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Showing posts from 2015

Commonplace Monday #14

Commonplace Monday is a series of post wherein, on Monday mornings, I share short quips, sentences -perhaps as much as a paragraph- which I have collected in my various commonplace books and files. If I wrote down or recall where it came from I will certainly give attribution. However, sometimes I write down things and not where they came from. So if you see anything like that here and recognize it, that's what comment sections are for. Anyhow. Here's this week's installment : No ceremonial provision is to take priority over pressing human need. Fred Gums

Nor Doth He Sleep

'Tis the season. The season of what? Well, of Christmas time, you might say. If you are in the mood for elaboration, you may be inclined to continue in such a way: the season for giving, the season for love, happiness, joy and cheer. Family, friends, good food, good drink, presents, a big fat elf, and maybe a little snow. Aaaaannnnddd, probably shouldn't forget that baby in a manger business. That's good too. If you like basketball, you might add the Christmas day games, but who watches the NBA on Christmas? Or ever? Anyhow. The sense you get from talking to most folks is that this is a season of joy. And of course for many, it is. Amidst all of the stress and the crunch and the rush, there is an undercurrent of I love spending this time with my family  or, I love presents-giving and receiving them! or, Christmas Eve is my favorite church service all year  or,  what makes the Christmas spirit brighter than Fireball and a Backwoods cigar? There are a lot of things to be ha

Commonplace Monday #13

Commonplace Monday is a series of post wherein, on Monday mornings, I share short quips, sentences -perhaps as much as a paragraph- which I have collected in my various commonplace books and files. If I wrote down or recall where it came from I will certainly give attribution. However, sometimes I write down things and not where they came from. So if you see anything like that here and recognize it, that's what comment sections are for. Anyhow. Here's this week's installment : I wasn't looking for someone perfect. I was looking for someone I could love. Unknown

Speaking With Your Kids

How should we speak to and with our children? Realizing that a) I'm no expert and b) I'm mostly thinking aloud, I think we need to ponder these things. That is the intention of this blog, after all. To think aloud, and to invite you to join my thinking. On Conversing: Some form of this post has been stirring in my mind for many a moon, but what finally kicked me over the edge to put finger to keyboard was this article in The Atlantic . The focus of the piece, if you have not read it, is on early childhood education, preschool specifically, and the fact that though children are being taught  more information than every before, they are in fact learning  less. The author, a professional in the field, discuses various reasons for this, but then points to a number of things that provide a genuinely healthy learning environment for children. Here is a section: As an early-childhood educator, I’ve clocked many hours in many preschool classrooms, and I have found that I can pre

Commonplace Monday #12

Commonplace Monday is a series of post wherein, on Monday mornings, I share short quips, sentences -perhaps as much as a paragraph- which I have collected in my various commonplace books and files. If I wrote down or recall where it came from I will certainly give attribution. However, sometimes I write down things and not where they came from. So if you see anything like that here and recognize it, that's what comment sections are for. Anyhow. Here's this week's installment : Church discipline is almost impossible in the era of the automobile. Carl Trueman

Commonplace Monday #11

Commonplace Monday is a series of post wherein, on Monday mornings, I share short quips, sentences -perhaps as much as a paragraph- which I have collected in my various commonplace books and files. If I wrote down or recall where it came from I will certainly give attribution. However, sometimes I write down things and not where they came from. So if you see anything like that here and recognize it, that's what comment sections are for. Anyhow. Here's this week's installment : Most love is not expressed sexually--nor should it be.   Fred Gums

Commonplace Monday #10

Commonplace Monday is a series of post wherein, on Monday mornings, I share short quips, sentences -perhaps as much as a paragraph- which I have collected in my various commonplace books and files. If I wrote down or recall where it came from I will certainly give attribution. However, sometimes I write down things and not where they came from. So if you see anything like that here and recognize it, that's what comment sections are for. Anyhow. Here's this week's installment : Marriage is a pre-political institution.   Fred Gums

Commonplace Monday #9

Commonplace Monday is a series of post wherein, on Monday mornings, I share short quips, sentences -perhaps as much as a paragraph- which I have collected in my various commonplace books and files. If I wrote down or recall where it came from I will certainly give attribution. However, sometimes I write down things and not where they came from. So if you see anything like that here and recognize it, that's what comment sections are for. Anyhow. Here's this week's installment : There would be more real laughter in our churches if there were more tears.   John Piper

