The Presence of Greatness. “What the world calls damaged, deficient, broken, Jesus names beloved, beautiful, redeemed. What the world would throw away as useless, He honors and exalts, making the least into teachers of compassion, possessors of radiant faith, living parables of His truth. What the world considers great, isn’t. Not in the eternal scheme of things.”
It has again been a little while since I have been able to share good reading I’ve found on the web. I try to do them about every other week so there’s not such a long list, but life doesn’t always work out that way. But here they are, and maybe you’ll find something of interest among them:
The Best Day of the Week. “Lord’s Day worship isn’t a burden to endure, but a joyful offering from God to receive. Christians don’t put aside their earthly cares each week to earn God’s favor, but to enjoy worshiping the God whose favor has already been granted in Jesus Christ. It is a true delight to forego even the best worldly endeavors for the day, without feeling any sense of guilt for being lazy or uncaring, to revel in the heavenly things of God which are the truest and greatest treasure for any Christian (Matthew 6:19-21).”
Your Children Are Your Neighbor. This is excellent. There is one difference in that parents are authorities over their children and supposed to correct them, while they are not with neighbors, but even still, authority can be handled with grace and not authoritarianism.
Invent a Ministry. HT to Challies. Love this. One of my themes is that ministry isn’t always in an official church-sponsored activity. It’s being available for God to use you all throughout the day. Another is the “Someone should…” or “The church should…” mentality, forgetting we ARE the church. I’ve been thinking about a possible blog post along these lines.
What It’s Like When You Publish a Book. Interesting thoughts on the type of people God uses (clue: messed-up ones, because that’s the only type available).
Sticking With It, on reading long books with dull spots, either personally or to children. I don’t think the author is advocating for never putting a book aside, but I like the analogy that life is going to be that way sometimes.
It has been quite a while since I have been able to do one of these, but here are some posts I’ve found interesting the last few weeks. Maybe you’ll enjoy one or two of them as well:
5 Questions I Wish My Accountability Partner Would Ask Me. I am wary of accountability partner set-ups for several reasons, and while the author still recommends them, he advocates facets that are much more in line with Biblical accountability and relationships that what I usually see.
Twenty Years. A man’s reflection on twenty years of marriage.
Navigating the Challenges of Real Life Online. “If you share everything, you’re an exhibitionist. If you share nothing, you’re closed-off and unapproachable. If you share too many good things, you’re fake. If you share too many bad things, you’re a whiner.” Jenn discusses some principles and guidelines for finding balance here.
10 Things Photographers Hate With a Passion. I had never seen the dinosaur wedding thing before. Bizarre! I don’t agree with every point – I think some trendy or “as seen on Pinterest” requests are inevitable – but otherwise some good things for us to think about.
I’m Grateful That Lady Forced a Bible On Me, HT to Challies. “We have this idea that doing something significant for God requires huge planning, red letters in the sky, a parting of the sea, signs and wonders. But the truth is, He’s working through us in ways we could never arrange on our own.”
No Disappointment in Jesus? HT to Story Warren. “It’s in life, in the real world, down here where things do and do not pan out, that the just are supposed to live by faith. When we are honestly disappointed in the way the God we trusted has handled things, when what has happened was not at all what we wanted—then statements like “Not my will but thine be done” have powerful meaning. What a sinewy kind of trust old John the Baptist had as he lay in chains—captive, doomed, lonely, blessed, and not offended.”
Melanie shared this recently – a real-life illustration of the sheep knowing their shepherd’s voice:
I don’t know how many of you are familiar with Ron Hamilton, aka “Patch the Pirate.” He’s fairly well known in the Southeast. I love this arrangement of his song. Ben Everson is a master at these mutli-harmony things:
Here are some thought-provoking reads from the past couple of weeks – maybe you’ll find one or two of interest:
My Father Killed My Mother. “How am I supposed to keep the command to honor my father when all I really know of him is that he hurts people to the point of shattering the very next command about murder?”
When Your Heart Isn’t In It. “Do you really think that avoiding worship will be the means by which your heart will changed, prepared to engage in worship?”
The Duggars and the Evil Outside, HT to my friend Ann. You may be getting tired of all the posts about their situation, and I have been mainly staying out of it since I don’t watch the show and only know what I’ve heard, but I thought this made an important point: We can try to shield children from all the evil “out there,” but we still have a sin nature in our own hearts that we have to learn how to deal with. Then just this morning I saw an article on an interview with Jill and Jessa Duggars that “The media coverage has been 1,000 times worse than the incident.”
Forgiveness: What If He Isn’t Sorry? Excellent, well thought-out, thorough article on this subject. Too many people have a glib answer to this which overlooks some Scriptural principles, so I am very happy to see some of this articulated.
Wedded Bliss: 10 Years Married to a Sports Addict. Good article about dealing with a husband’s hobbies. I don’t think a wife necessarily has to jump in and experience it with him – I think it’s ok to have some different tastes – but there are great thoughts here about how to “honor his appropriate pursuit of” his hobby rather than attempting to “manipulate, belittle, or guilt him away from the thing he loves.” And of course this works with the husband in regard to the wife’s interests as well.
It’s been a few weeks since I’ve been able to share links I found interesting recently. But I don’t have as many as you might expect for a longer time period. Here they are:
10 Amazingly Enjoyable Things About Having Kids. We hear so much negativity in the world about the frustrations of having children, but there are many fun things, too. This is from a secular source and therefore has a couple of philosophical bits I wouldn’t agree with, but overall some great observations.
Here are just a few commendable links from the last week:
Borrowed Lights: Inspiration for Christian Living. Benefits of reading about the lives of other Christians who follow the Lord closely. Loved this that Robert Murray McCheyne said of Jonathan Edwards: “How feeble does my spark of Christianity appear beside such a sun! But even his was a borrowed light, and the same source is still open to enlighten me.” I liked it so much I added it to my previous post Why Read Biographies.
Are You a Mentoring Momma? “Most likely if you asked them, not one [of these women] would say she mentored me. Yet her life influenced mine in profound ways. The common thread among each of these unique women is that she was further along in the journey, loved me, loved Christ more, and modeled how to treasure Him above all else.” To me that’s the best mentoring – not an official program, not a formal set-up mentor-mentee relationship, but just this.
When Motherhood Drains Your Happiness. The truths here of what to do when you feel drained ministered to me even though I wasn’t feeling that way with regard to motherhood at this point.
My Mother Practiced the Piano. “There’s nothing selfish about working toward your artistic interests as God allows the time. In fact, your children can benefit from watching you model discipline and discovery.”
And, for a smile – I’ve watched this several times and love the look on this cat’s face – although it wouldn’t really be funny to live with a cat who does this:
Stray Thoughts 