Ancient Truth | Modern Sound

Water Flowed From the Temple
Ezekiel saw a vision of water flowing from the temple into the community. It poured off the the altar and at first it barely wet the ground, but as it continued to flow it became waist deep and then flooded the whole culture. This vision speaks to the church’s mission, our mission. Worship is to overflow from our church and pour into the lives of the people all around us. Picture your Sunday morning worship overflowing with love and power into the communities where you live, everywhere within reach. Picture it like water carrying the life-changing grace of Christ. Then realize that the church is you and me. Worship changes everything, and worship is everything.

Aye! Are ye transfixed by me Blood Eye?

It’s the strangest thing. I can’t feel it and it doesn’t affect my vision. It just looks gruesome. It’s called a Subconjunctival hemorrhage. It seems that I was a victim of a violent sneeze, although it seemed like a normal sneeze to me. It’s actually much better that is was a few days ago when most of the white on one side of my right eye was completely red. It’s still pretty shocking.

I spent the first few days answering “what happened to your eye?” with a crazy story about protecting Kim and the kids from unschooled ruffians at the St Louis Airport. The story would end with me saying, “… so I walked up to the tall skinny kid that was being the most mouthy. I’m thinking to myself, I haven’t been in a fight since high school. I step between the kid and my wife, and when I look him in the eye (I ball my hand into a fist and shake it a little for dramatic effect) I sneeze, and apparently broke a blood vessel in my eye.” Then I let them know that it really happened in the morning at my Dad’s house and there were not any angry teens.

I was also conducting a little sociological experiment. Some people would look at the eye and not ask about it. I wonder if I can truly trust those people. I mean, are they the kind of people that wouldn’t tell you if you had a big booger hanging out of your nose? I asked one guy why he didn’t mention my eye, and he said he didn’t want to be rude. He figured that I had pink eye, and didn’t want to question my hygiene.

It should go away in a few weeks. Meanwhile, try and steer clear of the transfixing gaze of me Blood Eye!

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I recorded a Christmas album. This is a Christmas album that is inspired by my love of acoustic music and my years of playing cello with Kemper Crabb. The tracks represent my favorite Christmas songs played the way I have always wanted to hear them. Simple, singable, mostly upbeat with a bit of light beauty thrown in to add some depth. I sang all the parts, and used the instruments that I had laying around the house: acoustic guitar, cello, doumbek, udu, sitar and other various instruments. I hope you like it.

Six of the songs were included on a CrossPoint CD giveaway, part of our “I Am Santa” program. We are in the process of giving away thousands of these CDs, which is a very cool thing. There are four additional tracks on the actual album, including a new song called “I Will Be Christmas” that I have written in conjuction with our Christmas series “I Am Christmas.”

It may be a bit of a shameless appeal to commerce, but you can listen to samples and purchase the album here:

Click here for more information. Merry Christmas.