinite, personal God whom we can come to know intimately in:
He Is There and He Is Not Silent by Francis Schaeffer

A page-turner about the ethics of biotechnology. Sounds incredibly boring, I know. It’s not. Trust me and read:
Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age by Bill McKibben

As a companion to the previous book, you should read (or re-read) the great science-fiction piece:
A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Why not read something amazing and worth your time? You would be a fool not to read:
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

For a very fascinating mixture of sociology, history, theology, and modern/postmodern culture, read:
Above All Earthly Pow’rs: Christ in a Postmodern World by David F. Wells

If you think you understand the doctrine of God, read:
The Doctrine of God by John Frame

Addicted to something? Know someone who is? Then you’d better get to reading:
Addictions: A Banquet in the Grave by Ed Welch

If you’ve ever doubted the importance of the Atonement, you’ve got to read:
Death by Love by Mark Driscoll

That should be enough to keep you going for a few weeks.

Dilemma: What will you do with your old WWJD bracelet[s]?

Possible Solution[s]:

• They make wonderful collars for small dogs and cats–even your ferret can get a lil’ Jesus love on.
• Turn your lust-a-lot Barbie into a bona fide believer with a WWJD “bracelet” headband or belt.
• At the next wedding you attend, forget about throwing rice and birdseed or blowing bubbles–toss your WWJD bracelet at the newly christened husband and wife.
• Hang your old bracelets on any doorknob. It’s a great conversation piece.
• If you have more than six bracelets, put them all on your next bottle of Dr. Pepper–they’ll keep your hand from getting wet! WWJD bracelets make the coolest coozies.
• Cut them up and use them as bookmarks. This way you are guaranteed to finish all your assigned reading–c’mon, Jesus wouldn’t sluff off on his studies would he?

There is a reason why postmodern heretics, from feminist theologians to ecumenical pluralists, would rather talk about “God” than Jesus. And there is a reason why so many of the most heated controversies in church history have been Christological. “God” is an abstract enough concept that it can be defined impersonally, as “the divine” or the “Ground of Being.” So the liberal divinity school theologian can speak in terms of “God covenanting with Godself to redeem God’s people and to bring them into God’s land.” The pluralist dialogue partner can speak of “God” at work as Allah, Vishnu, and whatever Marianne Williamson is calling divine these days.

The gritty flesh and blood reality of Jesus of Nazareth, however, is much more particular and much more exclusive. I think the fatal flaw of contemporary Christianity, on both the right and the left, is what Adrio Koenig called “the eclipse of Christ.” We speak of the glory of God, and we aim for “God-centered worship,” but we forget that God’s glory is tied up in what Maximus the Confessor called “the Christic mystery,” namely that God’s purpose is “to sum up all things in Christ” (Eph. 1:10). Contemporary Christians may have “WWJD” bracelets and other sorts of “Jesus junk” in our closets, but too rarely do we hear the big picture of how our God is no generic God, but the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jesus of Nazareth.

–Russell Moore

Soren Kierkegaard was a Christian, a philosopher, a mover and a shaker. If you want to read something sincere, read this guy. That’s why I love him.

Writing in the 19th century, Kierkegaard saw the greatest enemy of Christianity as the cultured and respectable Christianity of his day. The tragedy of easy Christianity is that existence has ceased to be an adventure and a constant risk in the presence of God but has become a form of morality and facts to be believed. Its purpose is to simplify the matter of becoming a Christian. This is only paganism, “cheap” Christianity, with neither cost nor pain, Kierkegaard argued. It is like war games, in which armies move and there is a great deal of noise, but there is no real risk of pain–and no real victory. Kierkegaard believed the church of his day was merely “playing at Christianity.”

Kierkegaard was convinced that his calling was in “making Christianity difficult.” He reminded people of his day that to be truly Christian one must become aware of the cost of faith and pay the price. So he said things like this:

“We are what is called a ‘Christian nation–but in such a sense that not a single one of us is in the character of the Christianity of the New Testament.”

“The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obligated to act accordingly.

“Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship.

“Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close.

“Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.”

He was a severe man. This is why I like Soren Kierkegaard.

If we have a son, Soren [middle name] Smith sounds good to me. It has a nice ring to it. And the legacy of a dead philosopher as well…

Car towed far away
How could this happen to me?
Oh yeah, I forgot…

Ignore the urgent and focus on the important. Why? Because focusing on the urgent just causes more urgent things to come up. The only way to really minimize the appearance of the urgent is to focus on the important. Important issues are the ones to deal with. If you focus on the important stuff, the urgent will take care of itself. Ignore the urgent so that you can do the important things that are necessary to make the urgent fires stop happening in the first place.

With the being said, I would be really interested in knowing how many hours a day everyone out there spends doing facebook, twitter, blogs and email.

How much time do you spend on facebook or twitter each day?

How many blogs or emails do you read a day?

And, if desired: How do you feel about that?

Disclaimer: Sure, this post was a bit of an overstatement, but it’s actually a pretty good principle. Minus the fact that it is very, very convicting.