Clips & Quotes

All of these are from my recent reading material...

My father was killed by ninjas. I need money for karate lessons.

• begging sign pictured in Killing Cockroaches: and Other Scattered Musings On Leadership by Tony Morgan

Every mistake, every pitfall, and every poor decision you could ever make has already been made & recorded somewhere in the pages of the Old & New Testaments. It may not match your situation detail for detail, but the principles will be right on target, and the solutions you need will be right at hand...

Let me reiterate a deeper source of guidance than human counsel. Remember: Everything you have gone through, someone in the Bible has gone through before you.

• Wayne Cordeiro in Leading On Empty: Refilling Your Tank and Renewing Your Passion

Here's the thing: I agree with the gist of Proverbs [he's referring to Proverbs 22:15, 23:13-14]. I need to discipline my son more. I need to give Jasper some tough love, dispense more time-outs, or risk having him turn into a three-foot-tall monster...

Look at the example set by God. The God of the Bible treats his children - the human race - with both justice & mercy. Right now, I'm out of whack; I'm 10 percent justice and 90 percent mercy. If I'd been in charge of the Garden of Eden, Adam & Eve would have gotten three strikes, then a fourth, then a stern warning, then had their bedtime moved up twenty minutes. God, as you know, kicked them out. As a sign of His compassion, he clothed them in animal skins before the eviction, but He still kicked them out.

• A.J. Jacobs in The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible

The [Indiana Jones] films even had a built-in Disneyland connection as well, as director Steven Spielberg had sent his sound designers down to the Park to record Big Thunder Mountain Railroad for the second film's mine-chase scene!...

At one point, the ambitious concept [for the Indiana Jones ride] called for the EMV ride system, the runaway mine cart, the incorporation of the Disneyland Railroad, and the even the Jungle Cruise boats converging inside a massive Indiana Jones show building...

• The Imagineering Field Guide To Disneyland

We cannot be dependent on ourselves and on God at the same time. When we consider the practice of rest unnecessary, we will also inevitably lose sight of the necessity of God.

• Anne Jackson in Mad Church Disease: Overcoming the Burnout Epidemic

I've sometimes wondered why Christians make such a big deal over the celebration of Christmas, esp. compared with Good Friday or Easter. It's true the magi provide a good precedent for the giving of valuable gifts. When they put me in charge of redesigning our culture, I'm going to design a holiday for which all the gifts are bought at great price on Good Friday and then appear on Easter morning, but mysteriously (perhaps even misleadingly) wrapped so everyone wonders, "What is that? What's going on?" That's where the first Easter Sunday began.

• Conrad Gempf in Mealtime Habits of the Messiah: 40 Encounters with Jesus