The Prodigal God. Tim Keller.

Posted on August 30, 2009 by seanb724

A friend of mine gave this to me to borrow at small group a few nights ago, and it was a quick read. The book is about the parable of the Prodigal Son, which I’ll include in its entirety at the bottom of this post:

Who would think that you could get an entire book out of that? In fact, Keller himself writes:

On the surface of it, the narrative is not all that gripping. I believe, however, that if the teaching of Jesus is likened to a lake, this famous Parable of the Prodigal Son would be one of the clearest spots where we can see all the way to the bottom.

Well, you can get an entire book out of it, and a very good book at that. Most of the book focuses on the older brother rather than the younger brother, which is not quite the norm when I’ve heard this parable preached. The older brother is full of self righteousness and this parable was directed at Pharisees…

A definition of “prodigal” would be good:

prodigal: recklessly spendthrift (not just wayward)

recklessly extravagant
having spend everything

Just a few quick thoughts:

Is God’s saving grace “prodigal” ??? (not in terms of spending, but in terms of saving with no reason)
Why people like Jesus but not the Church: “Elder Brothers” (self righteousness) (pharisees)
One of the reasons the younger brother left in the first place (i.e. one of the reasons people leave the church) is because of older brothers

The Parable of the Lost Son

¹¹Jesus continued: “There was a man who had two sons. ¹²The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them.

¹³“Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. ¹⁴After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. ¹⁵So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. ¹⁶He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.

¹⁷“When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! ¹⁸I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. ¹⁹I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.’ ²⁰So he got up and went to his father.
“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.

²¹“The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.^[b]‘

²²“But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. ²³Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. ²⁴For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.

²⁵“Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. ²⁶So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ²⁷‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’

²⁸“The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. ²⁹But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. ³⁰But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’

³¹” ‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. ³²But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ “

“The Quad”

Posted on August 25, 2009 by seanb724

With a week long vacation to Colorado, I was excited to get another 14er or two under my belt. Not like I’ve done many — just the two last year — but they are a lot of fun and quite a challenge. My friend Ben had to be in Leadville later in the day (to pace someone in the Leadville 100, but he still wanted to hike with us!), so we looked for a peak in that area. It also turned out that my other friends Mike and Ethan, with whom I often hike the AT, were in the area as well– Mike has moved out there for a year to teach and Ethan was there for work. Together we decided to hike “The Quad,” a series of four 14ers you can hit in one go — Democrat, Cameron, Lincoln, and Bross.

As always, 14ers.com has the definitive guide with photos, routes, maps, and all kinds of other useful info here.

Ethan and I stayed at Mike’s house the night before. We awoke around 3:45 a.m. and hit the road so we could meet two guys guys in Colorado Springs, and head out to Kite Lake. Ben and Nicholas had left Highlands Ranch around 1:30 a.m. to go to the Leadville 100 race start at 4:00 a.m. He was to meet us at Kite Lake around 6:30, though he ended up not getting there until closer to 7. I had sent the other guys on as I figured we might catch them, since Ben would have to go fast to get back to the race.

There was quite a crowd at the Lake, and the route would be fairly crowded all day. I guess with the beautiful weather and the day being Saturday, lots of people were out.

I used the nifty RunKeeper app for the iPhone to track the route via GPS. I was out about 5 hours and this pretty much drained the battery, but it’s great to see the exact route taken and the profile/speed info.

And the profile:/speed info… That blip in speed around mile 5 is probably a mistake — RunKeeper has a GPS filter but sometimes things slip through. Either that or I decided to run a quater mile for fun. 🙂

From Kite Lake, Democrat doesn’t look too intimidating, but it was going to be quite a climb — 2000 feet in 2 miles:

Here is a view looking back towards the lake, after maybe the 1st 700-800 feet of elevation gain. If you look closely you can see a lot of cars in the parking area, but the road up to the lake was really full too. And you can see a lot of hikers on the trail below. There were probably twice that many above us already!

As Ben, Nicholas, and I were on the final approach to the summit of Democrat, we passed the other guys on the way down. The first shot shows how rocky the “trail” was, while the second shows the final climb.

The three of us on top:

I normally take a video on the top of each peak, and I did this time as well, but the peaks were all so crowded, with many folks on their cell phones and stuff like that, that it isn’t worth posting them.

After we descended to the saddle between Democrat and Cameron, Ben and Nicholas decided they better not push it and headed back to Leadville. With Ben having to pace someone later in the day, it was probably a wise decision, as the rest of the day was not easy.

This shot shows the long steady climb up Cameron… Towards the top of this, I was definitely feeling it! Though the rest of the day I felt pretty strong. I met the other guys at the top of Cameron.

Me on top of Cameron:

After Cameron it was a short hike down and up to Lincoln… The remaining 5 of us on top of Lincoln:

I was itching to keep moving (didn’t want to get cold) so I hiked up to the top of Bross by myself. It was really flat up there and again there were a lot of people. I started to hike back down as there was a split in the trail I could take to go back to the lake, but I met the other guys before that split, so hiked back up again, and then headed on down. There were sections of the downhill that were a bit hairy — super steep and mostly scree — so I took it pretty slowly in most places. The next few shots show the scree, steepness (though pictures never do justice!), and some old abandoned mines.

From the end of the trail, this is looking back the way we just descended:

RunKeeper shows it took me about 5 hours with an average pace of 1.5 miles per hour. While that seems slow, you have to remember how steep it is both on the way up and the way down, and that most of the hike is above 13,500. And I did take time at each peak to hang out (well, just for a few minutes).

It was a relatively easy way to bag four 14ers in one go, though no 14er is truly easy.

Music Monday: Avett Brothers in concert recap

Posted on August 10, 2009 by seanb724

On Saturday August 8th, I finally got to see the Avett Brothers live. Over the past couple years, they have quickly become one of my favorites. Something about their music is just right for me — combining excellent lyrics (raw, honest, intelligent), with music that you can’t really categorize — blue grass infused with country, rock, pop, folk, etc. And there is so much energy!

We saw them in Charlotte, which is their hometown, and I think that helped make their live show even more special and more energetic. There was a great combination of old and new, fast and slow. I was really surprised by a couple of these — like Left on Laura, Left on Lisa… I would have loved to see them play my all-time favorite — The Gift for Melody Anne. But I certainly can’t complain. This is a long set list (~ 2.5 hours) and it was a great show.