Blog on Hold

Well, we’re off for a couple days. I was hoping to get our trip to New York up on the blog before I left, but it will have to wait until later, maybe Friday or Saturday. In the meantime, feel free to visit the Archives and explore some of the back pages of the blog. Or even better, turn off your computer and go outside and enjoy God’s good creation! See you in a few days.

Preaching Tired

Yesterday I was really tired preaching. No, not tired of preaching, just tired while preaching.

I was working off of about three hours of sleep after getting back from an all day trip to New York City with the family. It was a great trip with a lot of fun experiences capped off by a Larry Norman concert in the evening. But we didn’t get home until close to 2:30 a.m., which is very late for us as a family.

Anyways, I have never preached on so little sleep before, so I was wondering what might happen. I was hoping I wouldn’t fall asleep in the middle of my own sermon.

The funny thing was that I had a feeling that I was preaching too long. This was a Communion Sunday, which meant we would need an additional ten minutes at the end of the service to celebrate Communion together. I don’t like to look at the clock while I am preaching, and I usually have a pretty good sense of the time. I felt the sermon was dragging on forever, so I began to edit on my feet. I preach from a manuscript, so at first I clipped a sentence or two here, then a paragraph, eventually whole sections!

Finally, I got to the end of the message, called for the deacons to come forward to serve Communion, and looked at the clock. Our service runs from 10:00 to 11:00, and I fully expected the clock to read 11:05 or even 11:10. The time was . . . only 10:53!

So as it turns out, I actually preach shorter on less sleep. I wonder if this means I will start getting middle-of-the-night crank phone calls from people in the church to keep me up late Saturday nights?

Related posts:

Sunday Morning Soundbytes – 8/5/2007

Yesterday’s message was called Praying for Your Life, taken from Psalm 27:1-14. The main idea of the message was that praying for your life in a crisis builds upon a life of daily, persevering prayer. I was really tired and hope I made sense! Here is the outline of the message:

1) Praying in times of crisis (verses 1-3)
    – Remember that the Lord is your strength (1)
    – Realize that your enemies will stumble and fall (2)
    – Know that God is bigger than any problem you face (3)

2) Praying for daily strength (verses 4-10)
    – Come to God with singleness of desire (4-6)
    – Apply your heart to seeking God’s face (7-10)

3) Persevering in prayer for a lifetime (verses 11-14)
    – Commit yourself to going God’s way (11-12)
    – Wait to see the goodness of the Lord (13-14)

Note: To read the complete message, go to the Sermons tab at the top of the blog.

The Creative Bomb

The Fat Man mushroom cloud resulting from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rises 18 km (11 mi, 60,000 ft) into the air from the hypocenter. This week marks the anniversary of the atomic bombings that took place at Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and August 9 in 1945. In remembrance of these events, here is a poem I wrote called “The Creative Bomb.”

“THE CREATIVE BOMB” – by Ray Fowler

The two-faced god of Janus peered
Intently to the right
And on his left perceived a boy
Who craved creative flight.

With powers of flux unknown to man,
And often blamed as chance,
He touched the lad’s still waiting brain
And watched the neurons dance.

Thoughts ravaged his right hemisphere,
Then, quiet as a theft,
Stole fast across the cortex
To be stored within the left.

Opposing forces caught in time
Wreaked havoc on his brain.
Janusian thoughts negated rhyme;
The contrapuntal reigned.

Destruction, death and severed souls
He could not vindicate.
Aha! Why could he not invent
A bomb that would create?

In chemistry and medicine
We have our antidotes;
The harmful drug may save a life
When taken in small dose.

So why not have a bomb that could
Explode a song of joy,
Shatter new frontiers of thought,
Create, and not destroy?

If dropped on Nagasaki such
A bomb would surely find
That space-time point of harmony
Before the dreadful grind.

No mushroom cloud of measured rage,
Instead our bomb revised
Would bloom a rose of beauty far
Above the watchful skies.

“But stop!” they say. “Review, and let
Your noble neurons rest.
You’ve failed to yield a product –
Creation’s acid test.

The bomb you praise does not exist;
You ponder it in vain.
Perhaps you are the product of
An overactive brain!”

