Mission, models, and mirrors

are all elements of an ethical business life, the Christian Science Monitor reported this week.

Living a Christian life is, in large part, about ethics--how we live in ways that are responsible, honest, and maintain integrity.

Given that, these three bywords--mission, models and mirrors--seem a helpful way of looking at our life during Lent:

Whose mission are we serving with a particular action or entire way of life--our own, our culture's, or God's?

What role models do we have for the different parts of our lives--as professionals, as parents, as church members, as Christians, and as church members?

What mirrors do we peer into in order to reflect on our actions and ways of living--scripture, pop culture, confession in worship, prayer, conversation with other Christians? Do we have reflection time built into our lives, or is reflection something we rarely do?

Making sense of The Passion

Seems like the whole world's passionate about The Passion, Mel Gibson's new blockbuster about the final twelve hours of Jesus' life.

Questions about faith virtually drip from this film, and to help sort through it all, Presbyterians Today Online has prepared a helpful viewer's guide that looks at the (Roman Catholic) movie through Reformed eyes.

Take a look at the viewer's guide in preparation for our congregation's potluck meal at 6p Sunday--we'll be talking about the theology behind the film, using Diane Sawyer's interview with Gibson as a launching pad for conversation.

"Selling Ourselves Short"

That's the title of a new book reviewed this week on the Christianity Today website.

Here's the plug:

"Selling Ourselves Short: Why We Struggle to Earn a Living and Have a Life, by Catherine Wallace (Brazos Press). Why, Wallace wonders, is it only paid work that seems to count in our society? What is work, anyway? How have we been led astray by the notion of "vocation"? Is there any prospect for a truce in the Mommy Wars? Reviewer Randi Sider-Rose finds Wallace a guide worth attending to."