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:

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.”

“Activity in the King’s service will not make up for neglect of the King.” — Derick Bingham

Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on July 24, 2026 by Barbara Harper

I’m pausing in the midst of life’s busyness with Susanne and friends at Living to Tell the Story to remember and share the blessings of the week.

1. Jason’s birthday. It’s always a joy to celebrate his special day.

Mittu made this adorable cake:

2. Timothy’s end of school year party. He actually finished a few weeks ago, but this was our first chance to celebrate. He didn’t just finish the school year–he finished the sixth grade! Thus Jason 3-D printed this topper for the chocolate cheesecake Timothy requested–not only for the change in grade level, but for whatever the “sixes and sevens” thing is all about. :).

Mittu made this cheesecake as well. She’s batting 1,000!

3. My heroes. I was on my way to a ladies’ potluck dinner and prayer meeting at church when this happened:

My GPS was sending me a way I don’t normally go. I almost went the usual way, but there was not a lot of time to decide whether to take my usual exit or not. I decided to go with the GPS, but it took me on some back roads, where I must have hit something that put a hole in the tire. I called Jim, and he drove out to where I was and talked with me via cell phone the whole time. Then he called a tow truck. We waited half an hour or so, then we got a text that the tow was going to be an hour.

Jason was a couple of miles away at the church and had asked if there was anything he could do to help. So at that point I asked if it would be too much to ask for him to swing by and pick me up and take me home. So he and Timothy came. But it was just about time to pick up Mittu from the ladies’ prayer meeting, so we went to the church first.

By that time, I was getting a little light-headed and then headachy because I hadn’t eaten yet. So Jason went in and made up a plate from the potluck leftovers and brought them out to the car for me. Afterwards, I realized I could have gone in and done that. But I was still a little rattled.

When Mittu came out, they took me home and shared some of the leftover cake from the potluck with us, and I shared some of the broccoli salad that I had made for it with them.

Then Jim texted and said the tow truck was now expected to come at 11 p.m–we had first called them around 6:45. Poor guy!

I’m thankful for everyone going out of their way to help.

4. Warranties. We had just gotten those tires recently, so the repair and the tow were covered.

5. Friends who pray. A decision came up unexpectedly this week, and I was thankful that I could email a couple of friends and ask for prayer about it.

How was your week?

The Spy Keeper of Marseille

Posted on July 21, 2026 by Barbara Harper

In The Spy Keeper of Marseille, a novel by Roseanna M. White, Zelie Bellerose is the widow of an Army officer in France with two young children during the German occupation of France during WWII. She becomes involved in the Resistance, with her children safely away from the area with her mother. When their leader is imprisoned, Zelie is the only one who can step in and take over the network. But this works to her advantage, as no one expects a woman to be in that position.

Marcel Laurent was a well-known concert pianist, but enlisted the the French army. He was captured and imprisoned in a POW camp for a year. He is freed in a prisoner exchange with the help of a wealthy businessman involved in the Resistance. Marcel is recruited to join them. He applies to be the conductor of a youth orchestra, picking up intel he hears, sharing news in code in the orchestra’s weekly broadcasts. To his surprise, a Nazi SS officer is assigned to oversee the orchestra, causing Marcel to have to exercise extreme caution.

Zelie and Marcel share a love for music, and that and their meetings for the Resistance draw them closer. But then a stunning betrayal threatens the whole alliance.

This story is based on real-life Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, who set up and then ran the Alliance network of spies in France during WWII to get information to MI6 in England. These spies were not professionals. The idea was to place people in areas like restaurants, museums, concert halls, etc., where Nazi visitors might be more relaxed and less on their guard, and pick up information they might let slip. Then they transferred anything pertinent through a series of secret radio transmissions.

Once again, Roseanna has written a gripping story with relatable characters. Their religion was Catholic, which is accurate for the time and place. But I disagreed with a couple of points.

