Into a Golden Era

Posted on August 6, 2026 by Barbara Harper

Into a Golden Era is the seventh novel in Gabrielle Meyer’s Time Crossers series, where the main character lives in two different years and must decide by her 25th birthday which timeline to remain in.

Ally is a well-known actress in 1929 California during the “Golden Age” of Hollywood. Her father owns a small movie studio, but it’s on the verge on bankruptcy. Bigger studios like that of L. B. Mayer are absorbing the smaller ones. Ally’s family is throwing everything into making one last film, Little Women, with Ally in the starring role as Jo.

Mayer approaches Ally’s father with a proposition. One of Mayer’s most famous stars, Spencer Hayes, has gotten into some trouble due to bad decisions and alliances. Mayer will loan Spencer to Ally’s father for the role of Laurie in the Little Women film if Ally will agree to date Spencer publicly. Mayer’s thought is that Ally’s good reputation will rub off on Spencer, making his latest scandal ebb away.

Ally’s father is afraid the opposite will happen, that Spencer’s bad reputation will rub off on Ally. But Ally agrees to the arrangement in order to save the family studio.

In 1849, Ally and her father and sister have just arrived in San Francisco. Her father had attempted to help Bronson Alcott, father of Louisa May, start a school in Massachusetts. When that failed, Ally persuaded him to travel out west and try to start a school there. Secretly, she wants to use her knowledge of the Gold Rush era from her 1929 path to help her father find gold, so he and her sister would be taken care of if she chooses to remain in 1929.

However, her father falls gravely ill en route. They are taken to a boarding house where Ally agrees to help in the kitchen to support them. However, she is stunned to learn that the owner of the boarding house is an infamous gangster. According to a recent popular movie in 1929, a fire is supposed to start in that very boarding house the next day, setting off a series of fires throughout the city. Ally isn’t supposed to knowingly change history in either timeline: if she does, she’ll forfeit her life in that timeline. But she can’t let the building burn down, not when her father is too ill to be moved.

To be honest, the Gold Rush era is about my least favorite time period in history to read about. But I did find both timelines interesting. Ally has difficult decisions to make in both timelines. She learns that there is often more to a person’s life that what appears on the surface.

Gabrielle always manages to put a little different twist on the time crossing scenario into each story. But I felt that in this book and the last one, there were a few too many time crossers in the story. If I remember correctly, in the first book, there were very few. Now it seems just a little too convenient that there are so many who turn up just at the right time to help out.

I’m still enjoying the series, though. There are enough hints about the next story in this one that I am already looking forward to it.

C. S. Lewis’ Letters to an American Lady.

Posted on August 5, 2026 by Barbara Harper

C. S. Lewis was a prolific letter-writer. Just the third volume of his collected letters covering the last thirteen years of his life is over 6000 pages.

Yet Lewis often felt burdened by the volume of letters he needed to write. He even asked friends not to write to him at Christmastime because he heard from so many people then, answering their correspondence became almost impossible.

Clyde S. Kilby says in his preface of Lewis’ Letters to an American Lady that Lewis said “one essential of the happy life is ‘ that a man would have almost no mail and never dread the postman’s knock.'” Yet he wrote because he “believed taking time out to advise or encourage another Christian was both a humbling of one’s talents before the Lord and also as much the work of the Holy Spirit as producing a book” and “one’s days and his talents are given him not for private expenditure but to be used in all lowliness within the will of God. Though the flesh abhorred it, he mortified the flesh.”

The American lady this collection of letters was written to is unnamed, by her request. After Lewis’ death, she donated his letters to Wheaton College. She was a widow and a “southern aristocrat” who “loves to talk and speaks well.” She also wrote “reviews articles, poems, and stories.” She had fallen upon hard times financially as well as family problems and, in the end, various health issues.

Her letters to Lewis are not printed here, but her first seems to have praised him for his books. He writes that he would have to “be either of angelic humility or diabolical pride not to be pleased at all the things you say about my books.” She must have shared some of her troubles with him, because he assures her of his sympathy and prayers.

Their correspondence goes on to include over a hundred letters. His tone is always cordial, though at times he says he can only write “a pen scratch” because of busyness or illness.

She writes that she has converted to Catholicism. He says that path is not for him, but he did not want their correspondence to be controversial. He was happy that her “faith and joy are so obviously increased.”

Some of his notes are sprinkled with humor:

About sleep: do you find that the great secret (if one can do it) is not to care whether you sleep? Sleep is a jade who scorns her suitors but woos her scorners.

As for wrinkles—pshaw! Why shouldn’t we have wrinkles? Honorable insignia of long service in this warfare.

Over the thirteen years they wrote to each other, we see glimpses of his personal life and what books he was working at the time. His marriage to Joy and her death took place in this time period. But most of the letters focus on encouraging her in her troubles.

Some of the quotes that stood out to me, some of which are well-known:

How little people know who think that holiness is dull. When one meets the real thing (and perhaps, like you, I have met it only once) it is irresistible. If even 10% of the world’s population had it, would not the whole world be converted and happy before a year’s end?

