Even though my favorite team lost, and even though Jonathan’s favorite team wasn’t even in the game, we still had a great time hosting last night’s Super Bowl XLIV Party at Jonathan’s house last night. Judging by the picture, it looks like the students did too.

The process of marriage is a beautiful time in a couple’s life. As you can see from this clip from The Office, a wedding can be the most joyous event. But the engagement process is pretty neat too. The period of engagement is the time when two people prepare to enter into a new life together. As any married person can tell you, marriage is a completely new and different way of life.

As wonderful and special as an engagement is today, it was very different a couple thousand years ago according to old Jewish customs.

Homer Finds Out He Has 22 Hours Left To Live

If someone were to show you how you were going to die, would you want to find out? There’s a great scene in the movie Big Fish where young Edward Bloom and his friends visit a witch’s house. The witch has a magic eye and when the boys look into it, they each see how they are going to die. (I couldn’t find that clip online, but the scene linked above of Homer Simpson finding out about his impending death is a good illustration as well. And any excuse to use a Simpsons clip is fine by me.)

As Edward Bloom sees it in the movie, finding out how you will die could empower you. This valuable knowledge could enable you to face everything else in life with no fear. After all, if you knew what was going to kill you, you would know that nothing else this world throws at you could.

Unfortunately, we can’t know the time or the place of our death. Maybe that’s why life seems so daunting sometimes. Maybe life seems so hard because it is so uncertain. Maybe that’s why we seem stuck somewhere in the in-between, somewhere in between life and death. We find ourselves too afraid to die to really live, and we end up living a lukewarm life.

I know all the things you do, that you are neither hot nor cold. I wish you were one or the other! But since you are like lukewarm water, I will spit you out of my mouth!

As Revelation 3:15-16 tells us, living a lukewarm life is unacceptable. Yet that’s where most of us end up. The key to escaping this lukewarm area is to change the way we think about life and death and to gain some courage from having a bit of certainty about our future.

I think someone is trying to kill me. I don’t have any mortal enemies that I can think of. My bank account is not exorbitant. And there aren’t any serial killers running around Augusta that I know of either. But I think someone is after me.

After all, how else can I explain the type of mail that I’ve been receiving the past few weeks? I just purchased my first house a couple of months ago. In doing so I also had to purchase homeowner’s insurance for the first time. Nearly every day since I’ve moved in I’ve received mail from the insurance company telling me how vital it is that I also purchase life insurance from them. “How will your family be protected when you’re gone,” the letters ask. “Who will pay for your house if you’re not around to cover the bills?”

Do these guys know something that I don’t?

My favorite verse in the bible is Philippians 4:4. It reads:

Rejoice in the Lord always; I will say it again, rejoice!

Some people, including myself, have a hard time living this verse out. Take Elmo, for instance:

Our buddy Elmo seems to have some serious emotional problems, doesn’t he? One second he’s ecstatically happy, the next he’s nearly suicidal with despair. And why? All because the green frog won’t play with him right that instant.

We’ve all acted like Elmo before, haven’t we? Much like Kermit promises Elmo everything he wants, God promises us everything we could ever desire. Yet we complain because we want it all right now.

Elmo is guilty of an error many of us make in life. Elmo is not finding his joy in the right place.