My 2024 Reading List

As is my annual habit, here is my reading list from 2024. Looks like I was a little lazier this year about writing much about the books - some years I share my impressions more than I did this year, but as I always caution, just because I read it doesn't necessarily mean I recommend it.  If you want to know what I think about any of these, feel free to ask. 

January 2024

• The Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism - Tim Alberta (NF)
• Before We Were Yours - Lisa Wingate (F).
• None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God - Matthew Barrett (NF).
• Promise of Blood (The Powder Mage Trilogy, Book 1) - Brian McClellan (F).

February 2024

• All the Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr (F). My daughter was reading this for school and wanted me to read it, too, so I did.  I have seen this recommended in various places, but wasn't really all that interested in yet another WWII historical fiction.  Wow. I would have missed out for sure. It was not at all what I expected and I'm glad I read it, and I've really been enjoying discussing it with my daughter. This was a beautiful book and I loved it, but it did leave me feeling a little melancholy at the end, sort of a bittersweet feeling, so be warned if you want to read it - the ending is very satisfying, but not necessarily "happy," which is true to life, especially in war time. 
• The Book of Lost Things - John Connolly (F). While I mostly liked this book and appreciated the themes examined through the story and the growth arc of the main character, even finding myself tearing up at the final chapter, I don't think it's one I would recommend. It is marketed for ages 11+, and I definitely wouldn't have given it to any of mine at that age, especially not my youngest.  There are several scary elements and disturbing body horror type things that would have really disturbed her at that age. Also, I have a feeling an adult would better be able to appreciate the layers and deeper exploration of loss that permeates it than a child might. Just because a book is about a child of the middle grade age doesn't necessarily mean the book is best suited for a reader of the same age. 
• The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store - James McBride (F).
• The Midnight Library - Matt Haig (F).
• The Deconstruction of Christianity: What it is, Why it's Destructive, and How to Respond - Alisa Childers, Tim Barrett (NF).

March 2024

• The Crimson Campaign (The Powder Mage Trilogy, Book 2) - Brian McClellan (F).
• The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains - Nicholas Carr (NF). One of the most disturbing things I've read - maybe ever.  This depressed me a bit. I have another book addressing this topic from a Christian focus waiting on my Kindle that I will be reading soon which my pastor recommended to me after seeing I had read this one and how it had affected me.  
• The Autumn Republic (The Powder Mage Trilogy, Book 3) - Brian McClellan (F).
• The Unquenchable Flame: Discovering the Heart of the Reformation - Michael Reeves (NF).
• Forsworn: A Powder Mage Novella - Brian McClellan (F).

April 2024

• Digital Liturgies: Rediscovering Christian Wisdom in an Online Age - Samuel D. James (NF).  My pastor recommended this book to me after he saw how disturbed I was after reading The Shallows. It was a perfect recommendation.  Though I still have many of the same concerns I had after reading the first book, this was encouraging, while still sounding a much needed wake up call.  As I said in my post on Facebook about the other book, we Christians are not thinking deeply enough about how the internet is affecting our brains and how we process knowledge and the world around us. We are embodied people, and we need to experience the world as embodied people, with other people, and the internet is a disembodied space, and we need to be careful in this age we are living in. I appreciated this book very much.
• Servant of the Crown: A Powder Mage Novella - Brian McClellan (F).
• Seasons of Sorrow: The Pain of Loss and the Comfort of God - Tim Challies (F).  This book is a treasure.  It has cost Tim Challies greatly, but I believe God will use these words to comfort many. Though not long, this is not a book one can sit and read through all at once.  My own copy is drenched in tears, as I read Tim's honest, often raw, but deeply faith-filled and Christ-honoring labor through the first year of grief following the loss of his son. Many of the hard and anguished questions he is honest enough to leave on the pages are questions I, too, have found myself struggling through and wondering as I work through the grief of my mom's passing, and I am extremely thankful for his willingness to honestly pen them and publish them, as it has helped me to realize I am not alone in the questioning, and not alone in thinking them, and I don't have to feel guilty about them, either, as long as I ultimately entrust them to my loving, all-wise, compassionate Savior. I am sure many people have the same questions and wonderings this side of Heaven. It was not an easy read, but it was a deeply meaningful and worthy read. The theology and deep trust and love for Jesus underpinning his wrestling is something we must all come to grips with now, so that when we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, and when we are so broken with grief that we almost cannot breathe and it is almost impossible to see, we can most certainly rest in the Shepherd we know and love, and who so greatly loves His own. I highly recommend it. 
• The Book That Wouldn't Burn - Mark Lawrence (F).

