Francis Chan's Forgotten God

On the recommendation of one of my Interns, I recently picked up a copy of Francis Chan's Forgotten God. His take is that the church has essentially squelched or quenched the Holy Spirit. My take is that he's pretty much right.

On a personal conviction level, here was the most vivid passage for me: 

"What if you grew up on a desert island with nothing but the Bible to read? Imagine being rescued after twenty years and then attending a typical evangelical church. Chances are you'd be shocked (for a whole lot of reasons, but that is another story). Having read the Scriptures outside the context of contemporary church culture, you would be convinced that the Holy Spirit is as essential to a believer's existence as air is to being alive...There is a big gap between what we read in Scripture about the Holy Spirit and how most believers and churches operate today." (p. 16)

Got your attention?!? To me calling out this gap is Chan's strength. And he repeats, redefines and clarifies that gap over and again. That said, as a theology text, Forgotten God is pretty light. See chapter 3 for his 7 theological points. In addition, Chan majors on our personal connection (or lack of) with the Spirit; I found myself craving a chapter on how the Spirit speaks to US, as a community. The bottom line is that Forgotten God is best suited for devotional reading, like in a quiet time setting. It could also work in a group. 

May God help me (and us!) to close the gap so that our praxis more closely approaches the Scriptural emphasis on the Holy Spirit!

So I'm watching GMA this morning and...there I am on the screen...wearing spandex...

Just scroll through to 14 seconds and look for the vintage Cal Poly jersey...

Lucy's Desk

So last weekend, I built Lucy a desk. The only two requirements were as follows:

1. I could only use materials that I had on hand. On the plus side, I didn't go to Lowe's even once! On the flip side, my lack of wood filler means the screw holes are kind of eyesores.

2. It had to be small. The targeted space was about 28 inches wide, between Lucy's bed and the opened closet door. In the end, the desk is maybe 2 feet wide and 22 inches out from the wall.

Bottom line, it's a decent piece of work. Best of all is that Lucy loves it. Not that she can use it, because in the span of about 5 minutes, it was covered in goodies!