The Peace of Wild Things-Wendell Berry When despair for the world grows in meand I wake in the night at the least soundin fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,I go and lie down where the wood drakerests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.I come into…
Tag: Matthew
Rend Your Hearts
One of the most formative habits of my life has been that of daily Bible reading. Whether the motivating force on any given day is desperation, duty, or delight, I truly believe that those who seek the Lord in His Word will find Him; I’ve experienced that over and over again in my own life….
Hello Again!
Hello again, and happy July! As promised, I’m back after taking a bit of a break during the month of June. There was a lot of front porch sitting, a good amount of reading (14 books finished in the last 6 weeks!), and I do feel refreshed and more myself. As I sat on my…
Eyes Up!
The state department of transportation in my area utilizes electronic message boards to convey what it considers to be useful information or helpful reminders. Sometimes it is indeed useful – missing person alerts, detours and delays, traffic issues, and weather alerts – and sometimes the messages fall into the realm of punny safety tips. Recently…
Self-Justifying Rationalizations
I’m not sure whether you’ve noticed, and it could possibly just be me, but a careful reading of and thoughtful meditation on Scripture is often uncomfortable. Sure, it’s all sunshine and roses here when I read about how closely the Israelites obeyed God and how well the kings listened to the prophets He sent (read:…
Rest
Rest. We as a culture can barely define it. We’ve mostly prioritized the opposite of rest, glorifying the overworked, overscheduled, overcommitted, hyper-busy to the point where anyone with down time is caricatured as a lazy, irresponsible slacker who has likely forgotten a significant number of responsibilities. Hyperbole? Hopefully, but I fear it’s all too accurate…
Signs of Love
Valentine’s Day was a few weeks ago, and my social media feed sparked a thought I’ve been considering since then. (Yes, it takes me a while to process things sometimes.) I saw post after post that included something along the lines of “real love doesn’t look like flowers and chocolate one day a year; it…
Invited
We’ve been house hunting recently, and with that of course comes the repeated evaluation of every feature of house after house, and a ranking (and shuffling, and reshuffling) of priorities: Is it an acceptable distance from work or church, is it in good repair, does a larger lot offset less living space, how far is…
Messiah, Part 1
As I mentioned last week, this Advent season I’m running a series of the text (libretto) to Messiah by George Frederic Handel. You’ll find below the biblical text (King James Version, of course) used in Part 1, whose theme is “The prophecy and realization of God’s plan to redeem mankind by the coming of the…