I’m not quite caught up with my online reading, but here are some good things I found this week:

When You Don’t Get Anything Out of Devotions. “Sometimes God meets with us in a special way. Occasionally a verse or a phrase or a thought can revolutionize our lives, but I have found that those times tend to be rare. Rather, it’s the slow and steady repetition of reading God’s Word, asking Him to change me, and watching as that happens little by little through the weeks, months, and years.”

Jesus Is Unashamed to Take Awkward Family Christmas Photos, HT to Challies. “In many ways, the Old Testament can be seen as a massive coffee-table photo book. Sometimes the photos are stunning. But for any Old Testament family with a decent collection of pictures, there are—without exception—some awkward family photos. We read about priests and kings, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, who we’d be ashamed to claim as family. Would Abraham have stuck Lot’s picture on his fridge at Christmas? Would you?”

Don’t Be Duped by This Year’s Religious Trend, HT to Challies. “The religious zeal with which the world pursues self-help isn’t surprising. Lacking a Savior, nonbelievers will look inward to solve their problems. But it’s concerning when self-help methods begin to trickle into Christian thought and teaching. In Colossians, Paul warns the church not to be taken captive by any human doctrine that is ‘not according to Christ’” (Col. 2:8).

The Scopes Trial at 100: Fact, Fiction, and the Christian Historian, HT to Challies. “The trial remains embedded in the American imagination a century later. It was a key skirmish in what’s often depicted as the great ideological conflict of the modern world: science versus religion. However, this telling is too simplistic.” I learned some things I hadn’t known about the trial.

How Do We Measure Christian Maturity? (Hint: It’s not Just Bible Facts), HT to Challies. “We often measure maturity by the wrong metrics. We confuse information with formation, and equate Christian vocabulary with Christ-like virtue. Which is understandable because information is measurable. But I don’t think that it’s the right way.”

Being Ourselves in Heaven, HT to the Story Warren. “These are common portrayals of the afterlife, disembodied ghosts—pale reflections of a person’s former self—floating in a nebulous netherworld. But these stories do not accurately reflect what our lives will be like on the New Earth. A central part of our bodily resurrection will be the continuity of our identity.”

The Coming of the Light, HT to the Story Warren. “Soon the winter solstice will be upon us. On the twenty-first of December the sun will struggle into the sky for just a few short hours before sinking below the horizon once again. Taken in isolation, this day could be viewed as a victory for darkness. Without the benefit of history we could be forgiven for believing that the light will gradually be swallowed up and disappear. Armed with the bigger picture, we know that the longest night is simply a turning point. There are dark days still ahead but, from this night on, the coming of the light is inevitable.”

Mary: Enduring Shame for the Cause of Christ. “Pain? Sure. Hardship? Yes. Poverty? OK.  Hard work? Count me in. Death? That one is very hard, but yes. Public humiliation? Uh, maybe not.”

Don’t Fight the Wrong War, HT to Challies. “I reject the framework that Christians are at war to maintain conservative and Christian values. In fact, adopting this worldview may cause us to lose the real war God calls us to fight.”

AI Griefbots? HT to Challies. “With the powers of generative AI technology, we can summon the voices of our friends, family members, and even heroes from beyond the grave. . . . But just because we can doesn’t mean we should. The apostle Paul writes, ‘All things are lawful,’ but not all things are helpful” (1 Cor. 10:23).”

Single This Season? Prove He’s Sufficient. Though the context here is the difficulty of being single during the Christmas season, it’s truths are applicable year round.

Renewal From Wreckage: How A Near Death Experience Changed Trevor Gearhart (video). I’ve mentioned the Dead Man Talking podcast a couple of times. Bob Roberts, camp speaker and creator of Kids 4 Truth, has been dealing with stage four cancer in his liver and discussing what God is doing through that with four longtime friends. They had a guest on this episode: a pastor friend who had a massive heart attack while driving, crashed into the stairwell of a building, and was pronounced dead. He was resuscitated and had triple bypass surgery. Though my own physical issues have not been that serious, I identified with several things he said.

“What rivers of infinite bliss have their source, aye, and every drop of their fulness in him! Since, O sweet Lord Jesus, thou art the present portion of thy people, favour us this year with such a sense of thy preciousness, that from its first to its last day we may be glad and rejoice in thee. Let January open with joy in the Lord, and December close with gladness in Jesus” (From Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening reading for January 1).