Trouble with a Capital “T”

There’s bound to come some trouble to your life
But that ain’t nothing to be afraid of
There’s bound to come some trouble to your life
But that ain’t no reason to fear
I know there’s bound to come some trouble to your life
But reach out to Jesus, hold on tight
He’s been there before and He knows what it’s like
You’ll find He’s there

There’s bound to come some tears up in your eyes
That ain’t nothing to be ashamed of
I know there’s bound to come some tears up in your eyes
That ain’t no reason to fear
I know there’s bound to come some tears up in your eyes
Reach out to Jesus, hold on tight
He’s been there before and He knows what it’s like
You’ll find He’s there

Now people say maybe things will get better
People say maybe it won’t be long
And people say maybe you’ll wake up tomorrow
And it’ll all be gone
Well I only know that maybes just ain’t enough
When you need something to hold on
There’s only one thing that’s clear

I know there’s bound to come some trouble to your life
But that ain’t nothing to be afraid of
I know there’s bound to come some tears up in your eyes
That ain’t no reason to fear
I know there’s bound to come some trouble to your life
Reach out to Jesus, hold on tight
He’s been there before and He knows what it’s like
You’ll find He’s there

Rich Mullins

Godless

I ran across this statement recently:

“The greatest danger of television and movies is helping (us) to grow accustomed to the enjoyment of the absence of God.”

I’ve pondered that for a couple of weeks. I generally agree with the sentiment: we need to be careful about what we intake, and a lot of our intake these days is television and movies. (Note the absence of books, probably for a couple of reasons: one, it’s possible to find books that aren’t absent God, and two, who reads books anymore?) But there are couple of implications that I’d like to tackle.

Alicia Florrick and the Formidability of Forgiveness

Alicia

The Good Wife has long been my favorite show on TV.1 It’s legal shenanigans are often ludicrous but always fascinating, it has some of the most well-written and well-developed characters around, and many of those characters are multi-faceted women that are the antithesis of the one-notes we usually get on network TV.

A couple of weeks ago, the title character, Alicia Florrick, has a bombshell dropped on her when Eli, a long-time associate and friend, tells her that he once did something that interfered with Alicia’s relationship with another man she loved. Eli is telling her in order to ask for her forgiveness, but until now, she didn’t even know it had happened.

You Don’t Always Get What You Want

Twelve Years Prior

Her name was Rachel, and she was perfect. How could anything that small and helpless and beautiful not be perfect? So what if she wasn’t a boy? If someone offered him ten sons at this moment, he would turn them all down. Because she was perfect.

Her name was Yael, and she was annoyed. Her time was supposed to have been finished five days ago, but she was still bleeding. She had gone past before, but never this long. She wasn’t concerned, but she was certainly getting tired of the extra laundry.

That Was Sloppy and I Didn’t See It Coming

Several months ago1 at my church we sang a new to me song. The song made mention of a “sloppy wet kiss” and I thought that was interesting but didn’t have time to think much about it since the next line was already being sung.

Heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss

A week or three later we sang the song again, only this time the sloppy wet kiss went missing, and I thought that was even more interesting. It was interesting enough I spent the rest of the song hitting the Internet to find out what the deal was.