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A La Carte (October 15)

tuesday

Today’s Kindle deals include a nice little list of titles (though, to be fair, a good number of them seem to go on sale every month or two).

(Yesterday on the blog: Do We Care for the Sheep or Do We Use the Sheep?)

Ten Things You Should Know about John Henry Newman (1801–1890)

John Henry Newman has been much in the news recently. Here’s a short article on his life and influence.

Why So Many Companies Bailed on Facebook’s Libra Project at Once

It’s not good news for Facebook’s cryptocurrency, but it’s also not necessarily devastating news. “The first to ditch Libra was Paypal, which withdrew on October 4th. Then, over the course of a few hours on October 11th, Visa, Mastercard, Stripe and Mercado Pago all bailed on the project, with eBay tagging along for good measure. That meant every major US payment processor has exited the association.”

Carbon Copy

“Stick a spade anywhere in the natural world and it comes up teeming with fascination. Did you know, for example, that sequoia bark is inches thick and its sponginess protects the trees from forest fires? That they are the most massive plants, and among the oldest living organisms, on earth? That their seed cones do not drop naturally but depend on gray squirrels to swarm their branches and nibble through the stems?”

That Two-Hour Marathon

Here’s a look at how Eliud Kipchoge became the first person ever to run a marathon in under two hours.

YouTube Heaven?

“We live in the world of viral videos—at least those of us connected to the internet. The latest video becomes the topic of conversation—have you seen the one where…? Together, we spend 3.25 billion hours on YouTube in a month. That’s 399,543 years. Add to that all the YouTube videos embedded on Facebook etc.” Incredible! And here’s how and why it matters.

‘This Word Must Be Preached’

Justin Taylor has a beautifully-written anecdote from the life and ministry of John Piper.

The Strength of Silence

I have some distant memories of silence. “When I’m in the middle of a busy season of life, I find myself pushing my time with God into smaller and smaller chunks of my day. Other priorities take the place of that time, and before I completely realize what happened I’ve sacrificed the sweet depth of my relationship with God for the temporal busyness of my schedule.”

Flashback: Please Do & Please Don’t Assume Motives

It’s good to make assumptions if the assumption is that a person’s motives are good; it’s sinful to make assumptions if the assumption is that a person’s motives are bad.

If God is the creator of all things, and if the Bible has his seal of truth and power, then the Bible has the right to interrogate my life and culture, and not the other way around.

—Rosaria Butterfield

  • Happy Lies

    Happy Lies

    I’m quite certain you have heard of the New Age movement. Though its popularity seems to have crested and begun to wane some time ago, it continues to wield a good bit of influence. But I wonder if you’ve heard of another similarly-named but quite different movement called New Thought.

  • A La Carte Collection cover image

    A La Carte (January 28)

    A La Carte: Parenting is hard / The wildness of orthodoxy / Rubbing shoulders throughout eternity / Glorifying ourselves / The middle of somewhere / Is Roman Catholic baptism valid? / Excellent Kindle deals / and more.

  • Who Am I?

    It is not simply that we as a culture have lost our knowledge of God, but that in so doing we have also lost sight of ourselves. “Who am I?” is the question of the age.

  • Church cemetery

    If I Could Change Anything about the Modern Church

    I have often been asked what I consider the greatest weakness of today’s church or what I would change about today’s church if I could. Such questions make for good discussion at a conference Q&A session but they are also pretty much impossible to answer in a compelling way. It’s not like any of us…

  • A La Carte Collection cover image

    A La Carte (January 27)

    A La Carte: To men delaying marriage / A mother unknown / Steve Lawson update / Three essential values for effective teamwork / God is good even when he doesn’t do what we want / Kindle deals.

  • Closet

    How To Learn To Pray

    Christians are well-resourced with tremendous books that teach the theology and the practice of prayer. Many churches and ministries offer powerful classes that teach why we must pray and how we must pray. We are truly blessed.