Hello all and welcome to Thursday.
It snowed a bit here this week. Charlotte has been in a drought when it comes to snow, so any little bit is big news. I would say we receive a half inch all told. Not enough for sledding. Not enough for snowmen, unless you were really committed. But enough to cancel school, yes. And enough to make everything look bright and beautiful for a bit.
The Part Where There’s an Essay: The Courage to be Kind
This week I’ll point you in the direction of Cultivating Oaks Press, where our Winter issue has just gone live. The theme this time around was kindness. I reflected on the necessity of courageous kindness in the face of mistreatment from others (with a little help from Cinderella):
These occasions are when I most feel akin to Cain, being told that “sin is crouching at the door” (Gen. 4:7 ESV). My inner struggle for justice cries out to rise to the surface and be given a full-volume hearing, in defense of myself and my feelings. It is at these times that I am helped by a remembrance of God’s sovereignty in the situation. He is not absent; He has brought us both—myself and my insulter—to this place. Where do we go from here?
For the Anglophiles
I believe we’ve covered my enjoyment of this woman. Watch this:
Reads & Listens of the Week
Some good thoughts here on manual labor and the glory of God (and baking bread!): “In retrospect I see how my rocking, sweeping, and nursing was a new medium for intimacy with God, a living out of Christ’s love.”
I saw Interstellar for the first time on New Year’s Day. I really enjoyed this essay about that film plus A Christmas Carol. “In both Interstellar and A Christmas Carol, higher beings than ourselves offer mere mortals the chance to bend time and space for the sake of a grand redemption.”
Please enjoy this profile of Charles Schultz, creator of Charlie Brown. “I suppose one of the solutions is, as Charlie Brown, just to keep on trying. He never gives up. And if anybody should give up, he should.”
These Massachusetts road signs made me laugh out loud.
Enjoyment is a clue to reality’s deepest, brightest secret: that the universe is the gleeful invention of an unassailably happy God. - Bobby Jamieson