One of the hardest things I have ever experienced in my life is being a parent. Parenting is hard! Don’t misunderstand… It’s good. But it’s difficult.

We thought it was tough when the kids were little. Then we had teenage girls. That was tougher. And then we had a teenage boy. That has been toughest of all so far. And we still have four more kids yet to go through these stages. Parenting is hard!

A friend of mine shared a verse with me a few years ago that shed some light on this for me. He told me to read Galatians 6:9, which says, “And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.”

This was not written with parenting as the specific context, but it definitely applies. Don’t grow weary… Parenting is hard! We will reap a harvest… Parenting is good! It might be difficult at times, but if we hold on and keep on going, we will see some results.

Sometimes, though, it can be difficult to see past the immediate circumstances of hard to the future reality of good. Have you ever been there? That’s why Dennis and Barbara Rainey have written The Art Of Parenting. Because it does get difficult. And it does have dark moments. But it also has great moments, and if we do not give up, we just might one day see the harvest that God can bring about in the lives of our kids.

Our family is large. We have adult children. We have teens. And we have younger children as well. Parenting in all these various seasons of life for our kids seems chaotic at best, and downright crazy at times. So I’m excited to dig into The Art Of Parenting. Having read other books by the Rainey’s, I know it will be a great help to my parenting life.

If you are a parent, I suggest you read it as well. You can purchase it on Amazon.

I think most people would agree that our culture has gone crazy. So many things have happened in the past few months that are hard to get our minds around. It is tough to comprehend just where we are headed.

As crazy as it seems though, it’s not unexpected to those who have been paying attention to the trends our culture has been picking up over the past few years, and even for recent decades. Western culture seems to have been in a steady decline for a while, and recent events have shown that the pace is picking up.

That sounds a warning bell for western Christianity. And the warning comes in the form of a recent book by Rod Dreher, The Benedict Option. This was released in 2017, before all of the most recent craziness hit our world. But in the midst of bakers being sued for refusing to make cakes, and florists being vilified for not providing services to certain elements of society, Dreher opens our eyes to a world that is increasingly antagonistic to Christianity. So much so that it may be too late to change the direction we’re headed.

Is there a solution? Dreher thinks so. And he finds it in the most unlikely of places: the Benedictine solution from centuries ago. St. Benedict of Nursia was a sixth-century monk who, fearful of the direction his culture was headed, set about to do something about it. He created a community that was able to hold on to their faith in a word that was crumbling around them, and to do so with a longevity that still impacts our world today.

Today, we may need to do something very similar. Dreher is not calling us to escapism, leaving the world behind; because to do so would be to forsake the Great Commission. What he does urge is for the church to stop placing our hope in political leaders and the temporary reprieve that they may bring, and place our hope in something greater. He calls the church to focus on strengthening the local church body, to create new avenues of education, to develop disciplines that will carry us through crisis after crisis in this world, with our hope centered firmly on Jesus.

After all, he’s the only thing that will provide what the church needs to survive until he returns to claim his bride. Until then, we must continue to be ready.

I highly recommend you read The Benedict Option. You can purchase it on Amazon.

Most of what I read is geared around continually educating myself, primarily in the areas of spiritual growth. However, I occasionally read some fictional material, and have a few favorites. Another genre that I like to read often surprises many of my friends. I like to read poetry.

Several months ago, I purchased a book of the poetic works of Mary Oliver, called American Primitive. I promptly put it on my shelf and forgot all about it. But this week, I pulled it out and have spent some time reading through some of the selections offered. Her work is simple yet elegant, easy to read yet containing depths of meaning that strike you when you least expect it.

Oliver is a contemporary author, and has been publishing her work since the 1960s. Many of the poems in this volume are simple. But they speak right into the human heart will bless you as you read them. Containing an element of mystery, you might have to stop and consider what you read for a while,and allow it to sink in fully. But when you do, it will bring some relaxation to your soul.

I highly recommend you read some of her works. You can get a copy of American Primitive on Amazon.

Cancer is everywhere it seems. A hundred years ago, the odds of experiencing cancer were somewhere around 1 in 80. Today, it’s more like 1 out of 3 will experience it. Why has it increased so drastically? And why aren’t the treatments that are being given to people working as much as we might expect them to?

Ty Bollinger thinks that we are approaching the matter in the wrong way. Big Pharma, using petroleum/chemical based pharmaceuticals, may not be the best way to treat cancer, and may be, in fact, harming us more than we realize.

For centuries, more natural remedies have been utilized to treat illness and disease. But over the last century, we’ve largely abandoned those methods. Is that abandonment justified? And if not, then what can we do to “relearn” some of those helpful approaches to treatment?

Those are some of the questions that Bollinger explores in The Truth About Cancer. And with so many people in my life who have experienced this disease, and died from it, I’m interested in what he has to say about it.

If you are interested in reading The Truth About Cancer, by Ty Bollinger, you can pick up a copy on Amazon.

Someone once told me that we live in an age of “dumbing down.” I think he specifically called it the “dumbing down of America.” I suspect there is some truth to that statement, at least to a degree. It’s not that people are dumb; but it’s more of a situation where we have forgotten how to think for ourselves.

This happens at all levels, form the most common of conversations on social media to the halls of academia. I vividly remember a conversation with one of my professors in college. He told me that he wasn’t concerned with originality in our work for his classes as much as he was with the ability to repeat what he had taught us. What I took from that conversation was that if I could regurgitate his notes in my work, I’d get a good grade. And I did. Along with so many others, I was obediently interested in what he told me we wanted me to learn, and not much else.

I get it. He was teaching a specific topic, and we needed to learn that subject matter. But I think I could have learned it better if thinking and exploring were more encouraged than just repeating what he said in class.

A further problem is that when we don’t think and reason about things, we substitute emotion and feelings. This is why so much is said on social media that we might never say in a physical, vocal conversation. Instead of objective conversation, we turn to subjective feelings, and we let them drive our speech.

So what do we do about it? Maybe, just maybe, we need to relearn how to think. We need to learn how to use our cognitive reasoning abilities to assess our lives and circumstances. It will be hard, because these thinking muscles haven’t been used in a while for most of us. And it will take time. But I think it might help us avoid so many of the problems that we face as a culture, and lead us out of the chaos.

If you are interested in reading How To Think, by Alan Jacobs, you can pick up a copy on Amazon.