May 2024

• Wimpy, Weak, and Woke: How Truth Can Save America From Utopian Destruction - John L. Cooper (NF).
• Murder at the Kinnen Hotel: A Powder Mage Novella - Brian McClellan (F).
• Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries - Heather Fawcett (F).
• The River We Remember - William Kent Krueger (F).

June 2024

• Motorhome Prophecies: A Journey of Healing and Forgiveness - Carrie Sheffield (NF).
• In the Field Marshal's Shadow - Brian McClellan (F).
• The Christian in Complete Armour: Volume 1 - William Gurnall (F).
• Ghosts of the Tristan Basin - Brian McClellan (F).
• A Trial of Innocents - Michael Swiger (F).

July 2024

• The Skeletons in God's Closet: the Mercy of Hell, the Surprise of Judgment, the Hope of Holy War - Joshua Ryan Butler (NF). I wanted to really like this book.  I found much that was compelling and worth pondering, but I also found some parts that make me uncomfortable recommending it to others. Where it is good, it is quite good, but there are enough points that I felt were a little confusing or questionable, or at the least not clear enough, that, again, I can't recommend it. And as I was reading, in the back of my mind I kept thinking I recognized the author's name and it seemed like it was something concerning, so I looked him up and was reminded of a controversy I had read about over a more recent book he had written, and for that reason I can't recommend him without caution. This review from Trevin Wax spells out what some of my discomfort with this book was very well, better than I can state it. I agree with the points of caveat and concern Trevin notes in this review, and his take on the whole matches my take away as well. So, while there are things I found helpful, I would recommend discernment in reading this one. Interacting with Joshua Ryan Butler's "Skeletons in God's Closet" (thegospelcoalition.org)
• The Siege of Tilpur - Brian McClellan (F).
• The Mad Lancers - Brian McClellan (F).

August 2024

• Gardens of the Moon (Malazan Book of the Fallen, Book 1) - Steven Erikson (F).
• Ask Not: The Kennedy's and the Women They Destroyed - Maureen Callahan (NF).
• Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda - Megan Basham (NF). 
• Doing Life With Your Adult Children: Keep Your Mouth Shut and the Welcome Mat Out - Jim Burns (NF)
• 100 Proofs That Jesus is God - Curt Daniel (NF)

September 2024

• FAST: 10 Easy Steps to Success with Intermittent Fasting for Women Over 50: Lose Stubborn Belly Fat, Balance Hormones, Regain Mental Clarity and Finally Feel Like yourself Again - Heather E. Carson (NF).
• Misled: 7 Lies That Distort the Gospel - Allen Parr (NF).
• Deadhouse Gates (Malazan Book of the Fallen, Book 2) - Steven Erikson (F).

October 2024

• The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World - Christine Rosen (NF).
• Recovering from Losses in Life - H. Norman Wright  (NF).
• What it Means to Be Protestant: The Case for an Always Reforming Church - Gavin Ortlund (NF).
• We Solve Murders (We Solve Murders, Book 1) - Richard Osman (F).
• God's Big Picture: Tracing the Storyline of the Bible - Vaughan Roberts (NF).
• The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness - Jonathan Haidt (NF).
• The Reckoning - John Grisham (F).

November 2024

• Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed - Ben R. Rich (NF).
• The Answer is No - Fredrik Backman (F).
• Pilgrim Prayers: Devotional Poems That Awaken Your Heart to the Goodness, Greatness, and Glory of God - Tim Challies (NF). I feel kind of funny including this in my reading list, as it is not a read-straight-through kind of book, but it is so good I wanted to go ahead and include it so I could remember and talk about it here. I love the format of this book as a daily devotional that includes poem prayers to spark my own prayer for the morning. It really is a beautiful little treasure of a book, and I'll be using it in my daily quiet time routinely from here on out. 
• Sowable Word: Helping Ordinary People Learn to Lead Bible Studies - Peter Krol (NF)

December 2024

• Memories of Ice (Malazan Book of the Fallen, Book 3) - Steven Erikson (F).
• I Cheerfully Refuse - Leif Enger (F).
• Recapturing the Glory of Christmas: A 25-Day Advent Devotional - R. Albert Mohler, Jr. (NF)
• The Rise of BlueAnon: How the Democrats Became a Party of Conspiracy Theorists - David Harsanyi (NF)
• The Best Christmas Pageant Ever - Barbara Robinson (F). One of my favorites to read at Christmas!

