A small but excellent list today of interesting reads ’round the Web this week:
Figuring out how to forgive {your parents}. The principles are good for anyone, though, not just parents. This brought tears to my eyes. It’s odd that I have had more trouble with my feelings for my dad since his death — you’d think that would be all over now. But this post is very helpful.
We Need Boring Christians. Excellent article. Quote: “Many of us want to do something awesome, something epic. We tend to think that the more normal, the less ‘spiritual.’ So it is quite possible that our aspirations to be radical stem from dangerous ambitions to perform biography-worthy feats of global glory.”
Getting Good Info. My son, Jason, started this blog to share what he’s learned about best ways to research online.
And a special thanks to Cheryl at The Bz House That Love Built for listing my Week In Words meme among her massive list of regular memes, blog parties, carnivals, etc., here. I met some of my best blogging buddies through memes, so if you’re feeling all alone in the blogosphere and want to make new friends online, participating in a meme is a great help. Cheryl lists tons of them, so you’re sure to find one that interests you!
This is pretty cool: an eagle owl (I didn’t know there was such a creature) landing in slow motion:
Hope you have a great weekend. We’ve got some fun stuff planned — celebrating Jeremy’s birthday over the whole weekend.
So How’s Your Day Going? If you feel you’re having a bad day — it might not seem so bad after seeing this!
Just a short list this week! We’re doing something special and fun today — but it is a surprise so I can’t talk about it yet. 😀 Hope you have a good weekend!
The New Asceticism and Investment Bankers, HT to Challies. I’ve seen reference to a number of new books advocating things like Christians selling everything and go to or give everything to third-world countries (I haven’t read them, just seen other people’s comments about them). This author has a caution that we not go too far the other way: “If you can’t weep for the American businessman the way you do the Haitian, then you are not ready to go to Haiti.” “I’m afraid we may be misunderstanding the Gospel in all this. If we assume the disadvantaged in our inner cities (or third world countries) need the Gospel more desperately than the privileged on their boundaries, than indeed we have.”
Here are some great reads that caught my eye this week:
The Valley of the Shadow of Death….from one in that valley now. “You will all face what I am facing now. I want for everyone of you to be blessed with the peace and confidence that Christ has given me. I wish that everyone could see during their whole lives what I am seeing so clearly now.”
Motherhood Is a Calling. I’ve seen many reference this but I just had time to read it today. Excellent.
Do You Bring Meaning to Your Work? HT to Ann. “For us to live our faith with consistency and integrity it has to be spread throughout our lives—and that undoubtedly includes our work lives. If this is true, then we don’t have to try and find meaning at work, but instead can realize that work itself is meaningful.”
Pray a Fresh Prayer. “’I have 30 minutes (or less) to talk with God today. What do I say? Repeat the same requests as yesterday? Exact same thanks? Same confessions?’ If this is how we pray, no wonder we don’t look forward to it.” Lisa gives some great tips to revive prayer life.
Journal-keeping. Great advice. “Journal-keeping has been viewed in some quarters as a spiritual exercise, right up there with Bible reading and prayer. I realize that keeping a journal can be very positive…but it is not a spiritual duty or the key to super-spirituality. In fact, it may very well be a snare.”
How Many Books Are You Reading? I tend to have only two at most going. With nonfiction, especially, I feel the need to concentrate more to get what the author is saying as well as the flow of it. If I just read things in snatches (except for reference), I have all these disconnected bits floating in my head. But this post helped me understand the mindset of someone who is dipping into multiple books at a time. Neither reading personality is right or wrong — just read, however you do it. 😀
Patriotic flash mob at a grocery store, HT to Kim. I’d love to see one of these things “live” though I think a grocery store might be a little too crowded and busy for it. I always admire the bravery of the one person who gets it started.
Hope you have a great (there’s that word again…) wonderful, stupendous, enjoyable, relaxing Saturday. It’s been a very busy last few days for me, so I am taking it easy this morning.
Another HT to Challies, Dear Photograph is a really cool site, where participants “take a picture of a picture from the past in the present” and integrate it into the present. You’ll have to look at it to see what I mean.
Too funny:
Kids, don’t try this at home. Though I wish I could parallel park this way sometimes!
Here are a few posts that especially caught my attention this week:
A new normal. How does one ever get back to “normal” after something horrible has happened? “God shook the snow globe of my life, and some truths that were obscured by complacency have now taken a more prominent place in my thinking.”
The Great Awakening of the 21st Century, a renewed focus on grace. “I knew I was saved by grace, ‘To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.’ Eph 1:6 …but was I to be accepted in the body of Christ only when I did the right things? Were the only people approved by God the ones who kept The List too? And I noticed other people had different lists.”
