Virgin America Is Awesome. Except When It’s The Opposite Of Awesome.
@VirginAmerica’s EPIC FAIL (Please excuse the vulgarity of this post.)
I love Virgin America. It’s my airline of choice. If I have any say in the matter, I take them every time. If they don’t fly to a city, I often don’t fly to that city. Best airline experience in the U.S. — bar none.
Except when they blow it. Badly. Which is the only way to describe what happened to me earlier today.
Before I dive in, let me just state that I realize what it looks like when someone with a relatively large online following bitches about problems like this one. It looks like we’re taking advantage of the power gained by other means. I’ve done it before. So have many others.
But, honestly, my true point here is to try and get Virgin to fix their fucked-up-beyond-belief flight management system. Judging from Twitter, I wasn’t the only person screwed by their fuck up today. In fact, I shared a cab back to Seattle with one guy (who happened to be a startup founder) that I met at the airport, screwed by the same issue.
Here’s what happened.
Source: parislemon
Easter Wednesday - Matt 2:1-12 (N.T. Wright)
Matthew seems to be saying, to his resurrection-based church, that their mission will remain rooted in the Jewish scriptures, and that they will be able with their help to draw the wisdom of the world into homage to the world’s rightful king. But he is also warning them that they must not expect all the Jewish people to join in. As Paul would put it, God has subjected all people to disobedience, so that he might have mercy on all. The good news of Jesus, his kingdom-message, cross and resurrection, is always humbling to all people. It is the place where the scriptures and the wisdom of the world can meet and celebrate, but it will take something more as well. The ‘wise men’ could just as well have been called ‘the humble men’, or indeed ‘the obedient men’. It’s people like that who could then be called ‘the overwhelmed-with-joy’ people.
Marriage won’t work unless you put your marriage and your spouse first, and you don’t turn good things, like parents, children, career, and hobbies, into pseudo-spouses.
Worship Leaders, We Are Not Rock Stars (@TGC)
Stephen Miller writes:
We will never be more noticed, loved, cherished, accepted, validated, encouraged, and satisfied than we are in Christ. We will never have a greater identity than the one he has purchased for us on the cross. We are created in the image of God, bought with his blood, redeemed for his glory, adopted into his family, given an eternal inheritance, a new family, and the Holy Spirit to dwell in us!
We don’t need people to raise their hands and sing loudly in corporate worship. We don’t need to have them come to us after and tell us how great worship was. We don’t need to grow our platform, have a well-read blog, go on tour, lead worship at the biggest conferences, or have the top-selling Christian album on iTunes. We don’t have to be rock stars. We have Jesus. And Jesus is more than enough.
Read the whole article here.
Source: twitter.com
Easter Tuesday - Matt 28:16-20 (N.T. Wright)
How did Jesus come to this point of being king?
The answer is obvious. He didn’t do it in the way the disciples expected, in the way the crowds wanted, in the way which the chief priests and Pilate assumed he would behave. He didn’t follow the normal human path to power, pushing and shoving his way forward, fighting and killing until his position was established.
He came as the Servant, the one who took people’s infirmities and diseases on to himself, the one who suffered insults and mocking and torture and death. He was obedient, through- out his life, to a different vision of power, a different sort of kingdom-dream. And his resurrection not only showed that he was right. It established his kingdom, his type of kingdom, once and for all.
This 1-hour webcast discusses How to Read the Bible through the Jesus Lens by Michael Williams, and it aims to help church leaders discover how all Christians can read every book of the Bible as pointing to Christ.
Filmed at Calvin Theological Seminary, it includes an engaging Q&A period with Michael and both onsite and online audiences.
- Michael discusses everything from evangelism and hermeneutics to how churches and pastors can utilize the book in teaching and preaching.
The book How to Read the Bible through the Jesus Lens connects each of the sixty-sixbooks of the Bible to the person and work of Jesus Christ.
By explaining each biblical book’s theme and raising pertinent questions about the contemporary importance of that message, author Michael Williams sets readers on a path toward purposeful, independent reading and application of the entire Bible.
- Special features include suggestions for contemporary implications; a convenient summary chart; and succinct statements of the theme of each book.
Source: thegospelcoalition.org
Free on @AmazonKindle
Speaking of Jesus: The Art of Not-Evangelism by Carl Medearis (David C. Cook, 2011)
Free April 9-15. Reader beware, I haven’t read this & can’t endorse it exactly; this may not be an evangelism book for everyone:
Some of us fear moments when we need to defend our theology. Some of us seek them out. But we are seldom ready the way Jesus seemed to be ready. So how do we draw others to God in the midst of these ordinary conversations the way Jesus did?
In Speaking of Jesus, Carl Medearis draws on his experience of international reconciliation between Muslims and Christians to remind us of the heart of the matter: Jesus. Here he gives us tools, stories, and the foundation we need to move beyond “us” and “them” and simply talk about the One who changes it all. As Carl writes, “While others are explaining and defending various isms and ologies we’re simply pointing people to our friend. The one who uncovers and disarms. Who leads people right to himself. The beginning and the end of the story. A good story indeed.”
A Quick Introduction to the New Testament: A Zondervan Digital Short, by D.A. Carson & Douglas J. Moo (Zondervan, 2012).
Read this one: great resource;-)
Derived from D. A. Carson and Douglas J. Moo’s widely adopted textbook, An Introduction to the New Testament, this FREE digital short surveys key critical and interpretive issues in New Testament study. Attention is given to original manuscripts, interpretative traditions, biblical theology, historical criticism, postmodernism, linguistic and social-science approaches to the text, and more. Students of the New Testament will find A Quick Introduction to the New Testament to be a handy yet complete reference tool.
For those who want the entire textbook, An Introduction to the New Testament, it is on sale for $19.99 on Kindle ;-) (Hardcover is $26.39)
Source: gospelebooks.net
A New Decision-Making Unit with your Spouse
When you marry, you commit to becoming a new decision-making unit and to developing new patterns and ways of doing things. If you rigidly impose the patterns that you saw in your own family rather than working together with your spouse to create new ones that fit both of you, you haven’t “left home” yet.
Keller, Timothy (2011-11-01). The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God (p. 121). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.
