This morning I was encouraged by today’s devotional reading in New Morning Mercies by Paul David Tripp. I’ve been enjoying the daily readings from this volume for the past few months, and even though I only pick up the book every few days or so, the message is powerful and encouraging.

Yesterday, I was chatting with a coworker about an Apple Maps Van he saw driving around town. Interestingly, I also spotted a similar van while riding my bike home from work a few days earlier, and I had attempted to sneakily take a blurry photo of the vehicle. My coworker and I shared stories and guessed at the type of sensor technology that was mounted on the vehicle, while speculating what Apple’s actual purpose might be for driving this vehicle around the Denver metro area.

I’m currently reading Essentialism by Greg McKeown, and I’ve really enjoyed the three-quarters of the book that I have gotten through so far. It’s overall an easy read, with a compelling message and fairly recent examples. Although the author’s suggestions and tips haven’t been as specific as I might have liked, the general themes have done the job of getting me thinking about my focus and my goals.

I was reading this morning in Acts 11 about the early church in Antioch, how the believers in that city were the first to be called “Christians”. At the end of the chapter, there’s this interesting story about the believers’ reaction to a warning about hardship:

A few days ago, I rediscovered Rands in Repose, thanks to a mention from Chris Bowler that I saw last week. After browsing around on Rands’ site, I was inspired by an article where he shared pictures of iPhone home screens that some of his followers had posted on Twitter.