Table Rock Lake and Campfire Donuts

I went on my first camping trip of the summer this week. My whole family was able to make it, including my brother and his wife. We also were visited by several Canadian geese, who ate more of our hot-dog buns than we did.

True King of the Wild Things

Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary recently wrote a blog entry titled "What Maurice Sendak Can Teach the Church."

Maurice Sendak, who just died, doesn’t seem, at first glance, to have much to teach Christians. After all, he was an atheist with a cynical outlook and a foul mouth. But underneath all of that, I think, Sendak saw something of the fallen glory of the universe we followers of Jesus sometimes ignore...

World's Most Read Books

Last week First Thoughts' Mark Misulia posted about Squidoo's most-read book info-graph.

Elisabeth Elliot on Judgment and Humility

I love the work of Elisabeth Elliot. I always find her realistic, pithy honesty refreshing.

In her On Asking God Why, she has a chapter titled "To Judge or Not to Judge." True to form, she calls it how she sees it.

The only verse about judgment in the Bible which anyone seems to have heard of these days is "Judge not." There the discussion usually ends. It is tacitly assumed that negative judgments are forbidden. That positive judgments would also come under the interdict escapes the notice of those who assume it is a sin to judge. ...

A Glimpse: Table Rock Lake

This evening I took a walk along the shore of Table Rock Lake. 

Scot McKnight's One.Life: Thoughtful.Provocative.Inspiring

I started reading another book this week. That makes six total right now -- still manageable, though I don't have time to read from each of them every day. I have no excuse. I am a self-accepting book addict. My "to-read" list doesn't end, and I like it that way.

So anyway, I started reading another book -- Scot McKnight's One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow. It came highly recommended by an old college professor, so I had a feeling I would like it. I was right.

Here is a sampling:

From Chapter 1, "One.Life."

Christianity isn't enough. Religion isn't enough. Being accepted in a church isn't enough. Climbing the corporate ladder isn't enough. Solving intellectual problems isn't enough. Chasing the American dream isn't enough. Friends aren't enough. Science isn't enough. Politics isn't enough. Money isn't enough. Nothing's enough. The only thing that is enough is Jesus, and the only way to get to Jesus is to follow him, and that means one thing: giving your One.Life to him and his dream.

More Problems with the Pill

Photo by Arkansas Times

Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist, recently posted about some problems with the pill, titled "How “The Pill” Can Harm Your Future Child’s Health." I've heard a lot of cautions against using oral contraceptives, but this concern was new to me.

Since the introduction of oral contraceptives in the early 1960′s, use of The Pill, as it is generally known, has soared to approximately 7 in 10 women of childbearing age. Among young women ages 18-24, use of oral contraceptives is especially high, reaching two-thirds in 2008.