1. For the past 8 weeks I’ve been teaching a Sunday School class of 60 plus young parents. Because it’s Memorial Day weekend, we are not meeting and it feels like I’m missing out on something significant. Something I need down deep.
2. If you step back for a time and observe, you will see how our TV and movie entertainment depends on violence and increasingly the circumstances are darker and more gruesome. Why? Could it be we are so desensitized to the point where we now crave it? Have we lost the taste for beauty? Is anyone pushing against it?
3. My great problem with music is everyone suffers from comparison to Jason Isbell.
4. The NT writers never really saw themselves up against the governments of their day. You only hear desperation to fight sin, knowing the unseen powers were the issue.
5. I haven’t had bread or cheese or pasta in more than 6 days and I don’t even know me anymore.
6. It is more common in evangelical circles to hear directives about missionary work than about loving your enemy.
7. I miss the joy of summer vacation.
8. As much as I enjoyed the new Radiohead album, it didn’t sound like anything I was familiar with. Here’s what I mean. Right after hearing one of those songs on the radio, the local DJ talked about Jason Isbell. And immediately I was in a place. Home. There was red dirt underneath me. Humid air around me and lightnin’ bugs in my yard. Radiohead sounds like nothing I know. Guys like Isbell sound like home.
9. I’ve been thinking about Paul’s statement in Romans 8 that we are “more than conquerors.” Maybe I’m the only who naturally is tempted to think of the “we” as “super conquerors.” And that’s kind of true I guess. But Paul was writing in a time of actual Conquerors. Men actually conquered in those days. So I got to thinking about this. He’s not saying we are better conquerors but we are something much more. Because even though we can killed and defeated in the way the world measures those things, in all reality our King has made it so those things actually establish the Kingdom of Christ. No surprise, we see this clearly on the cross.
10. The other day, Bethany and I sat out in the front yard and the sunlight hit her hair and the hidden redness showed up and it was the kind of sight poets have been writing down time out of mind.
Echoes and Stars 
#2 – You need to watch Brooklyn – such a beautiful movie
#7 – me, too
Great stuff as always. #9 intrigues me. I’ve only heard this explained as “super conquerors”, but for the first time see it as “more” than conquerors. Thanks for the new perspective. I’ll have to think on this. The latter sounds more like the Gospel than the former.