An enjoyable devotional

Too Blessed to Be Stressed: Inspiration for Climbing Out of Life's Stress-Pool by Debora M. Coty

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Debora M. Coty has a breezy, chatty style that makes you feel like you're having coffee with her at the kitchen table. She draws connections between her wacky, Erma Bombeck-style domestic adventures and Scripture to provide life lessons that help us cope with everyday stressors. I give 4 stars rather than 5 only because this book doesn't dig to quite the theological depth I look for. Other women may see that as a benefit, though. ;)



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A must read for new writers

Writing in Obedience - A Primer for Christian Fiction Writers by Terry Burns

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is a truly wonderful book that will help Christian writers, especially novelists, clarify their place in the market. It helps us sort out whether our writing is a calling or an offering by describing the difference. It also examines the different types of audiences we may write for and how to tailor your writing for each audience.

The detailed breakdowns of how different stories need to be structured for these different audiences are alone worth the cover price. I have never seen that information anywhere else.

This book is a primer, so the second and third parts of the book contain a lot of information that will be very familiar to anyone who’s been around the writing block a few times. But then, this book is meant for the new writer, so that's OK.

The book is divided into three parts. Part One is packed with unique insights. Parts Two and Three contain a lot of the familiar material, but Burns's really excellent advice about how to keep readers turning pages is explained more clearly than I have ever seen elsewhere. Part Three is about how to get published, with an emphasis on the importance of perseverance.

The book is written in a casual, conversational style, as if you happened to wind up at a dinner table with Burns and Yezak at a conference and got to pick their brains awhile.

Even for those of us who already have a roomful of writing books, this book is a great refresher, and the inspirational angle is invaluable.

For a new writer, this book is a must read.

Disclosure: I received an advance e-copy of this book for review purposes.

This post originally appeared at kristenstieffel.com

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Heartfelt devotional for women with eating disorders

Hope for the Hollow: A Thirty-Day Inside-Out Makeover for Women Recovering from Eating Disorders by Jena Morrow

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This devotional is written for women with full-on, life-threatening eating disorders like anorexia and bullimia. I happened to pick it up while it was on a Kindle free promo, even though my dysfunctional relationship with food isn’t that severe.

This is a well-written, heartfelt devotional. It doesn't contain a lot of heady theological material, which for me is a downside. I realize for some, that’s a benefit.

The author uses the Message translation a lot, which bugs me because I feel Peterson takes a few too many liberties with the text. Nevertheless, the devo is packed with bedrock spiritual truth that can help anyone develop a right view of themselves and restore a right relationship with God and with the food he has given us to richly enjoy.



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NET Bible: New English Translation good but not great

The NET Bible: New English Translation by Biblical Studies Press

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I got this Bible free in the Olive Tree Bible Study app on my iPad. (Love that app, by the way.)

The translation was crowdsourced, which explains why it's inconsistent in places.

The editors show a propensity toward cliches, e.g., Isaiah 64:11, "all our prized possessions have been destroyed," where a note indicates the alternate translation as "all that we valued has become a ruin." Given the choice between the two, why would an editor prefer the hackneyed old set phrase "prized possessions" over something plain, simple, and more literal?


Other times, though, the translators appear to be needlessly striving for originality. In Habakkuk 2:14, for example, they write: "For recognition of the Lord s sovereign majesty will fill the earth just as the waters fill up the sea."

The footnote shows the literal translation: Heb. "for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, just as the waters cover over the sea." The poetic meter of the original has been eradicated in the translation, and for no good reason I can discern.


The translators have a journalist-like aversion to metaphor. Deuteronomy 26:8 reads, "Therefore the LORD brought us out of Egypt with tremendous strength and power(a), as well as with great awe-inspiring signs and wonders." Note (a) then says, "Heb. 'by a powerful hand and an extended arm.' These are anthropomorphisms designed to convey God's tremendously great power…They are preserved literally in many English versions (cf. KJV, NAB, NIV, NRSV). Well, yeah. I suppose that's why those translations are among the most widely used. I'd rather have the literal translation with an explanatory footnote than the other way around.



