Father's Day and other thoughts

Happy Father's day! It's kind've cool being a dad today. I'm proud of my status as a father; and I hope I do the godly title honor and not defame our sovereign great abba.

I'll get to Mary's prayer tomorrow. I'm excited for it, check back.

I just finished Angels and Demons by Dan Brown. Really good book. He does a great job at leaving cliff-hangers and forcing you to continue reading. It's just a very difficult book to put down, just ask Melissa! The Science v. Religion theme seems to dominate the entire book, for good and bad. I just wish people wouldn't read the book and claim Dan Brown's subtlely conveyed worldview as their own. To his credit, the guy is ridiculously intelligent, but he is no theologian or philosophical scholar on the existence of God or His church. Brown is just off on a few points, in both the Da Vinci Code and this book, which I will not go into here unless someone eagerly wants to know. But if you're looking for an entertaining and capitvating story, look no further than either of those books.

I'm curious what people will think about this, but we started a new family tradition on my brithday. We decided that for each of our birthdays henceforth we will receive no gifts. Rather, we will give gifts to every other person in our family. So, for example, on my birthday I got Melissa a CD and Noah a set of building blocks. I'm am super excited about this new tradition. If it is true that it really is better to give than to receive, than why not act this truism out on our birthdays? How great would it be to have a son that is more eager to give gifts and toys rather than hoard them for himself? Forget our son, what if that was my heart? It saddens me to see little kids (though I know this is the natural selfish sinful nature) tear through gifts only to ask, "Where is the next one!?" or "What else?" We want to do our best to instill in Noah a sense of giving. Additionally, we hope this will help our kid(s) learn to be excited about the achievements and special occasions of others. Granted it'll be for selfish reasons Noah is excited about my birthday and Melissa's, but that'll be a step from me having a hard-time even remembering my parents birthdays, far removed from anything even resembling excitments for them.
If this idea sounds familiar to you, it's because I stole it from JRR Tolkien's hobbit-world. This was the practice of Hobbits. They took the theme farther to give gifts to anyone coming to the birthday party; in Bilbo's case this was hundreds of hobbits.

I would love to hear what you think about this! Post comments below!