Check This Book out!

I've made up my mind: if you only read 3 books this year (by the way, 3 is NOT a lot), 1 should be The Relationship Principles of Jesus by Tom Holladay (the Bible should be another one & I'm still out-to-lunch on the third). And when I say "you" I mean you. Here's just a sample of it's profound simplicity and potent power from my first day notes:

Day #1 - Nothing Is More Important

• “Relationships are painful. Relationships are wonderful. We all live in the drama that plays out between these two truths.”
• “Relationships are filled with both wonder and pain.”
• “When Jesus came to this earth, he demonstrated that he understands both [wonder and pain]...Jesus came to show you how to enjoy a new way of relating to God and to others.”
• “...How easy it is to value things over people.”
• “Priorities become most important when we must make choices. If we had enough time to do everything, everything could be a priority. But we don’t…”
• “If we had the power to do every good thing we wanted to do, our choices wouldn’t be so important. But we can’t…”
• “When Jesus spoke about the priority of relationships, he could not have been clearer. He taught that relationships must be given the highest of values…”
• “He values our relationship with God, and he values our relationships with each other.
  “Your relationships with God and others will last all the way into eternity.”
• “A life without relationships may well be a simpler life, but it is also an empty life.”
• “The path to the greatest life possible and the greatest joy possible is found in the priority that Jesus taught us to keep at the top of the list: place the highest value on relationships.”

That is only the beginning! Personally, I believe that people all around me (including myself) that are in my age-group need to get the whole relationship-thing down because if we don't our lives will end up wasting so many opportunities and so much time in areas that are not as important.