Grace and peace to you today.

We are wrapping up the month with a few new Kindle deals.
(Yesterday on the blog: Not a Lack of Food, But a Lack of Hunger)
When the Mob Shows Up the Monday After Roe
Michael Lawrence: “About 7 p.m. on Monday, three days after the Supreme Court overturned Roe, between 75 and 100 people assembled at a park near the church I pastor in Portland, Oregon. In broad daylight, they marched to our office building two blocks away.”
God loves to surprise his children
I like this one. “Any parent will tell you, there is something fantastic about surprising your kids. Whether it is birthdays and Christmas, holidays or just a random treat, surprising your kids is wonderful. There is a rich seam of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram content centred on this very thing. Parents love surprising their children. God is no different.”
Life Is Precious
“Are children a limit on personal autonomy? Yes. There’s no getting around it. They take resources. They need help, care, support, food, time, energy, and the list goes on and on. They need everything supplied to them for a long time. And is there a better way to use autonomy than this?”
Dear Anxious Heart, I Want You To Know…
Amber has some encouraging words for those who struggle with anxiety.
I Despise My Sufferings. And I’m So Thankful For Them.
This is a strange paradox, but a familiar one.
60 Questions for Pro-Choice Christians
“I have 60 questions for any Christian who identifies as pro-choice. These are not meant to be dismissive, snarky, or rhetorical. They are much more helpful than calling an entire segment of people ‘bigots’ or ‘baby murderers.’”
Flashback: A Soul Physician
We are all responsible before God to be involved, to observe carefully, to diagnose accurately, and to treat patiently. Are you caring for the souls of others?

If there is no joy and freedom, it is not a church: it is simply a crowd of melancholy people basking in a religious neurosis. If there is no celebration, there is no real worship. —Steve Brown

I don’t remember a whole lot about my twenty-third birthday. Twenty-three is a “neither here nor there” age so it’s rarely the most memorable of occasions. It sits between coming into full adulthood at 21 and the milestone looming at 30. These are decisive years in any life. They were certainly decisive in my life.

Though I don’t remember a whole lot about the day I turned 23 (all the way back in December of ’99), I do know that Aileen was pregnant and just entering into her third trimester. These were the days when we had learned we were having a boy but hadn’t yet decided what to name him. I remember “John” and “Michael” being in the running—both good family names. I remember Aileen lobbying for “Ethan” for a time. But in the end we got it just right: he would be Nicholas Paul. I would often lie with my head on Aileen’s growing belly to feel Nick stretch and squirm, to begin to bond with the son I had not yet met but already dearly loved. It wasn’t long after that he was born and our joy was complete.
It will be Nick’s twenty-third birthday on Sunday. Or is it more appropriate to say that it “would have been” Nick’s twenty-third birthday on Sunday? I actually don’t know. Either way, it was 23 years ago that the Lord blessed us with our precious baby boy, our firstborn child, our only son.
This will be Nick’s third birthday in heaven, though they probably don’t mark birthdays there, do they? I’m not even convinced that time in heaven passes in months and years, in hours and days, as it does here. Does time outside the context of this world work just the same as time within it? Since the Bible is silent on this I suppose God judges that it doesn’t much matter. What matters is that where God is, Nick is.
And my dad, too. He made the journey just a short time before my son, the first of several blows that followed one after the other in quick succession between 2019 and 2020. And while I’m sorry that my dad is gone, there’s comfort in knowing that he and Nick are together.
And on this subject, a little scene popped into my mind the other day, a little memory of a tearful farewell. For a moment I was transported back to dad’s funeral in the waning days of 2019. Nick was standing at the front of the room sharing some memories of his grandfather. And as he spoke, he wept—he wept with the sheer sorrow of facing the reality of death and the pain of loss. He wept as he said goodbye to one he had loved.
And then another scene appeared in my mind, though this one was imagined rather than remembered. In this scene my father was in heaven, alive and well and just a little younger now than when I last saw him—fewer white hairs on his head, fewer lines on his cheeks, fewer creases on his brow. He was busy at some task or the other when suddenly he stood bolt upright, an expression of surprise, an expression of joy, sweeping over his face. What was it that so shocked and delighted him? My view shifted and now I saw it—Nick had just arrived and was standing before him. I suppose dad must have expected his wife to be next to pass that way or at least one of his children. But no, there before him was his grandson. And he was so pleased to see him, so happy to throw his arms around him, so glad to know that Nick had made it safely home.
In one scene there was sorrow at a parting and in the other there was joy at a reunion. In one scene Nick was weeping as he bid farewell to my dad and in the other dad was rejoicing as he bid welcome to my Nick.
And it strikes me that so much of our response to the death of a saint depends on our perspective. Though from one perspective we see family members weeping as their loved one fades from their view, from the opposite perspective we see other family members rejoicing as their loved one draws near. While some weep with grief that one has passed beyond their sight, others weep with joy that one has safely crossed over. There is no great happiness for some without great sadness for others. For while every death marks a departure it also marks an arrival. That’s just life and death in a world as badly broken as this one and one so gloriously whole as the next.
And so as this birthday approaches and arrives, I wait to see and experience that kind of joy—the joy of taking part in the welcome rather than the farewell, of cheering my loved ones in rather than weeping them out. And as I wait, I am choosing to let some of their joy filter from heaven to earth so I too can feel it, so I too can enjoy it, so I too can let it stir my soul. I choose to take pleasure in their pleasure, for they are in that place where all sorrows have been soothed and all tears have been dried, that place where we all most truly long to be.

