Dimly Lit

That doesn’t stop me from wishing this film tour would come through St. Louis. A collection of films shot from different locations around the world of fly fishing goodness. If you go to the site, click on Screen Room to see some clips.

Just thought I’d share.

Explanations with no stories are theologies with no churches. It is story that drives the river into the mountainside that Moses strikes and wets the whistles of the Israilite whine. It is story that shames young people into not making fund of their elders lest som Elisha send two bears to maul them. Without story history is lost in its facts; it is Paul’s epistles with no hair mopped Jesus of Gospels.

The Matthew’s House Project has a brand new look and a wonderful interview with David O’Hara, co-author of From Homer to Harry Potter: A Handbook on Myth and Fantasy.

Put me firmly in the camp of those that believe that story is often the most powerful tool in communication that we have, and this from someone who was an avowed non-fiction reader for several years. I have come to believe though, that there is some part of us that is ‘wired’ to hear the truth in story in more powerful ways than we hear it in facts and figures. We need a resurgence of story tellers in our culture.

We need a resurgence of story tellers in evangelical Christianity, and I don’t mean of the Left Behind variety. Can evangelicalism claim any really great story tellers? Flannery O’Connor was a Catholic as was Walker Percy and Tolkien. C.S. Lewis was Anglican. Frederick Buechner is a Presbyterian, but I don’t think he would consider himself part of the evangelical fold.

Is there room in evangelicalism for this kind of storytelling or is it too risky, too uncontrolled, too messy? I hope that’s not the case. The evangelical message can be told very compellingly through the likes of Leo Bebb and Hazel Motes.

There are small voices within the evangelical movement that working toward a willingness to engage good stories rather than run from them. L’Abri, started by the Schaeffers, and the Francis Schaeffer Institute at Covenant Seminary. Ransom Fellowship, and from what I can tell sites like The Matthew’s House Project are really seeking to engage the culture and the culture’s stories.

Then again, I suppose that one sign of a good story would be that you wouldn’t be able to tell if it was an evangelical who wrote it, you would just be captivated by the characters, enamored with the plot, and drawn toward the Truth.

P.S. One thing I don’t like about the new Matthew’s House site is the inability to link directly to the article. You’ll just have to get to the site and look around til you find it.

Technorati Tags: story, myth

25 ways to use a Ziploc baggy. We actually do several of these. Just more proof that Plastics is where it’s at…

Instead I was sick. Blah - what timing. Now that the holiday is done and gone, I’m feeling better.

Really, I mean it…I’ll finish this one.

Stop laughing!

Philip Yancey’s Prayer is a wonderful and accessible journey into the mysteries of prayer. Yancey approaches the topic with his typical easy style that draws the reader in and engages him as part of the process of discovery, rather than as a novice listening to a master.

Yancey admits up front that in writing the book he was not a teacher, but a student trying to learn more about this strange thing that God tells us we should do. The questions that most of us struggle with are the same ones that Yancey does. He acknowledges that often prayer can feel like nothing more than sitting in a room and tossing words at the ceiling. He is amazed by friends and acquaintances who can sit in meditative prayer for an hour and admits that 15 minutes is about his maximum.

In all of this the question that Yancey and so many of the rest of us struggle with is, ‘does it make any difference”? Yancey’s answer is a resounding yes, and he points to both historical events and personal changes where he believes prayer has played a crucial role.

As I said, I haven’t finished it, but I can already recommend it. As with all of Yancey’s books that I have read, it is engaging and convicting. It compels me toward prayer and for that I am thankful.

Technorati Tags: Book Review, Prayer, Yancey

Technorati Tags: Federal Vision, Theology, Reformed