And I thought there were a couple of implausible occurrences in the plot. Zelie’s son seemed much more mature than an average ten-year-old. And I wouldn’t think some of the operatives would discuss and choose new call signs in front of children. Though the children were away from the main action, there was still an underlying danger that they could be traced to Zelie. So it seems the adults would have kept much more from the children who, in their innocence and naivete, might share information they shouldn’t.

But other than those things, I enjoyed the story very much.

I listened to the audiobook which was nicely read by Megan Tusing.

Kinder than They Deserve

Posted on July 19, 2026 by Barbara Harper

When someone makes a cutting remark to us, we want to slice them back with our words. When they speak unkindly to us, when they are dismissive or make us feel stupid, often our first instinct is to answer them back in like manner. “Oh yeah? Well, you . . . “

I’m not confrontational by nature, so I may not say what comes to mind. But I’ve sure fed retaliatory thoughts for hours after a negative encounter.

Yet I am often convicted by Colossians 4:6: “Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one.” (NKJV).

Christians use the word “grace” a lot. There are many ramifications of what grace means in the Bible, but the standard definition of grace is “unmerited favor.” Though the word isn’t used in Romans 5:8-10, the concept is: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.”

Titus 3 provides another clear illustration. Verse 3 says we “were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.” Then there comes a turning point: “But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life” (verses 4-7).

If we understand grace as God’s favor shown to us when we didn’t deserve it, then what does it mean to let our speech be with grace?

Well, the grace that God shows to us, we show to others. We don’t react negatively to negativity. We forgive because He forgives us. We love out of the overflow of His love for us.

I like to think of it as being kinder to other people than we think they deserve. Of course, we should treat every person with the respect of an image-bearer of God.

But when someone isn’t bearing that image well, we don’t respond in kind. The Internet has made harsh speech the norm rather than the exception since we can’t see the hurt in others’ eyes or when we know they can’t hurt us beyond flinging words back at us.

But when we speak with grace, we respond kindly even when others are harsh. We remember God was kind to us when we didn’t deserve it.

Proverbs 15:1 says, “A soft answer turns away wrath.” Responding softly can often disarm a person’s anger and diffuse the tension.

But grace isn’t just about conflict avoidance. Ephesians 4:29 tells us, “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.” We build others up with our speech instead of tearing them down. We “minister grace to the hearers,” as the KJV puts it. Hopefully, the grace we show others, even when, especially when, they don’t deserve it will point them back to the One who gave grace to us and wants to give it to them as well.

Gracious speech isn’t dull, wishy-washy, Pollyanna-ish, never taking a stand. Colossians 4:6 goes on to say our gracious speech should be “seasoned with salt.” Ephesians 4:15 talks about “speaking the truth in love.” Jesus was full of grace and truth (John 1:14).

We have to share truth, even when it hurts, because it would be even more hurtful to the person not to share it. But we don’t wield truth like a club. We share truth graciously, in love, hoping for their reconciliation.

May God give us the grace to be kind and gracious to others, even when they don’t seem to deserve it, because He was kind and gracious to us when we didn’t deserve it.

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

Laudable Linkage

Posted on July 18, 2026 by Barbara Harper

Here are some of the good reads found this week:

A Godly Grief. “Have you ever done something you said you’d never do? If your answer is yes, you aren’t alone.”

Does the Day End in Night, or the Night End in Day? HT to Challies. “Every day ends in night, and every night ends in day. These cycles have been circling for longer than anyone can remember, and they will continue long after our own lives are forgotten—but they cannot continue forever. Someday, the cycles must finish. And will they finish with an everlasting day, or a never-ending night?”

The Real Reasons We Don’t Read the Bible, HT to Knowable Word. “If we’re honest with ourselves, a lot of modern American excuses boil down to one: I’m just too busy right now. Really? Am I really too busy to hear from God? Am I too busy to have my soul revived by his living and active word? Am I too busy to receive the wisdom I desperately need in all of my busyness? Am I too busy to have my dim eyes awakened again to ultimate, spiritual reality? Am I too busy to have my easily distracted mind focused on the most important things? Am I too busy to taste the sweetest honey and receive the finest gold?”

