January 2009 Archives

Eighty-five degrees.  Sunny.  A perfect day, made even more so by the thought that it is more than 100 degrees colder back home in Minnesota.  Ah, yes, New Year's Day in southern Florida.  

A friend of mine just invited me to an execution -- of sorts. He had just put a contract out on himself.

Dr. Os Guinness (website) is a called man.  In fact, he wrote the book on it. The Call (Word, 1998) stands as a must-read, modern-day classic on the topic. But it's only one of the more than twenty books he has edited or written, including his most recent work, The Case for Civility: And Why Our Future Depends on It (Harper One, 2008). You might recognize the Guinness name - he is part of the Guinness beer-making family.  However, he's probably best known for his work as a Christian writer, lecturer, and social scientist. He is uniquely equipped to address the challenges to Christianity in the post-modern world. A frequent speaker and seminar leader at political and business conferences around the world, Guinness has lectured at many universities, including Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, and Stanford, and has spoken on Capitol Hill.  He was born in China to medical missionary parents, was educated in England, has traveled widely, and now resides in the United States. (Read his biography on Wikipedia)

"God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.  Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's might hand, that he may lift you up in due time."   2 Peter 5:5-6

It was splayed across the mountainside like a hat-pinned moth in a biology display case.  Fully intact and with no visible damage, the small plane was an eye-catching curiosity for every traveler going Eastbound through the Eisenhower tunnel at Colorado's continental divide.  It was an aluminum monument to the dangers of small plane mountain flying, resting just above the West portal.