Excellent and Timely Links

I hesitate to follow the standard model of blog posting adopted by some: link to link to link.  Collecting information, bookmarking more and more web pages that we may read...when?
Anyway, here are some links to posts I have read.  I would encourage the indescriminate link-clinker to pause on a few of them.  Stay at home mothers have a special calling to aquaint themselves with serious theological discourse in the midst of their motherly duties because theirs is opportunity to be the primary teachers of their children.  Without further adieu:
Mark Driscoll, church-planter pastor in Seattle, notes a new volume on "Contemporary Christian Music".  Here is an interview of the author.  Anyone interested in "CCM" will enjoy these.
The Internet Monk, whose opinions and writing I find increasingly challenging and delightful, posts on what volumes are necessary for understanding biblical eschatology.  Dispasensationalists beware!
Peter Leithart, who posts far to frequently for most people to stay abreast his work, has two quick thoughts regarding our savior:  Biblical Theology done quickly and quietly, for our joy.  "Rabbi Jesus?"  "Turn the cheek"
Al Mohler's blog has become must read for me.  He gives more important news that CNN, with commentary.  Here he quotes Tom Schreiner on desires, evil, and expecting redemption.  It's applied to homosexuality, but I found the statement very appropriate for our daily struggles, whatever they may be.

banana man

more within...

[having just been handed what is perhaps the last copy of the bible in North America]

It's been a long time. I'm not a religious man. But it's been a long time." Faber turned the pages, stopping here and there to read. "It's as good as I remember. Lord, how they've changed it in our 'parlors' [which are giant virtual-reality television sets] these days. Christ is one of the 'family' now. I often wonder if God recognizes His own son the way we've dressed him up, or is it dressed him down? He's a regular peppermint stick now, all sugar-crystal and saccharine when he isn't making veiled references to certain commercial products that every worshiper absolutely needs.

I didn't make much of Fahrenheit 451 in the last post. But I must now for the book is staying with me. In its world-of-tomorrow, everyone is hooked on banality, trading real life for a virtual one. Sacrificing real children for virtual ones. It seemed, when I read it, too over the top, too far out. Then I went to church, to youth group, to kid's club. Now I'm terrified. We are so close to that world.

Fahrenheit 451

I just blitzed through Fahrenheit 451. It helps that there are three chapters. Three. Do you remember the triple long jump? I stunk tremendously at it. At any rate, in literature such poor spacing helps a fellow hop over a book quickly.
The story is about a fireman. In the "future" fireman don't put fires out, they start them. Specifically, the burn the homes of people who've been found to posses books. The story chronicles the actual and psychological journey of the man from being a book-burner to a book-lover. The style was like that of Invisible Man.
Two quotes for you, one today, one another day.

It took some man a lifetime maybe to put some of his thoughts down, looking around at the world and life, and then I come along in two minutes and boom! its all over.
"Let me alone," said Mildred. "I didn't do anything."
"Let you alone! That's all very well, but how can I leave myself alone? We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?

(bold added, italics original)

Newberry Books

In case your childhood was truncated by the invention of television, or boy (or girl) scouts took all your time, you would do well to go to the library and check out every single title that has anything approximating the seal pictured here on its front cover.  I just finished two of the more recent Newberry Medal Award Winners: Holes, and The Giver.  Both were excellent.

The Giver was a standout peice of literature: adolescent 1984.  The story grows more confusing as it concludes, but it's well written and thoroughly enjoyable.

Holes, on the other hand, is nearly a must-read.  Follow this general story line: child with perenial, and inherited, "bad luck" finds that all his bad luck has "worked together" toward some amazing, and might I say, without spoiling, good outcomes.  Hmmm.  Does that sound familiar?  Suffering follows someone only to find that it has really been intended for an ultimate good?  If you guessed that that's the shape of redemptive history, and probably that of your own sanctification, then you're right!  Holes is a beautiful tale of benevolent providence, the biblical, painful variety.

God's Eternal Plan for Everything

I again had the privilege and joy of bringing the Word of God to His People.  Listen here:
God's Eternal Plan for Everything.

Previous Sermon: God's Passion for His Glory (hey, I only get so many times to preach each year.  Gotta make 'em count.)

