Wisdom For Your Weekend: your weekly installment of things we’ve been reading around the web.
Articles of the Week
How Busy People Make Time to Read—And You Can, Too, Laura Vanderkam. Last week I pointed out Aaron Armstrong’s advice to burgeoning writers: read a ton. To which many of you muttered under your breath, “Yeah, right. With all the ‘free time’ I have, I’ll just read 5 books a week.” But busyness doesn’t stop some of the most successful people from reading voraciously. So how do they do it? Vanderkam shows us how.
Get to Inbox Zero or Get Out of the Ministry, Danny Franks. “Pastor, if someone shows up at your office door today—asking a question, having a crisis, needing some counsel—would you ignore them? Would you make eye contact, acknowledge their presence, and then turn your back and get back to sermon prep, to ministry planning, to whatever? Yet so many times we pull off the digital equivalent of turning our back when a parishioner’s email hits our inbox. We put it off, ignore it, assume someone else will grab it, or worse, hit ‘delete’ and send it to that big trash bin in the sky.”
The Supreme Court Has Spoken (Sorta). What Does This Mean For Christians? Russell Moore. This week the Supreme Court declined to take up appeals from states in which same-sex marriage is legally protected. This is a landmark move in favor of same-sex marriage. Unfortunately, many who support the Court’s decision are now heralding this as a human rights victory, painting any who oppose same-sex marriage as bigots opposed to basic human decency. As Christians, we can expect rhetoric like this to continue.
It is important for us to remember that the heart of the debate is not whether gay people can live together and enter into covenants of their own design—but whether the state must redefine marriage to accommodate this. Based on most arguments in favor of same-sex marriage, there is no logical reason to limit marriage to two people. Or, for that matter, to make the covenant exclusive. We can expect more changes in that direction. But as Moore reminds us, the gospel offers us a response that avoids both compromise and anger.
An Open Letter to Women’s Ministry Leaders, Beverly Headen. “Women’s ministries leaders can feel torn between the needs of group (all the women in the ministry) and the individuals (particular women processing difficult experiences)… resulting in a sense of being overwhelmed. Too often these realities can tempt the women in your ministry to fall into the trap of thinking, ‘If I can’t do everything, I won’t even do the parts that I can do.’ The result is people’s struggles become more overwhelming as their lives become more isolated.”
Should Atheists Be Bothered by “Missionary Medicine”? Brian Palmer, Slate. This is a fascinating little piece, written by an atheist, confessing his bias against Christian medical missions. Palmer admits that missionaries are “risking their lives” to do what “no one else will,” yet deep down part of him wishes they wouldn’t. In the end, though, he admits that unless secular medical groups are ready to make the same sacrifices (and they certainly aren’t anywhere close), even atheists need to accept Christian missions as a patently good endeavor.
On The Lighter Side
A flowchart of when it’s acceptable to take a selfie, The Doghouse Diaries. (It’s quite simple, really.)
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