Sycamore

So all of last week I was on a houseboat at Lake McClure for a youth group trip.  (For those of you who don’t know, a houseboat is basically a giant RV on water that maxes out at 5 mph).  Despite the staff’s mutual addiction to the internet and some pretty incredible wireless service considering we were in the middle of a lake, no blogging happened all week.

So coming back, I had some catching up to do.  Below are some quick links from the 500 new google reader posts I came home to:

Michael Card’s relationship with scholar William Lane gets a great treatment at Between Two Worlds.  The summary paragraph is worth repeating:

“During the conversation Bill told me why he wanted to spend his last days here. He didn’t feel that Seattle was home, even after eight years there. Neither did he want to go back to Bowling Green, even though his years there had been some of the happiest of his life. ‘I want to come to Franklin,’ he said. ‘I want to show you how a Christian man dies.”

Ed Welch has written a fantastic short booklet on eating disorders that is well worth passing on.  I personally think everyone should read it, first because disorders are so common and second because using food as an idol is something you probably do and don’t realize it.  (See also a solid blog article about American Idol and self-esteem).

An atheist goes to a mega-church and records his thoughts.  Bear in mind he’s a bit biased, but it really is a great article.  Hard to pick a paragraph, but here’s one:

As people yelled, “Yeah!”, “Amen!” and ‘‘Awesome!” I wanted to yell, “I don’t get it”. I love the way religion convinces people by making things deliberately incomprehensible and you feel too shy to say ‘‘I don’t understand’’ lest you reveal your stupidity.

There’s more coming this week.  Glad to be back in town.