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A La Carte (7/26)

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The Trellis and the Vine – The paperback edition of The Trellis and the Vine is now out and Westminster Books has it for sale at half price. It is an excellent book and as close to a must-read as they get. Buy one for yourself and one for your pastor!

The Good Christian Girl – I like the beginning and middle of this article more than the end, but either way it still has some good and interesting things to say about loading young women with expectations. “Once there was a good Christian girl who dreamed of growing up, getting married, and having children. She read all the right books and did all the right things. She read about how she was a princess in God’s sight and how he wanted the very best for her. She committed herself to sexual purity, to high standards, and to waiting for the good Christian man that God was going to bring her.”

Humbled(?) Haggard – You knew this was going to happen sooner rather than later. “The Rev. Ted Haggard stood at a pulpit made from stacked buckets one recent Sunday and announced his resurrection.” Notable bits from the story: “He acknowledged grave lapses of judgment in the episode he refers to as ‘my crisis.’ But Mr. Haggard also said that in his sorrow and shame, he accepted too much guilt after the scandal broke. ‘I over-repented,’ he said.” And “Mr. Haggard, who said he draws a weekly salary of $300 from St. James, said he founded the church as an act of humble repentance, because it forces him continually to confront his sin.”

A One-Pixel Sun – This graphic (which takes a while to load) starts with the sun being a single pixel and shows the relative size of some of the other stars in the universe.

New Calvinism – R.C. Sproul was recently featured in the Orlando Sentinel. “At 71, Sproul is one of the old guard in what’s known as the ‘New Calvinism’ movement, which Time magazine identified in 2009 as one of the ’10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now.’ Sproul has influenced a generation of younger conservative evangelists and this month announced the creation of a Bible college on his Sanford compound that could extend his influence for generations.”

Sketchy Characters – How accurate are police sketches? Here’s a round-up. The results are, well, not so good.

Information Overload – Here’s an old video where Ted Koppel discusses an issue that is still relevant.


  • The Pursuit of Virtue

    God’s character is the essence of virtue. The heart of virtue is to know the Lord and to become like him, as a child resembles her father. That is the goal, privilege, and destiny of the redeemed. #Sponsored

  • When God Plants an Acorn

    When God Plants an Acorn, He Means an Oak

    We stood together on the crest of a hill, a gentle breeze rustling the meadow around our feet. The fields ran gently downward until they met a creek that gurgled happily in its course. A few years prior, an acorn had somehow made its way to the highest point of this hill, carelessly dropped there…

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    A La Carte (April 28)

    A La Carte: Protestantism’s Catholic converts / How healthy is your pursuit of health? / God’s special calling on your life / Considering a Christian university? / Testing the teachings of Catholicism / Kindle deals / and more.

  • New and Notable

    New and Notable Christian Books for April 2025

    It is surprisingly difficult to find a list of Christian books that have been released in any given month—especially if you want that list to be filtered by books released through particular publishers. That’s one of the reasons why I close each month by coming up with my list of New and Notable books. I…

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    Weekend A La Carte (April 26)

    A La Carte: Every pinch of pain has purpose / China closed Christian bookstores / Watch for the thing after the thing / For everything there is a time / Showers of blessing / What Pope Francis can teach us about preaching / and more.