I have returned from my week away—a week away from home and a week away from the day-to-day. On July 9th we bundled ourselves into the van and drove 1100 kilometers pretty much due south. That took us to a state park in Virginia—a state park far from civilization, one that is accessible only by back roads. There we met up with all of my family along with some of Aileen’s. And there we stayed for a week, living in some surprisingly nice cabins.

We spent the week doing family stuff, vacation stuff. We went to the beach, went for walks, talked, played, read and saw some of the sights. We drove to Appomattox and saw the home where the Civil War essentially came to an end. We drove to nearby small towns and looked (mostly unsuccessfully) for something interesting to see or do. But mostly we just stayed pretty much static, in or around the cabins. It was a genuinely relaxing vacation, a time of real rest. It was a time I needed in a bad way.

I kept my week entirely free of electronic media (not counting the GPS that was affixed to my windshield). I had no phone, no text messages, no email, no blogs, no Twitter, no Facebook, no television. I had prepared myself to find this difficult, to deal with wanting to fight the guidelines I had put in place, with wanting to “cheat” and steal a few glances at email. But what surprised me most about my media fast was how much I enjoyed it. There was not a single moment of regret and not a single moment of wanting to find a wifi signal to check in with the world. I fell of the grid and was very content to be there.

I have returned safely from my week away (more about that on Monday) but first I have one more short guest blog for you. This was sent to me by Tim Turner, the Principal Designer and founder of Subsplash and one of the creators of The Church App. Tim and I have been working together on some interesting and forthcoming projects. As I begin to reflect on my week away from all digital technologies, I appreciated Tim’s words of gratitude for them.

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We're a spoiled bunch. As 21st century techno-geeks, we have gadgets that give us everything at our fingertips. We break into fits of rage when we have to wait 2 seconds for page-loads, the Twitter Fail Whale, and the occasional commercial on Pandora. We throw a fit when we don't have perfect 3G coverage on our iPhone 4. It's so easy to get upset about these things. And it's even easier to rationalize it. I know this because I do it.

Not only do we suffer from "Chronological-Snobbery," as C. S. Lewis calls it (thinking that because we're the latest, we're also the greatest), but I would also pose that we suffer from Technological-Snobbery (thinking that we deserve the perfected latest and greatest).

We should really take a minute to chill out and remember God's grace and blessing. We are at an amazing point in history and we should celebrate that with humility. We get to experience some extraordinary advances, especially as Christians. To read the Bible, we don't need to walk mile upon dusty mile to read a handwritten scroll. We can flip open our phone and access 40 different translations, with cross-references, notes, commentary, devotions, and more. We can access decades of sermons from many incredible Bible teachers and churches both in audio and video forms, all on-demand anywhere in the world. Having all these resources available to us at the tap of a finger is a great and wonderful blessing that we should not take for granted. It's important that we not put ourselves in the middle of the iUniverse--even though our phones are called iPhone. It's not about us. It's about God and His work that he's doing through Jesus and His church. People are meeting Jesus and we're experiencing His Truth in amazing ways. If that takes an extra 2 seconds, I'll try to be ok with that.

This little reflection, which I wrote yesterday while researching my book, seemed appropriate to post this morning, one day after the 199th anniversary of the birth of Luddism and the very day that the next great technology, the iPad, goes on sale.

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Luddites have gotten a bad rap. Synonymous with irrational suspicion toward technology, Luddites were, in reality, not nearly as concerned with technology as we might think. History has not been entirely fair to them.

Early in 1811, the owners of Nottinghamshire weaving mills began to receive angry and threatening letters from General Ned Ludd and his Army of Redressers. It's unlikely that there ever was a Ned Ludd; historians believe that the name was a fictitious name fabricated by workers in the textile industry. And these workers, artisans mainly, had much to concern them. As the nation became increasingly industrialized, machines began to do the jobs previously done by men. The work of skilled craftsmen soon became the work of an apprentice or an unskilled woman operating a machine. Wages plummeted as did quality and even the demand for quality. The craftsmen were quickly becoming obsolete and impoverished. The new machines did inferior work, sure, but it was both fast and cheap--a trade-off most people were willing to make.

Under the banner of Ned Ludd, the old artisans plotted to thwart the factories that appeared bent on destroying them. They first wrote letters threatening harm to factories if they did not rid themselves of the machines. Not surprisingly, the factory owners refused to comply with the demands. And so the Luddites attacked. Within weeks factor raids were a nightly occurrence and hundreds of knitting machines had been destroyed.

I have been introducing you to the team who will help make my next book a reality. First you met Ryan the Editor and then Chris Fann the Marketing Man. Today I want to introduce you to Agent Andrew (known to some as Andrew Wolgemuth). He is, as you may have guessed, my agent. His job is to represent me before the publisher (first to help find one who would like to publish my work, then to negotiate a contract and then with anything else that happens to come up). He will stay involved with the work from beginning to end.

I’ll let Andrew introduce himself… 

I'm Tim's literary representative. Or - a bit less dramatically - his agent. Though I didn't set the course of my professional life after seeing Jerry Maguire (I'm sure a movie about a literary agent would be just as compelling) and while I didn't grow up aspiring to be a member of the publishing industry, I've been surrounded, challenged, taught, and blessed by books and great authors for my entire life.

In fact, my first official paycheck came from Wolgemuth & Hyatt Publishers a couple of decades ago (the "Wolgemuth" in that company was Robert, the owner of the agency that I now work for; the "Hyatt" was Mike - now the CEO of Thomas Nelson; my dad, Dan, was CFO for this house. They published Orel Hershiser's Out of the Blue, Max Anders' 30 Days to Understanding the Bible, and Patrick Morley's Man in the Mirror, among many other excellent titles). I helped W&H with mailings or marketing...or something that felt pretty big time for a seven-year-old.

My second employer was Can-Do Trash and Recycling Service. That was a good gig, but it's significantly less relevant to my present occupation.