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, p.15

It could be that God has not absconded but spread, as our vision and understanding of the universe have spread, to a fabric of spirit and sense so grand and subtle, so powerful in a new way, that we can only feel blindly at its hem. In making the thick darkness a swaddling band for the sea, God "set bars and doors" and said, "Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further." But have we come even that far? Have we rowed out to the thick darkness, or are we all playing pinochle in the bottom of the boat?

fear and parenting

"Fear in what context? How do we teach our kids to fear him who is able to cast both body and soul into hell?"

This brief question from Chris highlights the lacking transitionary thinking between Kimmel's exhortation to remove fear from the emotional vocabulary of child-rearing and the foundational reasoning behind that removal: fear God alone. How do we teach our children true fear in a fearless context? Or rather, how do we communicate to them the complex reality that there is One whom we must fear and none others, all the while battling to communicate that to ourselves?

Following Kimmel's model, let's see what it is about God that allows us to fear Him all the while secure in a covenantal love. God is perfectly just, justly angry, and the now and coming Judge. Yet, God is perfectly loving, incomprehensibly merciful, and He Who did not spare His beloved Son. And that is the heart of it: Jesus satisfies God's anger while communicating His love. We find these categories perfected in God: loving, caring Parent, and just, angry Judge. Jesus Christ is the means of communicating both categories at the same time.

These then are the categories it is our job to create in the hearts of our children. We must create both at the same time. And, in as much as we are able, we must sustain them consistently. Teach the child to fear you, when he has willfully disobeyed, or is in a state of unrepentant disobedience. But also saturate them with your love. Even more importantly, communicate to them in the punishment the reality your overarching love for them. But most importantly, use times when you have punished your child or when you have enjoyed a special experience of displaying your love for them to explain to them who Jesus Christ is and what He did. "Just as I love you deeply (as you know or as we are now experiencing), and yet must punish you on occassion when you disobey (as you know or as we are now experiencing), so also God the Father loves us deeply and yet will not allow us to disobey Him without being punished. This is why Jesus came, to receive God's anger against sin and to give us God's love."

I'm sure you'll think of better ways of saying this in context with your child.
1. Communicate to them God's love. Surround them with it as God surrounds us with common and special grace.
2. Instruct them in God's justice. Ground all justice in the command of God and, when necessary, teach them about the pain and sorrow that disobedience brings.
3. At every opportunity, Explain to them how Jesus Christ is the focus of God's love and of God's justice, and how they must trust in Him to receive the love and escape the just-anger.

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard

"I never knew as I washed, and the blood streaked, faded, and finally disappeared, whether I'd purified myself or ruined the blood sign of the passover."

Gilead, pg. 56-57

I have been thinking about existence lately. In fact, Ihave been so full of admiration for existence that I have hardly been able to enjoy it properly. As I was walking up to the church this morning, I passed that row of big oaks by the war memorial--if you remember them--and I thought of another morning, fall a year or two ago, when they were dropping their acorns thick as hail almost. There was all sorts of thrashing in the leaves and there were acorns hitting the pavement so hard they'd fly past my head. all this in the dark, of course. I remember a slice of moon, no more than that. it was a very clear night, or morning, very still, and then there was such energy in the things transpiring among those threes, like a storm, like travail. I stood there a little out of range, and I thought, It is all still new to me. I have lived my life on the prairie and a line of oak trees can still astonish me.

“Grace Based Parenting” by Ted Kimmel

What does the book say?
Kimmel assumes that we should treat one another as God has treated us in Christ, namely, graciously. And one of those “one another” relationships is the parent-child relationship.

