Prayers for everyone effected by Hurricane Gustav.

Students returned to IWU over the weekend. Classes begin tomorrow. Everyone on campus has been preparing for the start of a new year. I haven’t heard any official enrollment numbers yet, but there were 890 freshman and 125 transfers here for New Student Orientation. Here’s to a great year!

And after the primary elections, I thought the general election would be boring. Guess not!

I haven’t had a chance to learn much about Governor Palin yet, but my gut reaction is that her family needs her more than the country does right now.

I think the Democrats put on a good convention. I was looking forward to the Republican convention starting today. I hope we get some rousing Republican speeches yet this week.

Ken Schenck writes on Education in America.

Jim Wallis calls for Christian Civility in this election.

A question many communicators have asked: How does Obama write his speeches?

Donald Miller is blogging again. His first post: Donald and Barack Exchange Emails.
Be sure to read some of the comments. Apparently Don’s humor is a bit subtle for some people. 🙂

Lately I’ve been getting a lot of traffic from the members only section of Gaither.com. Anyone a  Gaither.com member who can tell me what’s going on? Does it have anything to do with a goat that sings the AU Alma Mater?

High gas prices result in lower traffic fatalities.

Wonder when Michael Phelps got so fast? lol

Who knew rhythmic gymnastics was so beautiful?

From the you’ve got to be kidding me department.

In yesterdays sermon, Pastor Steve profoundly challenged us to be slow. We are not holy because we lack patience. You can download it here soon.

Visits to my website jumped 500% for some reason. If you’re new to the site-welcome!

The Marion Sonic opens at 11:00 am today. Can anyone say “early lunch”?

I spent several good days at FLAME last week. I got to spend some time with some great ministry people, including Joshatwestern and Mark from Revitalize Your Church.

I am always inspired whenever I watch people who are the best at what they do. I’ve been inspired a lot this week.

One of my posts from here showed up on McCain’s website this week. All I know is I didn’t do it.

I haven’t had a chance to watch the Saddleback Civil Forum yet, but I’m very interested. Last night Rick Warren spent an hour each interviewing Obama and McCain. Watch the complete forum here.

I liked some of the function of the new version of embracethegodlife.com I rolled out over the summer, but I finally decided it was too cluttered and hard to read. So, I unveiled an even newer update over the weekend. 🙂
Now I just need to make time to write more content…

Did you see the US mens swimming team win gold in the 4×100 relay? Amazing!

This weekend, I ran 7KM for the first time. Felt great!

Started reading Jesus for President. Great stuff. Looking forward to having Shane on campus this fall.

Interesting article from Foreign Affairs on how the troop surge in Iraq may have created short term gains at the expense of a long term stable Iraq.