Sunday, December 27, 2009

How far away is your future?

Let's try a thought experiment:

A flying saucer comes to Earth, destroys a major city to get our attention, then announces that in 10,000 years it is coming back to destroy the Earth. In order to eliminate any doubt, it then blows up Mars.

Assume for a moment that you believe the threat and there's nothing we can do about it...

Question: how would knowing that the planet would disappear in 10,000 years change your typical day?

Okay, now run the same story, but 1,000 years from now instead.

You can probably guess where this is going. What if it were twenty years? If it were twenty years, how would that change things?

Most of us assume a single range of focus that we care about. And it's usually right around the corner, or even closer. Is that the place to be focusing your brand or your business or your life?

taken from: www.sethgodin.typepad.com

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Merry Christmas

Rejoice, rejoice Christ our saviour has come
Cast off the works of darkness
Put on the ways of light
And clothe yourself with Christ
Put on love to surround you
Put on hope to guide you
Put on joy to sustain you
And clothe yourself with Christ
Rejoice on this dawn of righteousness
Rejoice for this day of justice
Rejoice in the prince of peace
And clothe yourself with Christ

from www.msainfo.org

Monday, December 21, 2009

Primal

I would like to recommend a book to start the New Year off with, "Primal" by Mark Batterson.

In the last section the author states what the book ‘Primal’ is about.
“What does our generation need to rediscover? What primal truth needs to be remained? What is our reformation? Simply put we, we’ve got to be great at the Great Commandment…”
This book is about being great in loving God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and the writer attempts to give some thoughts on what that love would look like.

1. Loving God with all of our heart can be seen and exemplified in our giving.
2. Loving God with all of our soul is found in our rediscovery of wonder. He uses the idea of a ‘sixth sense’, we can only know some things as God reveals them to us. Thus emphasizing the necessity of reading/studying Gods word.
3. Loving God with all of our mind is seen in renewing our curiosity and not being afraid to ask questions. Christians should be the most creative people of all
4. Loving God with all of our strength means not being afraid to sweat. Manually working and laboring for God.

I enjoyed the book for 3 reasons
1. He said what needed to be said in just over 170 pages (It seems like authors always have to have at least 200 pages,,,WHY?)
2. He used examples from science, history and life to make his points
3. He seemed to write with passion. This is something he wanted to say (not just write a book about)

Thanks to WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for providing me this book to review.

Friday, December 18, 2009

Happy Holidays or Merry Christmas

If we could be honest for a moment, for the most part Christmas is about everything but Jesus. It is about buying gifts, it is about being with family, it is about shopping, its about decorating but where is Jesus.

In our society, many Christians have got upset because we want to say Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas. I think a question we need to ask ourselves, why are we upset about that? For the most part a holiday is all Christmas is to any of us anyway.
There was a email I got encouraging people to send a card to the ACLU that said “Merry Christmas”. the purpose of it was to let them know we think it should still be called Christmas instead of holidays….I cant imagine Jesus sending someone a card for the purpose of trying to prove a point…..If you want to prove a point, live a life that would represent Jesus…..Don’t buy any gifts on Christmas. Instead help the homeless, the hurting, the oppressed. That would send a greater message than any card.

Wouldn’t that be neat if all Christians decided that this Christmas, instead of buying for those of us who have about everything we want already, we are all going to pool our money and send to the starving in Africa or Haiti or somewhere else. I wonder what the world would think if that would happen...Possibly next year they may be saying Merry Christmas instead of Happy Holidays, and Christmas would actually mean that it has something to do with Jesus.

by the way...Merry Christmas

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

consumerism at Wal-mart

Americans spend $36,000,000 at Wal-Mart every hour of every day. This works out to $20,928 profit every minute.

Wal-Mart employs 1.6 million people and is the nation’s largest private employer. It is also the largest company in the history of the world.

Wal-Mart now sells more food than Kroger and Safeway combined, and did this in only 15 years. Wal-Mart now sells more food than any other store in the world.

Wal-Mart has approx. 3,900 stores in the U.S. (1,906 are Super Centers, a 1,000 increase since 2004).

90% of all Americans live within 15 miles of a Wal-Mart.

Monday, December 14, 2009

Free e-book

Here is a free e-book from Seth Godin. It looks pretty neat.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/files/what-matters-now-1.pdf