Coram Deo ~

Looking at contemporary culture from a Christian worldview


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25 Great Quotes from Halftime: Moving From Success to Significance  by Bob Buford

A few friends and I have continued the Friday morning book club we started the last few years of our career at a Fortune 50 organization. The first book we read was Bob Buford’s Halftime: Moving From Success to Significance, which had been recommended by an executive who also took early retirement.

One of our group members, a former teacher who had spent his final years of his career in the learning function, suggested that we have a final review of the book going over our lessons learned from the book. From that exercise, I pulled 25 of my favorite quotes from the book that I would like to share with you:

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MUSIC REVIEWS and NEWS

Milk & Honey by Crowder
****

Milk & Honey is Crowder’s fourth studio album, and his follow-up to 2018’s I Know a Ghost. Crowder has written that the title Milk & Honey is about promise. The album is a celebration of the future we are marching towards together and a prayer that each of us can live in this promise in the here and now. It features a variety of musical genres, though less of the swamp rock and bluegrass that his previous albums have included. Several of the songs are about Jesus and will soon find themselves into worship services. This is one of my top albums of 2020 thus far.

Below are a few comments about each song:
Good God Almighty – This song was written by Jeff Sojka, Ben Glover and Crowder, and produced by Sojka and Glover. The song has charted high on Christian radio. Crowder describes this song as some good old-fashioned group singing, people singing in harmony. An excellent opening song.

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  • More of this review
  • Music News
  • Song of the Week Lyrics: River of Life by Mac Powell

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BOOK REVIEWS and NEWS


Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just by Timothy Keller. Viking. 256 pages. 2010
****

I’ve gone through this book twice, once as an audiobook and once as a participant in a book club. Though written in 2010, the book is perhaps even more relevant now than it was when first published.
Keller tells us that the book is both for believers who find the Bible a trustworthy guide, and for those who wonder if Christianity is a positive influence in the world. He also wants to challenge those who do not believe in Christianity to see the Bible not as a repressive text, but as the basis for the modern understanding of human rights.
Keller begins each chapter with a call to justice taken directly from the Bible to show how those words can become the foundation of a just, generous human community. His aim is to introduce many to a new way of thinking about the Bible, justice, and grace.
Keller writes that our society is deeply divided over the very definition of justice. It is not only Bible-believing people who care about justice or are willing to sacrifice in order to bring it about. Nearly everyone thinks they are on justice’s side. He writes that no current political framework can fully convey the comprehensive Biblical vision of justice, and that Christians should never identify too closely with a particular political party or philosophy.

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BOOK REVIEWS ~ More of this review…
BOOK CLUB ~ Providence by John Piper
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My Review of JUNGLE CRUISE

Jungle Cruise, rated PG-13
***

Jungle Cruise, the latest Disney film to be inspired by one of their theme park attractions, is an entertaining action/adventure film, that includes a lot of humor, though may be too dark and scary for very young children. The film, which had a budget of approximately $200 million, was directed by Jaume Collet-Serra (The Commuter, Non-Stop), and had a team of five writers.
The film opens in 1916, with MacGregor Houghton, played by British comedian Jack Whitehall, trying to convince the Royal Academy in London to finance an expedition into the Amazon to find the Tears of the Moon tree, the petals of which are said to have healing powers. While he is speaking, his sister, Lily, played by Emily Blunt (A Quiet Place), sneaks into the archives of the Academy and steals an arrowhead from the last Amazon expedition, which is key to unlocking the location of the tree. Lily steals the arrowhead just as German Joachim, played by two-time Emmy nominee Jesse Plemons (Fargo, Black Mirror) is set to collect it after making a large donation to the Academy. Continue reading