What's scary...

...is that I've eaten most of these burgers. No wonder I feel the need to go on a diet. I wonder whether these burgers are like "The Machine" from the movie, The Princess Bride: each burger sucks a year of your life away.

Who knew?

That Mississippi is the 6th happiest state in the United States? Of the top ten, it is interesting that six are in the South (Louisiana, Tennessee, Florida, Mississippi, South Carolina and Alabama). All we need is Georgia and Arkansas and you'd have the entire SEC in the list!

Good words from Tim Keller...

...on dealing with controversy. I especially appreciated this line: "The biggest danger of receiving criticism is not to your reputation, but to your heart."

D. G. Hart on the Manhattan Declaration

Aside from the fact that Darryl Hart stole some of my best lines (I had tweeted on December 9, "I didn't sign the Manhattan Declaration because I don't like the Yankees or the Mets"), he has written perhaps the best response to the recent ecumenical statement.

Santa Claus?

Some interesting thoughts from Noel Piper on why she and John did not talk about Santa with their kids.

Introverts in the Church

Just wrote a book review at Ref21 on a new book by Adam McHugh called Introverts in the Church: Finding our Place in an Extroverted Culture.

I like the E Street band and all, but...

...I don't know if I'd go this far. From the Big Man himself on being in the E Street Band and playing in concert: "For me, it is a church. It is my religion. It is my belief. To bring joy and light to the world is my purpose in life, so my spiritual teacher tells me. So when I go out on that stage, I'm bringing that spirit of joy to a lot of people, and it's just wonderful."

Athanasius on Praying the Psalms

Read the whole piece here. The part that struck me was this:

In the Psalter you learn about yourself. You find depicted in it all the movements of your soul, all its changes, its ups and downs, its failures and recoveries. Moreover, whatever your particular need or trouble, from this same book you can select a form of words to fit it, so that you do not merely hear and then pass on, but learn the way to remedy your ill. Prohibitions of evildoing are plentiful in Scripture, but only thePsalter tells you how to obey these orders and refrain from sin.

But the marvel with the Psalter is that, barring those prophecies about the Savior and some about the Gentiles, the reader takes all its words upon his lips as though they were his own, written for his special benefit, and takes them and recites them, not as though someone else were speaking or another person’s feelings being described, but as himself speaking of himself, offering the words to God as his own heart’s utterance, just as though he himself had made them up.

Lost twins?

This was funny. I particularly like the comparisons to Bob's Big Boy and Tim Allen.