Why does it say what it says?
There are two motivations behind the ways people raise their child: fear and grace. Kimmel traces several kinds of homes back to a fundamental fear: fear of man, fear of sin, fear of the world, fear of failure. But starting with fear ends in terror and destruction. Fear breeds no good thing. Only the fear of the Lord begets wisdom, and it is the fear of the Lord to which Kimmel then turns. Since we fear the Lord and esteem Him highly, we do as Jesus did: only what the Father does did Jesus in turn do. We are children of our heavenly Father. Act how God acts, in love, grace, and kindness. Do not live to please others. Do not fear anyone who doesn't have the authority to throw you into hell. Fear God; keep His commandments. Be gracious to one another. At least base your relationships on grace, even if at some point you have to knot a cord and toss some tables.
Basing relational interaction in grace is part of genuine love. Love never lies, but neither is it compelled to deliver the whole truth unsolicited in every situation. Love never condemns, but neither does it withhold consequences to the detriment of developing character. Love never freaks out, but neither does it tolerate arrogant disregard for clear and necessary boundaries.
Kimmel outlines a way of raising children, that is, a manner. He advocates no system, so called. Rather he checks our tone, our body language, our internal mechanisms, our motives, our prejudgment, and our otherwise graceless way of handling immanent or actualized conflict.
Is it valid? Absolutely. Once you have the necessary presuppositions in place (I.e. You're saved), Kimmel's main point seems more difficult to do than to agree with. Few would say, “no, we're not supposed to treat our children graciously, as God did to us, but rather as the savage brutes the little lizards are and always will be.”
Kimmel makes other tidy comments along the way that might be controverted. His steps, “A secure love, a strong hope, a significant purpose,” will dissatisfy those who've doggedly ascribed to Piper's gibberish about God's passion for His glory (as I have). Dissatisfied, but helped.
What of it? Kimmel attacks core family worldviews. Fear is fundamentally dissatisfaction with God, with His promises, with the work of Jesus, and with the presence of the Spirit. Fear at the heart of a family will kill the vitality of the gospel in it. Fearful families are the death bells gonging atop churches. Parents who care so much for their children that they ignore biblical realities like depravity (their own and their child's), God's faithfulness, forgiveness, and things of ultimate importance, open themselves up to worldly wisdom and the whispers of the accuser. Ignoring God's ways, as Christian and Hopeful found, lands one in the dungeons of doubting castle under Giant Despair's dim gaze.
And God's way, as hard and seemingly roundabout as it may be, is the only way to raise godly children, or more importantly, to raise children for God's glory.
Summary Comments: well-written, easy to read, repetitive (in a good way), and ends on a breathtakingly Christ-centered note. Lacking exegesis, containing few explained Scripture passages, occasionally reverting to caricature, and missing an overall passion for God's glory: Where in a child's three main “needs” is a passion for God? A Christian Hedonist might fill in the blanks for Kimmel, who perhaps leaves them in order to appeal to a wider audience, but I missed it sorely.
If you care to raise your kids for either of the above reasons (1. to be godly, or 2. to glorify God), then “Grace Based Parenting” will help.

THE JESUS PRAYER: chapter five of "Soul Shaper

"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

This simple, humble prayer summarizes poignant confessions and pleas fromthe New Testament. This is the “Jesus Prayer.” The prayer itself is unremarkable, as prayers go. Rather, the way the Eastern church used the prayer sets it apart. Whereas Western prayers tend to follow a logic, an internal coherence, typified in the “ACTS” device, which uses the logic of the gospel to guide prayers (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication), Eastern prayers and liturgy tend to be more meditative, in the proper sense.

We see this in the greatest prayer book of the East or West: the Psalms. Repetition and restatement couple together single thoughts so that the reader, the singer, the listener, the pray-er, is forced to soak in the facets of a singular reality, often a fundamental one: new mercy, great faithfulness, the Creator, the King.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Believers recite the Jesus Prayer over and over again, hundreds, even thousands
of time. They use this doctrinally packed phrase like a whip to drive away temptation, distraction, wicked thoughts; they use it like a rope, a life-line, drawing themselves by grace into a fuller awareness of God's goodness to them in Christ. The goal is to so soak in the truths herein revealed that the prayer continues in the mind and heart long after it has ceased from the lips. So that when one sits and waits for the bus, peruses t-shirts at the thrift store, stares at the river, the soundtrack is simple, yet profound theology. To set one's life buzzing with Jesus: Humming His praise at all times from the heart, and arriving, by any means necessary, at prayer without ceasing, are the goals of this practice.

People use prayer ropes to “keep track” of their prayers. The point of this is not to just pray the phrase many times, but to free the pray-er to include this way of prayer and meditation into a perhaps too busy lifestyle. Setting and arriving at goals may also free the prayer from the clock and allow him or her to focus on praying from the heart.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

We would do well, I think, to acquaint ourselves with this practice and to begin working it into our lives. It commends itself to us by, first, being about Christ. We should work to center our lives on Christ by any and every possible means. Second, it preaches the gospel. Preaching the gospel to one's self is a primary means of sanctification. This sort of washing with the Word places us under the faucet of grace: “You are Lord, Christ, the Son of God; You give mercy; I am a sinner, and need your mercy; Praise Your Name, Lord, Christ, the Son of God...”

