Here are a few notable reads from the last couple of weeks:
Beware the peril that lurks in success. An interestingly written account of what David might have been thinking and feeling a year after his sin with Bathsheba.
Great Expectations. Great parenting or teaching tip: I learned the hard way that you can head off a lot of discipline problems by preparing children for what to expect and what’s expected of them in a given situation.
There are two excellent books free or nearly free for Kindle apps for a time: How I Know God Answers Prayer by Rosalind Goforth is a Christian Classic and is free at the time I am posting, and Words by Ginny Yttrup is 99 cents (my review of Words is here). I highly recommend both of these.
Steve Hafler posted Before You Take a Sip, Consider This, about the liberty of drinking alcohol, and the very next day his brother’s car was hit by a drunk driver, killing his sister-in-law and hospitalizing I think two of their children. Unfortunately he has taken down his post commenting on the accident, but Pastor Chris Anderson posted Ambivalence About Alcohol after ministering to the family. I am sure the family would appreciate prayer during this difficult time, and may this cause many to rethink the dangers of alcohol.
Ask For Tolerance up front when discussing different viewpoints, HT to Challies.
A Literal Epidemic of Crutch Words, those “empty” words we could well leave out of our speech and writing, or words that don’t mean quite what we think they do. A few days later I saw this on Pinterest (with special meaning for Princess Bride fans) and chuckled:
This was going around Facebook:
And this was a series of texts between my husband and myself, illustrating the iPhone’s tendency to overdo auto-correction:
I don’t mean to toot my own horn or call my own link laudable, but I thought some of you might be interested in seeing my latest newspaper column: Missionaries can be a force for good. My original title was “Tolerance, Evangelism, and Missions.” I only have one more column left — and too many ideas for it! In some ways it will be a relief not to have to meet this deadline every six weeks, but in a greater sense I will miss it. But I can reapply after a year. (If you are interested, my other columns are here.)
Here are some interesting online reads discovered in the last week or so:
The Redistribution of Wealth is a topic that comes up often in election years, but is it a Biblical idea? No, but the Bible does have much to say to those with any kind of wealth.
Here are some good reads from the last couple of weeks:
Forsaken By God: When Our Fears Become Our Reality. “Psalms 22 ministers to us when we struggle with a God who didn’t move for us as we expected, who didn’t save us from a painful road of life that we prayerfully tried to avoid.”
Pacifying Lies and the Sympathizing Truth. Too often we want to comfort someone in trouble with trite phrases that aren’t even really true. “It is only in looking to Christ that my friend can find comfort. Only in pointing to Christ that I can be a comforter.”
I Don’t Wait Anymore. Excellent. “A lot of girls were sold on a deal and not on a Savior….What if we as girls had learned early on that having Him was everything, not a means to the life we think He would want us to have.”
Free to Live. What “living free” does and does not look like. Dr. Olson was my class chaplain four years in college.
To My Gay Angry Friend written by a former homosexual who became a believer in Christ and turned from the lifestyle.
Missionary Wives Furlough Q&A, HT to Kim. Missionary wives answers questions about what has helped and hurt while on furlough. Excellent reading if your church supports missionaries!
Spoiler Alert: What God Is Teaching Me Through the Olympics. It’s hard not to hear or see headlines about the Olympics when you’re trying to wait to see the broadcasts. Here’s what one woman learned as a result of knowing ahead of time what would happen.
5 Problems With Unconditional Forgiveness, HT to Challies. It has always bothered me when a victim of a horrible crime publicly forgives the offender when there has been no sign of remorse, and this post explains very well why that is. We should make provision for forgiveness and be ready to offer it, just as God does, but He also does not grant it until repentance occurs.
“Meaningful Suspense” is author Adam Blumer‘s tagline, and he explains here that Christian fiction should be more than just entertainment.
Master Craftsmen by Randy Alcorn deftly defends Christian fiction against the charge of being “predictable, sugar-coated, preachy, and poorly written!” I’ve been enjoying Christian fiction for almost 40 years, and always wince at that kind of charge.
Since I was first deeply moved by reading Through Gates of Splendor by Elisabeth Elliot about her husband and four other missionaries who were speared to death by the Indians they were trying to reach, I’ve been fascinated and tried to read everything I could get my hands on in connection with this incident and these people. One of the earliest books was The Dayuma Story. Dayuma was a young woman who had escaped from the tribe then known as the Aucas, now the Waorani. She had helped the missionaries learn some Auca terms and eventually she and Rachel Saint (brother of Nate, one of the five) and Elisabeth went to live with the Aucas. I had read in this book about Rachel being honored on the old program This Is Your Life. I don’t think she had seen it before or knew quite what it was, and I remember she wrote something about her brother whispering in her ear during a commercial that she needed to watch the time and keep things moving because the host, Ralph Edwards, had a limited amount of time with a live show to try to get everything in. Of course, Rachel was also busy trying to translate what was going on to Dayuma, who was with her. Well….I don’t remember how I came across the blog Theology For Girls, but I saw a link to a post concerning this program and had to check it out. This lady’s uncle was one of the guests on that episode, and she had recently discovered the entire episode had been uploaded to YouTube! It was such a joy to watch. It’s amazing that the show was so favorable to the gospel and the work Rachel was doing. And the commercials are pretty funny, too. 🙂
I have a question for those of you who have me on Google Reader: on some blogs I have there I see what looks like separate posts with the blogger’s links from Delicious in between their regular posts. Do you see that with mine? I was thinking if they show up there it is kind of redundant to put them here on Saturdays.
Also, a few weeks ago I had a link to vote for my assistant pastor to win a handicap-accessible van. Thanks to those who voted. Unfortunately he did not win but is trusting God to supply some other way.
Here is my weekly round-up of interesting things seen round the Web:
Steve Saint, author of End of the Spear and son of Nate Saint who was killed with Jim Elliot and three other missionaries by the Indian tribe they were trying to reach in the late 50s or early 60s, was paralyzed in a serious accident last week. Here is his testimony just six days later:
I Was Confronted For Being Immodest. I really appreciate Courtney’s response here, even though the woman who confronted her did not go about it in the best way. It’s a reminder that sometimes women who wear something less than modest don’t realize it’s a problem and they’re not doing so on purpose. A gracious follow-up to that was My Feelings About the Woman Who Confronted Me.
Free audiobooks. Author Adam Blumer had a link to this on his Facebook page. Evidently they put up a different book for free every week or so — this week’s is Sense and Sensibility!
Stray Thoughts 