Few gifts are more meaningful than a thoughtfully chosen book. It’s a gift that can offer hope, wisdom, and even fun. As you consider your Christmas gift, here are a few books you might want to consider for loved ones.
Christian Living, Faith, Spiritual Growth, Wisdom
“Pastor, I was really touched when you said…”
One of my favorite parts of pastoral ministry is hearing how Scripture, sermons, Bible studies, and blog posts are shaping the lives of people in the congregation.
A common occurrence in these conversations is when someone tells me I said something in a sermon that I did not actually say. What happened? Usually, it’s not because the person was inattentive.
Recommendations, Culture, Gratitude
Two ways to worry about AI: Alan Noble begins, “If you’ve followed some of the news in AI recently, you might be feeling scared. Concerning stories have been coming from two leading AI companies this summer.”
What gratitude was never meant to do: Tracy Harper says, “We run into problems with gratitude, though, when we use it as a countermeasure to avoid the thoughts and emotions that disappointment brings to the surface. God was prompting me to sit with the deeper question of why this mattered so much to me, and I couldn’t use my list of blessings to avoid going there with him.”
Christian Living, Consumerism, Culture, Generosity
You’re running a day care center that closes at 5pm. You notice a handful of parents pick up their children late. Every time a parent arrives late it impacts you: you must stay late—family dinners and events are lost. What do you do? Realizing that your honor system isn’t cutting it, you start charging a fine for arriving late.
And then the unexpected happens: the number of late-arriving parents doubles.
This experiment was run by economists trying to help an Israeli daycare. The results confounded the researchers.
Recommendations, Culture, Biblical Studies, Nature, Prayer, Science
Three things stress reveals: Michael Kelley says, “And maybe you, too, know what that bursting feels like – it’s when something small that ordinarily shouldn’t have bothered you as much as it did just sets you off. And you find yourself overreacting to that single incident because of the accumulated pressure from the other circumstances.”
Seraphim may be flying serpentine creatures: Wyatt Graham challenges how we envision these angelic beings, “The word saraph occurs only seven times in the Hebrew Bible. Its verbal form means “to burn,”
Christian Living, Culture, Identity
I was fourteen years old, 5’9” and 130 pounds. My backpack hung loosely over my shoulders and butterflies filled my stomach. It was the first day of high school. I navigated the path from my fourth period class toward the cafeteria in a sea of three thousand mostly new faces. Who would I sit with? I saw the group of guys I had hung around with in middle school: jocks who had made those three years fairly miserable for me.
I scanned the grass and picked out the groups: band kids, several kids playing chess, kids playing pick-up basketball. I saw one gathering playing Dungeons and Dragons.