(Concerning someone she had a problem with) I mustn’t encourage you to go on thinking about her: that, after all, is almost the greatest evil nasty people can do us—to become an obsession, to haunt our minds. A brief prayer for them, and then away to other subjects, is the thing, if one can only stick to it.

I suppose the only way with thorns in the flesh (until one can get them out) is not to press on the place where they are embedded; i.e. to stop one’s thoughts (firmly but gently).

Your faith is a support to me as well as to yourself.

Remember one is given strength to bear what happens to one, but not the 100 and 1 different things that might happen.

As for the bug-bear of Old Peoples’ Homes, remember that our ignorance works both ways. Just as some of the things we have longed and hoped for turn out to be dust and ashes when we get them, so the things we have most dreaded sometimes turn out to be quite nice. If you ever do have to go to a Home, Christ will be there just as much as in any other place.

Re some of their health problems:

Not that you and I have now much reason to rejoice in having bodies! Like old automobiles, aren’t they? where all sorts of apparently different things keep going wrong, but what they add up to is the plain fact that the machine is wearing out. Well, it was not meant to last forever. Still, I have a kindly feeling for the old rattle-trap. Through it God showed me that whole side of His beauty which is embodied in colour, sound, smell and size. No doubt it has often led me astray: but not half so often, I suspect, as my soul has led it astray.

Pain is terrible, but surely you need not have fear as well? Can you not see death as the friend and deliverer? It means stripping off that body which is tormenting you: like taking off a hairshirt or getting out of a dungeon. What is there to be afraid of?

Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave it with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.

Remember, tho’ we struggle against things because we are afraid of them, it is often the other way round—we get afraid because we struggle. Are you struggling, resisting? Don’t you think Our Lord says to you “Peace, child, peace. Relax. Let go. Underneath are the everlasting arms. Let go, I will catch you. Do you trust me so little?”

Of course this may not be the end. Then make it a good rehearsal.

Though I’ve had this book in my Kindle collection for several years, it wasn’t on my radar to read any time soon. But in looking for a particular quote (the one about having better things ahead than behind), I began to read that in context, then read some more, then started at the beginning. Though I read some of these in the last volume of his collected letters, it was good to have all his correspondence to one person put together.

I’m so thankful this lady shared Lewis’ letters with the public. They were an encouragement to me, as I am sure they have been to many others.

(Updated to add: someone thought this book contained letters written to Joy Davidman, who later became Lewis’ wife. No, these letters are to someone named Mary. I don’t think Lewis knew Joy yet. None of his letters to Joy are in the larger volume of collected letters.)

Cranford

Posted on August 4, 2026 by Barbara Harper

Cranford was originally written as a series of vignettes by Elizabeth Gaskell in Charles Dickens’ magazine, Household Words. She started out with just two, but he encouraged her to write more. Afterward, with a little alteration, the pieces were formed into a book.

As such, there’s not an overarching plot through the book. The stories take place in a fictional small town whose residents are mostly older single women living in genteel poverty. They live by a strict code–“calling” is only for three hours a day and only for fifteen minutes. They are constantly evaluating situations by class–how to dress for this person’s get-together, whether it was right for that person to marry this one, and so forth.

The two main characters are sisters, Deborah and Matty Jenkyns, daughters of the former rector. Deborah is older and very strict in her views of what is acceptable and what is not. Yet she surprises others by breaking protocol sometimes in her compassion for others. She leads the way in new thinking that class is not always the basis for one’s actions.

When she passes away early on in the book, the more timid Matty has to come into her own.

The stories are told through a Miss Smith, who comes to visit often. This is what I would call a quiet book. The characters experience ups and downs, joys and sorrows. Gentle humor is sprinkled throughout.

When a man with two daughters moves into the neighborhood, the dynamics of society are shaken up a bit, especially as he doesn’t know that things like one’s financial situation are not discussed in public. A series of robberies take place just as a magician comes to town, making him a suspect. Matty comes across a former suitor she’d had to turn down decades ago.

This Kindle version of the book has a couple of interesting appendices, one on the historical context of the book, and one on Gaskell’s life. Many of the stories are based on Gaskell’s memories of living in Knutsford (including one tale of a cow dressed in flannel. She told someone she scaled down some descriptions a bit, thinking no one would believe the full version). The former article says, “The tale of Cranford, then, is the tale of England in miniature: a society caught in a moment of profound transition, learning to reconcile its cherished traditions with the irresistible tide of a new and unfamiliar age.” It also says Gaskell captured the “quiet comedies and secret sorrows of her characters.”

Gaskell’s family were Unitarians, and she married a Unitarian minister. The article describes them as “Dissenters,” though I had not associated that word with Unitarianism. The article says, “This progressive faith emphasized reason, social responsibility, and individual conscience over rigid doctrine” and “shaped her entire worldview. It instilled in her a powerful sense of moral duty and a deep-seated empathy for those on the margins of society.” I would not agree with many religious aspects of Unitarianism (they deny the doctrine of the Trinity, for one thing), but that does not come up much in the book. The emphasis here is more on “social responsibility.”

