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The Monster in the Hollows
5 of 5 stars to The Monster in the Hollows by Andrew Peterson
It was very hard to discipline myself to only read one or two chapters a day. Perhaps this book has more tough plot points, and twists, than the previous two books in the series, but I am very much enjoying Peterson’s novel-songs.
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Julius Caesar
4 of 5 stars to Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
2019: Adding a star. There are some great gems in here, even though I’m still not convinced that assassination is the right way to solve national problems. :)
2013: Note, according to Goodreads, three stars doesn’t mean it was only half-good, it means “I liked it.” Okay, sure. I did. This edition includes abundant and helpful notes for old English terms and idioms.
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Art and the Bible
4 of 5 stars to Art and the Bible by Francis Schaeffer
2019: Still good, though I’d like to read more about Schaeffer’s thoughts on art styles.
2016: A brief, biblical apology for Christians to appreciate, make, and/or evaluate art.
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The Road Called Aestas
I read the following story for our school’s end of year assembly. It would probably be helpful to read The U.H.’s Hot Tips for Completely Wasting Your Summer first, and it may also be helpful for me to say that what stuck out to me from the U.H.’s article were things such as bed, T.V., and being lazy. : )
There is a road that is only visible for about three months of the year, or twelve weeks if you count more precisely like a pregnant woman.
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Now We Belong
It used to be that the carcasses of the animals whose blood was used in sacrifices on the Day of Atonement were taken outside the camp to be burned up.
For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy places by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp. (Hebrews 13:11)
The bodies didn’t belong at the altar. Jesus fulfilled this work for us at Calvary.
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All Are Yours
I gave the following remarks at our school’s graduation ceremony on June 2, 2019.
Good evening to our school board, faculty, families, friends, raggants young and old, and especially to our seniors. All of you have worked a great work to get here tonight, and it is an honor to celebrate with you, as well as to address our two candidates for graduation.
It is often a dangerous thing to speak about dichotomies, to divide things into only two.
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Justifiable Blessings
One of the reasons that we include confession of sin in our weekly liturgy is not just that we recognize that we are sinful, but we receive God’s revelation that He is perfectly righteous. God not only acts in accord with moral law, what we refer to as moral law comes from His character. His nature is right. He always does what is justifiable. We don’t, of course. This is why we love the Son who gave Himself for us that we could be justified, declared righteous by God.
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The Grail
Last summer my oldest daughter began spending vast amounts of her time rewriting/repurposing Monty Python and the Holy Grail with the hopes of persuading the powers that be at Evangel Classical School to allow a student performance of her adaptation. Well, said powers approved, and Maggie has selected a cast and been directing practices for the last few months. Not only her fellow students, but a bunch of friends of the school have been working to make this fun, and there will be three performances next week!
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#SamePageSummer
I’ve been using the M’Cheyne Bible reading plan for 2019, but am excited to add the #SamePageSummer readings through the New Testament for June-August. Mo and all four kids are also going to do it, so we’ll be same-paging as a family along with everyone else. “What happens when Christians are coming to the Word regularly? They are being worked over, regularly, by the Spirit and by the Word.”
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Proclaiming the Lord’s Love Until He Comes
Whether you eat or drink, or whatsoever you do, let all of it be done in love. This is a conflation of 1 Corinthians 10:31 and 16:14. I’m not rewriting the Scripture, I am connecting two ways of dealing with the same thing. In 1 Corinthians 10 Paul exhorted the church about using their theological understanding about God’s creative generosity and their liberty in Christ to love one another in what they willingly did not eat and in what they did eat with thankfulness.
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I Like Job, but I Don’t Want to Be Like Job
Most of us appreciate the story of Job. God regularly uses his story to bless us, to sustain our happiness, or at least our hopefulness, when things are difficult. In Job’s narrative we see how our faithfulness to God brings trouble, not that trouble always comes from our disobedience. We see how nothing happens apart from God’s control, even the worst loss and pain. And we see God’s grace to restore good to His servant when His point to Satan is made.