My Bible Reading Plan for 2025

 It's that time of year again when I decide what I will use as a plan for daily Bible reading for the coming year.  Back in 2003, we had just moved to Indiana and my husband was on a year-long deployment overseas. As a lonely young mom effectively functioning as a single mom in a new state that year, when our pastor challenged us if we had never read the Bible through in a year, maybe this was the year to do it, I decided that was exactly what I needed. And for the past more than 20 years since, I've made it a practice to do just that, some plans were heavier on the amount of daily reading than others, but always including at least one time through the Bible in a year. This is a practice I strongly encourage. Too often we read the Bible out of context and those favorite verses we love just may not mean what you think they mean if you take the time to read what they are actually saying. Any Bible reading plan needs to take context seriously, not just a verse here and there. Maybe you won't read the whole Bible all the way through every year, but everyone ought to take the opportunity to read it all the way through at least once, so you can grasp the whole arc of the scripture in context. It really is edifying. 

Another practice I gleaned from encouragement from another pastor is to read the Proverbs every day.  There are 31 chapters in Proverbs, so it works out nicely to read through the book each month, taking a chapter a day. That practice I'll continue this year, as I've found it very edifying and it is neat how the wisdom in Proverbs begins to filter into how you think through life's situations when you're spending every day reading through it. 

This year, however, I think I am going to change things up a bit.  I've noticed the past couple of years that the amount of chapters I had set to read each day were sometimes challenging, and it was becoming more that some days felt more like kind of a 'check the box burden' feeling, and I'd find my mind drifting and realize I hadn't really taken in what I'd read rather than really digging in and every day pondering what I was reading and digesting it well.  Some days were better than others, but overall, I think I've suffered a bit in deeper devotions and study. Also, I found that reading ahead for the various group Bible study opportunities I have during the week was suffering. I need to change things up this year and I'm hoping for a deeper devotional time for it. 

So, all that said, here is what I plan for my own personal daily reading this year. 

Every day (Sunday-Saturday): Read through the Psalms and Proverbs, repeating as often as the year allows. 

Monday: Read and think over the passage we will be studying in our Wednesday morning women's study. 

Tuesday: Read and think over the passage we will be studying in our Wednesday evening study.

Wednesday: Read the Wednesday am passage again and prepare for the morning.

Thursday: Read and think over the passage for our Sunday school lesson.

Friday: Read and think over the Sunday school passage again and the passage for the Sunday morning sermon if we know it.

Every day: Work on scripture memory. (I've been stuck on Colossians 1 for way too long now)

I'm looking forward to this new plan for the coming year. It will be different for me, and I have a feeling it will feel really weird not to be starting over in Genesis on January 1, but I'm looking forward to being better prepared for the group discussions and to learning more for myself as well. 

May I encourage you, too, whatever plan you might choose, to spend some good time in Bible reading and prayer each day? It is a gift of God's grace that we have these means to draw near to Him.

Light: Rescued From Darkness, A Christmas Devotional

 I got to share the devotional this morning at our church's women's ministry Christmas party.  It was a sweet time with my sisters from my church family.  I thought I'd share the thoughts here on my blog as well: 

One of my very favorite things about the Christmas season are the decorations.  Not so much the cutesy, schmaltzy, cluttery ones, but the beautiful, shimmering, glittering, brilliant lights as they glint and shimmer in the all the gold and silver and glass. We all have our preferences for what makes for beautiful decorations, but for me, I’m partial to white lights and candles and the gentle twinkle as those lights shine on the tree, reminding us of the starry night sky. Lights play a big part in our Christmas decorating. For us in the northern hemisphere, Christmas takes place in the winter with its long, dark nights, and we light up our homes with shimmer, lights, and shine as we try to push back the darkness with wonder and beauty as we await all the things that make Christmas wonderful for us.

What I like to ponder while I sit in the quiet of my living room on early December mornings and watch the beautiful twinkle of lights on the glitter and glass on the tree is how that beauty points to an even greater, more immense, more significant, brilliant, and glorious beauty – Jesus, who is the light of the world.

The motif of light is quite prominent in the arc of the scripture. When God creates the heavens and the earth, what is the very next thing He creates? LIGHT! “Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.”

In this first opening chapter of Genesis, we get a picture of what God will do spiritually for the rest of the ages – after mankind falls into darkness, when we disobey and reject God and become marred by sin and plunged into spiritual darkness – God, in His grace and mercy, sets into motion the rescue of His people from the darkness of sin and rebellion to bring them back to His light.

