Mikey is my newly adopted dog. He’s a black and white beagle/something-or-other mix. He doesn’t have a chip. We have messages in with the local animal shelters and lost and founds, as well as Craigslist. After a few weeks, we’ve still not heard anything back.

Welcome home, pooch.

(Can’t see the video? Watch it on YouTube!)

Psalm 80:19:

Restore us, O LORD God of hosts!
   Let your face shine, that we may be saved!

I love this.

While perhaps the context doesn’t translate directly, it reminds us that God’s grace, God’s grace in revealing himself to us in Jesus Christ on the cross, is where we find our salvation.

Seeing God, as he is, is the only way we see our need for him and so receive his total blessing.

That is beautiful.

I have this fear of watching movies that I loved in my childhood. After I watched The Never Ending Story a couple years ago, it dashed my delusions about the movie. It was, in fact, terrible.

Tonight, at a loss for anything else to do, I watched Willow. The 1988, George Lucas written, Ron Howard directed, classic-ish fantasy adventure. I thought for sure all my fond memories would be dashed on the rocks of my since matured taste in cinema.

And while I didn’t watch it with the wonder and excitement I did as an eight year old kid, It wasn’t altogether disappointed either.

Did you ever see the movie? The main character is played by a little person who, strangely enough, boasts a pretty long rap sheet. He’s been in almost every Harry Potter movie, and was the unsung actor behind the robot Marvin in 2005’s move rendition of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. He also happened to be the antagonist in all six Leprechaun movies, including Leprechaun in Space, Leprechaun in the Hood and Leprechaun Back 2 Tha Hood.

And of course, the underrated Val Kilmer towered above him as his heroic warrior companion.

I even found myself actually laughing at some of the jokes. Not just laughing at the 80’s fantasy movie style. But I also noted that a lot of things were distinctly borrowed from Star Wars and almost plagiarized from the Lord of the Rings books. Neither did I notice as a child.

But, the very best part of all was the epic final showdown between two great sorceresses. Both would appear to be in their early 70’s. While at first they fight each other with their magic, by the end it turns into a pretty classic cat fight. I have to admit, I couldn’t help but laugh at that part.

So, if you’ve seen the movie, take a trip down memory lane and have fun with it again. If you’ve never seen the movie… well, just keep it that way.

In Tim Keller’s book Counterfeit God’s he has a chapter devoted to the allurement of power and how, as human beings, we often elevate power a success (both socially and professionally) to the level of a deity.

As Americans we often have the idea that we can do ‘whatever we set our mind to’, but Keller asserts that:

“We are not nearly as responsible for our success as our popular views of God and reality lead us to think.”

As Keller describes, we have a tendency to want to see our lives as a blank canvas for us to draw on as we go. As children and young adults, we see things in our family and parents that we vow never to emulate. But before long, any rational assessment of our lives will reveal just how much our family and life circumstances have shaped who we are, what we do and what we like to do.

With just a quick step back, we can see these are things we have had no control over whatsoever. We do no choose when we are born, where we are born and to whom we are born.

If these are three things shape a massive amount of our character and person, they are also sure weights in the balance of our success in all kinds of areas of life.

We are therefore profoundly naive to ever honestly believe we are really ‘in control of our destiny’ so to speak. If we believe in the God of the bible, we must be humble and confess that we are not in control of our lives in the way that we would like to be.

Keeping this in mind is a humbling thing and massive step toward trusting God and having confidence in his decision making.

The past several weeks, I have been in something of a love affair with country music. For my age and the company that I keep, this is very unusual. People have a tendency to scoff at country music. But, like a friend articulated a few days ago, country music is a simpler form of expression and there is something to be said about that.

Well, after a few weeks exploring and taking recommendations I’ve decided on some of my favorites. In no particular order:

Josh Turner
Would You Go With Me

Brad Paisley
Make A Mistake

Brooks & Dunn
Cowgirls Don’t Cry

George Strait
Check Yes Or No

Gloriana
Wild at Heart
Lead Me On

Jack Ingram
Lips of an Angel

Keith Urban
Sweet Thing
You’ll Think of Me
I Told You So

Lady Antebellum
Need You Now

Love & Theft
Runaway
You to Miss

Rascal Flatts
These Days
I’m Movin’ On

Toby Keith
God Love Her
She Never Cried in Front of Me

So that’s what I’ve been listening to. Have any suggestions for me?

The past couple weeks I’ve really been dwelling on the idea of remembering Jesus—remembering the Gospel. As I read today, this passage in the beginning of Psalm 77 stuck out to me.

You hold my eyelids open;
   I am so troubled that I cannot speak.
I consider the days of old,
   the years long ago.
I said, "Let me remember my song in the night;
   let me meditate in my heart."
   Then my spirit made a diligent search:
”Will the Lord spurn forever,
   and never again be favorable?
Has his steadfast love forever ceased?
   Are his promises at an end for all time?
Has God forgotten to be gracious?
    Has he in anger shut up his compassion?"
                         Selah

Then I said, "I will appeal to this,
   to the years of the right hand of the Most High."

I will remember the deeds of the LORD;
   yes, I will remember your wonders of old.

Asaph describes his turmoil and mental anguish over his circumstances. Then shifts immediately. He says that he will remember God’s works and ‘wonders’ of old.

Every Christian can attest to God’s power to provide strength and comfort. Yet, we all quickly forget that he has done so for us in the past, when our present seems to fall apart. Like Asaph, we should make a careful point to remember what God has done for us in the past, in his Gospel in general and our lives in specific, to give us confidence for the future.

Someone very special shared this quote with me on Facebook a couple weeks ago and it’s been echoing in my mind ever since.

“You can be sure that God will never take from you something that is good. Rather, when you are ready, He will remove the evil (sin) and replace it with something far better. He will tear down your fortress so that He can build a palace in its place" – Erwin Lutzer

As new Christians we might see our sanctification as a loss of things we love. But over time, we learn that though they are things we love, they are also things that will inevitably try to destroy us. As older Christians, we often fear the loss of something ‘good’ only to find that it was laced with something from our heart that was ‘bad’.

With always perfect timing, God removes those things from us and we discover again that “there is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.” (Proverbs 14:12)

Thank God that He knows the right way. And that way is better than anything we could ever conceive on our own.