As part of our summer vacation this year, we found ourselves at Canada’s Wonderland, a colossal amusement park near Toronto. My teenage son has discovered roller coasters as a passion, and so we strapped ourselves into the Behemoth, riding up to a height of 230 feet and then plunging down at 77 mph. The Behemoth cost $26 million to build. But all day it was like that: we were surrounded by acres of ingenious and costly technologies engineered with the sole purpose to amuse and thrill.
As my old body began to wane in the late afternoon, I plopped down on a park bench and waited out my kids who were on another ride. A young teenage girl was standing nearby. Suddenly, I heard her utter a short squeak and I felt something rustling on the ground between my ankles. I looked down. A chubby woodchuck wandered out from under my bench. Behind us was a small wooded lot between paths in the amusement park. A little stream flowed into a pool there and it was hard to tell whether this patch of nature among the tarmac was original or manufactured. Nonetheless, it was apparently where the woodchuck lived. I suspect it was “suppertime,” if that’s what you can call his daily allotment of popcorn and funnel cake. Read more »
I’ve been pushing hard all summer on a major writing project with the goal of finishing the intial writing by the end of September. This is the main reason you’ve seen less posts on Our Father’s World than usual. Sorry about that – but hopefully the end product will be worth the wait.
In the meantime, enjoy this video clip from Chipotle. You may know that I’m not much of a fast-food advocate – but this company does seem different.
A couple of weeks ago I attended a conference in Bozeman, Montana. The announced topic was ‘Human and Environmental Health: Social Justice Implications: A Program for Religious Leaders and others…’ The setting was magnificent: A century old railroad inn an hour’s drive from the western entrance to Yellowstone Park, surrounded by the mountain ranges for which Bozeman is famous. But what made this conference unique was the oxymoronic nature of the sponsors. FREE (The Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment) is a conservative institution dedicated to the application of what they would consider ‘sound economic principles’ to environmental problems. I call them my ‘libertarian economist environmentalist friends’, and while I happily retain my own convictions, I found much that was profitable in this conference.
New Friends
As with any gathering of people around a common concern, the most profitable and enjoyable aspect of this conference was the people. There were just 25 of us including presenters, and we represented a wide range of intellectual and religious and career backgrounds. A number of mainline protestants (Methodist, Episcopalian, Presbyterian and so on), a couple of Catholics, one Orthodox priest, two Rabbis (including one who survived the Holocaust as a teenager), and yes, four or five evangelicals. Someone commented than an afternoon hike could have been a joke: “A priest, a rabbi and a minister went up a mountain…” Read more »
John Stott’s going-home-to-glory was announced yesterday. I wrote the piece below last September, but the thoughts are just as valid if not more so now. If you haven’t read Uncle John’s farewell message to all of us, please do so. There’s a link at the bottom of the post.
There are few leaders in the Christian world greater than John Stott. I first heard him preach at Urbana 1970 – forty years ago, when I was a senior in high school. [You can read the actual talks here - I don't think the recordings are available on-line.] I’ve followed his ministry career ever since, though almost always from a distance – we shook hands perhaps twice or three times, but my memory fades a bit at this point. John is now at the end of his life, though he has not yet ended his service to the church and her Lord. He has written one last book that is intended to be his farewell to those of us still here – and you need to read it. Read more »
It has been a year of flood and drought. This spring’s floods along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers are old news to most of us, as is the ongoing drought in Texas, which is breaking records set as long ago as 1917, long before the Dust Bowl of the 1930′s.
But nowhere in the world are things as bad as what is happening in East Africa, not far from where Craig and Tracy Sorley are serving in Kenya.
The Worst Drought in 60 Years
“Once More Into the Abyss”. That’s how the Economist news magazine described the developing drought in Kenya and other East African countries a week or so ago:
BLOATED bellies with stick arms and legs; huge eyes staring out of skeletal heads; gaunt mothers trying to suckle babies on withered breasts. The world thought it might never see such scenes again. Famine in Africa, absent for many years, appeared to have gone the way of diseases for which we now have cures or vaccines. Read more »
Who knew? Your best way to survive this might be to go to church...
So once again cutting edge research shows that if the church will just be the church, she will be better positioned to respond to crisis than any other institution. For the last two or three years I have been winding up my presentations with a call to the church toward Repentance (change our attitude toward God’s creation), Restoration (work to restore what has been damaged), and Preparation (be ready for more disasters to come). A report from NPR this week reinforces the effectiveness of this kind of preparation.
You could start with a multiple choice question: In the aftermath of the 2004 Tsunami, which Indian villagers had a great chance of survival?
As part of our summer vacation this year, we found ourselves at Canada’s Wonderland, a colossal amusement park near Toronto. My teenage son has discovered roller coasters as a passion, and so we strapped ourselves into the Behemoth, riding up to a height of 230 feet and then plunging down at 77 mph. The Behemoth cost $26 million to build. But all day it was like that: we were surrounded by acres of ingenious and costly technologies engineered with the sole purpose to amuse and thrill.
