On the way home from spending Christmas with the in-laws we stopped at Hudson’s Treasure Hunt in Meridian, MS. They had a seminary book store stock from the New Orleans area. The books were randomly scattered across the shelves and stacked two deep, which made sifting through them rather difficult. I also only had time to look through less than half of the rows before we had to hit the road again. Still, I managed to find several good selections for my library.

List of Books by Title (incl. subtitle), Author: (more…)

Victoria Osteen, the wife of pastor and best selling author, Joel Osteen, was “asked to leave a plane on Tuesday after she failed to comply with a flight attendant’s instructions…” Joel Osteen is the pastor of Lakewood Church in Houston, the country’s largest megachurch with 30,000 members. Victoria and her family were reportedly on their way to Colorado for a ski vacation.

At first I thought that Lakewood was one of the megachurches that was canceling Christmas Day services. “God has a sense of humor,” I thought to myself. Christmas Day is about family time and getting away from it all, right? However, I was wrong because I then remembered someone who commented on Transformatum saying that Lakewood was only scaling back. Sure enough the church calendar confirms it, although it looks like the Osteens will not be there.

Something about the situation still bothered me. I began searching Technorati for other bloggers’ thoughts. Derek Brown, on For Your Good, speculates that the incident may have been provoked by one of the philosophies in Osteen’s book–Your Best Life Now–in which a strong emphasis is placed on “trivial examples of God’s favor to the faithful.” Like Brown, I pray that this incident becomes a springboard for a “dialog about potentially harmful theology” and a quest for Biblical truth. The alternative is that the Church’s image will continue to tarnish in the eyes of the world.

I did even though I host my own blogs. I visit Chattablogs several times a day and comment frequently. So far each blogging account has been free for the users, but due to growing pains Terrablogs is in need of a newer and more powerful server. Click here for more information on how you can help.

The first chain letters were mailed in a stamped envelope. Then they took on electronic form via email. Now blogs are being used to perpetuate them. I will provide the five weird things about myself, but someone is going to have to make me tag five people.

Five Weird and Random Facts About Myself (more…)

By way of Binary Bonsai I just learned that the WordPress 2.0 release is imminent. It is an early Christmas present, but not one that I will be able to take advantage of until after the holidays. Sometime in January I will probably give this site a mild design overhaul as I upgrade to 2.0 and also switch over to Michael’s K2 template. Transformatum is currently built off of the original Kubrick template.