The history of mankind is rife with evidence of the darkness our sin causes in this world. Every one of us has sinned and rebelled against our Creator and felt sin’s devastating effects in our world and our lives. And yet, God gives us the light of His Word so that we may know Him, so that those who walk with God can walk in light. In Isaiah 9:2, the prophet gave hope to God’s people, Israel: “The people who walk in darkness will see a great light; Those who live in a dark land, the light will shine on them.”

Many years later, in Luke 1:78-79, John the Baptist’s father speaks a beautiful word of prophecy reflecting that Isaiah 9 prophecy, about the Messiah who was soon to come, the One for whom John would be the forerunner and prepare the way, “Because of the tender mercy of our God, with which the Sunrise from on high will visit us, To shine upon those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

 Fast forward to Luke 2 when the brightness of the glory of the Lord shines into the darkness of the night and startles a group of shepherds outside Bethlehem with the good news of great joy that a Savior has been born, and the heavenly host sings, “Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased.” And in Matthew 4:16-17, we see the prophecy from Isaiah fulfilled in Jesus. Matthew quotes that Isaiah 9 prophecy and then says, “From that time Jesus began to preach and say, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’”  Truly, could it be any clearer that it is through Jesus that God’s light shines on those of us who have been in darkness?

And then we have John 1:1-14. This is one of my favorite passages in the Bible! “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. There came a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to testify about the Light, so that all might believe through him. He was not the Light, but he came to testify about the Light. There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

In John 8:12, Jesus says, “I am the Light of the World; he who follows Me will not walk in darkness, but will have the Light of life.”

In John 10, Jesus is in Jerusalem for the Feast of Dedication – this is what we know today as the Festival of Lights, or Hannukah – and at a festival of lights, Jesus so clearly identifies Himself as the Messiah that the religious leaders understood He was claiming to be the Son of God and in their unbelief they took up stones to stone Him. He clearly is claiming to be the One prophesied to bring the Light.

In Revelation 21:22-24, the New Creation is being symbolically described, “I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. And the city has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb.” Hallelujah – here we find the fulfillment of what I said at the beginning that God rescues His people from the spiritual darkness our sin plunged us into and brings us to His light – He brings us to Himself.

We only have time for a brief look at light in the Bible this morning, but if you want to dig a little more you could probably do an interesting word study on light that I imagine would be very encouraging. There is one more passage I want to share before I share some practical application and close. For the past, I’m not sure how long, I have been sporadically, far too slowly, trying to memorize the book of Colossians. These verses in Colossians 1:9-14 have become precious to me: “For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience; joyously giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in Light. For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”

I know that the holidays, and especially Christmas, can be a difficult time for many. When so many voices and movies and TV shows and music all around us are so loud about the so-called perfect Christmas, the pressure to have the perfect holiday can feel dark and overwhelming if your reality is vastly different from the worldly expectations or when you do not have what you wish you could have to make this Christmas perfect. Holidays can be very lonely when life's events make us weep.

My friends, my encouragement for you this Christmas – whether you will have a houseful and all the holiday cheer your heart desires and all your expectations are joyful, or on the other hand, perhaps you may be feeling lonely, disappointed or bitter with the weight of the difficulties of life in this fallen world, or maybe you’re feeling burdened and overwhelmed with some sin that has robbed your joy, or perhaps maybe you don’t even understand what I’m talking about today if you haven’t yet met this Jesus and come to find the peace that passes all understanding when you come to trust Him as your Lord and Savior – wherever this Christmas season finds you, may I encourage you to take time to look away from the world’s empty promises of what the perfect holiday, the empty promises of what the perfect life looks like, and let the lights and all that comes with them in this season point you to the true Light. Jesus has come! And He has come to redeem you from your darkness. Most importantly, because Jesus perfectly obeyed God’s Law, when we could not, because Jesus died as our substitute to pay the debt our sin deserves, because Jesus rose again and is ever interceding for His people, because of this, in Jesus we can be reconciled, brought into right relationship, to God. When we come to Him, confess our sins and repent and trust in Jesus alone for our salvation, we can be made right with God and walk in His light. In Jesus, broken expectations, disappointments, and even grief, can be put into proper perspective. Let the forgiveness, peace, and love Jesus brings draw you near to God and into His light. Let your focus this Christmas be so much less on what the world would promise Christmas is and so much more on Jesus, whose promises never fail and who is the true Light of the World.

