You Can't Keep Up This Pace

HT: Erik Raymond

Some years ago I was serious about distance running. I meticulously planned my meals, training, and schedule in order to achieve my goals. After a long season of training I laced them up and lined up for a marathon. At the start I took off on pure adrenaline. I ran with excitement passing many people and feeling like I was in the Olympics or something. The street was filled with onlookers and there was music. It was excellent. The only problem was I never slowed down. Like a labrador in an open field I just ran hard for several miles. Then something unexpected happened. At about mile 14 I began to feel irritation in my hips and knees. Instead of slowing down I just winced through it. By mile 18 I was grimacing. By mile 22 I felt like I was in a vice. I had foolishly outrun my ability and my body was paying the price.

This incident has become instructive for me of late. For years I have been privileged to speak to men who seem to take on too much work and go too hard. They are always running on fumes and rarely feel like they are doing their best in a particular area. They regret their busyness. I look back to many conversations where I’ve tried to help guys see their priorities, build a reasonable plan, and some accountability to make it happen. I’ve even used the analogy of life being a marathon and not a sprint. What’s more, I’ve even used my misplaced running zeal as an example of what could happen if they don’t reign some things in.

The only problem was, I never listened to the advice.

You can read the rest.

Advent and Reconciliation

HT: Brandon Showalter

With Advent now upon us, a season of preparation for the coming of the Lord, I have found myself wondering what Peace on Earth and good will toward men might look like on a global scale in a world more interconnected than ever before but still painfully disconnected on so many levels. In 2015 in the United States we can watch earthquake victims in Kathmandu valley dig out from under the rubble in real time. We can then send them aid even though many of the Americans who wire funds overseas to help said victims cannot place Nepal on a map. Flooding our social media newsfeeds are heartwarming videos about radical generosity (and kitty cats pawing at printers), uplifting us even if only for a few brief moments. We then scroll down a little further to see a flood of vituperative political memes and clickbait that appeals to our most carnal, depraved desires.

Advent is not just a time of preparation but a season of penitence. What does repentance, a truly penitent turning of the heart, and the ministry of reconciliation–that which the apostle Paul defines as “not counting their sins against them” (2 Cor. 5:18)–look like today?  The very idea of repentance and reconciliation seems impossible given the grisly barbarism and nasty cultural divisions dominating the headlines, not least of which are the murderous rampages of Daesh and the cavalier disregard in the West for the most vulnerable among us. (I’m thinking of refugees and the unborn here).

But alas, the circumstances were not so different in the era in which the hinge of human history was born two thousand years ago.

You can read the rest.

What Child Is This?

HT: David Mathis

As a child, I was not impressed with a Christmas song that asked a question everyone already knew the answer to. What child is this? Really? It’s Jesus, of course. We all know that — even the kids know that.

What I didn’t yet understand is that questions aren’t just for solving problems and requesting new information. Sometimes questions make a point. We call those “rhetorical questions.” Other times the form of a question expresses awe and wonder about something we know to be true, but find almost too good to be true. It’s too good to simply say it directly like we say everything else.

You can read the rest.

An 8-bit Christmas

For the small cross-section of people out there who, like me, enjoy 1980's video games and singing hymns, here's a Christmas gift for you.

You're welcome.

HT: Tyler Larson

Thoughts/Prayers Now, Wise Action Pending for San Bernadino

Some strong points here. If you want to comment, read the whole article first.

Three cheers for anyone outside the immediate area of a crisis who refuses to pontificate or politicize, but pauses, ponders, and prays.

For some reason, waiting to see what motivated an act, where the weapons were gained, and who the killers were is no longer enough. We are refusing to act says the critic . . . and that means passing national gun control legislation. What legislation? Nobody says, but we should do something.

It is unclear to me why people think praying is doing nothing. If I were an atheist, this phrase would be the equivalent of a public statement of solidarity. What else can a person do in the early moments of a tragedy? When facing the initial trauma of an event, normal people feel sympathy, express that feeling, and this helps everyone.

I pray that God will make my heart just. I pray that the victims rest in peace in the life of the world to come. All of this is good for me. I pray that God will work in the hearts of evil men, knowing He does, but adding my voice, as is fit for me to do. I pray God comforts the hearts of those hurting. This comfort does come. This much I have personally seen when a community was hurting over death, natural disaster, job loss, or sickness.

No Christian thinks that we should “only” pray in every situation, but until we know the situation, Christian are too sensible to suggest what we should do more than standing in solidarity and praying for the hurting. Should we go to war? Should we pass gun control stricter than that of Paris? What should be done?

My thoughts and prayers are with my fellow citizens in San Bernardino.

HT: John Mark N. Reynolds

About Rosa Parks

I'm a day late on this one.

Five facts about Rosa Parks.

Five myths about Rosa Parks.

HT: Justin Taylor and Joe Carter

Dickens of a Christmas

I need to repost this from last year.

People say Dickens invented Christmas: he didn’t – though he aided its revival. Britain’s newly urban population didn’t have much energy or opportunity to celebrate it, thanks to the extremely un-festive combination of long hours of unregulated industrial toil and displacement from the rural communities they’d grown up in. Dickens was the most successful of numerous cultured Victorians keen to revive the season, both out of nostalgia for the (more fondly than accurately) remembered country Christmases of yore and a sense of social conscience.

Many of our ideas about what makes a merry Christmas (including the phrase itself) were his first. Dickens placed charity at the heart of the season and made us hope for snow. In his imagination Christmas was always white, which his biographer Peter Ackroyd puts down to the eight unusually cold, happy winters of his boyhood, before his father, John, ended up in debtor’s prison.

Hence all the Victorian-like appearances of Christmas? I enjoy many Christmas decorations, but how much do we let Dickens influence our celebration of Christmas in comparison to the humble, sacrificial and loving act of God incarnate?

You can read the rest here. HT: Lauren Laverne