Catching your breath...

is sometimes hard to do at this time of the year. There are always places to go and things to do, but the time between Thanksgiving and New Year's seems to be even more crowded with "must do" things. Plus, our increasingly connected world puts hundreds of our closest friends in our shirt pockets.

As much as we love the holiday season, and as much as we love our friends, it is sometimes a good thing to disconnect a bit - step back and relax, and decompress. In the Screwtape Letters, Lewis makes reference to the constant noise and confusion of hell. There is probably more truth than poetic metaphor there. I may even try a radical experiment; turn off the cell, the ringer on the office phone, and unplug the Ethernet cable from the computer. That way I can still work on many things that need doing, but not be tempted by email, Twitter and Facebook.

Radical, indeed.

Book Review- The Principle of the Path by Andy Stanley

Andy Stanley is a prolific writer and great communicator. His gift is to present simple principles using simple words that communicate profound truth.

In this book, Andy talks about something that seems trivial, and he admits it; the destination where we arrive depends on the road we travel to get there. Get on a road going north from Atlanta, and you are not going to arrive in Florida. It doesn’t matter how much you wish for it and how hard you pray for it- the road you have selected just won't get you there. The powerful message of the book is that this principle applies not just to our travel, but also to every aspect of our lives.

Life is full of desired destinations - a career, a home, financial, relational and spiritual peace- and every one of those destinations comes at the end of a journey along a path. Choose the wrong path and despite our desire or intention, we will not arrive where we wanted to be when we started out.

The power of this book is that beyond pointing out this principle, Andy uses Scripture to encourage the reader toward choosing the right paths in the first place. I found this book entertaining and encouraging, and hope all my friends read it; especially the younger ones- they still have time to avoid some of the nastier journeys and destinations.

Writer's Block...

Before I started blogging, I had a million things to say. But, since I started, the flood of thoughts and ideas has turned into a trickle.

It gives me new respect for guys who make a living writing- how difficult it must be to wake up each day and face that blank page, knowing it isn't going to fill itself up.

I actually beleive that I respond better than initiate. I have commented on several other blogs since I wrote on mine. I guess that points toward my problem being a lack of good ideas of my own. What an awful thought!