Saturday This and That

I really like Thomas Shreiner's Magnifying God in Christ. I'm only in the first chapter, but reading it through the second time. It's about the now and the not yet aspects of the Kingdom of God.

As it happens, I also picked up (downloaded) a free copy of Gene Edwards' The Prisoner in the Third Cell, a short novel about "John the Immerser." I'd never read Edwards, although I've heard him lauded from time to time by others. The book is both simple and intense, and also happens to be about the now and not yet aspects of the Kingdom of God.

I'm reading both of these books on my Nook. I'm liking ebooks well enough, in some ways better than print, and in some important ways not so much. I've heard a lot of people say, "I just love to feel a book in my hands and turn the pages...." I understand that and share (to an extent) that affection, but for me it's not essential. The words, after all, are the important thing. And as I enjoy book after book on my "electronic reading device," it seems to take on a certain friendliness and charm, so that when I see it sitting on the desk beside me I get a little thrill of excitement, knowing there's good reading in there.

I've been pretty active on Facebook for a while now, and as an experiment have begun "following" people on Twitter. "As an experiment," because I just don't get Twitter. Not yet, anyway. Of course I'm "following" mostly people I don't actually know, in the hopes of discovering why I should be interested in their "tweets." I haven't "tweeted" anything yet myself, because I can't find a reason to--but I do have seven followers! I'm thinking my first tweet should be a haiku.

I've been attending a Bible study with a church planter. The church planter is a really good teacher, keeps things very Gospel-centered, and with each passing week I'm a little more liking the idea of being a part of this process. By the way, if you want to hear from my church planter friend you can go here.

I'm running again. That means my strained quad is healed, or just about. Running gently now, and slower, but loving the challenge. Meanwhile, all these wild shrubs are in blossom along my route. Doing a little research, I think they might be white cinguefoil bushes. At first, for reasons I forget, I was calling them trifloras for some reason, but that's definitely wrong. Anyway, they're everywhere just now. They're hearty and wild and quite pickery too. Does cinquefoil have pickers? The flowers look right, anyway. In some places they climb up into the lower branches of the trees. So I wrote a haiku:

Cinquefoil blossoms
tangled high in the maples
a petal-tower

First tweet?