It’s funny what happens to Saturdays when the family grows. Already I’ve taken my son to baseball practice, my daughter to ballet and worked over tomorrow’s sermon in the meantime. Next up is a list of chores (passport photos, baseball helmets, groceries). I remember when weekends were relaxing. But I think it’s a fair trade.…
When I was a boy, something that seems like a long, long time ago now, I spent most of my time within a Dutch community of believers (though I am not Dutch myself). I played with them, went to church with them and went to school with them. Along the way I was introduced to…
This week’s sponsor of Free Stuff Fridays is Brian Croft (yes, an individual rather than a company or ministry; that’s allowed, you know). Brian is Senior Pastor of Auburndale Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky, he blogs at practicalshepherding.com (pretty much a must-read site for pastors) and is the author of 4 books (so far), though…
It’s been a cool and rainy spring–enough so that my son’s baseball season has already been delayed twice. The fields are just too wet to play on. However, we are hoping to finally get the first practice in tomorrow, with a game to follow early next week. It’s back to the diamond at last. U-S-A…
Several years ago I introduced a program called Reading Classics Together. The impetus for this project was the simple realization that, though many Christians want to read through the classics of the faith, few of us have the motivation to actually make it happen. I know this was long the case for me. This program…
The Slippery Story – It’s been very interesting to see how the story of Bin Laden’s death has changed over the past few days. The Atlantic tries to make some sense of it. I wonder how much of the changes are based on misinformation that came through today’s way-too-fast news cycle. Victory Over or Struggling…
Several weeks ago I introduced you to a series of short films that focus on Christ’s appearances in the Old Testament as the Angel of the Lord. Every Wednesday for 10 weeks I will be posting a new episode right here at the blog. This will allow you to view the series in its entirety.…
In the summer of 1805 a young man set sail on the long, perilous journey to India. He left friends, family and prospects behind in order to serve as a missionary in a foreign land. Already suffering the tuberculosis, the disease that had claimed the life of his mother and would soon also claim his…
Anatomy of a Fake Quotation – This is interesting: “Yesterday, I saw a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. fly across my Twitter feed: ‘I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy.’ – Martin Luther King, J’. I was about…
Much has been said about the TSA and their growing freedom to do pretty much whatever they want to us once we enter an airport. I don’t like those backscatter x-ray machines and refuse to go through, which means that I have had to get that full and invasive patdown a few times now. While…
It is a double birthday in the Challies home today, with my wife turning [something] and my youngest daughter turning 5. Question is, when there are two birthdays, do you do one cake and put both names on it? Or do you do a cake each? I’m going with the one cake this year… You…
With a new month comes a whole new batch of desktop wallpapers, lovingy crafted by some of the readers of this blog. They are all free for you to download, enjoy and install on your computer, iPad, iPhone or other device. Enjoy! A few notes: 320 x 480 is for your iPhone; 1024 x 1024…
Social media: can’t live with it, can’t live without it. Or that’s how it feels. Facebook, Twitter, blogs–I think most of us have a bit of a love/hate relationship with them. While we enjoy the benefits they bring to us, we also see how they seek to dominate our lives. Many of us now live…
It’s Not Poetry – The Sola Panel blog (think Matthias Media) has an interesting article about the early chapters of Genesis. “When it comes to standard Hebrew poetic forms—especially parallelism, ‘non-standard’ vocabulary and ‘unusual’ verb patterning—these are also absent from the text (with the exception of 1:27). As my old Ancient Near East history lecturer…
The following quote comes from the pen of Horatius Bonar (1808 – 1889), the great Scottish preacher, poet, author and hymn writer (and probably other stuff too). It talks about the true nature of belief in God. Read it and then take a couple of minutes to ponder it. In all unbelief there are these…