I first read Cranford about fifteen years ago, and thought it merely “pleasant.” But then I started watching the BBC series, which combines stories from this book as well as My Lady Ludlow and Mr. Harrison’s Confessions. That renewed my interest in the characters, so I went through the book again, this time via audiobook superbly read by Prunella Scales.

Though I like others of Gaskell’s books better, I liked this one much more than I did on my first reading.

Devotional Principles and Practices

Posted on August 2, 2026 by Barbara Harper

A few weeks ago, two different friends asked me what I do for my devotional time. Reading the Bible and praying is also known as quiet time, QT, devos, and who knows how many other names.

I felt a little awkward as I shared, because I certainly don’t hold myself up as a perfect example of what a quiet time should look like. And I felt I needed to share how and why I got to the practices I use now. One of my themes is that there is not one right devotional routine.

Still, I remember as a young Christian, it helped to have some practical advice rather than a general admonition to read my Bible.

After communicating with these friends, I began to think about sharing what I told them in a blog post. Instead, I decided to share some general devotional principles I’ve learned along the way.

Read with a plan. God can speak to us when we open the Bible at random. But, generally, we get more from a passage when we read it in context. I’m a big proponent of reading through a book of the Bible at a time. We wouldn’t read line two of paragraph one of a friend’s letter one day, then line four from paragraph five the next. We’d read the whole thing, then probably go back and reread certain parts.

I was also taught early on to read the whole Bible. God says it is all inspired by Him, so we should read it all. If we just floated in and out of our favorite passages, we’d miss some buried nuggets in unexpected places. Plus, some parts of the Bible help us understand other parts.

When I first became a Christian as a teenager, my church advocated reading the Bible through in a year. I am so thankful for that, both because I needed the structure and because that practice grounded me spiritually more than anything else.

But I found that I didn’t have time to stop and ponder what I was reading because then I’d get behind on my schedule. And once I fell behind, it was very hard to catch up.

There are multiple Bible reading plans on the Internet and in various Bible apps (a good variety is here). There are plans to read the Bible in 90 days, a year, or two, or five. Some plans incorporate readings from various parts of the Bible; some focus on a book at the time. Some plans go straight through from Genesis to Revelation (as I did for years). Others go back and forth between the Old and New Testaments (as I do now). The key is to find one that works for you. However, you’re not tied to that plan for the rest of your life–you can try different things.

Sometimes you’ll read a longer passage as an overview: other times you’ll study a smaller passage more in depth. I share ways to do both here: Ways to Both Read and Study the Bible.

If a certain verse or phrase or principle in a Bible passage piques our interest, it’s perfectly acceptable to stop and investigate it more fully. Or, alternatively, we could make a note of that verse or thought and come back to it later..

Read purposefully, not passively. One problem with using any kind of plan to read the Bible is that we can fall into a “getting the assignment done” mentality. We work through our routine and then check “Bible reading” off for the day.

But what is our purpose for reading the Bible? To get to know our God better and learn how He wants us to live.

When I first started reading the Bible, I was advised to underline promises with blue, warnings with red, commands with black, and salvation verses with yellow. That was helpful as far as it went. But that focus might cause us to miss the overall theme of a passage.

One of my pastors used to say the Bible is “divinely brief.” The Bible says God’s thoughts are more than the sand. Of all the multitudes of things God could have shared with us, He chose what is in the Bible. So everything there has a purpose.

As we read a passage, we can ask a number of questions. Who is saying what to whom? What is the line of thought developed in the passage? What does this teach me about God? Is the passage prescriptive, telling me something to do, like forgive others, don’t lie, etc.? Or is it descriptive, telling me what people did that I am supposed to learn from but not copy, like polygamy in the OT? What words are repeated? What are connecting words connecting?

Read prayerfully. The psalmist prayed, “Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law” (Psalm 119:18). Jesus opened people’s minds to understand the Scriptures (Luke 24:45). We can’t understand the Bible in our own human reasoning. We need God to unfold it for us.

We often think of prayer as a separate part of devotions, before or after Bible reading. But we can pray while we read. When we come across verses of praise, we can express them to God right then. When we’re convicted by what we’re reading, we can confess that to God immediately, ask His forgiveness and His help to change.

Read thoughtfully. Paul wrote to Timothy, “Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything” (2 Timothy 2:7). God told Joshua to meditate on His law day and night (Joshua 1:8), and we’re told the righteous person does just that (Psalm 1:2).

Biblical meditation isn’t emptying the mind: it’s turning the passage over in our thoughts, looking at it from all angles.

Sometimes part of our devotional routine might be staring out the window, thinking.

Read with aids. A good study Bible made a great difference in my understanding, giving background information, the meaning of the original Greek or Hebrew words, the different interpretations of a passage. Trusted study aids like Warren Wiesrbe’s With the Word or “Be” series are helpful. I’ve also used some of the Good Book Company’s “For You” books: Isaiah for You, etc. I’ve just started one of Charles Swindoll’s Insights series on books of the Bible. There are multitudes of Bible study aids and commentaries: perhaps ask your pastor or a good friend for recommendations.