No kings

In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. Judges 17:6 Sounds pretty glorious, doesn't it? No king, do what you want. It's essentially the motto of 21st century America. You are your own god, you determine what is best for you, you determine what is right for you. No one can say otherwise. It's interesting here that the author uses this phrase as a subtle, yet stinging, rebuke of Israel in the days of the judges. There indeed was no king. Of course this was not, in and of itself, the problem. But the apparent vacuum of human leadership that was created was not addressed as it should have been; namely, by the people turning to God for guidance. Rather, each man, woman, and child simply did what was right in their own eyes. The results for their nation were disastrous.  As they have been for ours. If there is no fixed standard, no one may instruct me how to treat my neighbor. No one may tell me it is evil to offer my dau

Commonplace Monday #8

Commonplace Monday is a series of post wherein, on Monday mornings, I share short quips, sentences -perhaps as much as a paragraph- which I have collected in my various commonplace books and files. If I wrote down or recall where it came from I will certainly give attribution. However, sometimes I write down things and not where they came from. So if you see anything like that here and recognize it, that's what comment sections are for. Anyhow. Here's this week's installment : Cultivate a deep distrust of the certainties of despair.   John Piper

Commonplace Monday #7

Commonplace Monday is a series of post wherein, on Monday mornings, I share short quips, sentences -perhaps as much as a paragraph- which I have collected in my various commonplace books and files. If I wrote down or recall where it came from I will certainly give attribution. However, sometimes I write down things and not where they came from. So if you see anything like that here and recognize it, that's what comment sections are for. Anyhow. Here's this week's installment : There's naught so queer as folk. Unkown

Commonplace Monday #6

Commonplace Monday is a series of post wherein, on Monday mornings, I share short quips, sentences -perhaps as much as a paragraph- which I have collected in my various commonplace books and files. If I wrote down or recall where it came from I will certainly give attribution. However, sometimes I write down things and not where they came from. So if you see anything like that here and recognize it, that's what comment sections are for. Anyhow. Here's this week's installment : A church that doesn't know what it believes doesn't know what it is.   Carl Trueman

Bread on the Water: A Perplexing Text

This is a section out of a class I taught a few months back, I thought it might be helpful to you: Ecclesiastes 11:1-2 11:1 Cast your bread upon the waters,    for you will find it after many days. 2 Give a portion to seven, or even to eight,    for you know not what disaster may happen on earth. There is a substantial amount of question over exactly what point is of these verses. I mean, is he talking about crumbling up your French bread and dumping it in the river? [As a side note, there is a reason I like to bring up when there is discussion over these issues; that is my opinion on the difference in the function of preaching and teaching. If I were to preach these texts I would primarily be concerned with proclaiming them, and thus would most likely (unless it was something very thorny or difficult to decide upon) take what I thought to be the best understanding of the text and preach it. Proclaim it. Exhort obedience to “thus says the Lord.” I think that is

Inside the Walls

What gain has the worker from his toil? I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in it's time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.   - Ecclesiastes 3:9-11   I once watched an interview of Rod Dreher conducted by Eric Metaxas. The topic of this interview was Dreher's book, "The Little Way of Ruthie Leming"  (I subsequently read the book, which I commend to you). In the interview they explore the themes of the book, which examine's Dreher's growing up in a small Louisiana town, feeling out of place because of his intellectual proclivities, leaving the small town and living a somewhat nomadic big city life in search of place and meaning, and finding those things as he returned to that same small town. The catch in the story is what brings him back to the small town. His sister is diagnosed with s

Commonplace Monday #5

Commonplace Monday is a series of post wherein, on Monday mornings, I share short quips, sentences -perhaps as much as a paragraph- which I have collected in my various commonplace books and files. If I wrote down or recall where it came from I will certainly give attribution. However, sometimes I write down things and not where they came from. So if you see anything like that here and recognize it, that's what comment sections are for. Anyhow. Here's this week's installment : Leavin'  money to kids who spend it on gettin' blitzed/what's the point of livin' just to give it up in the end?   Lecrae So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun, because sometimes a person who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave everything to be enjoyed by someone who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil. King Solomon, Ecclesiastes 2:20-21