Good morning. Grace and peace to you today.
Today’s Kindle deals include several excellent titles. Among them are Kevin DeYoung’s Crazy Busy, David Mathis’ Workers for Your Joy, and John Piper’s Rethinking Retirement.
Book Brief. In Bad Therapy, Abigail Shrier turns from examining the transgender craze among young girls (see Irreversible Damage) to the massive over-diagnosis of mental illness and remedy of therapy among the younger generation. If you’ve wondered why younger people today seem to struggle to cope with life, this book explains. It is strong in cultural observation but prone to overstatement and lacking in biblical worldview.

Stephen McAlpine thinks Christians should be vexed by last week’s now-infamous opening ceremony. “I’ve read lots of Christians say ‘Oh it’s no biggie’, as if somehow those Christians who are vexed by it are somehow less mature, less hip and urban as Christians. Away with that idea. Actually this is a biggie.”

“I didn’t set out to be a yeller. There were many aspects of my childhood I vowed not to repeat in my own family, but yelling somehow didn’t make the list. I was Portuguese Italian, after all. Portuguese Italians had dark hair, ate pasta, and yelled.”

Greg Morse explains that he keeps “hearing stories about young couples who do not want children.” I have heard many say the same and share Greg’s concerns.

Doug says he recently “woke up thinking about something I had witnessed long ago that had disturbed my young faith. The years have stolen most of the details of that night from my memory, but the impactful aspect of the event still lingers. It was one of those moments when the simplicity of youth is confronted with the complexities of reality.”

Jim Elliff explains why his ministry does not solicit donations. You don’t have to agree with that position to benefit from reading the article. “In our ministry, we believe God has guided us to never solicit, but we do not believe this practice is commanded. … We recommend such an approach for people doing what we do, because by doing so we can spend all our time in ministry and none in fund raising, and because we believe it promotes interest in trusting God as sufficient and loving toward his own people, but we do not demand it of anyone else.”

“In Christian circles, we are fond of saying, ‘The ground is level at the foot of the cross.’ This is true. No one needs a double dose of Jesus’ blood to cover their sin. However, it would be a false conclusion to infer that this means all our sins are equally destructive or should have the same temporal consequences. We can be equally sinful and not equally destructive.”

I think the main reason we fail is that we make it too hard. Family devotions are the simplest thing in the world. We just need to get the family together, and then read the Bible and pray. Anything beyond that is gravy.

The message of every preacher is to declare the kingship of God over every soul.
—Steven Lawson