Studying the Bible with a friend or group can be helpful, too. Discussing what we’ve read helps reinforce it. Often, someone will bring out a point we missed.

Read obediently. God tells us not just to hear but to do His Word (James 1:22). After (or sometimes during) reading the Bible, we need to ask what our response should be. Sometimes we need a definite outward response: we may need to apologize to someone, change our viewing habits, stop wasting money on certain purchases, etc. But sometimes the response is inward: I need God’s grace to respond to that person with love rather than irritation; I need to change my attitude toward a job I’m not looking forward to; I need to be grateful rather than complaining.

Remember there is no perfect plan. No matter what routine we use, there will be days we wrestle with sleepiness, distractions, or boredom. We have to battle our flesh as well as the enemy of our souls who would like to keep us from God’s Word.

Every time in the Word will not give us blinding flashes of insight. Every time in the Bible will not leave us feeling warm and cozy. Sometimes God will speak to a specific need or answer a particular question for us from His Word. But most often, it’s the daily intake of spiritual food that nourishes us and sustains us. It’s like physical food. Some meals are a Thanksgiving feast. Others are less memorable, but even the tuna casserole and peanut butter sandwiches nourish us.

Sometimes we can get so caught up in our devotional routines that we forget why we’re actually having them. We feel good when we’ve accomplished everything on our list and vaguely uneasy when we haven’t. But the point of a devotional time isn’t just to work through a routine: it’s to meet with God. That can happen over one verse or thirty if we have a heart that wants to meet with and get to know our God better.

There’s so much more that could be said–in fact, the book I am *trying* to make time to write is on this very subject.

If you’d like a peek into what some other women do for their devotional time, Christa Threllfall did a series of interviews on that topic here.

(I often link up with some of these bloggers.)

Laudable Linkage

Posted on August 1, 2026 by Barbara Harper

Here’s some of the good reading found this week:

How to Hold onto Faith When You Feel Disappointed. “Do you sometimes feel as if life and maybe even God has disappointed you? We picture ideal scenarios for our lives, and sometimes (usually) our reality falls short of our hopes and expectations. Sometimes it’s our fault, and other times, despite our best efforts, life goes sideways. We end up feeling hurt, disappointed, and even betrayed by God. We know He is all powerful and can order the circumstances of our lives any way He chooses, so why this?”

You Still Have to Eat on Vacation, HT to Challies. “When life takes a turn, or when we leave town, most of us tend to push Bible reading aside until our circumstances return to normal. If we’re not able to sit down at our kitchen table for a quiet hour of in-depth study, we don’t even crack open God’s Word. Somewhere along the way, we’ve told ourselves that if we’re not able to feast, we shouldn’t eat at all, not realizing that a handful of almonds in the middle of the night is far better than allowing our souls to starve.”

When You’re Looking for Substantial Devotional Reading. I don’t usually put reviews here to books I have not read, because I don’t want to recommend something I haven’t checked myself. But I love what Michele wrote in the first few paragraphs here about devotions and devotionals. (Plus, I have read one other book from each of the authors she mentioned, so I think they are probably all right.)

A Liturgy with a Pause–for the Killing, HT to Challies.”Picture this scene: A person is sitting in a room. A member of the clergy is with them, offering them communion, with the classic formulation: “The body of Christ (given for you). The blood of Christ (shed for you).” Some other prayers are said. A few moments later, a nurse or doctor administers a lethal injection, killing the person. Is this a scene from some disturbing dystopian movie? Sadly, no—it is the disturbing reality of the state of the Anglican Church of Canada.”

10 Reasons to Avoid Sexual Immorality. “Easy sex will keep you from being wise. To make this point, Solomon lists ten consequences of sexual immorality in Proverbs 6:24-35. Before reading my list, I urge you to read the passage yourself and see how many consequences you can observe. Perhaps making your own list will help you to remember these things when you face temptation.”

We Weren’t Always This Way. “I’ve been surprised by the friendships that begin right now, the ones where we step into each other’s lives with decades behind us already—decades in which we did not know each other. Decades we can describe only in summaries and stories. We bring all these years with us into the conversation, yet we sometimes forget that not everyone was alongside us for them.”

Better than Me, HT to Challies. “What is my greatest weakness? A few weeks go by and I know the answer. As I sit on the couch and scroll through my phone I notice an icky feeling bubble to the surface. Social media used to provide inspiration, but it now breeds comparison. I compare myself to others and my past self, able to do more—and do it faster, better, and stronger. I used to fit into smaller clothes, do more jumping jacks, or stay up later. Despite my accomplishments, there’s always someone who performs better.”

What Is a Woman? The Question Our World Is Afraid to Answer. “Between ‘be exactly like a man,’ ‘fit this narrow mold,’ and ‘make it up as you go’—you’re caught in the crossfire. The confusion is real. The answers seem impossible to find. Everyone claims to know the answer, but their answers conflict. But what if, among all these competing voices, there’s one you can actually trust? . . . There is. It’s the voice of the One who made you.”