Diction choices are very odd indeed. There seems to be an excessive concern about helping "modern" readers understand the text, which results in pointless things like Jeremiah 13:1 describing his "linen shorts." I trust that modern readers are not so dense as to be unaware of what a loincloth is. Elsewhere, the plans for the temple are called "blueprints," a whopping anachronism.



The translators' notes are copious, almost overwhelmingly so. But I do like seeing the thought process.


The notes often highlight occasions when the translators have taken liberties with sentence structure. The notes will cite a verse or verses and then note that they are "one long sentence in Hebrew. The translation divides this into two sentences for stylistic reasons."


In one place, they have left what they consider a "long" sentence, with this explanation: "The length of this sentence runs contrary to the normal policy followed in the translation of breaking up long sentences. However, there does not seem any way to break it up here without losing the connections." The sentence in question is Jer. 15:4 -- "I will make all the people in all the kingdoms of the world horrified at what has happened to them because of what Hezekiah's son Manasseh, king of Judah, did in Jerusalem.” Now, is that really so long? It's not unwieldy.

This aversion to long sentences and the anachronistic diction choices lead me to believe that this translation is aimed at readers with lower skill levels, e.g., young people and those for whom English is a second language. Yet the notes are highly scholarly, often delving deep into fine points of Hebrew and Greek grammar.


For example, here's the note on Jer. 31:19 -- "For this meaning of the verb see HAL 374 s. v. ידע Nif 5 or W. L. Holladay, Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon, 129. REB translates "Now that I am submissive" relating the verb to a second root meaning "be submissive." (See HALOT 375 s. v. II ידע and J. Barr, Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament, 19- 21, for evidence for this verb. Other passages cited with this nuance are Judg 8:16; Prov 10:9; Job 20:20.)"

I have no idea what half of that even means, and I'm a pretty skilled reader. But not in Hebrew.

The notes are sometimes written so much for those with a seminary education that they are out of reach of ordinary laypersons. For example, on Mark 1:31, "...the fever left her and she began to serve (a) them," where note (a) says, "The imperfect verb is taken ingressively here." Not knowing Greek, either, I have no idea what an ingressive verb is or why it matters.

So I'm not quite sure what to make of the NET. As a Bible study leader, I find the scholarly notes helpful, albeit over my head at times. But because of the tendency of the text toward oversimplification and paraphrase, I'm not likely to use it in class.



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Crucial Questions provides great Bible study material

Can I Have Joy in My Life? by R.C. Sproul

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I have been teaching this series to some very mature Christian ladies, and today, on the last day of this series, one of them said the whole series has been "wonderful!" All of us learned something new from it. For me, the biggest lesson in this book on joy was the difference between pleasure, which comes from worldly things, and joy, which comes from the Spirit. This is a clear-eyed view of how we can rejoice in the Lord even in the midst of earthly struggles.

The whole Crucial Questions series is available in e-book versions for free: http://bit.ly/CrucialQs.


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'The Voice' Bible translation good for teaching 'The Way'

Our Sunday school class is currently going through Adam Hamilton's new video teaching, The Way: Walking in the Footsteps of Jesus. It's a great series. In each video, Hamilton shows you places in the Holy Land where Jesus walked and taught.


The lesson plans in the leader's guide call for class members to read the scriptures aloud dramatically, like a play. I found that the new translation The Voice is well-suited to this. It's a paraphrase written in a screenplay style, with dialog called out this way:

Jesus: Move out into deeper water, and drop your nets to see what you’ll catch. 

Simon (perplexed): Master, we’ve been fishing all night, and we haven’t caught even a minnow. But…all right, I’ll do it if You say so.

It's almost as if The Voice was written for the purpose. But The Voice is published by Thomas Nelson, and The Way by Abingdon Press. So I doubt they planned it.

In April, a colleague pointed me to the HarperCollins Christian Publishing Consumer Insights Panel. After signing on as a member of the panel, I got a promotional e-version of The Voice New Testament. Right about the same time, the Christian Education director at our church got a postcard promoting The Way and suggested it would be appropriate for my class.