Motherhood as a Mission Field. ” It is easy to become discouraged, thinking that the work you are doing does not matter much. If you were really doing something for Christ you would be out there, somewhere else, doing it. Even if you have a great perspective on your role in the kingdom, it is easy to lose sight of it in the mismatched socks, in the morning sickness, in the dirty dishes. It is easy to confuse intrigue with value, and begin viewing yourself as the least valuable part of the Church.”
A Faithful Man…Proverbs 20:6. This is a note on Facebook, but I think it is public so all can read. It’s a tribute to Justin Ridley, whom some of you knew or knew of, who died in an accident at a Christan camp a few years ago. My middle son happened to be at the camp that week, and many people were profoundly influenced by Justin’s life and death. Justin’s mom was the first person to reach out to us in our new church.
Ten Suggestions for Missionary Presentations. Unfortunately, the drive to compact speech into sound bytes affects even missionary presentations, but these are good tips to make them more concise and effective. On a side note, I’m so glad the churches I have been in have generally given a whole service to visiting missionaries rather than asking them to squeeze their life’s work into x number of minutes.
He would be what he wanted to be. Interesting that boys don’t generally dream of being daddies like girls dream of being mommies, but here is one sweet book about that dream.
When being silent can cost you in relation to blogging, HT to Laura Lee Groves. Balance is something most bloggers struggle with almost constantly, but it is true that the more time you invest in other people’s blogs, the more visitors and commenters you’ll have in return. Setting up a blog is not like moving into a new house where people know someone is there by the moving van in front of the house and the increased activity, lights on at night, etc. When you move into the blogosphere, no one knows you’re there unless you tell them or visit them first (or unless you write something unique that shows up on search engines). But of course we should visit and comment sincerely and not just to get return visitors.
Time In. I haven’t liked the idea of “time out” for a number of reasons, and this presents a good alternative.
Richard Dreyfuss reads the iTunes EULA. HT to Challies. This is kind of funny: actor Richard Dreyfuss reads some of the technical “end user license agreement” and such like. It does make it easier to understand hearing it that way!
I’d be afraid of bits of balloon going down the dog’s throat (that was always among the dire warnings I heard with babies, not to let them mouth or chew on a balloon lest it pop and part of the balloon choke them.) But love his enthusiasm and joy.
Good morning! I don’t know how many people are here on Saturdays — the blogosphere seems pretty quiet on weekends, at least what I read of it. But that’s okay — I don’t always have as much time on the computer on weekends, which is probably true of most of us. And I don’t know how many people like to look through these links (that’s why I put them here on Saturday!) But I enjoy scanning through posts like this on other blogs, so, I share these in case anyone else might find them of interest as well.
By Grace Through Faith. Important truths to remember when sharing the gospel (geared towards sharing with children, but true for anyone).
Having An Open Door. This really convicted me, as I probably would have had a very similar reaction to unexpected dinner guests.
Letting Herself Go. Perhaps a bit of a controversial post from Challies, but he makes some good points.
Stickers From a Bunk Bed — the inability of the law to make our kids good (yet I think it does show them their need that they can’t be good in themselves.)
A Craft Suitcase — a neat idea for storing or transporting certain craft stuff.
Thought this was really cute even though it’s past Mother’s Day. I don’t think I’m this bad! But I do still need help on many things and am thankful for my techno-competent sons being willing to.
Kids, DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME! Seriously! (Or adults either, for that matter!)
With Sunday being Mother’s Day, there has been a lot of good Mother’s Day reading this week:
For Moms, Former Moms, and Wannabe Moms. “Motherhood is not the greatest good for the Christian woman. Whether you are a mom or not, don’t get caught up in sentimentalism that sets it up as some saintly role. The greatest good is being conformed to the image of Christ.”
For the Mother who fears failure. “Relationships cost. It’s not that you aren’t going to blow it. It is what you do with it, when you do…Perhaps there was something more powerful to experience than a perfect Mother: the wonder of a committed Mother who simply humbles herself.”
Tutorial for Making Silhouettes. There is a very sweet example in the above link, and this shows the how-to. Neat gift idea!
Genesis 1:1-2:3 is not poetry and it is historical. HT to Challies. “When it comes to standard Hebrew poetic forms—especially parallelism, ‘non-standard’ vocabulary and ‘unusual’ verb patterning—these are also absent from the text (with the exception of 1:27). As my old Ancient Near East history lecturer once put it, anyone reading the text would fail a first-year Hebrew exam if they called Genesis 1 a type of Hebrew poetry.”
Stray Thoughts 