Purchasing Joy – “When life is busy I feel like buying that new device or that new piece of software will restore order. When I’m bored or feeling down, I can find myself thumbing through the Best Buy catalog, just browsing, hoping to notice something that will make all the difference. It’s joy I want, and I somehow think I can buy it. Of course it never does make that difference.”
Good News of Great Joy – A free advent book from the folks at Desiring God.
Always a Good Time to Mediate on God’s Mercy – “Maybe your day has just started, or it’s well under way, or it’s over and you’re ‘in the time zones that are sleeping right now.’ No matter what time it is, it’s a good time to give thanks to God for his rich mercies that are ever-new to us through Jesus Christ and share your joy with all who will listen.
Pain & Christian Marriage – “While being a Christian couple does not make marriage easy or pain-free, we do have some great advantages that should make it easier and healing” and this post provides a few of them.
The Church and Violence Against Women– “An abusive man is not an over-enthusiastic complementarian. He is not a complementarian at all. He is a pathetic aping perversion of Adamic leadership. He rejects male headship because he rejects his role as provider and protector. As the culture grows more violent, more consumerist, more sexualized and more misogynistic, the answer is not a church more attenuated to the ambient culture, whether through a hyper-masculine paganism or through a gender-neutral feminism. Instead, the answer is a truly counter-cultural church, a church that calls men to account for leadership, a leadership that cherishes and protects women and girls.”
A Surprising Response – A man who was documenting rejection got a surprising response to his elaborate doughnut request.