That all sounds very coincidental, but I don't believe in coincidences. I think Someone planned it, but it wasn't likely the publishers.

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Some of these links are affiliate links, so if you click on one and purchase the item, I will receive a pittance of a commission. As noted, I received The Voice NT for free in the hope that I would promote it. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe provide value. Per Federal Trade Commission, 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

The parable of the sower in 21st-century America

When we’re taught evangelism or church development, the early church is held up as an example. One church development movement, The Acts 16:5 Initiative, takes its name from this verse:

So the churches were strengthened in the faith and increased in numbers daily.

Photo by Razief Arlie • bit.ly/sxc-hu-adlie

There’s a fundamental problem, though, with modeling 21st-century congregational growth on the first-century model. And the problem is the church.

In the parable of the sower, Jesus taught that the seed of God’s word can fall on different sorts of soil, and different types of soil yield different results.

Peter

When Peter preached in Jerusalem, he was working with fertile soil; the Jews were prepared and waiting for the Messiah. When they gathered in Jerusalem for the festival of first fruits, what we call Pentecost, Peter could convert 3,000 people with one sermon by quoting the prophet Joel, because his listeners all knew exactly what he was talking about.

We focus on the Jews who rejected the Messiah, but we forget that most of the early followers in The Way were Jews who accepted the Messiah. They did not see themselves as Christians, but as what we would now call Messianic Jews.

The main objection Peter had to overcome was, “How do we know this Jesus of Nazareth is truly the Messiah we’ve been waiting for?”

Paul

When Paul preached at the Areopagus, the soil was not as fertile. It was rocky ground, cluttered by a profusion of deities. Rome was similar, having imported all sorts of gods from other cultures, including Greece and Egypt.

We get all worked up about mimicking the church-planting practices of the early apostles, but we forget that they were talking with people whose culture was inclined toward philosophical and religious inquiry.

The main objections Paul had to overcome were, “Jesus of Galilee? Never heard of him. Who is he and where is Galilee?” or “How is your one God any better than all the gods of Olympus?”

Us

When we preach in 21st century America, we don’t have soil. We don’t even have rocky ground. We have pavement.

We focus on our God of love and forget that for many people, the worst hurts they’ve received have come at the hands of people who called themselves Christians. They were ripped off by a televangelist, or bullied in a church youth group, or were shunned by churchgoers who disliked their dress or lifestyle or ethnicity.

The main objections we have to overcome are, “You Christians are just a bunch of hypocrites,” and “How can we believe you when you can’t even agree amongst yourselves?”

People in America have been so hurt by the church in so many different ways that they have paved over their wounds. They are armored in asphalt. They won’t be converted by sermons or teaching or tracts passed out on street corners. To reach people like this, we have to wait patiently for the cracks to appear. That takes patience.

Of course, sometimes God plows under people’s pavement with a great crisis: illness or unemployment or some other tragedy. When that happens, we can be there to provide support. But only if we’ve already been walking authentically, living out a faith devoid of hypocrisy and full of love.

My Christmas prayer for you

Over at New Authors' Fellowship,  I wrote about the Mayan Doomsday Hoax and Christmas, which aren't as incompatible topics as you might think. Christ's second coming will herald the end of this world as we know it, and his first coming is what we gather to celebrate this week. Here's a summary of what I said over there.

© jurand - Fotolia.com

Christmas is incomplete if we forget why God put on flesh to dwell with us.

It wasn’t because he thought it would be personally fulfilling to be born in a pen with the livestock and grow up poor and learn to work for a living.

It wasn’t because it would be great fun to walk along dusty roads from one end of the country to the other preaching to people, most of whom wouldn’t even listen, let alone take his words to heart.

It wasn’t because he thought everyone would believe him if only he could be tried on trumped-up charges and get executed in the most brutal way ever devised.

