Open Eyes, Open Mind: a weekly reflective (2012; issue 1)

Welcome to the first official issue of 2012. If you’re new to Open Eyes, Open Mind, check below the fold for a short description of what you’ll find here.

Some weeks in our lives have themes and this week’s theme is the start of a new year. A lot of us spend time at the beginning of the year reflecting on the previous year and considering the possibilities of the coming year. A number of the resources found in this week’s reflective point in these directions. Feel free to leave any thoughts, comments, or conversations.

Open Eyes, Open Mind: a new weekly reflective

For the past few months I’ve toyed with the idea of collating the best of what I see each week. I really enjoy sharing resources and regularly post links, quotes, and thoughts on my Facebook and Twitter accounts. But I’ve been thinking that perhaps it would be good to collect the best of those each week into a post that my friends could take a look at as they please. With that in mind, “open eyes, open mind” was born.

I’m convinced that there’s that of God all around us…ideas that provoke and prod, bring joy and hope, and spur us onward. So I’m going to try sharing things that have made me think, laugh, cry or consider over the past week each Friday (or Saturday) here on my blog. It’ll be a downloadable PDF with live links to each item. All I ask is that if something causes you to pause, smile, reflect, or reconsider that you leave a comment, thought or question so that we might engage in conversation. Here’s the inaugural one, which I’m labeling as 2012, issue negative one, seeing as we’re not quite into the new year yet. Enjoy!

 

broken

reading through my journal tonight, working on prepping some talks, i came across this & thought it was worth sharing:

“i spend so much of my life on affirming my worth and pursuing my pleasure, it is incredibly humbling to consider serving One who is, in all ways, the sum of perfection.  the disparity between my sin and his holiness is great than i could conceive or imagine.  the brokenness of my character is greater than i understand.

and so, in this disastrous brokenness, where do i look to with hope?  in what could i ever hope of hoping in?  

only in this One that is outrageously different.  this One, that by his perfection seems so far, is in reality the only hope for me coming close.  close to him, close to life & purpose, close to what i ought to be.”

smart man.

It’s extraordinary to me that the United States can find $700 billion to save Wall Street and the entire G8 can’t find $25 billion dollars to save 25,000 children who die every day from preventable diseases.

– Bono

ironic

“It’s overkill.”
-Courtney Solomon, President of After Dark Films, the company that recently released “Captivity”, a thriller, torture, blood-soaked movie, commenting on the decreasing revenues for horror films due in the last several months due possibly to an over abundance of such films.

the things we do can feel of emptiness
when who we are is questioned.

some days are just long…

when we are exhausted
God makes a way through
mighty waters.
we move forward in hope
as God does a new thing.

(cr. Tanya Hershberger…continuing to be one of my heroes.)