How to have a soft heart: Katie Laitkep says, “When the season you expected to be brief stretches from months to years, layered with added pressures in other areas of your life, the weight of it all doesn’t just exhaust your body; it changes how you see the world. You grow more guarded. You lower your hopes, expecting disappointment and attempting to protect yourself from anyone or anything that could cause more pain, whether it’s people, circumstances, or God Himself.”
What is wrong with the world? Paul David Tripp answers, “When we are looking for answers to the world’s problems, we can begin in an unlikely place: the doctrine of sin. But we shouldn’t stop there. Romans takes us from “all have sinned” to “justified freely by his grace.” From helplessness to hope.”
Is it worth going to church when I can’t even be in the service? Amy Payne responds, “The Lord graciously used my years in and out of the hallway, pacing with an infant and shushing a stumbling toddler, to overthrow my understanding of my own place in the church service.”
We all need counseling. We don’t always need counseling: Keith Evans says, “There is now a widespread expectation that we need regular and ongoing counseling in our contemporary moment. But the shift from embarrassment about counseling to a therapeutized culture is also not a good shift. It is a pendulum that has rebounded and swung too far.”
Bird photographer of the year: “Eye to eye” is one of my favorites in this incredible collection.
Photo by Remi Clinton on Unsplash