A La Carte (September 4)

May the Lord be with you and bless you today.

Today’s Kindle deals include the excellent Together Through the Storms, along with a book meant to encourage you through failures and setbacks, and bunch of other options.

(Yesterday on the blog: Rise with the Sun: A New Song with CityAlight)

The Secular Liturgy of ‘Goodnight Moon’

What a fascinating look at the publishing phenomenon that is Goodnight Moon. “Author Margaret Wise Brown (1910–52), who wrote more than 100 picture books, never saw the book’s massive success. But her influence, and Goodnight Moon’s unexpected popularity after her untimely death, are at the epicenter of what one historian called the ‘shapeshifting influence of American progressive educators on the invention of books for children’ in the 20th century.”

The Case Against Vasectomies

Don’t ever tell me A La Carte lacks variety! I hadn’t ever read a Christian case against vasectomies before. This one offers plenty to think about. “We may have read lots of books and heard lots of teaching on various aspects of sexuality. We hear about lust, same sex attraction, purity culture, sex outside marriage. We hear about the bonding delights of married sex and the vague goodness of children. But when push comes to shove, many of us were left to our own devices to navigate sex and fertility together.”

Why the Villagers Demanded Bible Teaching… and Ate Our Dog

I really enjoyed this account from the mission field. “According to the beliefs of the local villagers, anyone whose house was struck by lightning was doomed, cursed by the spirits to die. So, they waited with certainty for Uncle Phil’s death. In their experience, no one was powerful enough to escape this doom once the lightning had struck.”