Good morning! May the God of peace be with you today.
There are a few Kindle deals worth looking at today.
On special at Westminster Books is Tim Keller’s book Hope in Times of Fear which he wrote following his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.
Lassitude
Andrée Seu Peterson offers some transparency in her column at WORLD. “Back in spring I was telling myself that it was to protect my 96-year-old father—the most vulnerable age group, remember?—that I was staying home on the Lord’s Day morning, because that’s what was initially touted as the responsible course. Now we go to church with my dad and nobody says boo. I don’t think the science changed. It just seems we all got bored with the science. Or weary with ever-changing rules we don’t understand.”
Why Is Atheism No Longer Cool?
This article on the demise of the New Atheism offers some really good insights. “That intolerant tone (which now seems so familiar everywhere) began to look a bit childish. It was hard to get behind something that was so wholeheartedly negative. Troubling ideas began to surface. What do you do with people who follow a very religiously zealous (and therefore dangerous) worldview? We whisper this quietly, but perhaps, as a prominent New Atheist suggested, it might be best if we wiped them out. It seems that the gentle atheist stereotype who wouldn’t hurt a fly may be a delusion as well.”
Why You Matter
“What is the justification for believing that we are equals if God does not exist? This is a challenging question. Our country is becoming increasingly secular, and I think people are waking up to the reality that if God doesn’t exist, we aren’t equal; we are merely useful to each other.” (Sponsored)
Character is King
Now and always, character is king. “You can’t fake good character, and there is no substitute for it. You can hide behind a facade for a while, but at some point your private life and your public life will have to be reconciled. Your character and your reputation will either come into conflict with one another or they will converge in beautiful confluence.”
Hide And Seek
This is a wonderful and poignant bit of writing from Chris Thomas. “My son’s brain was irreparably damaged due to exposure to alcohol in his mother’s womb. In the place where he was being knit together, a place that is designed to hide the vulnerable from harm, he could not escape the poison his mother drank in attempt to hide from her own pain. Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder means that as his body adapts to the teenage years, his brain lags far behind.”
FAQ: How Do You Translate Unknown Concepts?
I found this a fascinating look at how Bible translators translate unknown concepts. “When we translated the Christmas story in Kwakum and ran into all kinds of translation issues. For starters, there is no word for shepherd in the language, so our team has chose to use a descriptive phrase those-who-monitor-the-livestock. It is longer than a simple word shepherd and yet, it is accurate. We also had problems with the word magi, which, as it turns out, I didn’t know what a magi was anyway.”
World Nature Photography Awards
If you’re looking for some eye candy, then look no further than the finalists from the 2020 World Nature Photography Awards.
Flashback: There Is Nothing Trite About It!
To say, “I’ll pray for you” is to say, “I will speak with the Author and Creator of all things. He’s my Father and invites me to come to him any time. I will speak to him about those things. I will plead his promises…”
There is no body so broken that it cannot be offered to God as a living sacrifice, and there is no arm too feeble to wield the sword of the Spirit.
—Betsy Childs Howard
