Out of My Hat

  • Subscribe to our RSS feed.
  • Twitter
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • Facebook
  • Digg

Saturday, 12 March 2011

On Books

Posted on 06:15 by Unknown
On this sunny Saturday morning, I find myself biding my time in the local Starbucks. I have a couple of hours before our monthly meeting of the Ozark's Chapter of the American Christian Writers' meeting and didn't feeling like driving home after working the mid only to turn around and head back to Springfield after a couple of hours. As long as I have a couple of hours, free wi-fi and free coffee refills; I thought I'd write a bit on some of the things that have been rolling around in the otherwise empty space in my head.

Last night, I finally got around to finishing the book I started a couple of weeks ago.  For some reason, I wasn't well focused on reading it and so, even though it was interesting and entertaining, it took me a while to get through it.  The book was Lynne Truss' book on punctuation, Eats, Shoots and Leaves. It's an fun look at the struggles that our society seems to have with proper punctuation. The joke that inspired the title is this:

A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and proceeds to fire it at the other patrons.
'Why?' asks the confused, surviving waiter amidst the carnage, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.
'Well, I'm a panda,' he says, at the door. 'Look it up.'
The waiter turns to the relevant entry in the manual and, sure enough, finds an explanation. 'Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.'

Funny.

It's a good read if you're a self proclaimed grammar nazi like my daughter or a wannabe writer like myself.

I also started and finished a quick read last night: Todd Burpo"s Heaven is for Real. Though it is a quick, easy read, it has some simple but sound theology and will have you smiling at times and then pausing to clear the tears from your eyes moments later so that you can continue to read. 

Too often, we get so wrapped up in theology that we miss the simple message of the Gospel: God loves you (He really loves you!), and Jesus died for you. Leave it to the simple understanding of a four year old to keep the truth plain and pure. 
If you are a believer, a follower of Jesus; this book will affirm much of what you've been taught and clarify the simple message of the Bible.  
If you are a skeptic, or a doubter, or a seeker of truth; this book may answer some questions or give you some new things to ponder. In either case, if you have questions that you want answered, but don't want them published, just e-mail me at gospelmagic@gmail.com or comment here but tell me that you don't want it published.

As a final bonus to today's post, I want to share an mp3 download. It is a 10 minute message that was delivered by my son last weekend at a communion service at Holy Trinity Church in Chicago. I hope that you take the time to listen to it. Aaron did a great job sharing about what our response should be to a Holy God. To help you as you listen, here is the text to Psalm 99.

John <><
Email ThisBlogThis!Share to XShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest
Posted in fun stuff, message, personal stuff | No comments
Newer Post Older Post Home

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Popular Posts

  • The Old Farmer's Almanac
    I know that The Old Farmer's Almanac is one of those outdated publications that just keeps hanging on. I would guess that the informati...
  • The Way. The Truth. The Life.
    From time to time I feel the need to make this very clear to my readers and friends. I have a number of friends that are not followers of Je...
  • Livin' the Good Life
    I have a pretty good   great life. You probably have a pretty good life, too; maybe even a great life. However, I have found that I can ta...
  • Citizen by Birth; Citizen by Choice
    According to my younger sister, 50 years ago today my mother became a United States citizen. I remember a few years ago when the spouse of a...
  • Tell Your Story
    Last Sunday, I once again issued the challenge to tell somebody that needs to know Jesus as Savior that God loves them and Jesus died for th...
  • The Windy City
    Blogging this morning from the kitchen table of my son's place in Chicago IL. It's cold (it's mid January in Chicago) and Chicag...
  • The Preacher That Didn't Preach
    Wow! Talk about your oxymoron. Most of the time you can't get a preacher to stop preaching. How rare is it that you can find one that do...
  • The Weekend in Review
    I hope that you all had a great weekend! I started my weekend by getting a little bit of raking and burning of the leaves in my back yard. T...
  • The Benefits of Regular Posts
    I am not a regular blogger. When I started Out of My Hat , I thought that it would be nice to post something a couple of times a week or so....
  • Weekend Thoughts
    It's nice to be able to sit on the deck with my coffee and computer and reminisce about the weekend. I really enjoyed my return to Zion ...

Categories

  • apologetics (5)
  • ATC (14)
  • books (2)
  • camp (3)
  • Christmas (38)
  • conference (2)
  • family (6)
  • Favorite Bible Stories (25)
  • food (3)
  • fun stuff (55)
  • Getting started (12)
  • health (3)
  • insight (20)
  • magic (27)
  • message (114)
  • missions (7)
  • personal stuff (205)
  • politics (62)
  • rant (178)
  • religion (107)
  • sports (6)
  • survey (6)
  • trivia (20)
  • video (44)
  • What I Like About ... (24)
  • writing (20)

Blog Archive

  • ►  2013 (89)
    • ►  August (11)
    • ►  July (12)
    • ►  June (18)
    • ►  May (1)
    • ►  April (5)
    • ►  March (12)
    • ►  February (7)
    • ►  January (23)
  • ►  2012 (158)
    • ►  December (33)
    • ►  November (30)
    • ►  October (6)
    • ►  September (6)
    • ►  August (10)
    • ►  July (22)
    • ►  June (1)
    • ►  May (2)
    • ►  April (10)
    • ►  March (14)
    • ►  February (16)
    • ►  January (8)
  • ▼  2011 (89)
    • ►  December (3)
    • ►  November (6)
    • ►  October (11)
    • ►  September (8)
    • ►  August (14)
    • ►  July (12)
    • ►  June (13)
    • ►  May (10)
    • ►  April (2)
    • ▼  March (8)
      • Reverse Thinking
      • Funny Stuff
      • A Post about Nothing
      • On Books
      • Ash Wednesday
      • Something Old, Something New...(sort of)
      • Making an Exception: Politics Once Again
      • Spiritual Doldrums
    • ►  February (1)
    • ►  January (1)
  • ►  2010 (94)
    • ►  December (17)
    • ►  November (3)
    • ►  October (3)
    • ►  September (11)
    • ►  August (14)
    • ►  July (10)
    • ►  June (5)
    • ►  May (8)
    • ►  April (6)
    • ►  March (2)
    • ►  February (3)
    • ►  January (12)
  • ►  2009 (70)
    • ►  December (13)
    • ►  November (10)
    • ►  October (6)
    • ►  September (10)
    • ►  August (15)
    • ►  July (12)
    • ►  June (4)
Powered by Blogger.

About Me

Unknown
View my complete profile