Site Maintenance

Thanks to Blogger's cool new template designer I was able to give this site a nice new look very easily. I like this  template's look, and I think it's great that it is so easy to change around to different designs.

The only problem is that changing the templates broke my Disqus commenting system. So now, you can't get at the comments on any of the old posts. So, I've turned on Blogger's commenting system for future posts for the time being. Sorry for any inconvenience. (Though I realize I'm probably the only one who cares!)

Scary Situation

It’s good to help people. If anything I wish that I and my church were doing more to help the needy and feed the hungry. But sometimes even trying to help can be scary.
As a pastor who lives in a house on church property, people stop by often to ask for help. Food, money, or a place to stay are common requests. Sometimes we can help. Often we can’t.
The problem is, sometimes the people who show up seem a bit scary. You wonder if you can trust them. You wonder if they’re out to scam you or hurt you.
A scary situation like that happened yesterday, when only my wife was home. A woman came to the door and started her visit with a lie. “I moved these boxes onto your step and out of the elements for you.” That was a lie; the FedEx man had put the boxes there. My wife was immediately on her guard.
Then the woman couldn’t understand why the pastor wasn’t home. (I was teaching a Bible class at someone else’s house.) She seemed upset that I wasn’t there. So my wife offered to write down her phone number to have me call her. When my wife went to get paper and a pen, the woman walked into our house and shut the door behind her. Needless to say, my wife was freaked.
Nothing happened, but it certainly scared us about what could happen. We’ll definitely be reevaluating when we even open the door for anyone stopping by from now on.
Oh, and I did call the woman back. She was looking for a large amount of cash to cover a check that her husband had written so it wouldn’t bounce. In return, she’d give me (the church) a check to cover the amount for us to hold onto until they got paid and could cover it.
I can’t say for sure this was a scam, but it sure seemed like one, especially after this woman already proved she wouldn’t hesitate to lie. My church couldn’t help with the cash even if we wanted to.
It was definitely scary and gave us a lot to think about. How can you best help people when you don’t know if you can trust them? Where can someone turn when they are truly in need?

Good Reads!

I posted about the Kindle yesterday and this blog has “well-read” in the title, so it should be obvious that I like books. Well, I just came across a cool site for keeping track of books that I am reading, have read, or just want to read. It’s called www.goodreads.com.

The site is a way to organize your books into a kind of electronic shelves. It lets you rate the books, write reviews, and even keep track of what page you’re reading at the time. They also have some social network functionality built in that lets you see what friends are reading.

One neat thing that I found is that when you have read a book that you really like, you can find someone else’s review of that same book from goodread’s database. You could then comment on that person’s review and sort of make your own little book club out of the site.

I haven’t really even begun to get into it yet, but just for fun I posted a “what I’m reading” widget from the site onto the blog. It’s interesting how actually keeping track of what I’m reading actually motivates me to read more. (That probably speaks to my perfectionist personality type!)

Check it out if you’re interested! And take the time to enjoy a good read!

Ode to a Broken Kindle

I own an Amazon Kindle, one of those e-reader devices that lets you read books, magazines, and just about anything else on a (relatively) small electronic device. There’s a problem with my Kindle, though. It’s broken. (Insert sad violin music here.)

The break stems from what, in my mind anyway, is a design flaw in the device itself. When you buy a cover for the Kindle, which most people do, the cover gets hooked directly into the side of the Kindle. Normally, this is nice. The cover doesn’t slide around, looks nice, and keeps the Kindle protected. What could go wrong?

Well, apparently, when you open the cover from the back of the Kindle instead of the front, it can bend the plastic pieces hooking the cover to the device. These pieces, once bent, slowly work their way into the wrong place inside the Kindle, and eventually start cracking and breaking it on the front. You can probably see this in my picture (you have to look pretty closely).

The Kindle isn’t technically broken; it still works. But the cover now doesn’t fit quite right, and it kind of weirds me out to try to read with it now with a little chunk missing out of it.

Don’t get me wrong; I’ve really liked the Kindle. It’s a convenient way to get a book whenever you want it. It’s comfortable to read. I think the best feature is its use of e-ink, which puts all the text you read into a very readable, easy-on-the-eyes form. If you’re like me, you’re not a fan of reading a lot off of computer screens. The e-ink solves that problem beautifully. Apple’s new iPad tablet might look neat, but the computer screen would make reading long books a problem for me and my eyes.

As far as my broken Kindle goes, I’m hoping that Amazon will make things right. (Insert trumpet fanfare here.) They even sent out an email about this very problem, suggesting people who experience it contact their customer service about getting it fixed. That’s exactly what I’m going to try. I’ll let you know in the future how it turns out. Hopefully Amazon can live up to the good service they’re supposedly known for!

The Theology of the Cross

I suppose if I call myself well-read I need to back it up by proving I read something once in a while. Actually, sometimes I’ll even read something more than once!

That’s the case with a theological book I’ve been reading for the second time lately, The Theology of the Cross: Reflections on His Cross and Ours by Daniel Deutschlander.

I can’t recommend this book enough. The title and topic might scare some people away for sounding too “heavy” or theological. And it’s true: this book is not a quick or light read. But it is so worth the work.

The point of the book is the “Theology of the Cross.” The name comes from words Jesus spoke in Mark 8:34-38, where he says that anyone who wants to follow Jesus, to call themselves a believer or a Christian, must deny himself (or herself), take up his cross, and follow Jesus.

Basically, to deny our sinful self with its sinful desires and follow Jesus alone is to bear the cross. It might sound easy, but it’s not. It’s hard and painful. But in the end, it’s what being a Christian is. Bearing our cross doesn’t save us; Jesus has already done that. But bearing our cross is a necessary consequence of being a Christian. As Pastor Deutschlander memorably puts it, “No cross, no Christian.”

In the future I might post a few quotes from the book. But in the meantime, if anyone has read this book already or has any thoughts on the topic, feel free to leave a comment on it.