When Christians Don’t Get Along: How the Gospel Calls Us to Unity. “I don’t know about you, but the thought of being personally named in Scripture because you were causing division in the church is a horrifying prospect. Yet this passage also gives us a powerful reminder: the Lord cares deeply about the unity of His Church, and the gospel is far greater than our differences, preferences, or personal agendas.”

Long-View vs. Short-view Leadership. “Call me simple, but my capacity to absorb ‘revolutionary tips for transformative change’ has a pretty low threshold. And I don’t have much patience with Christian resources that seem to be driven more by marketing than by Scripture. That said, God has graciously allowed me to stumble on some life-altering principles along the way. I call it Long View Leadership.”

No Christian can afford to neglect his Bible. If he does, he will be stunted and dwarfed in his spiritual life, and he will be a prey to doubts and fears, and may be carried away by every wind of doctrine.–Harry A. Ironside

Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on July 31, 2026 by Barbara Harper

I’m pausing as always on Friday to savor some of the week’s happening before they fly out of memory. I’m thankful that Susanne at Living to Tell the Story hosts this weekly exercise in gratefulness.

1. Time with Timothy. We watched him Saturday night when his parents had a meeting. After dinner, we watched A Bug’s Life. I think he enjoyed it. 🙂 As I was putting it away, I looked over the DVDs and videos in our cabinet, most from when the boys were younger, and thought we really need to have more movie nights.

2. My blog’s 20th birthday! To celebrate, I am hosting a giveaway on my blog birthday post. God has taught me so much through it, and I am so grateful for the friendships that have arisen through it.

3. Family celebration. Jim told me he wanted to take the family out to a favorite restaurant to celebrate my blog birthday. That seemed maybe a little odd, but I won’t turn down a dinner out. 🙂 Then I heard talk that Mittu was making a cake for it, and Jim asked the restaurant if it was ok to bring it in. And then, as we walked in, Jim grabbed a gift bag from the car. This was going to be a bigger deal than I thought. 🙂 I was a little self-conscious, but I appreciated their love and thoughtfulness. We even Face-Timed with Jeremy at the restaurant for a little bit. Jim had put together a summary of what was going on in the world at the time I started my blog and how old we all were at the time, and then he had printed off my first and tenth blog birthday posts and read them out loud.

One of his gifts was taking the picture from the header of my blog and having it put on a coffee mug. He also added an “extra” in front of the “ordinary” of my tag line. 🙂

Mittu made this beautiful Coca-Cola Chocolate Cake, and Jason 3-D printed the “blog anniversary” decoration.

4. An excellent waiter.He was not only generally good, but he offered to being clean plates and forks when we cut the cake and take-home boxes so we could divide the remnants of it among ourselves.

5. A funny moment. Someone with the restaurant–not a waitress, but maybe the manager–saw the cake on our table and asked what we were celebrating. When we told her, she came over to me and asked me about my blog. As I was telling her, she told another server who came by, “This lady has had a blog for 20 years called Stray Cats.” 🙂

Bonus: Lunch with my friend Melanie yesterday at Red Lobster.

How was your last week of July?

July Reflections

Posted on July 30, 2026 by Barbara Harper

It’s amazing how fast July flew by. We enjoyed a low-key 250th Independence Day with the family. The guys went camping for a few days while Mittu and I stayed at our respective homes and got things done. We celebrated Jason’s birthday and Timothy’s finishing the sixth grade as well as my blog’s 20th birthday–more on that in tomorrow’s Friday’s Fave Five!

Creating

I made two cards this month. The first was for Jason’s birthday:

I used a few things from a camping-themed scrapbooking packet and a few things from a forest creature themed packet. I was delighted to find this little frame in the latter packet–I had forgotten it was there. The chair and tent are 3-D layered stickers.

This was Timothy’s:

Watching

We rented Project Hail Mary from Amazon Prime Video when it’s rental price finally came down to a reasonable level. Its premise is that a middle school science teacher wakes up on a spaceship with no memory of how he got there and what he’s supposed to do. Slowly everything comes back to him and is shown to us in flashbacks. Some mysterious substance is destroying the sun, and he and two others were tasked with finding out what the problem is and what to do about it–only he finds the other two dead when he wakes up. He finds an alien investigating the same problem, and they team up. For such a dire situation, the movie has a sprinkling of humor and a surprising amount of heart. It’s implausible that one man, even a quiet genius, could figure out how to fly a spaceship (when he is not an astronaut), how to communicate with a previously unknown alien species, and how to fix the problem with the sun. But setting that aside, the story is quite enjoyable.

(BTW, don’t get this movie confused with The Last Hail M.A.R.Y., as my husband did. It’s the same premise of a dying sun, but it is truly awful in every way. In fact, if Mystery Science Theater, which lampooned bad movies, was still a thing, I’d nominate this film for them to cover.)