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4 of 5 stars to The Two Cultures by C.P. Snow
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5 of 5 stars to A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix by Edwin Friedman
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3 of 5 stars to Call the Sabbath a Delight by Walter Chantry
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4 of 5 stars to Show Your Work by Austin Kleon
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Not a Crumb of a Cardboard Cracker
How would you persuade someone that the church’s eating and drinking at the Lord’s Supper should be more happy than heavy? We believe that the bread and the wine represent the body of Christ tortured and crucified, the blood of Jesus spilled from His head, His hands, His back, His feet. We acknowledge that our sin drove the bitter nails that hung Him on that judgment tree. The murder of God’s Son is the most heinous and unjust offense committed in history, and, according to divine justice He had to be crushed for our iniquities.
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Where It Wafts
Sometimes Christians are able to take obedience and make it ugly; it’s one of our specialties. In 1 Corinthians 16:5-8 Paul wrote about his plans to visit Corinth, but also acknowledged that the Lord must permit the visit or it wouldn’t happen. Paul wasn’t expecting an approved itinerary handed down to him by an angel from heaven, but he would recognize by providence if God allowed it. Solomon wrote that “the heart of man plans his ways, but the LORD establishes his steps” (Proverbs 16:9).
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All Sanctimoniousness and Powerlessness
I’ve wanted to share this video and connect it with the quotes below it for some time. Since the interview came out at the beginning of December, it’s apparently been on my mind for half a year. Ha!
The interview is with John MacArthur on The Ben Shapiro Show. Some of you watched it already, and great. If you haven’t, I highly recommend it, and I recommend it as a perfect example of the kind of Dispensationalist (like MacArthur) I want to be and the kind of Dispensationalist I also want to build on.
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To Be Clear about Hell
A few things happened over the last year or so that have caused the elders to propose an addition to our What We Believe statement of faith. We have been in different conversations about the reality of eternal death and, specifically, the existence of hell. When reviewing the doctrinal statement as part of our annual elder affirmation process, Jonathan suggested that we add something more specific. Currently we only have a couple references to what happens after physical death to those who reject Christ.
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The Future in a Snap
ECS is a classical Christian school which means, among other things, that we are concerned about the classics. In our curriculum we read and reference some of the all-time greatest works as not just relevant for today’s snobs, but as part of how we got to where we are today as a society.
I’m trying to build up my knowledge and appreciation of these rich resources, and also pass that culture onto my kids.
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Steal Like an Artist
4 of 5 stars to Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative by Austin Kleon
This is a small book, easy and enjoyable to read, with good reminders to keep looking and learning. I laughed at the following quote, used it in a talk already, and think it’s a good summary of the benefit of Kleon’s book. As the French author André Gide wrote, “Everything that needs to be said has already been said.
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North! or Be Eaten
5 of 5 stars to North! or Be Eaten by Andrew Peterson
Book #2 in the Wingfeather Saga was no let down, though it’s not quite as light a story as #1. The plot surprised me multiple times all the way to the end. At a few points in the middle of the book I’ll admit I was irritated, but in good ways, because I wanted to know what’s going to happen?
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Roaring Lambs
4 of 5 stars to Roaring Lambs: A Gentle Plan to Radically Change Your World by Robert Briner
A friend recommended this book to me a few months ago and it really was worthwhile. It was first published in 1993, so there are more chapters that could be added now, but I appreciated Briner’s encouragement for Christians to get out of boycotting and grumbling and into screenwriting (for movies and TV) as well as into journalism and other writing endeavors, along with visual arts and higher education.
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Digital Minimalism
2 of 5 stars to Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport
There used to be a short answer to the problem posed by Newport that he takes almost three hundred pages to answer. What should we do about all the time-wasting, social-media-hyped, internet-exacerbated problems in society? We need self-control. So all he really needed was a hyphen, not hyperventilation. Though I thought Deep Work was a smidgen too precious, this book is supersized precious.
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What a Perishable Seed Can Do
It’s not a new observation, but it seems appropriate after such an extended amount of attention on the resurrection (in 1 Corinthians 15) to note that when Paul delivered the practice and reason for communion a few chapters earlier he did not mention the resurrection at all.
As Paul explained, Jesus gave thanks and then gave bread to His disciples and said “This is my body which is for you,” without adding “and it will be raised for you, too.