Thoughts on Unplugging, Touching Grass, and a Book Recommendation

 I’ve been reading The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World, by Christine Rosen. Well-written, disturbing, and something I know social scientists are beginning to think and warn about, but I’m afraid not enough of us are concerned enough about this topic.  We’re all feeling it, to some extent, I think – this anxiety, loneliness, and loss of real community and connection with real, live, embodied people as our culture becomes more and more reliant on mediated communication and technology that is making our world more virtual and less “in real life” and “in person” than we’ve ever been.

For all the conveniences and good that we truly do see in our smart phones and other technologies, I fear we are losing some things that should not be lost. I think the problem lies in the fact that far too often we move from using these technologies as a helpful tool to using them as a way of life. There is the addictive quality of the online life that I’m finding disturbing. The irony that I’m hashing out these thoughts and sharing them on my social media platforms is not lost on me.

The problem I’m seeing is that these mediated ways of staying in touch just don’t deliver what we hoped they would, but our addiction to them and our alienation from each other continues to grow. Communicating via Zoom or screen or text just isn’t the same and doesn’t fill us with joy the same as being there in the flesh over a cup of coffee or around a meeting table or in a classroom or sitting in the church pew in person. We are losing the ability to read other people’s emotions. The chapter in the book on that topic actually scared me. The author talks about apps that are being developed that use AI to determine how someone you’re interacting with is feeling based on what the AI determines from all the aggregated data it mines about them, etc. She also makes a compelling argument tying some of the trend we are seeing in an uptick in aggressive, even deadly, road rage incidents, to a generalized loss of ability to be patient combined with a loss of empathy in our culture. It is complicated, but think about it. We spend so much time in our personalized worlds, staring at our various screens, communicating in a mediated way through our screens, with our apps and whatnots carefully mining our data and feeding us what the AI determines we want based on our scrolling and too many other data points to even go into, and we demand faster and faster responses and have less and less patience with slow-loading webpages, and then when we venture out into the real world, we want everything there to react the same way. We become the center of our carefully mediated universes and we have little patience for anyone who may inadvertently get in the way of our instant gratification and what we think we deserve. Somehow, we are becoming more irritable and less able to assume the best of others. Not to mention plain old distracted driving. Too many of us can’t exercise the self-control to wait to look at our phones until we are no longer driving. We can’t be alone with our thoughts even for the few minutes we may be stuck at a traffic light.

The chapter on how we wait spoke to me as well. We aren’t able to sit quietly and just think anymore.  Any empty space must be filled with distractions or we feel we are wasting time. I recently complained about people who sit in a waiting room and rudely listen to loud videos on their cell phones. We’re so self-focused we don’t even care that there are people around us who may not want to hear our loud conversation or video. Again, I think we’re becoming conditioned to live in a little personalized bubble that caters to our every desire that our vision is becoming more and more tunneled inward. How often do we look up and away from our screens and truly interact with strangers in these situations anymore? Are we losing the ability to talk to real people we encounter in daily life? How often have you tried to talk to someone and they have one earbud in, even while they sort of talk to you? How can you truly give attention to someone if you’re only half listening? It’s rude, yet I see it all the time. So much of our creativity comes when we are a little bit bored and allow our minds to wander and just sit with our thoughts. But more and more, we spend less and less time doing that. We almost fear boredom these days.

There is so much to think about after reading this book and I have truly not done justice in my rambling here.  I know this.  I’m not sure this post even makes much sense, but what I hope anyone who has followed my rambling to this point takes away is – read this book.  PLEASE.  I confess that as I was reading I felt discouraged because the thought came to me, those who really need to read this, the people who are in danger of being that impatient road rager, for example, will never read this book or even think about what our distracted, virtual addictions are doing to us. Because people don’t read anymore. It’s too long, takes up too much energy, doesn’t feed the dopamine hit that the next round of the game on the phone or stupid video or scroll through the social media feed delivers. But we really, truly need to be thinking much harder about what this all is doing to us as human beings. We really, truly need to think about how much we need real, face-to-face friendships and fellowship.

A few small things I’m thinking about changing in response to reading this book are, for one thing, I’ve decided the leave my earphones at home when I go out for a walk. I did that today and it was a vastly different experience, one I quite enjoyed. Listening to the birds, hearing the oh-so-satisfying crunch of the acorns as I felt them under my shoes, even hearing my shoes on the pavement as I walked and enjoyed the peace of the quiet around me was profoundly satisfying in a way my walks haven’t been when I’ve taken them plugged up with my podcasts.  I enjoy those podcasts, but I’m changing up how I listen to them. I need more quiet and undistracted time built into my day. I’m also setting aside time to work again on memorizing scripture.  Taking the time to burrow down and really focus on it. And I’m also making a point to handwrite in my journal – spending the time it takes to get into the flow of writing. That was another insight the author shared – how writing with our hands is a different kind of processing than typing, and it’s another thing we’re losing as a culture  – and she’s right.

