derek webb during service??

Today we an amazing church day. You heard me right. I know those words have probably not come from my lips (fingers in this case) in over 2 years. At our RiverLakes church (you can download the sermon if you want), home to countless white middle-to-upper class peeps (like myself) the service was ended with the worship band singing "I Repent" by Derek Webb. Holy crap!! Let me just take a minute to sit in silence and praise Jesus. The message was on humility and service. How can we say we are Christians, people who are following Jesus, when all our efforts seem to be to climb the latter of success (wealth, comfort, pleasure) when Jesus is going the opposite direction? This was basically the thesis of the message today. I was shocked, what's next? Promoting social justice? Keep it coming.

Next, we have what I've been listening to the last couple of days. This band is incredible. I really like every single song that they play on this album. Thanks to PasteMusic.com for this one. From Like Castanets

"The city silver in the moon.
The mountains heaped with sugar spoons.
The click and clatter of my feet along the crooked, cobbled street like castanets."

The first song on the album is the story of the Monitor versus the Merrimac. Excellent. Come on.

Also, notice the Apple Reflection style image on the above? That's all GIMP baby. I've been learning more and more how to use GIMP and am seriously loving it. Look out Photoshop, there's another Image Manipulation Program (GNU I.M.P => GIMP) in town and what's that...it's free? Brilliant. The latest release of 2.4 is very awesome and after a few hours you can get acclimated from the Photoshop environment. Previous versions have been decent, but this last update is fantastic.

Finally, I wish to point out an update to the box.net widget on the right side of the blog. There are two mp3's that I added of this guy Conrad Gempf. It's amazing storytelling that I heard about a year ago but just recently located in download-able format. Check it out! You can listen directly from the box widget, or you can visit the Emergent UK website and download them for yourself.