Good morning from the tiny island nation of Tonga. When measuring by the International Date Line, Tonga is just about at the very beginning of the world!
You will once again find a nice little list of Kindle deals.
(Yesterday on the blog: Beauty in the Whole and the Parts)
My Grandmother Would Tell You That
Glenna’s reflection on life and death is an especially sweet one. “What a thing it is to die quietly at home with the people you love around you, to be gathered up to your Father at the end because the thing that mattered most was the One who saved you.”
Help! I Want to Get Married, but I Can’t Afford It.
I have been asked many variations of this question. Russ Gehrlein has a good response to it.
Whose Pins Are You Juggling? A Parenting Story
Rebekah reflects on her tendency to carry what is not actually hers to carry (or to juggle, as the case may be).
God Can’t Wait to Forgive You
What an amazing God we serve. “Just as the Father of the prodigal freely and fully reinstated the prodigal to sonship status, so God will not send you to the minor leagues before calling you back up the majors. He’s just waiting to hear your cry.”
The Cost of Fear
Karen Wade Hayes says that “fear of the world is more costly than we realize. When we operate from the place of fearing others more than God, the risk is greater than the loss of human approval or smarting pride. It’s bigger than the embarrassment of guys laughing over a yucky cake. The highest cost is when it keeps us from doing God’s will.”
3 Reasons I’m Thankful to Be a TCK
“When I was 5 years old, my missionary parents moved our family from northeast Pennsylvania to northern Italy. We settled into a little town nestled at the base of the Alps and my parents set themselves to the work of church-planting. From that moment on, I had a foot in two worlds—America and Italy—even as I felt like I never belonged to either. In other words, I was a Third-Culture Kid (TCK).”
Flashback: Theological Black Holes
God surrounds us with people who can speak with loving authority and experienced firmness of all of their attempts and failures, and who can guide us back to the straight path. He surrounds us with people who are wise enough to detect the first signs of wandering, and who love us enough to warn us of the consequences.
It doesn’t matter how efficient you are if you are doing the wrong things in the first place.
—Matt Perman
