The Essential Bottom Line…

…several tornadoes came through our area last night.  This is what they did to our brand new tent:

… and he plays music.  And he is really good.  So you should check it out.

Two guys came to the house today to bury the cable that has been laying across our yard for about a month (the cable is from our neighbor’s house to the junction box, which is at the back of our property).  Immediately I went out to question whether or not the work they were going to do was going to tear up the yard.  They said we wouldn’t even be able to tell they had been there and then showed me why:

They have this amazing trench digger that splits the earth for just long enough to allow the cable to drop into place and then immediately re-closes the trench over the cable.  It is unbelievable!

Plus, now that annoying cable is buried and out of the way!

So, I was at the annual family reunion this past Sunday (any story that starts like this could definitely be trouble)…

Anyway, the family reunion was fine. I mean, it was what it was meant to be: a time for the older generations to catch up on times gone by, and for the younger generations to play on the merry-go-round. Given that I fall smack dab betwixt these two generations, my day consisted of drinking bad coffee out of a styrofoam cup and hanging out with my dad (it was mom’s side of the family, so he was pretty bored too).

It was during this father-son bonding time that the horrible grape incident occurred. Sitting there, calmly munching on some fruit-salad, I forked a grape and made for my mouth with it. (The fruit salad was particularly good, and the grapes had been cut in half, for ease of forking.) As the grape entered my mouth I gave satisfactory chomp with my bicuspids, and was immediately rewarded with an unbelievably well aimed stream of grape juice.

I say “well-aimed,” but in reality it was just sheer dumb luck. Why do I say this? Because the stream of grape juice landed right in my father’s eye. Uproarious laughter ensued (after he recovered his contact lens).

Thus ends the account of the horrible grape incident.

“We don’t fight for victory, we fight from victory.”  – Craig Groeschel

This changes everything.

…Richard Foster is rocking my world again.  I just started his most recent book and it is totally changing how I am looking at the Bible.

Foster makes the statement the average American Christian owns 9 Bibles and is looking for more.  Man, I feel the conviction, because I was totally shopping for Bibles online the other night.

His point is that we are not satisfied with the Bible, because we are not reading it in a way that transforms our lives.  Really interesting…

How can this happen?

These are the moments when I really have to remind myself that God is PAST.FINDING.OUT.

Rick Warren is hosting a conference for influential pastors from around the US. He is using this as an opportunity to pour himself into other pastors. He said in his opening: “I used to pastor people, now I mainly pastor pastors.”

He also said: “You’re never wasting time when you’re sharpening your ax.” (i.e., if you are building skills and learning it is never a waste of time.)

Bottom Line: Rick Warren is a baller.

Bottom Line #2: The pastors who are at the conference are ballers.

Rick also invited some bloggers to the conference so that they could keep those of us who weren’t invited informed about the goings on there. You can go here or here to get some more inside info.

I got a notice in the mail yesterday that informed me that Pontiac issued a recall on my vehicle.  Usually these recalls are nothing more than a formality and most are not worth the effort involved in getting the service done on the vehicle.

But the recall on my vehicle is the following:

Fuel Tank Housing Fracture – Replace Fuel Tank.

Anything that has to do with my fuel tank fracturing should probably be a priority.

Fuel tank fracture?  Seriously.

This is my niece.  She is a baller.