A most wonderful secret
“What does it feel like?” I asked. “To have a whole new person growing inside you?”
My mom sat down on the couch and leaned back and thought for a while. A pretty smile spread over her face. “That’s a big question,” she said slowly, “A big answer. But I’ll try. It feels like…it feels like you have the most wonderful secret that makes everything…Oh I know! Remember what you said when you got your kitten? You said that afterward, it sounded like all the regular noise in the world had turned to music. Well, that’s what it’s like, Clementine. The wonderful secret of having a baby coming makes all the world’s noise turn into music.”
“Did you feel that way when you were going to have me too?” I asked.
“Oh honey,” my mom said, putting her arm around me. “I still feel like that with you.”
– author Sara Pennypacker, in her Clementine and the Family Meeting
Dealing with fake news
Christianity Today’s Ed Stetzer has advice on what to do if we still can’t tell whether a story is fake or not.
“…don’t post it. If you have not, will not, or cannot confirm a story, do not share it. As Christians, we have a higher standard than even the journalist. We aren’t protecting the reputation of an organization or a website, we bear the name of our King. If our friends and families cannot trust us with this type of news, many will not listen when we seek to share the good news of the gospel.”
One flesh
“The woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.”
– From Matthew Henry’s Commentary on Genesis 2
One of God’s favorite verses in the Bible?
We all have our own favorite verses in the Bible, many of them comforting passages. The world’s favorite verse is probably Matthew 7:1a “Do not judge.” The verse that is share with the world most often might be John 3:16, written up large on poster board and displayed at football and baseball stadiums around North America.
But Baptist pastor Jeff Durbin suggests that one of God’s favorite bible verses strikes a very different tone. Psalm 110:1 is the Old Testament verse that is most cited in the New Testament, and it proclaims Jesus’ sovereignty:
“The Lord says to my Lord: “’Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.’”
The wit and wisdom of George Hebert
George Hebert was best known as a Christian poet, but he published a collection of proverbs he collected over his lifetime. Here are a half dozen of the best:
- A fool may throw a stone into a well which a hundred wise men cannot pull out – being destructive is easy; being constructive takes real effort
- Comparisons are odious – they are the root of discontent and covetousness
- One hour’s sleep before midnight is worth three after – we all know it
- He that steals an egg will steal an ox – there aren’t degrees of trustworthiness
- Luke was a saint and a physician, yet is dead – the prosperity doctrine is bunk
- The fat man knoweth not what the lean thinketh – we shouldn’t assume that just because we were once hungry (or young, or poor, or single, or jobless, or etc.) that we still completely understand what it is like.
How to be a revolutionary
When a Christian conference is titled “How to enrage the culture” you might think it would be encouraging radical and revolutionary means. And you’d be right, when you consider that getting married, having kids, and raising them in the fear and love of the Lord are pretty radical and revolutionary ideas these days. How radical and revolutionary? Well, one of the conference speakers, Pastor Toby Sumpter, shared this illustrative anecdote:
“A few years ago, I’d come home from work, and my wife was finishing making dinner in the kitchen, and I was reading. She gets a phone call….some kind of alumni survey, and at the end they’re doing the demographic stuff. And I hear her say: ‘Homemaker….homeMAKER…HOMEMAKER!!! I’m a wife and a mom – that’s what I do!’ She gets off the phone a couple of minutes later and she shares, ‘The girl I was talking to had never heard of a homemaker.’”
It’s time for the men to act like men
“Imagine that in those ages past, Luther, Zwingli, Calvin and their [associates] had said:
‘The world is out of order. But if we try to set it right we shall only make a great row and get ourselves into disgrace. Let us go to our chambers, put on our night-caps and sleep over the bad times and perhaps when we wake up things will have grown better.’
“Such conduct on their part would have [passed on to] us a heritage of error. Age after age would have gone down into the infernal deeps, and the infectious bogs of error would have swallowed all. These men loved the faith and the name of Jesus too well to see them trampled on. Note what we owe them and let us pay to our sons the debt we owe our fathers. It is today as it was in the Reformers’ days. Decision is needed. Here is the day for the man – where is the man for the day?”
– Charles Spurgeon
