Christian

Jesus is visiting the home of three siblings, Mary, Martha and Lazarus.  (You can read the story in two excellent translations by going here.)  The wording is very clear that it is actually Martha’s house.  Perhaps she had inherited it from a deceased husband; that’s never spelled out.  Anyway, the disciples have probably come along too, although, again, that’s not spelled out, nor is the question of whether or not the visit is on the spur of the moment.  So we are told that Martha is busy getting a meal ready (she almost certainly had servants to help her) and gets rather irritated because her sister Mary isn’t helping her but is instead sitting at the feet of Jesus and listening to His teaching: “But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, ‘Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!'” (Luke 10:40 NIV).  And what does Jesus reply?  Well, it’s not what you’d expect.  He basically tells Martha to calm down:

I attended a showing of the latest D’Souza film this past weekend after waiting in vain for it to end its run and come out on YouTube. (I was perfectly willing to pay to see it online, just to be clear.)  But my husband was out of town, and I was tired of working around the house, and I really wanted to write about the movie, so I went.  I couldn’t even use the King Soopers coupons we usually buy, as there were no more showings at AMC theaters, so I had to pay full price. No one can say that I saw the movie in any sort of backhanded way!

Read more

Subverted:  How I Helped the Sexual Revolution Hijack the Women’s Movement by Sue Ellen Browder, Ignatius Press, 2015.

Has it ever occurred to you that there are two distinct and contradictory streams of thought about women in our modern culture?  That thought has been nagging at me for awhile now, but lately it’s come into sharp focus, and this book helped with that process.

Imagine this scene:  A conference room at some high-powered law office.  The announcement is being made of who has made partner.  It’s been a long and somewhat bitter process, but now it has been decided:  out of two women and three men the choice has come down to one of the women.  She is poised, articulate, and superbly dressed in her power suit.  She is known for her abilities in the courtroom.  From now on she will be paid, in money and respect, for the position she has earned.  Meanwhile, just outside the window of this conference room is a billboard advertising

A Loving Life In a World of Broken Relationships by Paul E. Miller, available in several formats (including audio, my new fave) from Amazon.  Also available through Crossway Books.  He is on the staff of seeJesus.net, a Bible study ministry, and you can view his video teaching blog at Paul’s Weekly Teaching.

I have been privileged to go through Miller’s previous book, A Praying Life, with study groups on at least two occasions but had never read this one.  I vaguely remember starting it at some point and thinking it was just too negative; it seemed to emphasize that love always involves suffering.  Not what I wanted to hear!  So I put it back on the shelf.  But then this summer I was looking over our stock of Christian books for something to read in my morning quiet time and decided to give it another try.

you have an opportunity.”  Gil Johnson, quoted at his funeral on June 25, 2016.

Don’t know how the little storm troopers are going to solve their egg problem, but their brains (if they had brains, that is) must be going a hundred miles an hour trying to sort things out. And that’s the thing:  profound problems lead to profound thinking and profound solutions.  I’m not going to get all Hallmark-y and chirpy here and say, “Be glad for your problems!”  That’s a bit much to bear, isn’t it, especially when you’re in the thick of things? What is helpful, though, is to look for solutions. What can be done? What should be done?  Let’s go on from there.