Cerebral Palsy & Cord Blood Banking

Why should you bank or donate the cord blood from your pregnancy? The following video from a news station in Arizona, shares one answer. For more information, read this.

Donald Miller on Story Writing

Image via Wikipedia

This morning, our devotional speaker was New York Times best selling author, Donald Miller. He's most famous from his book Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality, but his latest book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life is picking up steam as well.

His books are on my list to read, but I was trying to distance myself with a little time, so the hype from his books would not taint my reading of them. I'm afraid I should go ahead and dive in soon if his books are as good as his talk.

This morning Donald spoke about what he has learned in the are of screen writing when discussing the idea of turning one of his books into a movie. He then made application to how that plays out in our stories as Christians.

Some of the key points I walked away with were:

• "Charge the final scene with meaning." The end of your story gains it's power and meaningfulness from all of the small acts of goodness we practice through life.
  
  
• "We are only what we do." Our stories aren't told because we say we are good people, or because we want to be good people. They are only told by our actions.
  
  
• "What you want needs to be meaningful". In a good story, you will know what every character wants. The characters whose story is the most powerful is the one who wanted something that was meaningful.
  
  
• "There has to be conflict." Our stories cannot be played out in some perfect utopia. Our life is full of conflict, but that is what sets up the climax of the story so that when it's resolved, the story ends in a powerful way. When it comes to "Christianity", conflict will be with us until the end of the age. It's what will make the God's story so fascinating in the end when all of the tension is relieved.
  

His words were a good reminder that God is not a character in my story. I'm a character in His.

Are you entitled to respect?

Image by Sinthonia via Flickr

We are told that respect should be given to certain people not because of the person, but because of a position that person holds. In many cases, we may not like our President or the grumpy old man next door who fought for our country, but we often come to terms with our dislikes by saying "I may not like him, but I respect him."

I'm not against the idea of respecting others because of their position, but those who are searching for respect from others can often find themselves dissapointed and unsatisfied when they use their position or status as an entitlement to respect. It seems shallow.

All this leads me to questions about parenthood. Do you earn respect from your children or do you expect it because you're their parent?

Give reasons to be honored and respected. Don't just take it.

"It's probably God"

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We've all heard the universal answers to every question asked in church congregations which are usually either "God" or "Jesus". This weekend I realized that we pick up on the universal answers for everything by the time we are three years old.

As my 3 year old son and I were playing the cycling event on Wii Sports Resort, my Mii turned blue because he was out of breath. My son looked up and said "People aren't blue!"

Not knowing what kind of response I would get, I asked him "Who is blue?"

He answered, "Probably God."