It’s been a long time since I’ve written a blog post in this space, and this one has ended up being longer than I intended. It’s a little rambly, but it’s all things I wanted to say. I’m a bit rusty, though, and I think my thoughts probably aren’t as fleshed out and clear as I would like them to be. Maybe I need to start blogging again and sharpen up those thinking skills.

Before I go, though this post is already too impossibly long, I wanted to share something that came to mind while reading this book. There is a song that has become popular in the marching band world, and rightly so because it’s a beautiful piece of music. I was reminded of it while reading because the lyrics deal with our discomfort and yet also our eerie draw to the lure of the ubiquitous nature of our virtual technology and datamining social media. The song is “The Hymn of Acxiom” by Vienna Teng. 

To get the full picture I want to share, listen to this adaptation first, which is the marching band version of just the music.

 

Now, read the lyrics by Vienna Teng:

somebody hears you. you know that. you know that.

somebody hears you. you know that inside.

someone is learning the colors of all your moods, to

(say just the right thing and) show that you’re understood.

here you’re known.

 

leave your life open. you don’t have. you don’t have to.

leave your life open. you don’t have to hide.

someone is gathering every crumb you drop, these

(mindless decisions and) moments you long forgot.

keep them all.

 

let our formulas find your soul.

we’ll divine your artesian source (in your mind),

marshal feed and force (our machines will)

to design you a perfect love—

or (better still) a perfect lust.

o how glorious, glorious: a brand new need is born.

 

now we possess you. you’ll own that. you’ll own that.

now we possess you. you’ll own that in time.

now we will build you an endlessly upward world,

(reach in your pocket) embrace you for all you’re worth.

 

is that wrong?

isn’t this what you want?

amen

 

Now listen and watch this video of it being sung:

I think this song brilliantly captures how conflicted I feel about smart technology and social media and how dependent we are on it now. There is the beauty of how useful our media is as a tool for keeping in touch with people, sharing and finding information quickly, yet there are also quite disturbing costs we are only beginning to scratch the surface of coming to terms with, the disturbing ways it is actually changing us and our culture. I hope you can see a bit of the horror I’m beginning to feel with how commodified we, ourselves are becoming. You know the saying – nothing is free. If what they’re offering is free, if there is no “product,” YOU ARE THE PRODUCT. Every smart device we use, every webpage we visit, every social media post we make, every game we play, every video we watch, we are giving them more of ourselves to market and buy. We’ve opened a kind of Pandora’s box, and I don’t think we can go back, but I do hope we can be much, much more mindful and careful and aware of how much it could control us and become a dangerous idol to us. Let’s start thinking about using what good we can as a tool, but dropping it as a way of life. Look up, look out, engage with other embodied human beings face-to-face, with phones put away. Spend time touching grass and taking in all the sensory experiences of touch, sight, smell – see the beauty through your eyes apart from the mediation of a screen. Enjoy something beautiful for the sake of the beautiful, not for the sake of the social media post you could make. Try enjoying a fun experience without posting about it, at least some of the time, let your memory of an event be just that, a beautiful memory without a social media post to go with it.

Think about it.  And go read Christine Rosen’s book, The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World. My thoughts about it may have rambled too much in this post, hers do not. She brings clarity and a needed warning I hope more people will hear.

Book Recommendation: The Christian in Complete Armour

 I am so thankful for pastors who read and recommend good books. Our pastor in Virginia used to recommend a book almost every Sunday night, and if Pastor Jesse recommended it, I didn't even need to question it, I was almost sure to like it or want to read it. I read and really enjoyed a lot of books I never would have encountered had I not known his recommendations for them. 

Well, our pastor here in Texas also has a habit of reading and recommending good books.  Again, if Pastor Josh recommends a book, I am almost always sure I want to read it. This summer he has recommended we read The Christian in Complete Armour, Volume 1 by William Gurnall for a church book club at the end of this month.