Little House on the Prairie is a new remake of the earlier Michael Landon series and the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. This season had eight episodes on Netflix. I understand another season has been approved. It was just okay. Their are some variations from the original storyline, like the family’s close friendship, after a few rough starts, with a local Osage family which has a daughter the same age as Laura. Mary and Laura bicker sometimes in the books, but that seems to be taken up a notch here. One fun moment was recognizing Allison Arngrim, who played Nellie Oleson in the original series, as a scary drifter Mary and Laura run into when they get lost in the woods. There’s a conflation of the Osage and settlers’ religion which was not in either the series or the books. There were anachronistic phrases like “being the best version of ourselves” and “becoming who you were always meant to be.” But it was wholesome family viewing. A good article about the series is here.

We also watched Enola Holmes 3 on Netflix, the third movie based on a series of books about the much younger sister of Sherlock Holmes who solves cases in her own style. Enola was a teenager in the first two films but now is about to be married. But a crisis comes up, of course. This is a fun series with the distinction that Enola breaks the fourth wall to speak directly to viewers at times.

I started watching Cranford via Hulu a couple of nights when Jim was away. I knew the series was based on a book of the same name by Elizabeth Gaskell, but I didn’t know a couple of her other books were incorporated as well (My Lady Ludlow and a novella titled Mr. Harrison’s Confessions). The series takes place in a small English town in the 1840s, with a small town’s ups and downs. The series portrays the women who make up the main characters as much more gossipy than they are in the books. I loved Judi Dench as Mattie Jenkyns, the quieter, more timid younger sister who has to step out of her comfort zone when her older sister dies. I’m almost finished with the first season.

Reading

Since last time, I have finished (titles link to my reviews):

None Like Him: 10 Ways God Is Different From Us and Why That’s a Good Thing by Jen Wilkin with a friend. I didn’t review this since I did after my first reading of it, here. This book is worthy of multiple rereads.
Mist of Midnight by Sandra Byrd. A Gothic-type novel in which a young woman has to flee India, where her missionary family has been killed in an uprising. But when she arrives at her family’s ancestral home in England, she finds that a woman claiming to be her has come beforehand–and has died.
Theo of Golden by Allen Levi. A cultured, wealthy older man originally from Portugal comes to the small fictional town of Golden, GA on business. When he comes into a coffee shop which has portraits of local people on its walls, he gets the idea to buy the portraits a few at a time and give them to their subjects. His kindness and generosity have a ripple effect across the town. Though the premise didn’t sound very interesting to me at first, and the story was a slow burn, eventually I loved it.
The Spykeeper of Marseille by Roseanna M. White. A novel based on the real-life story of a woman who headed up a large spy ring in France during WWII, coordinating with MI6 in England. Very good.
Elisabeth Elliot: The Brave Girl Who Chose to Love by Ellen Vaughn, a children’s book about Elisabeth Elliot.
You’ve Been Pooping All Wrong: How to Make Your Bowel Movements a Joy by Trisha Pasricha. Not reviewed, not as helpful as I had hoped.

I’m currently reading:

Insights on Revelation by Charles Swindoll.
Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear.
Letters to an American Lady by C. S. Lewis.
How People Change by Paul David Tripp and and Timothy S. Lane.
Into a Golden Era by Gabrielle Meyer.
Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell. Watching the series made me want to reread the book.

Blogging

This month marks the 20th birthday of my blog! To celebrate, I am hosting a giveaway here which will end Monday morning.

Besides that and the weekly Friday Fave Fives, Saturday Laudable Linkage, and book reviews, I’ve posted these since last time:

The Danger of Blessings. We usually think that our trials and struggles are the biggest dangers to our spiritual lives. But our blessings pose a danger as well.
Aging Is a Series of Reliquishments. It seems that we face continuing losses as we age. But God is gracious to help us face our mortality in increments. As we face each relinquishment, we’re geared a little more toward eternity.
Assorted Stray Thoughts. A hodgepodge of mostly unrelated ponderings.
Kinder Than They Deserve. When people speak to us hatefully or dismissively, we’re tempted to respond in kind. But God showed grace–unmerited favor–when we didn’t deserve it, and He wants us to show grace to others.
The Wrong Kind of Nostalgia. It’s fun to reminiscence about what life was like when we were younger. But nostalgia can take a couple of wrong directions if we’re not careful.

Writing

I did get a bit done on my revisions, but not as much as I had hoped. Our critique group is taking the month of August off.

Looking ahead

The month of August is a busy but happy one for us. My oldest son will be coming to visit for about ten days, when our family will celebrate his birthday and mine as well as enjoying many get-togethers. The ladies event at church that was supposed to happen in July got postponed until August. And I just learned last night that my family from TX will be coming at the end of the month.

How was your July? Are you looking forward to anything in August?

(I often link up with some of these bloggers.)

20th Blog Birthday and Giveaway!

Posted on July 27, 2026 by Barbara Harper

Today marks twenty years since I first started this blog!

I began a blog for a number of reasons. First, I wanted to encourage other Christian women and to be a light to those who do not yet know Christ as Savior.

Secondly, I wanted to learn to write by writing.

