Here are some good reads found this week:

How to Make the Case Against Abortion in Less Than a Minute, HT to Challies. With the Supreme Court ruling on abortion in the news, abortion discussions will multiply. This video helps pare pro-life position to key points.

Confess Your Sins to God When Applying Scripture. “It is good for us to think about the different spheres and directions for our Bible application. But confessing sin is often a necessary step in the process. It is not just that we need a different strategy for loving our neighbor or a new approach to handling gossip. Frequently, we must confess that what we have been doing (or not doing) is offensive to God and deserving of his anger.”

Dear Daughter: On Outrage and Its Remedy. “Outrage is when you get really upset about someone else’s decisions or actions — so upset that you want them to be punished or forced to change. Outrage insists on being heard. It always points a finger but never at itself. It assumes it is the supreme authority on a matter regardless of whether it has any actual knowledge of it. It creates caricatures of its opponents and refuses to acknowledge the complexities of their human souls.”

Teach Us to Number Our Days, HT to Challies. “Psalm 90:12 speaks of ‘numbering our days,’ but like these two toddlers, we often don’t get it right. While we know exactly how many candles should go on our birthday cake (even if we prefer that no one else knew), we still tend to get the math wrong.”

5 Reasons We Should Not Stop Using Male Pronouns for God, or to turn it around, because the title confused me at first: why we should use male pronouns for God. HT to Challies. “It is right to believe that God is transcendent: God is not a man. Even little children learn in the catechism that ‘God is a Spirit and has not a body like men.’ And certainly, in Scripture God’s character and actions are sometimes described using feminine imagery (cf. Isa 49:15). But none of that means we should abandon male pronouns for God.”

How Were the Books of the Bible Chosen? “Inspired Scripture was recognized, not chosen. Genuine works by prolific artists such as Monet and Degas hang in museums because art experts have recognized them to be authentic pieces, not forgeries. They didn’t choose any of the paintings to be a Monet or a Degas. They scrutinized them for the unique signs of the artist’s imprint and recognized them as genuine.”

Sky Painting, HT to Challies. “I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen a boring sky. Even when the sky is an unending morass of steely grey cloud that stretches from horizon to horizon, I’ll give you that it’s technically dull, there’s a lack of sunlight, but it’s hardly boring.” I love the conclusion here.