Show Me Your Endurance. “While church leaders dismissed my friend as unpolished and uneducated, I realized her experience was a part of my discipleship journey in ways that information acquisition and discipleship habits alone were not. I saw in her life what my own could look like as I trusted God to be there for my child and for me.”
These Hibernation Days, HT to True Woman. “Winter is a fallen seed, before it has sprouted again. It is God’s gift to us, to teach us of the value of rest, quiet, hiddenness, and death.”
A Launch-Yourself-Forward Worksheet. If your resolutions or “one word” choices fizzle out sooner rather than later, this worksheet might help you implement those changes.
And finally, many of us are in a very cold weather system right now. We haven’t had snow here except for about an hour one day. I hope those of you “snowed in” get some sunshine and warmer temperatures soon. Meanwhile…
Just a few this week, but since some of them had to do with Christmas themes, I thought I’d go ahead and share them.
How God Used A Christmas Carol to Resurrect Literature in My Life. “People can be tempted to think that books are meant to take us away, meant to give us a mental holiday from our lives, but that is not true. Great books, living books, are not meant as an escape from life, but a passage into life.”
End of Year Evaluation. This is not a recent one – I’ve had it in my files for years and think about doing it but haven’t yet. I have trouble choosing superlatives and tend to over analyze all of that. My friend Susan isn’t actively blogging currently, sadly, but thankfully she has left her old posts online.
I mentioned recently that Phil Vischer’s Me, Myself, and Bob: A True Story About Dreams, God, and Talking Vegetables was on my top 12 books read this year. I recently discovered this video of a speech he gave which is kind of a condensed version of the book. It’s fun at first because he does some of the different characters he voices in the Veggie Tales programs. But then he gets to the meat of the matter. Personally I don’t care for the phrases about God “showing up” and calling Jesus “the Big Guy,” but if you can look past that, this is well worth the 56 minutes.
100 Years. 100 Million Lives. Think Twice, HT to Challies. I’ve been quite alarmed in recent months to see young people lauding communism. “For many students, casually endorsing communism is a cool, edgy way to gripe about the world.” “Communism cannot be separated from oppression; in fact, it depends upon it. In the communist society, the collective is supreme. Personal autonomy is nonexistent. Human beings are simply cogs in a machine tasked with producing utopia; they have no value of their own.”
On Leaving Jerusalem. “While the media is great at capturing events, they are not so great (or so interested) at capturing context or proportion.”
Lastly, I don’t know anything about the speaker here or the film he talks about, so this is not an endorsement, but a friend shared this on Facebook and I found it interesting. I had never heard what he shared about the significance of Jesus being wrapped in swaddling clothes before.
If you like writing about imagination, children’s literature, and families, you might be interested in writing for Story Warren: they’re looking for new contributors.
Finally, I was looking for this yesterday in talking about my young grandson’s imagination. I couldn’t find it then but found it later in the afternoon.
The Last of the Iron Lungs, HT to Challies. A handful of people with polio still rely on them, but they’re not sold or maintained by the the manufacturers any more. Fascinating article. And, though this is not the main point of it, I was inspired by those who are trying to make the best of their circumstances, like the man who took his iron lung to college, practiced law for the few hours a day he could go without the iron lung, until he started needing it almost 100%. Now he’s writing his memoirs while encased in it.
I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but in case you missed it, I announced the Laura Ingalls Wilder Reading Challenge for February 2018 and included a long list of related books to consider for those who might want to read beyond just the Little House series.
Finally, I didn’t listen to all this, but overheard a good bit while hubby was listening. Press Secretary Sarah Sanders began the last press briefing before Thanksgiving asking the reporters to share something they were thankful for before asking their questions. What we found amazing was the way they whole atmosphere changed by doing that, from confrontational and adversarial to convivial!
Happy Saturday! It’s Christmas decoration day for us!
Faith Going Forward: A Midlife Following. “If the Proverb is to be trusted, and my mostly silver hair is to be seen as a crown of glory and wisdom, don’t let me be guilty of false advertising.”
And, this is the night!!! Daylight Savings Time ends tonight, so don’t forget to turn your clocks back before going to bed. I hate losing the hour in the spring but I love getting it back in the fall!.
(Links here do not imply 100% endorsement of site or author)
5 Lessons From Reformation Women, HT to True Woman. With the 500th anniversary of the Reformation coming up, there have been a lot of articles about it, and this was unusual in focusing on some of the women involved.
How Carnival Games Scam You (video). A little long, but interesting. I always thought they were pretty much scamming, but this shows some of the science behind it.
I wrote about Veggie Tales a while back. Somehow I came across this video yesterday, and I had never seen it nor heard the song before, but it touched my heart. God loves me whether I have had a good day or a bad one
Happy Saturday!
(Linking to a site does not imply full endorsement or site or writer)
Here are more good reads discovered in the last week or so:
The Transgender Matrix: It’s Time to Choose the Red Pill, HT to Challies. From a man who had transgender surgery on why it didn’t solve his problems and facing reality. He had other issues, but those weren’t even dealt with before his psychologist approved him for surgery.
Let’s Get Real About Women’s Discipleship, HT toChallies. “If Instagram is any clue, most Christian women think discipleship is limited to hosting thoughtfully curated Bible studies in tasteful homes where shrieking children and dirty dishes don’t exist. This glossy ideal sits like a yoke on many women’s shoulders rather than spurring them onward in Christ’s Great Commission.”
