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A La Carte (December 8)

A La Carte Collection cover image

Good morning. Grace and peace to you.

The highlight of today’s Kindle deals is probably Matthew Bingham’s A Heart Aflame for God, which is usually over $30. If all goes well, you’ll also find books by Paul David Tripp and John Piper, whose new edition of Desiring God is on sale for the first time.

A Plea to Older Women

Barbara writes to her fellow older women. “It’s good for older people to share from their experience or express their opinions. But how we share our concerns is as important as what we share.”

Let Someone Serve You in Suffering

“I don’t like asking for help. Frankly, I’d rather take care of myself, by myself.” I think many of us feel the same as Vaneetha Rendall Risner—we would rather help than be helped.

Why AI Writing Can’t Compete

“Almost no one uses an AI prompt to contemplate their soul in an act of leisure. Usually, it is to farm engagement. By contrast, the reason we journal and write is for our souls. The outward product of our transformation by writing is one thing; the transformation within is another.”

Influencers

Cheryl writes for those who wonder if their relatively small influence means they shouldn’t even bother.

The Hidden Danger of Online Sermons

I have often contemplated how online sermons prove such a blessing in some ways and such a challenge in others.

Two Truths and an Opportunity to Disciple Young People in the Age of the Smartphone

“It’s obviously true that smartphones have transformed how we live, something that Jonathan Haidt describes as ‘the Great Rewiring,’ resulting in an end to the traditional play based childhood and the advent of the phone based one. In a world like this, one where more than twenty-four thousand minutes of new user video is uploaded to YouTube every minute of every day, how can the church ensure we’re doing what we can to disciple our young people?”

Flashback: The Legend of the Battle-Weary Crusader

Each of us who is in Christ is tending a little garden in which heavenly seeds have been planted and begun to thrive…Each of us is responsible to tend that garden, to foster the growth of those precious seeds, and to watch with joy as they come to fuller and fuller bloom. 

The Holy Spirit arouses the guilty soul to the enormous sinfulness of sin and points him to the cross before him, the heaven above him, and the hell beneath him!

—Theodore Cuyler

  • Works and Wonders November 8

    Works & Wonders (November 8)

    This week’s Works & Wonders: the power of God, Nikon’s microscope photos, three Come, Thou Founts, a brain-injured musical genius, and Prepare Him Room live.

  • Weekend A La Carte (November 7)

    The Hutterites’ guide to technology / Searching for jobs, Gen Z feels like it’s staring into ‘the void’ / The gospel according to Peter (Thiel) / Scientism and the allure of control / Can science explain sparkling rivers? / What led to Christianity Today’s crisis?

  • I Regret to Inform You That Heaven Tourism Is Back

    I Regret to Inform You That Heaven Tourism Is Back

    I regret to inform you, dear reader, that heaven tourism is back. The genre possibly never went away entirely, but it did at least disappear from the bestseller lists for several years. Sadly, it has returned in Gabe Poirot’s 18 Days in Heaven.

  • A La Carte (November 6)

    Don’t despise the red flags / Your thoughts are shaping your life / Can’t you just love everyone? / Selfies are not the self: forming embodied youth in a disembodied age / Effective altruists and the spreadsheet gospel / 4 Applications for the order of love—from the home to the ends of the earth /…

  • A La Carte (November 5)

    When you feel guilty about your giving / The missing piece in John Mark Comer’s quiet time / A manifesto for phone-free church / The pull of Rome / 4 Misconceptions about spiritual warfare / Slouching toward Narnia / Kindle deals, and more

  • A Daring Suggestion for Netflix

    A Daring Suggestion for Netflix

    Netflix appears to have fallen on hard times and I have some suggestions that I’d like to think would help it: cut the sex, nudity, and profanity, and gain back the viewers it’s long been alienating.