The Manly Virtues: Courage. Again, though specifically and needfully applied to raising boys, girls need courage, too, and some of this applies to them as well.
I found a lot of great reading this week. Here’s some of it:
How to Get the Most Out of Your Pastor’s Preaching. One quote: “If your heart is humble, your focus won’t be on evaluating the message or how it’s delivered; you will let the message evaluate you.” Ouch.
Discernment and Sexual Predators. Sad that this is even needed, but this is highly valuable advice for young girls and women to watch our for sexual predators, even in the church. Quote: “[We] puff up the minds of girls with princess mythologies but we don’t (often) equip them to recognize that Prince Charming needs to have some character, not just sweet talk.”
There Never Was Such Another. “Touching description of Charles Hodge with his fifty-one year-old dying wife Sarah.”
Janet shared a video of a chrysalis forming. Fascinating! Her family has quite the monarch butterfly nursery going, especially nice since the area where she got the caterpillars has been flooded recently.
Penn Gillette of Penn and Teller tells how, as an atheist, he once received a Bible portion from an apparently very gracious man. Thought this was a great example of how to engage someone, especially someone whom you think will disagree with you. But I also though some of Gillette’s observations were interesting, especially as an atheist: “If you believe that there’s a heaven and hell and that people could be going to hell or not getting eternal life or whatever, and you think it’s not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward…how much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them about it?” HT to Stuff Christians Like.
Testimony of a pilot who was scheduled to fly Flight 11 on 9/11 but was bumped:
I was so sorry to have missed the Friday’s Fave Five yesterday! There were some things that *had* to get done yesterday, so I figured I’d better do those first…and it is a good thing I did! Instead of writing a very late FFF post, I decided just to wait til next week.
But I wanted to share a few interesting links from this week’s web perusal and one very special video.
A Mother Hears Her Daughter’s Heart Beat One Last Time. A transplant patient who received the heart of a teen-ager offers to let the girl’s mother hear her heart beat. Very touching, very moving story, for both moms. Get the tissues out.
It’s a beautiful Saturday morning here in TN. I’d never know there was a hurricane heading for the East coast if not for the news. Our thoughts and prayers are with all those who may be affected.
Here are a few things that stood out to me in this week’s reading:
Parenting by Prayer, HT to Challies. Quote: “One of the main lessons that the Lord has been teaching me especially with the older three is the need to parent them first by prayer, and then by persuasion. As they have gotten older, I’ve come to believe that I spent too much time talking to them about them and too little time talking to God about them.”
Peach Cobbler For Two. With the kids in the process of leaving the nest, I love finding recipes for two.
I saw this at Nikki‘s yesterday, and at first I balked at the length of it, but, oh, my, it was so sweet. Not only the nostalgia it brought in remembering boys playing with boxes, but the creativity and unexpected twist at the end. Almost made me cry.
(Unfortunately sometimes the video seems to get a little hung up. I don’t know why. But other times it plays just fine. If it’s not working, maybe trying it again later will help, unless you know of some other trick to make it play smoothly. If you do, please share!)
I saw this going around Facebook: I know some drivers would love to have these posted at regular intervals. 🙂
And I know people who would love this. I miss caffeine sometimes!
She Will Come – For the Single Missionary. Sweet, poignant poem about finding contentment in Christ alone written by missionary Dave Hosaflook in his single days. Good for non-missionaries as well. 🙂
Book Filtering. I haven’t read the book this is promoting, but I love the introductory thoughts, pertinent to anyone who has lamented over “too many books, not enough time.”
How to Make Cake Stands — that hold multitudes of things beyond cakes. Really neat idea for receptions, luncheons, etc. More are here (giveaway is closed, I am just linking for the photos and ideas).
Some of you might have been following and praying for Amy Bixby‘s battle with cancer. She just went Home to heaven yesterday, and a friend posted this rendition of the precious promise of No More Night. I hope you’ll pray for the family left behind, a father and seven children, plus the father’s father just had a heart attack a few days ago.
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!
Stray Thoughts 