Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. (Col. 4:2)
There is a call the Lord keeps putting in front of me in regards to prayer. It is the great invitation to walk in prayer. Through the years I have had the Spirit bring many tools into my life to assist in this desire to walk in prayer. I don’t desire to have a “prayer time.” I have grown in a desire to walk in prayer.
Continue reading “The practice of devoting yourself to prayer”
The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure by Greg Lukianoff
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is a must read. It challenges. There are things to be argued over. There are things to be implemented. Lukianoff and Haidt present much needed material to challenge the deep divisions of our current society.
The picture painted in The Coddling of the American Mind is harsh. We’ve truly had a lot go wrong and we’ve put a lot of fear and anxiety into our lives, and much of it that is unnecessary. Is there any hope? They give some ideas, thankfully.
First, start with childhood. Colleges definitely need work (and these two university professors know those issues), but why not start kids off better?
Here are some quick points they offer:
The term a few years ago was “helicopter parenting.” I’m not sure if there is a new phrase. There has to be in some cases, because it can be witnessed that parents are a LOT closer to their kids and their activities than a helicopter.
Continue reading “Freedom to play helps democracy”Our current era of high anxiety has been fed directly by our addiction to social media. It has given social media hackers and experts all the fuel they need to exploit and manipulate an entire culture in ways we would laugh at a generation or two ago.
Continue reading “Anxiety in the age of social media”
The Very Good Gospel: How Everything Wrong Can Be Made Right by Lisa Sharon Harper
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Lisa Sharon Harper has one of the best calls to “SHALOM” I’ve read in quite some time. She is in the vein of Walter Brueggemann, who writes the introduction for her book.
Harper tackles the issue of the depth of the Gospel. The Gospel isn’t about individual salvation alone but the work to see God restoring what he has longed for in humanity all along: SHALOM. This isn’t about us getting saved so we can get to heaven. This is about us joining God again in his GLORIOUS work in this world. Through the work of the Gospel we can see shalom truly restored, but we have to get in our own spirits the understanding of the worth of ALL humanity and how Christ’s love can direct us in this work.
From regaining worth of self to relationships to genders to races to the physical world to the nations, Harper lays out the heart of God in each situation. It is an incredibly challenging read. One that I found refreshing for my spirit.
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When the Soviet Union was collapsing in the last 1980s, I read an article in The Atlantic about a region I’d never heard of: the Balkans. In that article, the writer told a tale I found fantastic and almost unbelievable. His contention was that during the Cold War, it was good for the U.S. and the Soviet Union to be the big gorillas in Europe. It kept this Balkan region from exploding.
Continue reading “The balkanization of the United States”