tattoos as confession | Stray Thoughts

Happy Saturday! Here are a few good reads found this week:

The Privilege and Responsibility of Freedom. Though Independence Day has passed, rightly considering our freedom is a timeless topic.

There Is No Pit So Deep that He Is not Deeper Still, HT to Challies. “Life had been incredibly hard for years, but this latest trial felt like more than I could bear. To be honest, I felt utterly hopeless. I didn’t want to live in my diseased and hurting body; I didn’t want to live in the chaos of our special-needs challenges; and I certainly didn’t want to live in a flea-infested home. Everything in me wanted to escape, but I had nowhere to run.”

The Stranger, a neat, short film (about 12 minutes) based on a true story about a stranger who shows up in the middle of the night to attend a mission conference.

Three Lies of Comparison: How to Help Your Teen Find the Truth. “If she’s like most teens, there came a day when her eyes fluttered open to comparison. Her sunny giggle faded, and her carefree personality fell as she began placing her measuring cup next to someone else’s, asking, ‘How do I measure up?’ So, what can you do? How can you help? How can you keep her from retreating to dark corners of isolation and insecurity? How can you stop her from driving herself to exhaustion with endless perfectionism?”

A Time to Be Tired, HT to Challies. “There are times when we must save our strength. The question is: what are we saving it for? Our strength may be limited, but it is real. God gave it to us, and he gave it for a reason. There has never been a shortage of meaningful work to do, people to love, and problems to solve. In all our talk of looking after ourselves, I wonder if we sometimes forget that overprotecting ourselves is at least as dangerous as burnout—it is one of the quickest roads to weakness.”

Tattoos as Confession, HT to Challies. “Gullett says many Americans instinctively judge tattoos — deciding whether they approve of the image or the act of getting inked at all. But he and Dayhoff encourage a different approach: suspend judgment, ask about the story, and listen.”