“I have no bomb to give to you
And know not where to start.
And so with failure weighing deep
And heavy on my heart,

I humbly submit to you
(Correct me, if I’m wrong)
This simple poem, now become
One big, creative bomb.”

________________________________________
Click here for more poems by Ray Fowler.

New Writings Page

I have now added a Writings page to the blog. You can find the Writings tab at the top of the blog just to the right of the Stats tab. This page will collect various writings that I have produced over the years – articles, poems, songs, etc. (Maybe I will even get around to posting my doctoral thesis here some day – a guaranteed cure for insomnia!) Right now I just have a few poems posted, but this is an area of the blog that I would like to develop in the future.

10 Worst Disasters of the Century

Popular Mechanics lists the 10 worst disasters of the century (occurring in the United States):

Continue Reading »

New Keith Green Music Coming

Keith Green was a singer/songwriter who had a great impact on me as a young Christian. I still enjoy listening to his music today. Sadly, he was killed in a plane accident back in 1982 along with two of his children and a missionary family. However, the Christian Post reports that some new Keith Green music will be released in the coming months.

Melody [Keith’s wife] has kept every musical piece that Keith created while still alive. Because of new technologies that have come out, she felt that it was the right time to release the tunes.

EMI/Sparrow Records producers are planning to release some music that has never been heard by the public. This includes an iTunes release set to come out in August and more material in the next year, according to Bryan Ward, director of artist development with EMI Christian Music Group (CMG).

Melody hopes that the music will have a positive impact towards culture and society. She feels that there is a need for his compositions today.

Sounds great to me. I am definitely ready for some new Keith Green music! (HT: MMI)

Related post: New Keith Green Live CD/DVD

A First Glimpse at the New Prince Caspian Film

Countdown:
______________________________________________________________

Here it is – the first glimpse of footage from “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian” movie. Actor Ben Barnes, who plays Caspian in the upcoming film, talks about the movie and his role. The film is scheduled for release on May 16, 2008. Only 272 days to go! (The trailer is about one minute long.)

Continue Reading »

Bridge Collapse in Minneapolis

Our heartfelt prayers go out to those who suffered loss in the collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge over the Mississipi River in Minneapolis. The bridge is close by Bethlehem Baptist Church where John Piper pastors. At the Desiring God blog, John Piper shares about his bedtime devotions last night with his wife and 11-year-old daughter following the collapse of the bridge. It is a good read with some serious theological reflection mixed in with a personal glimpse into a family at prayer.

PC and Mac in the Garden of Eden

Mac versus PC: In which PC and Mac get theological in their debate:

PC: PCs are way better than Macs. Remember, it was an Apple that caused all the problems to begin with back in the Garden.

Mac: True, but that’s only because Eve would never have been tempted by a PC.

(I am actually a PC guy myself, but my brother should enjoy this.)

Click here for more Random Thoughts.

Tony Dungy No. 1 on NYT Bestsellers List

Super Bowl winning coach Tony Dungy’s new book, Quiet Strength: The Principles, Practices & Priorities of a Winning Life, debuted at No. 2 last week on the New York Times best-seller list for hardcover, non-fiction books. As of today, it is now No. 1 on the list. Kevin Jackson of the Christian Post reports:

While Quiet Strength does mention Dungy’s career in the NFL, a major purpose for the content is to highlight the coach’s faith on and off the field. Through it, he hoped to show people that there is more to life than just sports, and that humans need God leading their steps no matter where they are.

“I really wanted to show people you can win all kinds of ways,” explained the Colts head in his memoir. “For your faith to be more important than your job, for your family to be more important than that job … we all know that’s the way it should be … I’m not afraid to say it.”

Tony has a great testimony to share, and it is fantastic to see his book doing so well.

Related articles:

Hubble Takes Photo of Veil Nebula

Hubble Photo of the Veil Nebula

Astronomers released photos today from the Hubble Space Telescope of the Veil Nebula (also known as the Witch’s Broom Nebula) – the distant remains of a star that went supernova some 1,500 light-years away from Earth.

The Hubble close-ups reveal the rope-like filaments of gas in the nebula, which resulted from enormous amounts of dusty debris plowing into gaseous surroundings. Thicker filaments of material result from viewing the supernova’s shock wave edge-on, while more wispy and diffuse views correspond to a face-on view of other parts of the shock wave from Earth. (from space.com )