"Let all your thoughts be with the Most High, and direct your humble prayers unceasingly to Christ.”
-
Thomas à Kempis

Gilead, pg. 48-49

I can't tell you, though, how I felt, walking along beside him that night, along that rutted road, through that empty world--what a sweet strength I felt, in him, and in myself, and all around us.  I am glad I didn't understand, because I have rarely felt joy like that, and assurance.  It was like one of those dreams where you're filled with some extravagant feeling you might never have in life, it doesn't matter what it is, even guilt or dread, and you learn from it what an amazing intrument you are, so to speak, what a power you have to experience beyond anything you might ever actually need.  Who would have thought that the moon could dazzle and flame like that?  Despite what he said, i could see that my father was a little shaken.  He had to stop and wipe his eyes.

Gilead, pg. 45

    A good sermon is one side of a passionate conversation.  It has to be heard in that way.  There are three parties to it, of course, but so are there even in the most private thought--the self that yields the thought, the self that acknowledges and in some way responds to the thought, and the Lord.  That is a remarkable thing to consider.
    I am trying to describe what I have never before attempted to put into words.  I have made myself a little weary in the struggle.
    It was one day as I listened to baseball that it occurred to me how the moon actually moves, in a spiral, because while it orbits the earth it also follows the orbit of the earth around the sun.  This is obvious, but the realization pleased me.  There was a full moon outside my window, icy white in a blue sky, and the Cubs were playing Cincinnati.

incompetech.com

Fascinating trove of pdf's.  "Ugly website. Brilliant content": as they say.
Incompetech.com has things like roughly 25 varieties of graph/grid paper, a mailing labels generator, build and print your own calendars (monthly, yearly) through 2038, as well as a large collection of Royalty-Free Music (mp3).

historical maps

excellent site from the library of texas: tons of historical maps (high resolution too).

bookmark manager purging

I need to clean out my "to link to" bookmark folder.  Some of the following links will be referenced later, as they are good.  Perhaps you'll find some of them particularly valuable to you in your situation.
Regarding the validity of Jack Chick's track ministry's claims
From Time Magazine regarding Scientology
Barna Research regarding Teenagers
Children in Church according to John and Noel Piper
Home Grown World Christians by Noel Piper
Martin Luther's Account of his own conversion
Piper's Coronary Christian Article
Pipers regarding vacation and Bed and Breakfasts
Piper on Reading (read it!) Al Mohler on Reading
Unanimity and Church Decisions (Piper, naturally)
Frame debates the "regulative principle"
Thomas Sowell on Islamists as Hitlers and postponing reality
Daily Greek Passage on your Site!
What Higher Education should be teaching
Ben Witherington meditates on JESUS and Kanye and culture
DAILY HEBREW
Economics and Finance articles
Kick-Start your cooking skills (more useful than bow-staff skills)
Scott McKnight on marking books
The Commonplace book: Part I and Part II
Microsoft Word tips

Phew!  Glad to get that off of my chest.  Hopefully there's something in that mess for you.

Best Solomon Picture Yet!

Testify

P.O.D.
Payable On Death
You probably won't like their style: hard rock meets reggae with the joyful urge to rap.  Oh, and sometimes they sing slow and melodic.  Hmmm.  On second thought, how could you not?  I just picked up their latest CD: Testify.  Every CD they come out with is more surprising than the last in both musicality and articulate doctrine.  I've not finished listening closely yet, and perhaps I should wait, nonetheless, I won't, because I love this group of young men (they're probably older than I am) in the Lord.  They are among a few, say four, mainstream groups for whom I will go to bat, and buy each of their CD's: Jars of Clay, Caedmon's Call, Fernando and P.O.D.  How's that for good company?  If you can't stomach buying the CD, then check it out from the library.

conversation

Linked below are the first two posts from what appears to be an fascinating conversation regarding commercialism, consumerism, and "evangelicalism" between the always funny, and so-often-right-it's-weird iMonk, Michael Spencer and Frank Turk, a gentlemen you can soon be as aquainted with as I am if you click below:
Conversation Q & A #1
Conversation Q & A #2

Gilead

I'm ten pages away from finishing an amazing piece of literature: Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson.  Here's what I wrote about it in my own comment section below:

Like looking at the underbelly of clouds: I am thankful and jealous all at once. And isn't that what glory should do? Stir us up in gratitude for the vision and rile us up with desire for more.

I am not posting quotes as frequently as I, or perhaps you, would like, because the book speaks to truthfully, so painfully, that I can barely read it, although it's fabulous writing and wonderful. DG's Top Five fiction books every preacher should read.