Writing helps me think things through, so a lot of my posts are just that: something I hear or read will trigger a thought, and as I mull it over, sometimes a blog post is the result.

I also love to talk about books and reading, so I share many of the books I read here.

Back then, a lot of blogs had the feel of visiting over the backyard fence. Though some still retain that vibe, many blogs have become more specialized.

I never wanted to do a niche blog because, in my experience those kinds of blogs start repeating themselves after about three years. Besides, my interests are too varied.

I hadn’t heard the term “generalist” at the time, but when I did, it clicked. I felt I had a valid label for my blog. 🙂

It took a while for me to fall into my present pattern of blogging. I wanted to keep the “neighborly” feel but still maintain something of a regular schedule.

One of my passions is getting women into the Word of God. If I have an underlying theme to my blog, it would be applying ourselves to the Word of God and applying the Word to our lives.

One thing I wish I had done differently was to think more about the title of my blog. I considered whether to have a blog for weeks or months. When I finally decided to, one of the first things I had to decide on was a name. I hadn’t thought about that in all my ponderings. “Stray Thoughts” is accurate, but I wish I had come up with something a little more meaningful and creative. But after so long a time, it seems better to keep it as is than change it and confuse people.

When I first started the blog, I had three sons at home. Now we’re empty nesters and my husband is retired. We’ve added a sweet daughter-in-law and handsome grandson to the family.

One of the most unexpected but blessed results of this blog has been making so many friends here over the years. Some of my dearest friends are miles away, and we’ll likely never meet in person until heaven. I so appreciate your encouragement and comments over the years. Without you, this would just be an online journal.

I haven’t always marked my blog anniversary, but twenty years seems like a milestone. I decided to prepare a giveaway package and draw names from the comments here for a winner to send it to. But I had so much fun putting it together, I decided to give away two packages to mark two decades.

Both packages have some pretty pens, post-it notes, bookmarks, and such. One package has one of my favorite books to recommend, Women of the Word by Jen Wilkin. I started to use another book for the second package, then thought about another copy of Women of the Word. But then I saw a prayer journal at Hobby Lobby and got it for the second package.

Inside the prayer journal:

If you’d like to be entered to win one of these packages, just leave a comment on this post. I’ll use the Random Number Generator to choose two recipients a week from today. I’m afraid I can only ship to US addresses due to postage costs. Note : I’ll include all comments in the drawing unless you tell me not to include you.

If you have a preference for Package 1 or Package 2, let me know.

I’d love to hear a little bit about you, especially those who don’t normally comment. If you’ve been reading a while, I’d love for you to share how long or perhaps a favorite memory of reading here.

Once again, thank YOU all for being here and for your kindness!

Package 1:

Package 2:

Thank you so much for your kind comments! You’ve touched my heart.

The giveaway is closed. The Winner of Package 1 is Lisa, and the winner of Package 2 is Michele Morin!

The Wrong Kind of Nostalgia

Posted on July 26, 2026 by Barbara Harper

A few years ago, we visited the Mast General Store downtown. I was hit with a wave of nostalgia as I came to a section of toys from not only my children’s childhoods, but from mine as well. I didn’t know some of those toys were still made.

Little Golden Books have a warm place in my heart because I read many of them to my kids, and I remember some from my childhood.

Going through boxes in our shed, My husband and I discovered high school and college notebooks as well as letters from our parents and cards our children had made for us when they were small.

When we talk about the price that things used to be, I’m reminded that the half-pint milk cartons served at our school cafeteria used to be five cents. I remember when McDonald’s first became a company, their commercials said that you could get a hamburger, fries, and a soft drink and still get change back from a dollar.

I remember as a child in southeast Texas, hardly anyone had central air conditioning. After dinner in the evenings, people would bring lawn chairs out in the front yard and visit with neighbors while kids rode their bicycles up and down the street or ran through sprinklers. My dad took kids for rides on his little motor scooter.

We often look back on the past through a rosy glow. The “good old days” seem simple and idyllic.

But were they?

I see acquaintances my age on Facebook posting memes saying we need to get back to the way things were years ago. Our childhoods would have been in the 60s: the era of the Viet Nam war, civil unrest, the emergence of “free love” and the drug culture, the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr., the Cold War. Though our own neighborhoods seemed peaceful, the world at large was not. And who knows what we’re forgetting from our own childhoods: fights with siblings, school cliques, feeling left out.

It’s not wrong to ooh and aah over our old baby pictures or talk fondly about how things used to be. But the wrong kind of nostalgia errs in a few ways.

One error is a condescending attitude that everything was better back in our day, and everything should be done the way we did it. I’ve seen snarky memes that say things like:

“We didn’t need to take water bottles with us everywhere we went. We drank from a hose and lived to tell about it.”
“We didn’t have coping skills. We had chores and a ‘You’ll live.'”
We didn’t wear helmets on our Schwinns. A fall and a few scrapes, and we were back to riding our bikes again.”
“The world wasn’t wrapped in bubble wrap. We slid down hot metal slides and got splinters from wooden swings. That made us tougher.”
“We didn’t go to Urgent Care for every splinter. Mom got out her tweezers.”

