“We see very few healthy, happy examples today whose lives spell out in flesh and blood the rugged words, ‘Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds’ (James 1:2). When historians list the character traits of America in the last third of the twentieth century, commitment, constancy, tenacity, endurance, patience, resolve, and perseverance will not be on the list. The list will begin with all-consuming interest in self-esteem. It will be followed by subheadings of self-assertiveness, self-enhancement, and self-realization. And if we think that we are not children of our times, let us simply test ourselves to see how we respond when people reject our ideas or spurn our good efforts or misconstrue our best intentions.” -John Piper, The Roots of Endurance, pg. 79

“Civilization is sharing in the work of others. Look at the chair you sit in. Imagine making it yourself–even if you had the skills, you’d need the tools. Do you have the skill to make the tools? And even if you had the skills for that, could you mine the ore to get the metal? And if you had the skills to do that, how would you get the ore down from the mountain? Would you make the truck? In other words, to simply make a chair from scratch, in a sense is a lifetime of work for one person. But through the work of others, you can buy it with the fruit of a few hours labor. Civilization is sharing in work of others. Your paycheck, whatever it is, can buy you the use of far more than you could possibly make for yourself in the time it took to earn the check. Work makes us interdependent. Work is cultivating the resources of the material and human universe…. Work is the form in which we make ourselves useful to others; civilization is the form in which others make themselves useful to us. Work unifies the human race and carries out the will of God.”

-Lester DeKoster, Work

Author Tim Keller spoke with LifeWay’s Chris Turner during this special edition of Inside LifeWay.

Paraphrase from the interview:

You might have a church where there’s not a lot of emphasis on the “Law”, there’s not a lot of emphasis on what we would consider “legalism”, which is: “We don’t smoke, we don’t chew, and we don’t go with girls that do.” Everyone is more dressed down, and there’s not a lot of talk about “no drinking, no smoking”. And yet the messages are “Here’s how to get your life in order. Here’s how to get your manage your money well. Here’s how to trust God. You really have to trust God and get your life in order, and serve him.” What is that? Its not what we would consider legalism, but it is what we’d consider moralism. Its saying, “You’ve got to get your life together and God will bless you.” But that will crush you. It was better to be an old-fashioned legalist, because at least its something that you can kind of “do”. At least its a model you can maintain. It makes you self-righteous, but at least its not going to destroy you. But when you say, “Study your Bible. Be a good person. Trust in the Lord. Really surrender. Attempt great things for God,”–that will crush you. Because you’ll never attain to that. The implicit message is, “…and that is how you will find God’s blessing.” Because there’s no emphasis on the finished work of Christ.

CNN.com – Special Reports – The 44th President – The Moment.

Check this out. A truly amazing concept.

Keane
Perfect Symmetry

Brian Blade & The Fellowship Band
Seasons of Changes

David Mead
Almost and Always

The Welcome Wagon
Welcome To The Welcome Wagon

Waterdeep
Pink & Blue

I’ve added a way for you to check out my Del.icio.us links through the front page of the blog. Check it out near the bottom of the homepage on the right side. Some links there are old, but as I find new articles that I want to pass on, I’ll post about it there.

Some tips I’ve found helpful for keeping the stream of information on the Web at a sane and reasonable level:

1) If you don’t read it, unsubscribe. I recently unsubscribed from about 10 email newsletters and 10 blogs that I simply don’t have the time to read. Much of the information was helpful and even pertinent to my job, but I simply had to cut back on how many distractions I had in a day.

2) If you find a blog helpful, do take time to read it. Don’t feel guilty. Choose a specific time each day and read the blogs that are helpful for you. A half hour of sifted, well-chosen reading couldn’t be more useful. A focused, meaningful blog will add a needed diet of sharp writing and helpful recommendations to your week. I often find immediate application for many of the posts I read.

3) Less About (Insert Name.) On Facebook, if you would rather not hear or see updates from a certain person who posts incessantly about every social event (or non-event) of their lives, simply choose “Options” next to the newsfeed item (it appears when you roll over the post), and choose “Less About _____”. Admit it: there are many of the same people who show up in your Facebook feed. People you don’t keep up with. People you will never see. (I may even be that person for someone else. That’s fine. “Less About Brannon,” then.)

4) Turn off email notifications. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and many other sites offer to send you on-the-spot email updates when someone contacts you, posts on your wall, etc. If its not the moment to spend time on that site, why hear about it right then? That’s like opening your bills when you can’t pay them—it will only frustrate you.

5) Choose specific times each day to visit your social sites. Maybe a 10 am break. Maybe mid-afternoon. Maybe after dinner. Perhaps all three. But randomly loading your Facebook or Twitter page between every micro-task can only significantly dilute the value of your day’s work. Would you get up out of your chair every 10 minutes and walk out to your front porch to see if (maybe, just maybe) a FedEx truck came with a package just for you?

6) Delete your MySpace account. Narrow your social sites down to the very best. I deleted my MySpace account in favor of Facebook. I can’t manage both. Stuff White People Like referred to MySpace as “Digital Detroit”. I couldn’t agree more.

I’ve been working my way through the book, Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell. The author notes that individuals who stand out in their fields, the rock stars (literally or figuratively), are those who have put in 10,000 hours of practice or more. Gladwell approximates 10 years, generally speaking. This is a helpful rule of thumb, it seems. You won’t be comfortable in your role or at the “top of your game” until you put in a massive amount of time perfecting your skill and honing your abilities.

But what kind of practice? Is it the mere doing of the craft that produces excellence? No. The way that Michael Jordan practices is far different than the way that many other very good basketball players do. Michael or Bono, Steve Jobs or a great artist like Glen Keane, seem to have the ability to observe their performance from the outside. These people judge from a more objective view, and are able to take mental notes, all the while making specific recommendations to themselves. Doing a layup wrong 10,000 times doesn’t produce perfect form the 10,001st time. But executing it more observantly and analytically each time likely will.

What is the key to more objective, analytical self-criticism? Ironically, the answer is humility. Though we assume that a worked-up bravado would provide the energizing fuel of self-improvement, the opposite is true. The ability to overcome our failings comes from looking them squarely in the face. It is the proud person who is blind to his own faults, and thus completely unable to address them.

We should be listening to ourselves speak and watching ourselves work from the “outside”–not self-consciously–but with the sort of critical, yet self-deprecating reflection that produces “perfect practice”.

Book list resolutions aren’t nearly as impressive as a year-in-review list of reading, but with great intention, these are the books I hope to finish or read from the beginning. As usual, its a mix of theology, art, and business.

Total Truth

Outliers

Blink

Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

Leading With A Limp

Getting Real

Jonathan Edwards, A Life

Tribes

Peace Like A River

Traditional Oil Painting

Surprised by Hope

To Infinity And Beyond!

Bold Love

Christ and Culture Revisited

(I’d also like to take this moment to put in a plug for Shelfari, an amazingly well-designed site intended to help readers organize, discuss and share their library titles with friends. Timothy Gray, a friend who built the initial Portland Studios site, was integrally involved in the redesign. My incomplete shelf here.)

Rumor has it that a new 17-inch MacBook, a huge 28-inch iMac, and an updated Mac mini are in the wings for tomorrow’s presentation. I’m mulling getting a Mac mini, actually. We’ll see what the specs are first.