Productivity or Virtue?
It’s uncanny (and simultaneously encouraging) how much this author is like me, both then and now. The ability to be self-aware of how I’m prioritising goals, relationships, and unexpected demands for my time is vital if I’m to be the kind of person I think I should be.
Preaching and Personality
I’ve mentioned this article more than a few times in the last week, and I continue to think about it in light of my preaching this week. Gary Millar is as qualified as anyone to discuss the tension between being faithful to the text, but also recognising that God is interested in letting your personality tell the story, as long as Christ remains the only focus.
10 Fun Things to do with your Teens
Lately I’ve been searching (desperately, at times) for things to do with our almost 14 year old. It’s funny how some of the things on this list appear as though they’d never fly; but I’ve found that when I suggest them and they’re rejected the first time, more often that not the idea sticks, and I’ve been asked to do that very same activity the next time boredom strikes.
Bearing Grief through Truth and Worship
My grieving friends are going to be ok, even though they can’t see how just yet. So until they can, we’ll all grieve, remember the truth, and worship God together. Someday their hope will be renewed and our bond of love in Christ will have grown stronger from sharing this dark path. Grief will not win, because death has already lost. Thank you, Jesus.
What The Benedict Option Is and Isn’t
My corner of the Internet continues to be abuzz with discussion and dissension around this new book. Some find it too extreme, some feel it neglects The Great Commission entirely, some see merit, but would approach it differently. Some have found it a healthy, thought-provoking prod for the average Christian to consider how they live as light in the world, and how the call to live as community while simultaneously on mission holds true for them. I found this article from Karen Swallow Prior (English Professor at Liberty University, and research fellow at The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission) very helpful.
“The Benedict Option’s” vision is not to make nuns and monks of modern Christians. Nor does it propose a bunker (whether literal or figurative) from which to establish merely an updated version of the fundamentalist separatism of yore. Nor is the turn to Benedict a quixotic attempt to recapture a romanticized past.
To the contrary, “The Benedict Option” calls Christians wherever they live and work to “form a vibrant counterculture” by cultivating practices and communities that reflect the understanding that Christians, who are not citizens of this world, need not “prop up the current order.” While the monastery that birthed the Benedict Rule was literal, the monastery invoked in “The Benedict Option” is metaphorical. It is not a place, but a way.
This
Someone has seamlessly integrated Rogue One into A New Hope. It’s glorious.