Commonplace Monday #4

Commonplace Monday is a series of post wherein, on Monday mornings, I share short quips, sentences -perhaps as much as a paragraph- which I have collected in my various commonplace books and files. If I wrote down or recall where it came from I will certainly give attribution. However, sometimes I write down things and not where they came from. So if you see anything like that here and recognize it, that's what comment sections are for. Anyhow. Here's this week's installment : Have a healthy disrespect for who [you] are.   Phil Long

Commonplace Monday #3

Commonplace Monday is a series of post wherein, on Monday mornings, I share short quips, sentences -perhaps as much as a paragraph- which I have collected in my various commonplace books and files. If I wrote down or recall where it came from I will certainly give attribution. However, sometimes I write down things and not where they came from. So if you see anything like that here and recognize it, that's what comment sections are for. Anyhow. Here's this week's installment : Ambiguity in art is like piss in coffee.   Chaim Potok

Commonplace Monday #2

Commonplace Monday is a series of post wherein, on Monday mornings, I share short quips, sentences -perhaps as much as a paragraph- which I have collected in my various commonplace books and files. If I wrote down or recall where it came from I will certainly give attribution. However, sometimes I write down things and not where they came from. So if you see anything like that here and recognize it, that's what comment sections are for. Anyhow. Here's this week's installment: You can't yell at your kids at the same time that you're feeling gratitude for them.

Commonplace Monday

This is the first in a new series of posts. On Monday mornings I will be sharing short quips, sentences- perhaps as much as a paragraph- which I have collected in my various commonplace books and files. If I wrote down or recall where it came from I will certainly give attribution. But...sometimes I write down things and not where they came from. So if you see anything like that here and recognize it, that's what comment sections are for. Anyhow. Here's the first one: The logic of truth is so copious that it cannot be exhausted by mere mortals.     Carl Trueman 

When the clock strikes 3:00

Today (I'm sure it will be yesterday by the time I hit Publish) I turn twenty-five. That may not seem like much to many of you, for you passed it up long ago. Or you haven't yet, but to do so is a forgone conclusion. But it feels significant to me. Maybe it's because I'm the morbid type. Perhaps it's because I've known so many who didn't make it. It could be that I've never been able to imagine myself as being older than twenty-four. Or maybe it's just my megalomania at work blowing every aspect of my life out of proportion. But I wanted to pause here, and reflect on twenty-five things I've learned in these years. The order is completely stream-of-consciousness, which at this time of night can be...scattered.  Life is short. Like a mist. Here today and gone...well, today.  Because life is short, every second counts. Which doesn't mean every second must be filled with frenetic activity, but it does mean that one should pause and evalu

Is He sovereign or do I choose?

The sovereignty of God over all things, the ruling of Christ the Lord over all the universe: these are not facts which negate the responsibility we have as volitional creatures to make rational decisions for which we will be held accountable.

Free College

There has frequently, throughout my lifetime at least, been a cry for free (or significantly cheaper) college education. While I'm not sold on that being a good idea, here is a thought that popped into my head one day, that may seem ludicrous to you. It may, in fact, be ludicrous. It's certainly just the beginning of an idea. But here goes. What if we were to take the money which the federal government spends on education at all levels (pre-K, elementary, high school, college), and funnel that all toward funding universities. Then take the state money currently heading to education at all levels, and redirect it toward funding and expanding community colleges, perhaps engulfing the final two years of high school (or all of high school?) into that system. Finally, make k-8th or 10th grade the responsibility solely of parents, local counties, municipalities, churches, etc. I realize that most people who see this will wonder what I smoked as I typed. But I believe if education in

Ambivalence

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Ambivalence. Questioning. Lack of surety. Phrases and words such as these seem to describe many Americans relationship to abortion.  Look at those videos ? Eh, I couldn't do that...Facebook beckons me away... Well, okay. Now I've watched them...but what can I do? I'm one person, and I can only control me. Not Planned Parenthood. Not the Federal Government. Not the millions of parents who have their children killed every year. Just me. And that doesn't seem like much.  So many people vacillate over whether they are "pro-life" or "pro-choice," caught in the web of the great American lie: shouldn't women have the right to choose ? Who am I to tell someone how to live?  Allow me to offer a suggestion: it's not impeding upon anyone's rights to insist that killing their child is a bad option. An immoral option. An option which, in the long run (an likely even the short run), they will deeply regret.  How can our ambivalence remain as

Murder for Hire

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In case you have yet to watch any of these videos, I wanted to put all five on here, so that you can simply watch them one after the other, or see any you may have missed. This barbarism must be brought to a halt.

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