End and Beginning... of books!

Today, in a few minutes, I am going to begin reading Rob Bell's "Love Wins". I'm really excited to embark on this journey because of all the surrounding criticism. Most of the people that criticized the book had not even read it yet. I am a firm believer - in most cases - that we should not knock something unless we try it (a case where this wouldn't apply is like for instance with murder... not a great idea to try that one out).

I finished Donald Miller's "Blue Like Jazz" last night and boy was it amazing. One of the most refreshing reads I've experienced in a while - almost as refreshing as the Bible. The main principles reinforced how important love truly is to the equation of life and all that Christ calls us to be while we're living our various parts of life. Love will save people, or it will at least set the foundation to where they will be open to salvation. Yes of course people turn to God out of desperate circumstances, but in general, from what Donald Miller says in "Blue Like Jazz", people respond and listen to those whom they believe actually care about who they are.

It's in these modern times with the ever growing technology that someone like me worries - funny coming from a blogger - about the disconnect that comes from the use of things like social networking. "How many facebook friends do we have?" How about instead "How many times have you cried or let someone cry to you about the crappy situations they or you are encountering?" Facebook is great in a lot of ways don't get me wrong. My family can keep up with what's going on while I'm away at college. But we can't let technology determine our involvement or engaging in relationships. We can't let technology - or other distractions for that matter - take us out of being the social people God designed us to be. Now that's not to say that introverts need to make a million friends, but it means that we all need to engage socially on an intimate level with someone. That could be one or thirty people, that's between you and I and ourselves.

So with all that said, I learned a lot or was at least enlightened to what I need to work on after reading "Blue Like Jazz". Now I'm looking forward to Love Wins. More later

-Kris-