BOOKS ARE GOOD

It's taking me forever to get through N.T. Wright's Simply Christian. It isn't a hard read, I just haven't made the time to finish. So far, the book is fantastic and I would heartily recommend it. Read this quote the other night and really liked it:

"Nothing in all the history of paganism comes anywhere near this combination of event, intention and meaning. Nothing in Judaism has prepared for it, except in puzzling, shadowy prophecy.

"The death of Jesus of Nazareth as the king of the Jews, the bearer of Israel's destiny, the fulfillment of God's promises to his people of old, is either the most stupid, senseless waste and misunderstanding the world has ever seen, or it is the fulcrum around which world history turns."

I found this little quote to be powerfully poetic...kept reading it over and over and over. It's great when a book does that - when it captures your imagination and heart and mind all in one little paragraph.

What about you? Share a quote that's grabbed you recently...

PS...just posted a new Christmas Poll over at the blog. Click HERE to check it out!

The Weirdest Blurb In History...

Yes, I'm reading The Shack.

Yes, Johnny is giving me grief about ti.

And, yes, I have lots of different thoughts about the book so far. (Maybe we'll do a book-discussion post once I finish it...)

But for now, the thing I can't get away from is the strange author's bio line on the back of the book:

"WILLIAM P. YOUNG was born a Canadian and raised among a stone-age tribe by his missionary parents in the highlands of what was New Guinea. He suffered great loss as a child and young adult, and now enjoys the 'wastefulness of grace' with his family in the Pacific Northwest."

What?

In all honesty, I thought that bio was a joke when I first started reading it. It's vague and weird and really contains non-information. Born a Canadian? Suffered great loss? Lives somewhere in the Pacific Northwest?

Who is this guy, Salman Rushdie? They can't be more specific?

Anybody else find it to be weird?

Words...

The past few days have provided some pretty cool reading...mostly articles and stuff, nothing major, but I figured it might be cool to throw some quotes out this week and see what you think.

Here's one to get us going:

"A lot of people think branding is about crass commercialism, big business, and exploiting workers in Third World countries. A lot of people have really negative connotations of branding, but the essential definition of branding is simply the story that surrounds a product, a person, or an organization. In other words, what do people think of when they think of you? What do people think of when they think of Apple? What do they think of when they think of Nike? All that information is encoded in that brand. A brand is a story that surrounds an organization.

"So my thing is the Church actually began branding because we're the people who began thousands of years ago telling a compelling story that transformed our lives. But it seems in the last 40 or 50 years, we've lost that ability and business now does it better than we do. Nike tells a better story than most pastors."

-Phil Cooke, author of Branding Faith

(Taken from Collide Magazine, Issue 04, March/April 2008)

Totally true? Total nonsense? Somewhere in between?

YEAH, I BOUGHT IT...

Believe the hype.
Find a way to read it.