Friday Summary Report, September 7

I don’t have anything too exciting to report on this Friday morning, but here are some interesting/good/important links from around the worldwide web:

(1) First, a story from Louisiana, where, in the aftermath of Hurricane Isaac, a father and son teamed up to rescue 120 people over a 12-hour period with boats. Jesse Shaffer, the father, insisted that he and his son are not heroes, but their neighbors would disagree. A great story, and a glimpse of what Jesus meant by “Love thy neighbor.”

(2) Here’s a cool story (with picture) about Clemson wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins getting baptized   after football practice.

(3) The last couple of weeks have been dominated by politics, with both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions taking place. I am not a fan of politics, in large part because it takes place in some weird twilight zone where the truth neither matters nor is really expected. I heard a ton of people raving about President Clinton’s speech, but was it accurate? Similar articles could probably be (and probably have been) written about every other speech that was given at either convention.

(4) Matt Dabbs wrote a really good blog post on the heinousness of abortion. The fact that abortion has been relegated to the political arena and has been turned into a mere talking point by both parties shows how warped and skewed our society has become. I mentioned this in the comments section of the blog I linked to above, but I’ll repeat it here: I am convinced that the legalized genocide against our own unborn is the greatest evil of our society. It is all too often discounted as ‘just another political issue’, but it far transcends politics. I sometimes wonder how long a nation that shows such little value for life will be allowed to continue.

(5) For those who are involved in youth ministry, here is a great post with some very practical suggestions for ways to get your students involved as leaders within your youth group. As Joseph points out, student leadership doesn’t have to be part of some big, elaborate, complicated program.

Richard Ben Cramer on Joe DiMaggio: The Mirror Of A Nation

A while back, I wrote a post about Joe DiMaggio.

Then, while reading an article written about him after his death, I found a quote that I really liked:

“In Joe, the nation found a mirror for its best self. In the hard-knuckled ’30s, he was the Sicilian immigrant’s son who came from nothing, made it big. As the war drew nearer, he was our can-do poster boy, getting hits every day through the summer of ’41. In the war, he sacrificed his best years but came back as a winner—bigger than ever. In postwar wealth and ease, he was our Broadway Joe, squiring Miss Americas at the Stork Club…until he wooed and won, in Marilyn Monroe, the most beautiful girl America could dream up. And even when he lost that girl for good, in 1962, he was us, at the start of our decade of assassination and bereavement. He was, at every turn, our idea of the American hero—one man we could look at, who made us feel good. For it was always about how we felt…with Joe. That’s how it worked. No wonder we strove, for six decades—the nation, its presidents, its citizens, almost everyone—to give Joe the hero’s life. It was always about us.”