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In worship today at APC, Pastor Stephen preached on Joshua 24:1-15 (NIV), which comes at the end of this week's reading in "The Story." Basically, Joshua gives a brief retelling of the Israelite's history, from Abraham's selection as the father of God's people, through Egypt, the wilderness, and finally into the promised land, all the while telling of what God has done for the people.

This morning, my pastor, Stephen Heinzel-Nelson, preached on Revelation 21:1-5. He started out by asking, "If you knew, with absolute certainty, who was going to win the World Series next year, would it change your behavior?" The point he was making was that, through the writings in the book of Revelation, we know that God wins. And, because God wins, God's people win. So we should look to that "end state" and live our lives accordingly.

Rollins starts off the chapter talking about desire -- desire for things, desire for people. He makes a fundamental distinction between desire for things, including experiences such as vacations and promotions, and desire for those whom we love. "Beloved" in his terminology. It's not so much a matter of degree (wanting the beloved more than those other things), but rather the desire for the beloved allows all of those other desires to exist. I can see that, though he then makes what to me seems a rather sudden leap -- that it's the desire of our beloved for us that we really desire.

In the introduction to "Insurrection" Rollins states his premise that the church has undergone several radical transformations over its history. The first of these was over the question of the circumcision of new believers found in the book of Acts. He mentions others in passing, such as the protestant reformation, but he focuses on that first debate. His claim is that each of these milestone events is an example of taking the old beliefs of what is required to worship God, and burn away the chaff to get to the true heart of worship and believe.

I found this short video interesting. It's Newt Gingrich talking about forgiveness for his past infidelities, which is certainly a fine topic for discussion. However, at the very end, he makes the claim that his public failings actually make him "more normal" than some unnamed person who "wanders around, seeming perfect." I'm sure he's referring to Mitt Romney, of course. But the first thought that jumped out at me when I heard this was "did he just compare himself to Jesus???"

I was really surprised when I was contacted recently by somebody who might want to use my theater productions plugin. I'm not 100% certain it's going to do what he wants, but he's willing to try. But that means that I need to actually document the silly thing. So I've spent this weekend writing up a first draft of a page on how to install and use my plugin.

Go ahead and give it a read if you'd like. If that doesn't scare you away from using it, nothing will.

Tony Jones posted an article on his blog this morning entitled There Are Two Marriages. This is something that Wendy has been espousing for years, and I'm glad to see somebody else bring this up.