A La Carte (May 14)

Sales & Deals

Today’s Kindle deals include some books for kids and teens like Science and God: Do You Have to Choose? My Pilgrim Prayers and Keller’s Rediscovering Jonah are there as well.

Recommended Reading

Dimensions. This is a sweet reflection on our inability to grasp the sheer size and scope of God’s love for us. “Dimensions. As a remodeler and DIYer, I know that dimensions describe openings, door and window size, square footage, etc. Dimensions are all about height, width, length and depth. They’re essential. What do dimensions have to do with love? Everything. God’s love for us, expressed through Christ, exceeds our comprehension. We cannot measure it.”

Angels: Avoiding Super-Spiritual Excess and Sub-Spiritual Denial. Ben Dean is right: “Biblically informed awareness of angels avoids two extremes, excessive super-spiritual over-interest and excessively restrictive sub-spiritual denial.” He turns to the question of whether angels have appeared visibly since biblical times. “Whilst absolute skepticism is unnecessary, sober discernment and caution are critical. Whilst angelic appearances are impossible to publicly verify, and whilst they are by definition the opposite of routine, there is no explicit biblical warrant for flat denial or an insistent assumption that beyond biblical times visible angelic occurrences have ceased.”

A Christian View of UFO’s, Aliens, and Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena. John Stonestreet considers UFOs, aliens, and other unidentified anomalous phenomena. “The Bible does discuss and, at times, describes creatures that are neither human nor animal. These beings exist, not on other planets but in a different realm, unseen but with access to our own. They are not human, nor do they bear the image of God.”

Actually, Having a Baby Has Slowed Me Down. Ryanne Molinari explains some of the ways in which having a baby has slowed her down, and also why she’s okay with this. “When I was nine months pregnant, a colleague of mine informed me that pregnancy didn’t slow his wife down. Good for her. To be fair, pregnancy barely slowed me down either. I worked out the entire time, kept up with my too-many jobs, submitted my doctoral dissertation, and even recorded the audiobook for Spirit-Filled Singing while dealing with worst of my first trimester nausea. But having a baby? Having a baby has slowed me down.”

You Can’t Give Your Children What You Don’t Have. This is a simple but still noteworthy reflection on the well-known words of Deuteronomy 6. “Look carefully at how the passage is structured: God doesn’t start by saying, ‘Teach your children My words.’ Rather, He starts with the father: ‘These words that I command you today shall be on your heart.’ What a significant and often overlooked foundation. The command to teach your children comes second.”

Performative Busyness. Chris Martin offers a Christian’s perspective on performative busyness and pseudo-productivity—traps each one of us can blunder into. (On a related note, see Susan Narjala’s Thinking Theologically About Productivity. Her article got me thinking about the fact that the great majority of writing on productivity tends to be by men. I wonder why that is.)

Natural Theology

Once again, when looking for a concise definition, I turned to The Baker Compact Dictionary of Theological Terms. In this case, I needed to look up “Natural Theology,” a term I have encountered a fair bit in recent days.

The approach to constructing (elements of) the Christian faith through general revelation without appeal to Scripture. It is exemplified in arguments—ontological, cosmological, teleological, moral—for God’s existence. Natural theology rests on general revelation, God’s manifestation of himself in creation, human reason and conscience, providence, and more. Given this revelation, natural theology can be constructed. Still, it is limited by the general revelation on which it is based; thus, natural theology cannot develop doctrines such as the Trinity, Christ’s person and work, and salvation.

Book Brief

His Father’s Son: The Life of General Ted Roosevelt, Jr. There are several famous Roosevelts in American history. Most know of the two Presidents, Theodore and Franklin, but fewer know of Ted. Ted was Theodore’s son and a man who lived a life that was, well, larger than life. He fought heroically in the First World War, went on to a life in business, failed in his attempts to succeed his father in national politics, but succeeded in serving heroically in the Second World War. His life is told well in this account, though I wish it had captured the man as much as it captured his actions. It’s well worth reading, but I hope it’s not the final or definitive account of this especially fascinating man. (Amazon)

Flashback

Is This Really a Good Idea? When you are safely home in heaven…you will think back to these days and see that in every way God directed you, his purpose was never to harm you but only to bless you; never to leave you destitute but always to provide for you; never to abandon you but to deliver you.