Last Sunday I spoke about death–its inevitability (You hear that, Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability. It is the sound….of your death.) and the way our culture does everything possible to avoid its reality. I used one of my favorite lines from “Fight Club” as a refrain:

“On a long enough timeline, the survival rate of everyone drops to zero.“
All of this was done in the context of examining Jesus’ words in John 11:25-26:

“I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

One text about death that kept running through my mind last week but didn’t make it into the message is Ecclesiastes 7:2-4:

It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of every man; the living should take this to heart. Sorrow is better than laughter, because a sad face is good for the heart. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of pleasure.

Let’s see you put that text on a magnet and stick to your refrigerator.

I finished “Lawrence of Arabia” yesterday. Talk about a long movie. It was good though. One challenge with watching older movies is their slower pace. Even when there is a bunch of action, it comes more slowly.

Next up: The Graduate

The New York Times talks about U2′s new album.

There are some great quotes to be found. My favorite:

“There’s cathedrals and the alleyway in our music,” Bono said. “I think the alleyway is usually on the way to the cathedral, where you can hear your own footsteps and you’re slightly nervous and looking over your shoulder and wondering if there’s somebody following you. And then you get there and you realize there was somebody following you: It’s God.”

Jeffrey Overstreet has pulled this one and some others over at his place. (via U2 Sermons)

I’m sitting in Panera Bread enjoying their free Wi-Fi connection. I’m pretty sure this will become my office away from the office. I would prefer to make Starbucks my office, but they haven’t ponied up the free stuff yet. I’m making a concerted effort to get out of my church office more and hang out among normal people. This will allow me to do just that and still get a lot of “office” work done. It’s amazing the conversations you can’t help but overhear at these places.

I’m in a really good place right now with my sermon prep. I just finished the rough draft for next week’s sermon. I’m trying to get at least a week ahead. I think this will allow me to be a bit more creative as well as being more relationally patient during the week.

I take my preaching very seriously. In some ways too seriously. Especially when I think of it as what “I do” in a defining kind of way. I can get too caught up in trying to be a good preacher for all the wrong reasons. In other ways, I probably don’t take my preaching seriously enough. I sometimes get very cynical about the difference a sermon makes in the overall scheme of things. Then I’ll get a note or a phone call or tearful “thank you” as someone is walking out the door and I’m reminded that what I spend so much time thinking and talking about, and getting ready to do, and then actually doing every week, actually matters.