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Goodbye, NIV.
The NIV Bible is no more. Alas.
The version that many grew up reading has finally ridden off into the sunset, never to return. Zondervan has phased it out, buried it, and replaced it with something else. Many people denied that a significant change had taken place, and tried to act like the Bible being sold now as the NIV is indeed the NIV they grew up with. That myth was sustainable for a while, but eventually it just didn’t work. This year many Christian schools finally dropped the NIV, and replaced it with something else. Even AWANA was forced to make the change.
I still have an original NIV Study Bible that I use often for my personal Bible study. But if I were to advise someone on what translation to buy I would have to recommend either ESV or NASB. I didn't realize that the NIV had changed so much.
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A great roundup of quotes on manliness from The Art of Manliness.
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Some great advice on dating which sounds a lot like the discussions I have had with my own daughters:
Don’t date just for the sake of dating. Sure, you can take a stroll through the park just for the sake of strolling through the park, but dating ain’t a stroll through the park. It’s a complicated and serious thing; it can also be fun, but it isn’t something you should do for pure recreation. Dating is supposed to be a means to an end. Or, maybe a better way of putting it, dating is a means to a beginning.
To put it simply: If you know for a fact that you would never marry a certain person, then you shouldn’t be in a romantic relationship with them. Knowingly staying in a relationship without a future is like riding a dying horse into the desert. It’s a slow, painful death march, and there is no chance of it working out in your favor. So go ahead and date, but date with a purpose. Date with a goal. Date with your eyes toward marriage. I know that might seem old fashioned. In fact it is old fashioned, which is why you should listen to it.
Back in those old, dark days, they didn’t have anything called “dating”; instead they had “courtship.” And courting would have looked a lot like dating, with one difference: There was a point. They had a purpose. They had a goal. They were interested in being adults and making a commitment, and the courting process would tell them whether they should or could make that commitment to each other. Marriage was the ultimate destination, and if it became apparent that this destination could not be reached, they ended the courtship and moved on with their lives. The modern dating strategy is different. You don’t have one common goal or desired destination. Instead, you spin in circles together until someone gets dizzy and jumps off. The sudden stop sends the other person hurtling into space, while you wander aimlessly away, searching desperately for another random stranger to latch onto for an indefinite period of false hopes and disappointments.
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Five Amazing Things People Buried in the Desert. No it's not treasure but interesting anyway.
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The Last 24 Notes
Tom Day is not a man given to extravagance. He thinks he’s living high on a reporter’s nickel if he orders a beef sandwich to go at the local Buona sub shop. He shops at Goodwill every Sunday, hoping to pick up bargains, like his handsome $35 suits. But if there’s one superfluity that Day especially can’t abide, it is that of empty rhetoric.
There’s been a lot of talk about “the troops” the last many years: Supporting The Troops. Hugging The Troops. Splitting A Malt With The Troops. (At least when not Forgetting The Troops, hurriedly paging past the “Faces of the Fallen” feature in your local paper to get to the movie listings.) The talk usually comes from helmet-haired cable anchors or men with soft hands who type things for a living. They use those who serve like polemical mascots, to run up the score either for or against the war of the moment. But to Tom Day, “duty . . . honor . . . sacrifice” aren’t just Memorial Day buzzwords that trigger the Pavlovian anticipation of picnic foods and mattress-outlet sales.
They are words that actually require something of him, the dwindling resource you can’t buy more of: time. For the 73-year-old former Marine serves those who serve. Or rather, he serves those who have served. Day is the man who, both on his own and through the 7,500-plus volunteers in the organization he founded, Bugles Across America, has saved the tradition of playing live “Taps” at military funerals.
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