Wait, what did you just say?

Let me clear my ears for a second here, because it almost sounded like you said, “I find a lot of joy in sewing.”

And that can’t be right. Get behind me satan, get behind me. Sure, I like surging and pinking shears as much as the next person. Etsy is some sort of fantastic colored wonderland. I almost see Hobby Lobby as a house of worship. But I can’t believe you used the j word in regard to sewing.

Every Christian knows that only God can provide true joy. The world can make you happy. The things of this world can make you gleeful. You can LOL all day at people and places and videos of kittens chasing laser beams (they think they’re going to catch them!) but I’m not going to stand here and let you flippantly use the word “joy” to describe something that is not God.

I don’t even use the word “enjoy” because it has the root word “joy” in it. I say “enhappy” as in “I really enhappied that baseball game last night.” It’s a little awkward, but better safe than sorry my linguistically challenged Christian friend.

I’ll admit that it seems odd that I would try to use shame as a way to get you to understand the difference between Godly joy and worldly happiness, but what can I say, joy moves in mysterious ways. See that, that was a snippet of a U2 song, a band that makes me happy, but not a band that gives me joy.

See the nuances there?

You’re welcome.

This is the ad Zondervan put in the new issue of Relevant magazine. (It’s a three page ad that sits on the Donald Miller article.) I’m also reading the book manuscript right now and I am continually amazed at the things they are willing to jump into with me. The very first line of the book is probably one of the craziest things I’ve ever written. And they were completely cool with running this line in one of the largest Christian magazines on the market: The Stuff Christians Like book is “100% funnier than the Shack.” Crazy. If you haven’t ordered the book yet, only $8.76, here is the link. Pick up a few copies today.

Please don’t be offended, but the Acuff family leaves vacations like bankrobbers fleeing the scene of a crime.

When we go on long trips or short weekend visits, we like to get up ridiculously early on the last day and beat the traffic home. I blame my upbringing. My family hit rest stops like a NASCAR pit crew. We timed our average miles per hour speed when we road tripped to Sunset Beach, North Carolina from Hudson, Massachusetts and sometimes I don’t think my dad even brought the car to a complete stop. My brothers and I would just tuck our shoulder and roll out into grassy medians like Hungarian circus performers, sprinting to the bathroom while my dad circled the parking lot.

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I hate to be dramatic, but I’m pretty sure that shower tried to murder me.

It didn’t look that scary from the outside. It was pastel tiled and simply designed. The family who owned it had invited me to live with them for a few weeks while I studied Spanish in Costa Rica during college. They had a modest house outside of San Jose and all was perfectly peaceful until the first morning I took a shower.

In this section of Costa Rica, and perhaps other parts of Latin America, they did not have hot water heaters. In order to get warm water, you had to first turn on the metal showerhead. Then, once the water was on, you flipped a big breaker box that sparked and hissed, sending an electrical current into the pipe, thus warming the water.

This act broke every rule of electricity I had ever learned in shop class as a young lad. Let’s go over the process once more:

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A few weeks ago, I was standing next to a minister when someone approached him and said, “Sorry the professional football team of your metropolitan area is doing so poorly this year.” (OK, that’s not a direct quote, but occasionally to protect the identity of the people I write about I have to cloak them in fancy talk and change “Tennessee Titans” to “professional football team of your metropolitan area” and “sucks” to “doing so poorly.” It’s a filter I have on my computer called “fancy talk.” Control F.)

Without missing a beat, upon being reminded of how lousy the pro football team in his town was, the pastor laughed and said, “To tell you the truth, church is great when they have a horrible year. More people come and are more engaged. So it’s actually a good thing for the church.”

I had never considered that before. Since I’m not a pastor, I never realized that maybe all those years my dad was praying for the New England Patriots to stink. And that when he left Massachusetts and moved to North Carolina, and they won their first Super Bowl under Tom Brady, there was perhaps a direct correlation.

The implications are pretty staggering and I started to wonder what other things pastors might secretly be praying for …

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For some reason, Gavin DeGraw is not nearly as famous as I feel like he should be. I have a bunch of his music and every time I hear his song “In Love with a Girl” on the radio I turn it up. I dig him but he’s never really had that breakout hit like Jason Mraz and “I’m Yours.” (By the way, Jack Johnson is the reason Jason Mraz leaned that direction which is the reason Train recently leaned that direction with their song “Hey Soul Sister.” It’s all related.)

I was reminded of my love for Gavin DeGraw recently when I got the album “Love & the lack thereof” by a guy named Greg Sczebel. On the first track, Sczebel sounds a lot like Gavin DeGraw in a good way. Heavy on piano and fun hooks, I ended up digging this whole album. I thought you would too, which is why I’m excited to give away 5 copies. (That’s my review policy by the way, if folks send me books or albums, I’ll always try to give out copies to you too. Although sometimes people want to send me Amish romance fiction and I just can’t roll that way even if secretly I hope Jereziah does end up in the arms of Ruth Watterson on the lonely plains of Wisconsin.)

I digress.

Let’s have a wicked simple comment contest today.

The question is “what should we do with Stuff Christians Like in 2010?”

What should we add? What should we do less of? What topics are missing? What technologies are horribly absent?

Answer any way you’d like. (More posts about being single at church! Less giveaways! More Serious Wednesday type posts! Etc.)

Or if you’d like to see us just keep doing what we’ve been doing, feel free to say that too.

Comment until Tuesday, December 29th and then I’ll pick 5 CD winners.

Thanks!

Merry Christmas!

As a dad, it’s my job to get the most dangerous presents possible for my kids for Christmas. I would call this year a success. Here’s a giant yellow ball I got them. The goal is to climb inside and then find the biggest hill in the neighborhood, roll down it and then go get stitches.

What would your caption be for this photo?

Caption please.

A few months ago, I wrote a post in which I said as a Christian you had to root for University of Florida quarterback Tim Tebow. In order to remove some of the inevitable heat I would take in claiming that Christians must support a quarterback just because he’s a believer, I told you that I didn’t make up that rule. I simply received it from the wise beak of a dove named Cornelius who is employed by the Southern Baptist Convention.

I intimated that he regularly drops of messages for me on my doorstep. Wes Molebash, a talented artist who I hope to help get published, agreed to draw Cornelius. Of all the things I could collectively give you this Christmas, an illustration of a talking dove that dispenses wisdom seemed to be the best idea for a very Stuff Christians Like Christmas.

Without further ado, I give you Cornelius …

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It’s two days before Christmas. Rather than roll out a typical Stuff Christians Like post I thought it might be better to share the card we sent out to our friends and family members this Christmas. It may or may not start with a lyric from Fergie and contain extreme pressure to buy the Stuff Christians Like book. Because that just how the Acuffs get down …

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Have you ever quit?

Has their ever been some action or attitude or behavior you wanted to eliminate from your life? Or maybe it was a good habit you wanted to start doing. Some beneficial thing you wanted to tightly bind to your daily activities.

It doesn’t have to be monumental, like kicking heroin. It can be small, seemingly insignificant. Maybe you want to eat one cream cheese on your bagel in the morning instead of two. Maybe you’re going to join the gym and take off those pounds that an age-slowed metabolism has put on. Maybe you’ll quit smoking or start reading your bible every morning.

The action isn’t what matters, there are a million things it can be. What matters is if you ever actually do it. And if you’re at all like me, the one thing that really stands between you and achieving a goal is the start date …

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