Some changes are good. Not everyone was so fortunate as to survive a bike wreck without a helmet on. Honestly, I cringe a little at the photo of us on the scooter without helmets. Urgent cares have been a great option when the doctor’s office isn’t open and one wants to avoid emergency room costs. People probably did have coping skills of some kind. These sayings mix truth with error, but they also seek to look down on everyone younger. How are we supposed to mentor or model Christlikeness to them or encourage them with attitudes like that?

Another nostalgic error is discontent when we long so much for past days that we can’t enjoy the present. Jen Wilkin writes in None Like Him: “There is a difference between missing the past and coveting the past. The antidote for covetousness is always gratitude: We can combat a sinful love of the past by counting the gifts we have been given in the present” (p. 75).

We fail to appreciate what we have and what we’re to do in the present if we are preoccupied with the past or think it’s all-around better.

Sure, young people do things differently than we did. But we did things differently than our parents did, too, didn’t we? If we’re always talking down to them about how our ways are better than theirs, we’ll just widen the generation gap. Where there are legitimate causes for concern, we do better to approach people where they are in love and speak from Scriptural truths, not cultural contexts.

Ecclesiastes 7:10 tells us “Say not, ‘Why were the former days better than these?’ For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.”

There are things God wants us to remember and learn from the past and to anticipate and plan for in the future. But He has given us this present moment to live and serve in, to love Him and others.

Ephesians 5:15-16 tells us, “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.” The KJV phrases it “redeeming the time.” To quote Jen Wilkin again, “Redeeming the time requires being fully present in the present” (p. 76).

May God give us grace to enjoy His blessings and lessons from the past, but to be content with where He has us now and about His business ministering to others.

(I often link up with some of these bloggers.)

(Special note: I don’t usually post on Mondays, but I’ll be celebrating my 20th blog birthday with a giveaway tomorrow.)

Laudable Linkage

Posted on July 25, 2026 by Barbara Harper

Here are a few posts that stood out to me this week:

Goodness That Grants and Denies. “I am voicing my confidence that God will respond to my prayers with an expression of his goodness. That goodness will be revealed in one of two ways: by granting the petition or by denying it. Whether he gives exactly what I ask for, whether he gives me nothing at all, or whether he gives me something else entirely, I can be confident that he will give what is good and what is best.”

End of Life Decisions and the Christian Family. “This event was traumatic for our family, especially for me. I know we are not alone. End of life experiences can put families in very difficult situations. They receive advice from medical professionals that can often be more harmful than helpful. I cannot give all the answers for the questions families have in such situations, but I do think there is some biblical wisdom that applies. Here are some things to remember.”

Intrusive Thoughts and Gospel Hope, HT to Challies. “Intrusive thoughts are a silent struggle for a growing number of people I talk with. Not that I think that more and more people are struggling with intrusive thoughts; I’m just hearing it from more people who, after knowing me for a long enough period of time, are willing to open up about it.”

Six Ways to Shepherd Kids Through Loss, HT to Challies. “Shepherding our kids through pain and suffering is hard. For parents, it can feel like we carry a double portion of grief—our own and that of our grieving kids. Whatever may come, as parents we are called to lovingly ‘train up [our children]’ whom God has entrusted to our care through every high and low (Prov. 22:6). What a privilege to walk with them, pointing them to Christ, despite the pain that often accompanies this calling.”

The Remarkably Ordinary Church, HT to Challies. “It’s also a challenge for those of us who attend such churches. Sometimes we show up with unspoken demands that things impress us. Instead, we end up listening to imperfect preachers and average sermons, sometimes leaving disappointed. Stop focusing on what doesn’t matter. Aim to be easily edified. Show up with the intention of glorifying God and being fed by everything available in that service.”

For Such a Time as This: Faithfulness Where You Are. “It’s easy to read Esther’s story and assume that ‘for such a time as this’ applies only to extraordinary moments. Will we boldly speak up in our secular workplace when we see wrongdoing? Will we tirelessly defend the defenseless, call for righteousness, and speak the truth even when it costs us? Yet I wonder if we’ve unintentionally overlooked a broader application.”

What Your Social Media Feed Is Teaching You About Love (And Why It Is Not the Whole Truth), HT to Challies. “The Bible does not romanticise human relationships. It presents them honestly—fractured, imperfect, and often costly. This is not a bug in the design. It is the ground within which love is meant to be practiced.”

My Infertility Didn’t End in Pregnancy. HT to Challies. “There have been times when, as a writer and a Bible teacher, I’ve been asked to meet with this young woman or to email that young woman to give some advice and hope to them regarding their infertility. The truth is, no woman wants to hear from me on this. She doesn’t want my advice. I am her worst nightmare. I am the one the doctors warned her she was unlikely to be.”

A Pastor and a Salesman Get into an Uber. HT to Challies. “Christian neighbors invited them to church in 2025, but the first seeds were planted inside his car.”