So now didn't we go off yesterday to the library and get ourselves some free videos to watch? (This cadence I blame on my having started on yet another Maeve Binchy novel set in Ireland...)
The thing is, we've got ourselves something of a cash flow problem this month, so we're trying every available means to economize. One such means is getting movies from the library. Generally we head straight to the VCR section because the DVDs have already been decimated, and if it means saving bucks we're perfectly comfortable with old technologies. (As the old custodian at Geneva College's McCartney Library used to say, "I'm pinching pennies so hard you can hear Lincoln squeak.")
Anyhow, we went wild with our selections, walking out the door with six VCRs under our arms. This is a strategy which generally works since there's got to be at least one good movie out of the bunch. We find that by five or ten minutes in we usually know if it's a stinker, and in fact the first one we tried last night, Novocaine starring Steve Martin, who's usually good for belly laughs, was one such. The characters, even the lead protagonist, seemed both unfunny and sleazy.
But then we watched a winner, namely, Dangerous Minds starring Michelle Pfeiffer (sp?). Based on a true story of a former female Marine who took a job teaching the toughest of the toughs--ones they'd put into a special class in an inner city school. While Pfieffer seemed a bit unbelievable as an ex-Marine, and just too too weak at first to have actually survived, the storyline carried the day and had me (as is my wont, being an old softie) eventually shedding tears. Actually the To Sir With Love plot of an idealistic teacher going into a tough district to teaching tough kids, struggling, and finally winning their hearts, seems to get told over and over in film and to work even when we know what's coming. By such films Hollywood perhaps slightly makes up for the raw sewage they've pumped through other films--at least in my humble opinion...
In other news I've continued to be helped and encouraged by means of books. Sometimes you feel alone, don't have a lot of social contact or Christian fellowship, and a good book can help fill the gap, make you feel in some slight way you've entered into conversation with the author. It's particularly encouraging when you've been praying and praying about some situation or other, and it seems like God directly addresses--I mean really precisely--the issue you've been praying about.
That happend again this week when I was reading Leap Over A Wall: Earthy Spirituality for Everyday Christians by Eugene Peterson. The book is all about the life of David and how he lived large and "earthily" and not very like the way many evangelicals live in all their narrowness and picky-pickyness. He sinned, big time, yet always was crying out to God. He lived for years in less than the best, even in seemingly morally compromised, situations--such as the time when he was on the run from Saul and put himself at the service of the Philistine king. People Peterson knew and counselled as a pastor, he said, often were in various binds such as David's, not knowing what to do, doing their best to survive, etc., yet in it and behind it God was at work. When they get to the end of the story they'll see how God has made things turn out as they should, even when they thought they were being quite naughty, or weren't quite giving (to quote Oswald Chambers) "my utmost for His highest."
Not that we're allowed to go around delberately sinning, I think Peterson would say, but, "hey, lighten up. Stop your fussing and introspecting. Do your best and know that God's in control."
(Speaking of control, it's time now for me to take control of my schedule and ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM to church.)
The thing is, we've got ourselves something of a cash flow problem this month, so we're trying every available means to economize. One such means is getting movies from the library. Generally we head straight to the VCR section because the DVDs have already been decimated, and if it means saving bucks we're perfectly comfortable with old technologies. (As the old custodian at Geneva College's McCartney Library used to say, "I'm pinching pennies so hard you can hear Lincoln squeak.")
Anyhow, we went wild with our selections, walking out the door with six VCRs under our arms. This is a strategy which generally works since there's got to be at least one good movie out of the bunch. We find that by five or ten minutes in we usually know if it's a stinker, and in fact the first one we tried last night, Novocaine starring Steve Martin, who's usually good for belly laughs, was one such. The characters, even the lead protagonist, seemed both unfunny and sleazy.
But then we watched a winner, namely, Dangerous Minds starring Michelle Pfeiffer (sp?). Based on a true story of a former female Marine who took a job teaching the toughest of the toughs--ones they'd put into a special class in an inner city school. While Pfieffer seemed a bit unbelievable as an ex-Marine, and just too too weak at first to have actually survived, the storyline carried the day and had me (as is my wont, being an old softie) eventually shedding tears. Actually the To Sir With Love plot of an idealistic teacher going into a tough district to teaching tough kids, struggling, and finally winning their hearts, seems to get told over and over in film and to work even when we know what's coming. By such films Hollywood perhaps slightly makes up for the raw sewage they've pumped through other films--at least in my humble opinion...
In other news I've continued to be helped and encouraged by means of books. Sometimes you feel alone, don't have a lot of social contact or Christian fellowship, and a good book can help fill the gap, make you feel in some slight way you've entered into conversation with the author. It's particularly encouraging when you've been praying and praying about some situation or other, and it seems like God directly addresses--I mean really precisely--the issue you've been praying about.
That happend again this week when I was reading Leap Over A Wall: Earthy Spirituality for Everyday Christians by Eugene Peterson. The book is all about the life of David and how he lived large and "earthily" and not very like the way many evangelicals live in all their narrowness and picky-pickyness. He sinned, big time, yet always was crying out to God. He lived for years in less than the best, even in seemingly morally compromised, situations--such as the time when he was on the run from Saul and put himself at the service of the Philistine king. People Peterson knew and counselled as a pastor, he said, often were in various binds such as David's, not knowing what to do, doing their best to survive, etc., yet in it and behind it God was at work. When they get to the end of the story they'll see how God has made things turn out as they should, even when they thought they were being quite naughty, or weren't quite giving (to quote Oswald Chambers) "my utmost for His highest."
Not that we're allowed to go around delberately sinning, I think Peterson would say, but, "hey, lighten up. Stop your fussing and introspecting. Do your best and know that God's in control."
(Speaking of control, it's time now for me to take control of my schedule and ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM to church.)
posted by Ted | 7:05 AM
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