Could Your Devotional Material Be Hindering Your Spiritual Growth? HT to Challies. “The danger is not that Christians read devotionals. The danger is that we begin to treat them as a substitute for reading Scripture itself. The danger is that we slowly become content with someone else’s digested thoughts about the Bible, while rarely learning to feast on the Bible for ourselves.”

What’s Really Holding You Back? A Biblical Look at “Limiting Beliefs.” “In the self-help world, it is common to hear the term “limiting beliefs.” Limiting beliefs are defined as any negative thoughts or assumptions that are holding you back from the life you want. More and more, however, I am hearing this phrase on the lips of Christians. And I have some concerns.”

Scattered. “It’s a strange feeling when you shift from having a tight little family unit that moves through the world together to this scattered collection of human beings who wave to one another from a distance. In some ways it feels like I’m picking up pieces of a former life I once knew and trying to make them fit into a new puzzle. Those pieces don’t connect anymore, and my brain is trying to keep up with the change.”

3 Helpful Instructions on Keeping a Journal. “Having written a couple hundred pages of theologically-dense teaching on God’s providence, [John Flavel] closes with a simple plea to Christians to maintain a journal that records specific instances of God’s compassion and care. He does not advocate a tell-all diary, but a prudent, humble, and appropriate record of our experiences and observations of God’s providence. He suggests that keeping this kind of journal can benefit and enrich not only ourselves but also other believers.”

The deepest waters I’ve had to go through have taught me the deepest lessons.–Elisabeth Elliot

Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on July 17, 2026 by Barbara Harper

I’m joining Susanne and friends at Living to Tell the Story to pause, share, and be thankful for the blessings of the week.

1. Camp leftovers. Jim had some burgers, potato salad, and baked beans leftover from the guys’ camping trip last week, so we enjoyed those for lunches. Then he also had some teriyaki chicken leftover that he grilled for dinner one night.

2. A light cooking week. Besides the camp leftovers, Jim was away Wednesday night for a men’s get-together at church, so I didn’t have to make dinner. Then another night, I was tired at dinner time and asked if we could get something out.

3. Getting shower curtains and liners cleaned. I saw some time ago either from Martha Stewart or Hints from Heloise (remember her?) that you could wash plastic (or vinyl?) shower curtain liners in the washing machine with towels, and the towels help scrub them plus keep them from bunching up. I usually use rags rather than towels so I can use bleach without messing anything up. We have hard water here with lots of minerals which leaves a white residue on things that’s hard to get off. The spray cleaners only go so far. So every now and then I’ll toss the curtain liners in the wash, and then wash the shower curtains in a separate load. Two of my shower curtains need to be ironed. So all of that, plus stretching to get them all off their hooks and back on again, took a chunk of time. But it was satisfying to get it done.

4. Killing a bug on the first try. That may sound silly. 🙂 But I do count it as a blessing! When I walked into my bedroom last night, I saw a centipede scurrying across the floor. They move really fast, so I didn’t know if I’d have time to grab some tissues and then smash him. I thought about just letting him go, but then I’d wonder where he was and when he was going to come back out. Jim is usually the designated bug killer (it’s a subdivision in our marriage vows under “love and cherish” 🙂 ). But he was asleep. For some reason, the centipede just stopped as I walked past him. So I got a couple of tissues and aimed for him, thinking he’d take off before I reached him (which is what usually happens). But I got him on the first try.

5. Some productive afternoons. I had gotten discouraged after a few days of not getting things done that I needed to. One or two of those days, I was sleepy and took a longer nap than I wanted. But I had several productive spurts this week and got most of my to-do list crossed off.

How was your week?