As happens each year, Westminster Books has marked down ESVs to 50% off. That includes premium Bibles, Reader’s Bibles, study Bibles, etc.

Logos users will want to be sure to download this month’s free and nearly-free books.
Today’s Kindle deals include a couple of Christmas devotionals.
(Yesterday on the blog: The Joy of Hearing)
Postmodernism’s Revenge
Here’s Kevin DeYoung writing for WORLD opinions. “Looking for blind spots is one thing. Acting as if we are blind is another. We don’t have to let sociological fads and ill-defined ‘isms’ set the agenda when we have the necessary theological categories already. The point is the same: we can know things truly even if we don’t know things exhaustively.”
Losses of a Prayerless Christian
Jim Elliff explains some of what you lose when you do not pray.
As Advent Begins, Here are Ten Vital Truths About the Incarnation of Jesus
“With the Advent season here, it is always edifying to think about the glorious fact that God became a man and was, as the hymnwriter so well puts it, born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth.Here are 10 things we must know about the Incarnation…” Stephen Wellum counts them down (or up, I guess).
Gentleness Is A Christian Virtue
“My greatest concern is not that our culture is angry. My greatest concern is that this sense of meanness has even invaded many corners of the church. Christians on both sides of the political spectrum justify their anger toward others by claiming to be fighting for justice or Christian liberty or the future of our country, or whatever other narrative fits their desire to express their more base emotions.” (See also: Why So Harsh?)
The Latest Evangelical Convert to Rome. What Does Rome Have to Offer?
Leonardo De Chirico reflects on a surprising conversion. “I am not English, nor Anglican, but the story of the conversion of the former Anglican bishop Michael Nazir-Ali to Catholicism struck me. He is not the first evangelical Anglican to become Roman Catholic, and he probably will not be the last…” (On this topic, you may also listen to the new Reformanda Initiative podcast.)
Why We Worship ‘the Word’
Mark Jones: “Bible readers young and old have wondered why John begins his Gospel referring to Jesus as ‘the Word’ that became flesh (John 1:1, 14). The Greek term for ‘word,’ logos, is common enough in Greek. It appears over three hundred times in the New Testament, with different meanings in different contexts. But when understood in relation to Christ, the word has been furiously debated.”
Flashback: The Counter-Cultural Vocation of Homemaking
My wife chose a rare and counter-cultural vocation. She chose a vocation that was once very respectful but is now viewed with some shame.

Churches don’t make the gospel true. It is true even when the household of God behaves badly. But people can see that it is true, and doubters are converted when “the sweetness of the Lord” is upon us. —Ray Ortlund

I don’t know what it is like to lose a spouse. I don’t know what it is like to bid farewell to the person with whom I’ve built a home and had a family and shared a life. I don’t know the unique griefs, the unique sorrows, the unique traumas that come with so devastating a separation. On the one hand I can’t know without actually enduring it myself, but on the other hand, I can learn from those who have experienced it and have recorded it. I can learn so I can better serve those in my life who are enduring this trial.

Mary Echols lost her husband very suddenly and unexpectedly after he suffered a heart attack. And in the aftermath of her loss she was desperate to find out how much of her experience of loss was typical. “I began looking for something I could read that would allow me into someone else’s journey and help me to see that the little things I was stressing over were okay,” she says. “I needed to know that someone else couldn’t change the sheets, that someone else washed her spouse’s clothes with hers, that someone else would open his bathroom drawer that held hairbrush, aftershave, cologne, and breathe in his scent. I needed to have these things validated!” Because she couldn’t find anything, she decided to journal her journey and the result is And Then There Was One: An Emotionally Raw Journey Through Spousal Grief.
The book’s format is what I have found typical for a book that has been written in a time of deep grief in that it is comprised of short thoughts that are often very urgent and very poignant. Some of it is written as if to her husband, some as if to herself, and some as if to an unknown reader like you and me. She recounts returning home to find her husband slumped in his chair and tells, how though she was a seasoned RN, nothing had prepared her for the moment. She tells about the early hours in which, as if in a terrible dream, she went through the motions of calling her children, and the early days in which she cried herself to sleep in a bed that was now cold and empty.
But time passes and she finds that, though time does not heal all wounds (as some insensitively suggest) it does provide space in which healing can begin to take place. She observes that the initial stages of healing seem to proceed in six-week increments where every six weeks she realizes she has begun to see some change in herself, some new ability, some new acceptance. She begins to do those things all grieving spouses must—write thank you notes to people who have brought her a meal, box up her husband’s possessions, learn to shop for one instead of two.