Worship Isn’t About Feelings, HT to Challies. “Sometimes I serve my neighbor out of obedience to Christ, and love for Christ follows. Sometimes I am filled with love for Christ, such that I look for an opportunity serve my neighbor.”
When You Don’t Need God’s Guidance, HT to True Woman. “We don’t need to seek guidance where guidance has already been revealed in Scripture. How easy it is to convince ourselves we’re “confused” about what we should do when we’re reluctant to do what we know is right. It helps us feel better to label questions of morality “complicated” when they require us to pick up a cross or suffer rejection. The serpent’s ancient whisper—Did God really say?—trips off the tongue when God’s commands are costly.”
Heroes, Hagiography, and Villainy. I’ve been thinking for some time now about writing a post concerning flawed heroes. This says some of the things I have been thinking.
Four Reasons to Read Slowly. “The Information Age isn’t slowing us down, but subtly and constantly pressuring us to speed up. As we browse, surf, and scroll, we’re training ourselves to quickly see new facts and then look for the next figures, rather than feel the weight of what we read.”
Some years ago I was wandering around the local library’s video collection looking for something to watch and saw the 10th anniversary production of Les Miserables. I decided to get it and see what all the fuss was about – and that started a love affair with the musical and then the book. Since the particular singers there were the first I heard, and though I have seen some wonderful clips of a variety of singers singing some of the songs, this cast will always embody the characters for me. Recently I stumbled across this video of Philip Quast, who played Inspector Javert, telling how he approached one of the solos. I had no idea such thought and intention was involved behind every word. In the song he’s discussing, Javert has just had an encounter with ValJean, the man he has been trailing all his adult life. ValJean has just carried a wounded Marius through the sewer system when he runs into Javert and begs Javert to let him see Marius to safety. Previously ValJean had held Javert’s life in his hands, and let him go. Javert can’t compute this: he upholds righteousness and The Law, and in his mind, once you’ve fallen, there is no mercy or grace. “Once a con, always a con” is his mindset. So how can it be that this man no longer acts like a con and even shows mercy and compassion? I’ll post the video of this song from the musical after this interview:
A couple of other things I love about this: Javert’s previous solo was about the comfort he found in the stars as “sentinels” of God’s order in the world. But here, “the stars are black and cold.” Also, there is so much parallelism between this song and Valjeans’s soliloquy when when the bishop shows him an undeserved kindness: the same tune there and here, similar phrasing about “allowing this man” to have an influence, an offer of freedom, “I am reaching, but I fall…,” escaping the world of Jean ValJean, but in two different ways. Although ValJean had to wrestle with it, he accepted the bishop’s grace. Javert either thought he didn’t need it, since he was always in the right in his own eyes, or he couldn’t accept it from this man. When his entire worldview was turned on its ear, instead of adjusting, he could only escape. Grace accepted saves and changes a person. Grace rejected leaves one out in the cold darkness.
Self-examination Speaks a Thousand Lies. “God calls us to examine ourselves (2 Corinthians 13:5; Lamentations 3:40), but healthy self-examination is a difficult and dangerous duty….when that introspection makes us self-absorbed instead of Christ-absorbed, we undermine our faith.” “God knows the worst about you and loves you still.”
Don’t Speak Up: On the Spiritual Discipline of Silence, HT to Challies. “As evangelicals, we often feel guilty for not evangelizing more, or not speaking a word of correction to a friend in sin. And sometimes that sense of guilt is correct! But here, Jesus identifies another way we can err: speaking up wrongly, at the wrong times, and to the wrong person.”
Remembering My Friend, Nabeel Qureshi, HT to Challies. I was heartbroken to hear of Nabeel’s passing, though happy that he is no longer in pain and with the Lord. I loved his book Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus and respected his integrity and determination to go where the truth led him, no matter the cost. I have to admit I wondered why God would take someone so young who was doing so much to bring people to Himself. But after a while I thought the better way of thinking would be that we all have a given number of days, not guaranteed to be 80+: are we making the most of them like he did?
Embodying Masculinity in a World That Rejects It. “If I thoroughly study the ‘man’ passages and never work through the ‘all believers’ passages (the rest of the NT), I will completely fail in both.”
God Didn’t Write a Book. “It took the printing press to make the Bible a book, but it didn’t take the printing press to make the Bible the Bible…the Bible is not essentially a book. It is essentially God’s recorded words to humanity, and those words transcend any single medium.”
Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Your Free Will, HT to Challies. Lots to ponder in this one, but one statement stood out to me: “Democracy assumes a set of capacities: the capacity for deliberation, understanding different ideas, reasoned discourse. This grounds government authority, the will of the people.” And these are largely absent from most social media exchanges.
A Real Life Fall Home Tour. I loved this! Laura Ingalls Gunn (yes, related to that Laura Ingalls!) writes about home decor and posts Pinterest-worthy photos, but this time she showed “real life” scenarios – shoes and “stuff” out, etc. I am tempted to do a similar post, even though I don’t usually write about home decor. I think as homemakers we often strive for that balance between wanting things to look aesthetically pleasing and yet wanting the people who live there to feel comfortable and at home.
Stray Thoughts 