"You'd Go Crazy Trying To Explain Penguins…"
Did you ever see that movie “March of the Penguins”? It’s an engaging documentary about the fascinating process penguins go through to have babies. Here’s the gist of it as best as I can remember: the female penguin lays an egg. She then passes the egg over to her husband. He tucks it safely in between his legs. The female then leaves to go on a journey for a few months, leaving the man to take care of the egg (as usual). Penguins live in large colonies, and most of them have babies around the same time, so while all the women are off traveling, the men huddle together to try and keep themselves and their eggs warm in frigid conditions. The penguins rotate on the inside and outside of the huddle so as not to hog the warmest parts. Finally, just when the baby penguin is about to hatch, the mother penguin returns to take care of it.
Here’s the amazing part – the mother penguin just happens to know exactly when her baby is going to hatch. There’s no real explanation how penguins just seem to know when to come back to their babies; they just do it, and have been doing it for as long as anyone knows. It’s like they have some sort of built in radar that tells them just when to come back, even though they’ve never had a baby before. It’s beyond explanation. As Donald Miller puts it in his book Blue Like Jazz, “You’d go crazy trying to explain penguins. It’s best just to watch them and be entertained. I don’t think you can explain how Christian faith works either. It is a mystery. And I love this about Christian spirituality. It cannot be explained, and yet it is beautiful and true. It is something you feel, and it comes from the soul.”
Penguins are a beautiful mystery, and so is our faith in God. Faithfulness is hard to explain, but it is one of the fruits of the spirit, and if we want to be the people God wants us to be, we ought to examine this fruit and figure out how to exhibit it in our lives. (more…)
Walk On
Do you ever feel like the kids in this video, that God is just teasing you? Do you ever feel like he’s saying “Hey, here’s something enjoyable that you could have now in life, but if you say no to that thing I’ll give you something way better in the future”?
The temptation to binge on temporary pleasures is ever looming. There’s the temptation to be lazy and avoid the work before us for an enticing nap. There’s the temptation to be proud and plaster all of our accomplishments over the internet. There’s the temptation to be greedy and store up as many songs on our iPods as possible. There’s the temptation to be selfish, sexually active, gluttonous, and so on and so on.
Everyone else in the world is giving themselves over to these temptations, it seems, and they seem to be doing quite alright. Why shouldn’t you jump in as well? How in the world are you supposed to exhibit self-control in a world like this? (more…)
A Euphemism For God
*Note – There is one choice word in this video clip near the beginning, but I feel like it illustrates the message of goodness so well that it can be overlooked.
The above video, in case you can’t see it or somehow missed the pop culture phenomenon of 2008, is the ending to “The Dark Knight”. Throughout the film, Batman and Harvey Dent (A.K.A. Two-Face) represent the war that lies inside each and every one of us between the nature of good and the nature of evil. The Joker plays the role of tempter, trying desperately to pull both men towards the dark side. Harvey Dent chooses to embrace evil, while Batman chooses to embrace good.
Both choices have consequences. Harvey Dent’s choice leads to his untimely death. Batman’s choice, as seen at the end of this clip, leads him to sacrifice himself and any chance for a normal life for the sake of the good fight.
Each and every one of us faces the same choice in our own lives. Will you embrace good or embrace evil? Before you make that decision, take a closer look at what goodness is all about. (more…)
Gentleness; or The Trials and Tribulations Of A Duck, A Beauty, A Beast And A Congressman
As someone who has toiled my way through a variety of customer service jobs (Movie Gallery, Video Warehouse, Family Christian Stores), I have learned that there is no rule more important or effective than “The Customer Is Always Right.” That’s Customer Service 101, and following this adage is generally the best way to resolve a conflict with a customer. It doesn’t matter who is actually in the wrong in the situation. The point is that as an employee you can usually win an angry customer back over to your side by listening to them, engaging with them, and working to resolve the issue rather than arguing about it.
Not only is this a basic guideline for customer service ,this is also the definition of one of the fruits of the spirit: gentleness.
Don’t be mistaken: being gentle does not mean being a push-over or a pansy. It simply means being considerate and kind to others. Of course, it’s not all that simple. This is really one of the hardest fruits of the spirit to grasp in our culture.
We live in a culture obsessed with war. The Iraq War may not take up the majority of the nightly news anymore, but the effects of this battle and the War on Terror are still ongoing. Our country was built on war. War is what we study in the history books everyday. The Civil War. World War I. World War II. The Vietnam War. The Korean War. And that’s not to mention the countless other countries engaged in war everyday.
Our culture is constantly in conflict. It’s integrated into our brains. We cannot avoid conflict. We face it everyday. But if we are to be the people God wants us to be, we must approach conflict with a sense of gentleness. If we do not, then we are sure to pay the price. (more…)
Some May Say It's Foolishness
Probably My Favorite Movie
The film “Forrest Gump” tells the story of a simple man’s life as a he journeys through an extraordinary period in America’s history. One of the film’s most memorable moments comes when Forrest is fighting in the Vietnam War.
His platoon is under a heavy attack, and the troop decides the best thing to do is to run away. As anyone who has seen the movie remembers, if there is one thing Forrest Gump knows how to do, it’s run. Forrest runs so fast he escapes the heat of the battle unscarred. He soon realizes that none of his other soldiers are close behind him. The one true friend he has made in his time in the military, Bubba, did not make it out of the jungle with Forrest. So, he decides to go back looking for him.
On his way to look for Bubba, Forrest sees another soldier hurt on the ground, unable to get himself out of the line of fire. Instead of worrying about his own life or about Bubba’s, Forrest picks the soldier up and runs him out of the jungle. Going back again to look for Bubba, Forrest finds another soldier and takes him out of the jungle as well. This happens over and over and over again as Forrest nearly saves his whole platoon by the time the scene is over.
How would you describe Forrest Gump’s actions in this scene? Brave? Courageous? Unselfish? How about foolish?
