Random Acts of Linkage #108

In today’s humour section, we have a selection of lines purporting to be from Steven Wright…

• After they make styrofoam, what do they ship it in?
• The ice cream truck in my neighborhood plays “Helter Skelter.”
• I lost a button hole today. Where am I gonna find another one?
• I made wine out of raisins so I wouldn’t have to wait for it to age.
• I saw a subliminal advertising executive, but only for a second.
• I saw a close friend of mine the other day… He said, “Steven, why haven’t you called me?” I said, “I can’t call everyone I want. My new phone has no five on it.” He said, “How long have you had it?” I said, “I don’t know. My calendar has no sevens on it.”
• I had a friend who was a clown. When he died, all his friends went to the funeral in one car.
• How young can you die of old age?
• If you were going to shoot a mime, would you use a silencer?
• I used to be a narrator for bad mimes.
• I hate it when my foot falls asleep during the day because that means it’s going to be up all night.
• A friend of mine once sent me a post card with a picture of the entire planet Earth taken from space. On the back it said, “Wish you were here.”
• Four years ago . . . No, it was yesterday. Today I . . . No, that wasn’t me. Sometimes I . . . No, I don’t.

That ought to hold you for a while… and now we can move on to the random linkage for the week.

1. Kingdom Grace on Penal Substitionary Atonement
2. What Happened to the Twelve Apostles? How Their Deaths Evidence Easter
3. Here’s fodder for a good word study: The “one anothers” and the “each others”
4. I love the Emmaus Road story in Luke, and love to imagine what the conversation was like. Ben Witherington retells the story
5. Tom Wright: The Church must stop trivialising Easter
6. John Stackhouse asks why Jesus was crucified, and so does Larry Hurtado
7. Scot McKnight continues a series discussing New Testament commentaries — Pastor’s Bookshelf: John. Good list; the serious scholar will include Schnackenburg’s 3 volumes as well as work by Culpepper and Dunn. Scot then continues his series with commentaries on Acts.
8. Paul Fromont points out Rowan Williams’ talk, An introduction to St John’s Gospel
9. On false memory syndrome
10. Should You Revitalize a Church, or Plant a New One? A couple good points of insight here.
11. Todd Hiestand is Rethinking the Evils of Suburbia
12. Gordon MacDonald is Speaking into the Meltdown; says “Our times demand a new kind of leadership”
13. Congrats to Julie Clawson, whose book Everyday Justice: The Global Impact of Our Daily Choices is due out from IVP in October.
14. RSS viewers may need to click through to the post to see the video.

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    I’ve loved Les Miserables since I first saw the live production some years back. It was simply captivating. We’ll still pull out the CD and give it a listen, and have been inspired to do so again this week. I imagine that you’ve already seen the clip a dozen times or so, but the surprise performance that’s got everyone abuzz really was stunning. After Susan Boyle’s introduction when she announces what song she’s going to sing, you think “Oh, that’s ambitious — this is going to flop big-time.” And then she starts to sing. Wow.