I don’t know why I do always do this, but whenever I think about reading a Puritan author, my first thought is that it will be difficult, dense reading, so that’s what I was afraid of when I took up this book to start it. But, just like with The Valley of Vision prayers, I was pleasantly surprised that reading this Puritan felt extremely current and relevant. The Puritans are NOT dry and dusty. They are NOT the dour, legalistic, unlikable, uncharitable people you were mistakenly led to believe they were in your high school history and English classes. They were real, joyful, lively Christians who wrote about the real Christian life, and this book was so extremely timely as I read it (and just finished it today). How encouraging it is to read from believers who lived a long time ago, but who experienced the same Christian life and loved, worshiped, and followed the same Jesus that we do today. Sure we have technologies and lifestyles and things that on the surface seem very different from life back in the 1600’s, but get beyond those surface differences, and people are just people. We have the same heart issues and we aren’t really all that different. Same goes for the people in the Bible. They are real people, not really all that different from us. And we all need the same Savior, who never changes, who loves His people and works with us and in us the same as He does with all of His people.

I’m thinking I am going to take the discussion questions and type out some of my reactions, for the book club, but it’s a little bit daunting, because I think I underlined something or marked up almost every single page of the book. Good thing I finished with some time to spare.  Haha.

All that to say two things:

1.  Read this book.  You will be glad you did. It is so encouraging. The author is practical and compassionately pastoral as he takes the reader through his logical and carefully made arguments for being a watchful, armor-clad Christian who stands firm in the face of temptations and trials. I walk away from it so encouraged that I have a Savior who intercedes for me and who will never let go of me.

2.  If you have a pastor who reads and recommends good books – listen to him and be thankful! If he’s recommending good books, it’s because he cares for your soul and wants to see you grow in the grace and knowledge of your Savior.

A Short Review of a Netflix Disappointment

 My daughter and I both recently finished reading All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, and we both loved it.  She was reading it for school and kept saying I just had to read it, so I did, and we have had some wonderful discussions about it along the way. It is a great book, very beautifully written, heart-wrenching story, and it left us both feeling a bit melancholy at the end. The Pulitzer Prize it won is well-deserved. So, loving it as we did, we thought we'd try watching the miniseries Netflix recently released.

My advice if you loved the book: DO NOT BOTHER with the Netflix travesty. 

My advice if you haven't read the book yet: Read the book, skip the Netflix mess. 

It's too bad, really, because the casting for the miniseries was excellent, but the screenwriting for the adaptation was terrible, in my opinion. I understand that movie adaptations are difficult and they will necessarily have to leave some things out. But this was just quite bad. The book does a wonderful job going back and forth between flashbacks and the present day of the story to let the reader understand the characters and learn important plot reveals slowly and at the appropriate time to make for a beautiful, heartbreaking story. The miniseries changes important plot points and reveals things much too early that you didn't read until well into the book, such that in the miniseries they just don't make any sense without the background build up, and if you hadn't read the book, I'm not sure you'd even know what was going on or why it was all that significant. It just ends up being a confusing mess, and you don't really feel much of anything for the characters, whereas, in the book, you grow to love and understand them. Werner's character is especially flat in the miniseries, and that is just inexcusable. His character growth arc is one of THE major significant points of the book, and by episode 3, I am not seeing ANYTHING about him yet that hints that the show will be getting any better. Granted, we've only made it to episode 3, but I hate it enough that I just don't care. I am done with it. If it hasn't been able to win me over by this point, well, life is just too short to waste any more time on it, in my opinion.

Read the book. It is very much worth the time spent. The miniseries is really just NOT. And that is a shame. 

Meditating on The Word - Navigating Our New Life Season

 While reading Genesis 1-2 yesterday morning, I got to thinking about Genesis 2:24, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.” It had never occurred to me before that this is before the fall, before sin entered the world. Which is significant. This means that this concept of a man leaving his father and mother and joining his wife is inherently good, good by design, which also means, if we think this through, that the so-called “empty nest” is a good and proper and expected thing, good and designed to be the way families work before the fall. It means that this is something that is in how our Creator has designed us and our relationships with each other. The thing is, though, that the fall and our now sin nature taints everything. We tend to take something beautiful and good and right and forget how to live in it as good and beautiful and right.

My husband and I are entering the phase of life where we are about to be empty-nesters, with one son having gotten married last May, one son who, having become recently engaged and will, Lord willing, most likely be married before the end of this year, and our youngest daughter about to graduate high school and, again, Lord willing, planning to leave for college in the Fall.  As I meditate on this biblical thought here at the beginning of a new year and at the cusp of our new season of life, I want to think and behave righteously.  Also, as I meditate on this, I find myself thinking about it from a different angle than I did as a newly wed just starting out and learning how to start our new family together. Now I’m thinking about it, not from the standpoint of the one leaving, but of the one being left.

How often do we see the “empty nest” concept as a negative thing, as something to mourn and complain about, among our friends and on our social media and in our entertainment?

