Monthly Archives: September 2021

Laudable Linkage

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Here are some noteworthy reads and a couple of listens discovered this week:

When Furrows Fight Back, HT to The Story Warren. This is timely, with Labor Day on Monday: God’s creation of work before the fall and redemption of work after the fall.

Navigating Cross-Cultural Relationships, HT to Challies. “It is becoming increasingly common that, wherever you live, you will find yourself relating with someone from another culture. This is true in workplaces, neighbourhoods and churches. When confronted with a different culture, there are three common reactions.”

On Divisions and the Kingdom, HT to Challies. “So are you growing in righteousness, and peace, and joy? All the things which we are absorbing, all the debates we are throwing ourselves into, all of our stances, all of our focus and attention on the things which divide, all of our talking points….are these bringing about righteousness and peace and joy? Maybe, then, they aren’t the stuff the kingdom is made of.”

How to Speak with Grace, HT to Lisa. “How do we ensure we heal rather than hurt? Compliment rather than crush? Encourage rather than extinguish? How on earth do we speak with grace?”

10 False Versions of Jesus People Are Falling For. “Our culture presents us with so many versions of Jesus, letting us make Him in our own image. Maybe you’ve come to depend on a false Jesus and didn’t even realize it. If you are struggling to find peace, read about these false Jesuses with an open mind. Consider what Jesus said about Himself and test your beliefs against the truth from Scripture.”

Preaching the Funeral Sermon I Once Dreaded, HT to Challies. Beautiful.

5 Things Special Needs Families Wish the Church Knew. “We expect the world to shun us for being different, but not the church. Youth and children’s ministers are missing an enormous blessing for themselves and rich experiences for everyone involved by ignoring this issue.”

The “Revive Our Hearts” radio program for women with Nancy Leigh DeMoss Wolgemuth is celebrating its twentieth anniversary. I read the blog, but I don’t hear the program—the Christian radio station I listen to doesn’t carry it. They have the episodes online, but I just don’t think to find and listen to them, unless I hear about something special like Valerie Elliot Shephard’s episodes about her parents, Jim and Elisabeth Elliot. But I enjoyed this “Birth Story” of the broadcast as well as On the Eve of Twenty Years for Nancy’s journal entries and prayers as she considered stepping out to start this ministry.

If you’re a podcast listener, ThinkBible for women has just started a new one with the same name. I’ve been reading their blog for a few months now. I was not familiar with the main blog owner/podcaster, but she used to have a list of contributing writers on the blog, and I knew a few of them personally. One of my favorite people of all time, Claudia Barba, is interviewed in the second podcast. I could not find the podcast on Apple podcasts, but it’s on Spotify and other venues and can be listened to on the ThinkBible website as well.

30 Creative September Activities for Kids, with a printable list, HT to The Story Warren.

This is interesting: time lapse of a dandelion over a month:

“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?” (Matthew 6:28-30).

“The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever” (Isaiah 40:8).

Friday’s Fave Five

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It’s Friday, time to look back over the blessings of the week
with Susanne at Living to Tell the Story and other friends.

I seriously don’t know where this week has gone. But let’s jump right in to the week’s faves:

1. New school arrangement for my grandson. My son and daughter-in-law switched to a different on-line program than they had been using, and the whole family likes it much better.

2. Telephone doctor visit. I know many health care providers now offer some kind of telephone or online Zoom-like way to talk to them, but this was the first time I used one. For some situations, I might prefer to see the doctor in person. But for this concern, being able to show the doctor the problem, find out what to do, and get a prescription for antibiotics, all over the phone, was a great time saver–and helped me stay out of his office during another uptick in COVID cases here.

3. One step closer to autumn. August is one of my favorite months, with my birthday and my oldest son’s visit for his birthday. But it is also our hottest month. Turning the calendar to September encouraged me that fall is on the way!

4. Mexican take-out. My husband said recently that he’s not crazy about any of the Mexican food restaurants in our area, and wasn’t even all that into Mexican food lately. I was raised in SE Texas, where Mexican food is a staple. 🙂 One night this week, my husband was away until about 9—so I took the opportunity to have Mexican food take-out delivered.

5. Family group texts. We have a running group text with all our immediate family where we share news, concerns, prayer requests, funny things we’ve seen, photos of culinary masterpieces, etc. I love being able to instantly share with and hear from the family.

How was your week? Hope it was a good one.

The Last Year of the War

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The Last Year of the War by Susan Meissner opens with an elderly Elise Dove, who has just been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Elise calls her disease “Agnes” and describes her as “a sticky-fingered houseguest who is slowly and sweetly taking everything of mine for her own.”

As Elise mourns the memories she will some day lose, she thinks of a long-ago friend she met in an internment camp during WWII.

Elise was a teenager then, living like any American teenager in Iowa. One day Elise came home from school to find strangers rifling through their belongings while her German parents were seated at the table. Elise thought they were being robbed. In a way, they were. A few statements and actions of her father’s had been misinterpreted, and he was suspected of being secretly involved in Nazi activities. The whole family was eventually shipped to an internment camp in Crystal City, Texas.

There Elise met Mariko Inoue, a Japanese teen girl who sounded every bit as American as Elise. The two became friends for the eighteen months they were in the camp, and even beyond. But their families were repatriated to the parents’ home countries, and the girls lost touch for the next sixty years.

Now Elise’s housekeeper has taught her how to look people up on Google with her new iPad. Elise decides to fly out to the place where she thinks Mariko is, without telling her children about the trip or about “Agnes.”

The present-day Elise’s search is sprinkled with flashbacks of her family’s trials, time in the internment camp and then in Germany, and what happened to them after that.

I had known about internment camps, but didn’t realize German and Japanese Americans were interned together. I also thought of the camps like POW camps. But they were actually like small towns, with schools, stores, jobs, etc. However, there were also fences, barbed wire, and guards with guns.

Both the present and past narratives are compelling. Having had a mother-in-law with dementia, I was a little on edge during the older Elise’s travels, hoping she’d be okay. For that reason, the very end, the last couple of paragraphs, were disappointing. They fit in with a metaphor raised earlier in the book, but they left Elise hanging, which left me without a satisfying resolution. But the rest of the story was very good.

I’ve read Christian or inspirational fiction from Susan Meissner, but this is pretty much strictly historical fiction. The only mention of God I can recall is a passing statement. Sadly, there are a few bad words, which I was disappointed to see.

I very much enjoyed Kimberly Farr’s narration of the audiobook.

I’ve read lots of WWII fiction, but this is the first I’ve read that is partially set in an internment camp. How about you? Have you read anything about the camps?