What happened? We used to be together. We sat at the same table, ate the same food, watched the same TV shows, slept in the same bed, breathed the same air, and then you went away. Funny how that changes everything. I still sit at the same table, eat the same food, watch the same TV shows, sleep in the same bed, and breathe the same air, but none of it is the same.
❖
I am alone and I’m so afraid. I’ve lost so much with your death. It’s not just the loss of my husband and friend. I’ve lost my protector—the one who always saw to it that I was safe from the world, the one who stepped in when I couldn’t handle something and took care of it for me, the one I turned to for guidance when I didn’t know what to do or how to do it, the one who was my emotional support, the one I leaned on. You were so strong when I was weak, and now there is no one to be strong for me. Now I have to handle the world all by myself, take care of things I know nothing about, and trust people I don’t know to help me.
❖
My mind is gone and I’m not sure I want it back, as I don’t know where it’s been. What kind of strange journey is it on, and why didn’t it give me some notice that it was leaving? The audacity of it to just leave me without so much as a hint it was going. I would much rather my heart had left and taken the pain of your death with it—but maybe, my mind decided I should only deal with one thing at a time, and that grieving should be top priority. But doesn’t my mind understand that its leaving just made the grieving harder? How can I concentrate on grieving when I can’t concentrate? My mind is gone, and I wish I had gone with it.

There is a turning point along the way where she gains a deeper acceptance of her circumstances. The day comes when she realizes she may be tempted to turn some of her husband’s things in a shrine and resists that temptation. The day comes when she realizes she doesn’t mind making decisions for just one person instead of two and living according to the plan and schedule of only herself. The day comes when she faces some of the regrets from her marriage, when she utters one final apology and grants one final forgiveness. After all, “We were just two people who loved each other and did the best we could with who we were.”
By the end of the book she has emerged from the worst of her sorrows. She may not be healed, but she is healing. She may not be over her sorrows (as if anyone ever is) but she is once again getting on with life. She is laughing again and experiencing joy. She has come to the other side of her grief. She has begun experiencing a new normal. “I am at the end of my grieving now. I find I can think of you without tears or heartache, for those things have been replaced with sweet memories. I can talk about you without tears yet, sometimes the memories are so sweet that the tears still come, but they aren’t tears of grief any more, but of fond remembrance. You are still as much a part of me as ever, and I find myself talking to you every now and then when I need another viewpoint because you were always so wise.”
In my assessment, this book has two notable strengths. The first is related to Echols’s realness. She simply lets us into her journey as she goes through it and is honest about her joys and sorrows, her fears and doubts, her submission and her anger. The second is related to her faith. She writes as a Christian who mourns, but not without hope, and who grieves, but not without a sense of God’s will being expressed even in something as tragic as death. Her book is not a theology of death, yet teaches that God reigns over death and provides ultimate hope beyond it. This is a beautiful, hopeful little book and one I’m glad to recommend.

Buy from Amazon

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you today.
You’ll find a number of one-day-only Kindle deals today.
(Yesterday on the blog: I Feel At Home in Your Church)

John Piper has written a powerful and comforting article for older Christians. “Dear older saint, I need to join you in the fight against the fears of aging, and to do so by faith in future grace. There are five fears that we will likely walk through together. God has given us antidotes for each in his word. These antidotes work through faith, and without faith they won’t work. But by faith they will work, and fear will be overcome, and we will go to be with Jesus in due time without walking in fear during our last season. That’s my confidence.”

Reagan Rose explains why he decided to permanently quit social media. And while none of us are obliged to follow his example, we’d all do well to at least consider his reasoning. “In this post, I will explain what led me to this decision, why I didn’t do it sooner, and specifically how I thought about the choice to leave social media as a Christian seeking to steward my life well for the glory of God.”

How holy are you? Stephen Kneale helps you evaluate yourself in light of Scripture.

I really enjoyed reading this sweet tribute to an ordinary/extraordinary man. It gets off to an interesting start: “When I was in 10th grade, the Power Team came to my church.  They were a group of powerlifting Christians who went around from mega-church to mega-church, lifting weights and smashing bricks in order to bring ‘glory to Jesus.’ I was excited to see them “perform/preach,” but I was mostly excited that my friends and I got to work out with the Power Team at Gold’s Gym one day between their nightly sessions.”

Mindy Belz has a moving article about life after the loss of her husband. “For months now finding solid ground has eluded me. The rules of the road feel broken. I wake in a house I’ve lived in for nearly 40 years with my husband and family, but I wake alone. The sun rises to greet me, and the dog waits for breakfast and a ball throw, but I float, suspended in this familiar but strange world—watching as though for the first time normal rhythms I once gave no thought to. They appear part of someone else’s life.”

Few of us have the expertise to be able to assess the significance of newly-discovered manuscripts. Ian N. Mills looks at one titled P.Oxy. 5575 to explain why it’s not as groundbreaking as some people are claiming. “My goal here is neither to minimize the importance of this new piece of early Christian literature nor to exaggerate the evidence for similar works but, rather, to help the reader understand P.Oxy. 5575 by setting it into a larger comparative context.”

Paraphrasing one of her favorite authors she said “It’s okay to be angry with God about this. It’s okay to tell him exactly how you feel about him right now. Let him have it. He doesn’t mind.”

The world will laugh with you when you laugh, and romp with you when you romp, but it will not weep with you when you die.
—De Witt Talmage