 In our fallenness, we are prone to a self-centered, selfish way of viewing life, and we often don’t even realize it. I know for a fact, as I sit here at the beginning of this season of life, that I did not consider my parents and in-laws enough in how they might be experiencing our leaving and cleaving.  I think, through the years, we have had a pretty good relationship with our respective parents, and I am very grateful for that. But there can sometimes be a tendency as we spread our wings to see our parents more as adversaries as we break free rather than as allies to help us fly. It can be especially hard for the in-law relationship if we, as young people, forget that these people loved and raised our spouse, have sought the best interests of our spouse, loved them as a tiny baby and loved them as they grew to adulthood, and love them still now that they are leaving the nest to go start their own nest.  

On the other hand, we parents can have just as much of a tendency to be self-centered and selfish, because we, too, are sinners. Again, how many times have you known people in real life and in our movies and TV shows who cling too hard to their grown children or who meddle too much or make demands/expectations or offer too much unsolicited/unwelcome comments or who just make it difficult for adult children to leave their parents and cleave to their spouses? There is a reason the meddling, difficult in-law joke is a common trope.

What I’m getting at is that as we navigate different life seasons, we would do well to remember that this notion of children growing up and leaving father and mother to form their own home and family is not an evil, not a thing to mourn, but to embrace, celebrate, and handle wisely. It is good. But as we remember this, we also need to remember that in our sinfulness, we can ruin that good thing if we do not have the right attitude about it and forget that all good things are meant to glorify our God and help us to enjoy Him in this life.

While pondering these things, I also read Proverbs 1 yesterday, where I came across verse 8-9, “Hear, my son, your father’s instruction and do not forsake your mother’s teaching; indeed, they are a graceful wreath to your head and ornaments about your neck.” So, I got to thinking about this in light of the Genesis 2:24 verse, that leaving and cleaving doesn’t mean forgetting all that came before. Our parents loved us, taught us, raised us, and, hopefully, if done well, we still want them to be part of our lives. They don’t stop loving us and wanting what’s best for us when we grow up and leave the nest. The training and instruction they instilled in us during our growing up doesn’t lose its importance when we leave their home. But the relationship does change. Hopefully, if we are both wanting to seek God and honor Him, we can move from having the authority relationship of parent to child to having more of a friendship of parent to adult child. 

So, as I follow the encouragement my pastor gave us on Sunday to meditate on God’s Word, and as I enter this season of parent to adult children, having once been that young adult child and now the parent of young adult children, here are a few thoughts I would like to consider, for the young just starting out and for me, the older person wanting to honor the Lord and love my sons and daughter well (and the new daughters who love my sons and the, hopefully one day, young man, who will love my daughter) as they learn to spread their wings.

As a young person, try really hard not to start out viewing your parents and in-laws as adversaries who you need to immediately set up boundaries against.  Try seeing them as allies who love your spouse and want very much to love you. We parents will make mistakes. We won’t want to, but we will. Please be patient with us as we seek to be patient with you. Please choose to assume the very best motives you can, rather than assuming bad motives. How you choose to see your parents and in-laws will very much color how you are able to hear, see, interact, and love them. This is something I wish I had understood better when I was young.

As a parent, God helping me and looking to Jesus, my Savior, and trusting the Holy Spirit as He conforms me to the image of Christ, I intend to choose to treat my children and their spouses as allies, not adversaries, and to try very hard not to give them reason to feel we are adversaries rather than allies. Again, how we assume motives goes a long way to how we then interact with each other. I must always put the best construction on comments and actions that I possibly can, assume the best and choose never to hold a grudge. Our family is not shrinking because our kids are flying from the nest, it is expanding. We get to love new people who, though different, are very, very special and worth knowing well. I intend to see the empty nest, not as a time to grieve what was when the kids were little and life was very busy with all their activities, but as a new season in which to find new interests and new traditions and new places and people in which to serve God’s Kingdom.  I intend to encourage my kids in positive ways, and to try very hard not to put undue expectations or burdens on them. Of course I hope in the years to come that they will want to spend time with us, so I am praying often that I will invest in being the kind of person they will want to spend time with. I don’t want to hinder that for them or make it difficult to love us, and I also very much want them to be free to start their lives together, with our blessing, not our complaining.

May we seek to honor God in how we love each other. May we be loving, forgiving, full of grace and understanding as we navigate new seasons of life together, because we have been forgiven so much by our loving Savior, Jesus Christ.

I am entering this new year of 2024 very grateful for the people God has graciously brought into our lives through the years. May we love them all well.