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Book Review: “True Life: Practical Wisdom from the Book of Ecclesiastes” by Carolyn Mahaney & Nicole Whiteacre
Introduction Have you ever felt like no matter how much you try to organize things, they never turn out quite how you’d like them to? Do you spend your life trying to make special moments happen, only to watch them slip through your grasp? Do you feel like life is an endless cycle of repetitive activities that you must do over, and over, and over again? How can you find joy when things go terribly wrong? True Life: Practical Wisdom from the Book of Ecclesiastes provides you with answers and encouragement from King Solomon himself, who had every earthly pleasure and found no satisfaction in any of it. “Vanity of…
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A Small Book with Big Ideas: Does It Matter What I Believe? by Samuel James
For this month’s book, I chose Does It Matter What I Believe? by Samuel James. I chose this particular book for two reasons: one, I think Samuel James is an excellent writer. I’ve been reading his articles online for a few years and find them to be insightful and helpful in navigating our current cultural trends. I admire how he engages with modern-day issues from a biblical worldview and expresses his ideas in a way that’s easy to understand; I don’t do this well at all, and I’m thankful for writers who can and do. And two, I was hoping this small book would distill the big ideas of Christianity…
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Planting Seeds with “The Sower,” a New Book by Scott James
We have a small collection of books on our kitchen table, held up with an old bookend from my sister and a pot overflowing with African Violets. Some of the books in our kitchen table collection include Everything a Child Should Know about God by Kenneth N. Taylor, My ABC Bible Verses by Susan Hunt, The Biggest Story ABC by Kevin DeYoung, a few of R.C. Sproul’s children’s books, and a children’s Bible. The kids and I use these books to do devotions together in the evening and we also used them as part of our bygone homeschool days. All of these books do an excellent job of taking biblical…
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7 Good Mental Health Habits to Continue in 2023
I love making New Year’s resolutions. (Here’s a list of my past New Year’s resolutions: 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022). This year, however, I decided to set the goal of continuing some good mental health habits I started in 2022. The first group of my good mental health habits concerns food. I’ve posted a lot about my struggles with overeating, and I continue to fight against that sin in my life. Overeating, for me, is a spiritual issue. I understand the ideas behind methods such as intuitive eating, intermittent fasting, and diets like keto and paleo. None of this matters, however, if I choose to continue to eat foods I shouldn’t…
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A Lullaby & The Introduction to My Book, The Light Gatherers {New Music Monday}
This is a very special New Music Monday, and I appreciate that you’re here, visiting my website. I’ve been working on a book for a little over a year, called The Light Gatherers. (You can read the Prologue to the book here, which I wrote as a writing exercise as part of The Habit.) I don’t feel like any book is complete without a poem or a song; most of my favorite books include at least one or the other. The Hobbit includes the songs in which the dwarves sing about helping Bilbo with the dishes and the Lonely Mountain. The Princess and the Goblin includes Curdie’s rhymes, which scare…