MONDAY
+ The first trailer is out for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe -- due out in December. Wow!

+ Chris Erdman's anti-Mother's Day sermon for Mother's Day.

+ My good friend Mike, another Covenant pastor, is serving in Iraq as an Army chaplain. His wife has started putting some of his pictures and dialogue on line.

+ A UCLA study says that most college students believe in God but don't have room in their lives for him.

+ The Brits have a new reality show called The Monastery -- "which most resembles The Apprentice reimagined as The Novice - a quintet of civilian men attempt to live by the rule of St Benedict at Worth Abbey in Sussex, checking their lip, will, ego and libido at the door. No prize is on offer, except presumably, as the full-time inmates of the house would say, the promise of eternal life."

What's interesting, other than the novelty of it, is that the contestants aren't necessarily Christians. So you've got a bunch of unbelievers trying to live by a "rule" designed to honor Jesus -- except they are clueless about Jesus. When you don't have any gas in the car you end up working awfully hard to push the car a short distance. Hopefully this will end up as one of those great unplanned evangelistic experiences rather than another "example" of the futility of trying to live a religious life.

+ NY Times article on charitable giving: "...In total, low earners gave 1 percent of their income to charity in 2003, while the high earners gave 3.1 percent. Looking only at those who actually gave, however, the figures tell a different story. Low-income donors managed to part with a whopping 26 percent of their incomes, while high earners gave 3.4 percent."