www.andrewmackay.net:

You should watch:

From Behold the Lamb of God:

via my little brother Matt. This is awesome.

I was reading Luke a Christmas story from the library last night. It’s from a major kids brand, which means that they can basically slap any content in with some stock artwork from the major brand’s TV show and kids will want to read it.

And boy can you tell. The dialogue tagging reads like something I did in 5th grade, when I was worried that saying “said” too frequently would get me in trouble. They “called,” “exclaimed,” “cheered,” and “cooed.” Anything but “said.”

So, I edited as I went. Unfortunately, this is not the first time that Luke has heard this story.

We got to a certain part, and “‘Yay!’ cooed the babies” became “‘Yay’ said the babies.”

Luke sat up and looked at me. “No, it’s ‘cooed the babies’”

So, I had to explain my editorial mind and the way dialogue writing ought to work to a three year old.

Not! Instead, I just said, “Daddy made it better.”

That worked.

So, we’ve had a parade of Christmas movies on, largely based on what Huluplus and Netflix have to offer. Let me just tell you, there are a whole lot of stinkers out there. It seems like for every Elf and Charlie Brown Christmas, there are twenty like Gotta Catch Santa Claus,  not just not great, but actually pretty bad.

And I’ve seen all twenty.

So, I’d love to hear suggestions. What are great Christmas movies that we should have Luke watching? (Reminder, he’s three, so even Home Alone is way too grown up). Help!

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.”

Lamentations 3:22-24.

After a weekend that felt very murphy’s law, that’s a good reminder right there. Job could look at his life falling apart and say “I haven’t sinned.” I can’t even look at a mildly rough weekend and say the same.

What does that look like in your life? What are you currently doing to care for the least of these? That’s a question that North American Christianity doesn’t seem to engage very well (at least the parts that I’m familiar with).

The thing that gets me about the social gospel thing is that more often than not, the people who are crusading for social transformation are doing it by yelling instead of getting their hands dirty. But, if you can look at your church and say, we haven’t done anything for the widows and orphans, can you genuinely say you’re the church? (I know, I know, harsh… but still a worthy question).

It’s easy to not see the value of things like that. But, it’s really hard to calculate the negative impact on a believer / church / community when the church is not engaging these issues well.

Definition: When you’ve woken up on the wrong side of the bed, stumbled into the kitchen, and then, as you fill the coffee carafe, smashed it into pieces.

All you can do is laugh!

It’s that time of year. Everyone is reflecting on how the year has gone. What questions do you ask yourself? What things do you investigate in your life?

Here’s a top 10 list of DIY projects from www.lifehacker.com. It features everything from tech hacks to board game remixes. I love the end of the year, when you can find big chunks of great content all conveniently organized into lists.