5-Day Weekend #1

Tonight brings the conclusion of my first 5-day weekend, with another to follow next weekend.  It’s amazing what can take place in 5 days and yet how short that time still felt.  Christmas Eve and Christmas Day obviously consumed the front end of this 5 day weekend.  Here are a few highlights…

Christmas Day:  We got up and sang Happy Birthday to Jesus and gave Christian a piece of Jesus birthday cake before diving into the gifts.  It has become a Christmas tradition of sorts.  After plowing through the gifts and having a few phone conversations with family, we kicked back and relaxed to take it all in.  Christmas lunch was a fondue extravaganza!  We had cheese fondue along with chicken and steak.  Yummy!  After allowing the food to digest we headed to the movie theater and enjoyed Bedtime Stories with Adam Sandler.  Classic Sandler in a fun and family friendly way.  Great movie!

The Next Few Days:  These, of course, included some of the typical shopping excursions.  We hit up Fatburgers in Aurora in the midst of all the retail stores.  I have proclaimed their burgers the best burgers I have ever had!  A little more shopping and then we crashed at home for the rest of the day.

Saturday:  We took another trip to the movies and watched Four Christmases.  I loved it, Neva didn’t.  What can I say?  However, before we headed to the theater Christmas was torn down in our home.  The only thing left, a few holly berries hanging on our wall that we all missed before the boxes were wrapped up and stored under the stair well.  I guess they’ll be there until next year.

Sunday:  Today was the last day of Christmas break.  We got up at 5 AM because we had to be at church early.  Neva led worship in our White Water venue and I was preaching in there today.  It was nice getting ready for the sermon this week as it was only 2o-25 minutes, compared to preaching 2 weeks ago when it was 45-50 minutes long.  Good times.  We did lunch with the Stiers at Red Robbin (another good hamburger) and then came home and crashed.  Nap time for everyone until 5 PM.

It’ll be hard going to sleep tonight, but we only have to survive 2 days of work back at the Dare 2 Share “ranch” before our 2nd 5-day weekend!  Tuesday night will be fun…once I get off work I’ll be headed to the church for our New Year’s Eve Eve (that’s right, the eve of New Year’s Eve) to deliver a devotion and Gospel presentation to the teenagers.  What a great way to bring in the New Year!

Ironman

4 out of 5 stars.

It is definitely among the elite of comic book movies, but not quite my favorite (I’ll save that for another post, another day).  One of my favorite aspects of most comic book movies is the depth of spiritual parallels that are so blatantly obvious.  Here are a few brief summaries of some of those truths found in Ironman:

1. Let me go ahead and start with the obvious, the spiritual armor of God.  Just as Tony Stark was able to suit up and get ready for battle, we are able to do the same.  Just take a look at Ephesians 6:10-20.  Our armor is spiritual in nature as the battle we are engaged in is of a spiritual nature as well.  And the weapon we are to do battle with is greater than anything Ironman’s suit is equipped with, it’s the Word of God.
2. The villian is obsessed with achieving absolute domination.  Okay – so this isn’t exclusive to the Ironman story line, however it stood out to me a little more in this movie because his drive was more than just greed of power…there were presonal motivations.  He was jealous, driven by rage, and had a personal beef with Tony Stark.  This situation much like the one that unfolded when Lucifer decided he was greater than the One and Only God.
3. And the monolague in the movie that encapsulated more spiritual truth than the rest of the movie: “There is the next mission, and nothing else…I shouldn’t be alive unless it was for a reason…I just finally know what I have to do.  And I know in my heart that it’s right.” – Tony Stark.  Can you imagine if every believer was driven in their walk with Christ to take the Gospel to the ends of the earth with this type of attitude?  Can you imagine with me what we might be capable of if we paraphrased this statement?  “There is the next soul to win, and nothing else.  For no other reasons than this do we live our lives.  There is no question regarding the purpose for which we live our lives that needs to be asked when you understand the answers are this: to grow deep in our relationship with God and to go wide with the Gospel of his Son Jesus Christ.  I know these truths to be right as they are sealed in my heart.”

So what did you think of the movie?  What other spiritual insights did you gain from?  Feel free to share your thoughts on my blog or the movie itself.

(Check out how this movie closely parallels and feeds into this year’s Dare 2 Share conference tour: Invincible)