It was because having gone through all that, his rising again on the third day demonstrated his ability to overcome anything — all opposition, all sorrow, even death itself. The cost of teaching us that lesson was the incarnate Word that governs the universe debasing himself to our level — to the lowest of the low, even into the grave. If he’d do that much for us, how much more will he meet all our earthly needs?


I pray that whatever opposition you face, whatever needs are weighing on your mind, whatever sorrows are breaking your heart, you will find comfort in the one who faced more opposition, poverty, and sorrow than we can imagine — and overcame them all.

Happy Christmas.

This book doesn't quite live up to its billing

A Sustainable Presbyterian Future: What's Working and Why by Louis Weeks

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Disappointing. This book is loaded with anecdotes, which I suppose are meant to inspire one to try similar activities in one's own congregation. The writing is academic and a bit stiff in places. Each chapter closes with a set of study questions, but this book provides few answers. I borrowed it from our presbytery library, and I'm glad I did. As a leader in my congregation, I felt a duty to read it. But I'm glad I didn't spend money on it. The early chapters on Presbyterian identity and culture and the description of the "new Presbyterian ecology" were helpful, but from there the book kind of coasts.

The subtitle, "What's working and why," is half right. Weeks gives many examples of congregations doing things right, but offers little analysis as to why some programs work and others don't, or why some congregations flourish while others die. There are few "action items," by which I mean key takeaways that a church leader can implement. It's one thing to show a congregation with a successful ministry, and another to explain what another congregation would need to do to replicate those results.

One characteristic of this book struck me as particularly odd. The author notes that the "new Presbyterian ecology" he's studying "employs digital technology and social media more than printed and published literature." Yeah. More than. Direct quote. But this book is not, so far as I could discover, available in any digital format.

UPDATE: This book is now available on Kindle. This is the first title published by Geneva Press I've seen on Kindle. Hopefully there will be many more.

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Does God only help those who help themselves?

Photo by Nat Arnett — sxc.hu

I just finished leading a study group at church using Cheri Cowell's excellent book Direction. I'll write a full review later, but for now, I want to look at an interesting aside in the book.

As part of a larger discussion of the lack of biblical literacy, Cowell cites a 2001 Barna survey that found, among those who identified themselves as Christians, the most widely recognized Bible verse is "God helps those who help themselves."

Do you see the problem there?

It's not from the Bible.

Cowell went on to emphasize the importance of biblical literacy, but I was left behind wondering whether this well-known aphorism has a detectable origin, or whether it's just one of those things handed down orally from the depths of time.

Indeed, we can find its origin if we look hard enough. A cursory Google leads you to Benjamin Franklin, but some additional digging turns up Algernon Sidney's Discourses on Government, published in 1698. The relevant passage appears under the heading "Section 23: That is the best Government, which best provides for War."

"...kingdoms and commonwealths acknowledging no superior, except God alone, can reasonably hope to be protected by him only; and by him, if with industry and courage they make use of the means he has given them for their own defence. God helps those who help themselves; and men are by several reasons (suppose to prevent the increase of a suspected power) induced to succour an industrious and brave people: But such as neglect the means of their own preservation, are ever left to perish with shame."

It's highly unlikely that enough people read Sidney for this to achieve a tipping point. But it is highly likely that Franklin read Sidney, which explains how that little nugget wound up out being reprinted out of context in Poor Richard's Almanac. But that is no doubt where enough people read it for it to become so popular as to be held up alongside the wisdom of Solomon and Jesus, if not actually mistaken as their words.

Cowell notes in Direction that spiritual illiteracy is a result of our sound bite culture. The scriptures are dense and hard to understand. It takes more work to understand them than many people are willing to apply. And even those who do read the Bible don't read much of it.

The worst of it is that Sidney's statement, which so many believers mistake for a Biblical truth, actually contradicts basic Christian doctrine. While it's true we are called to put to good use the talents God has given us, we are not called to do so in service to ourselves. We are called to serve others.

So if God doesn't help those who help themselves, whom does he help? "All who call on him in truth."

God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging.
— Psalm 46:1-3

Our traditional view of the nativity is wrong

Photo by Kristen Stieffel.
Yeah, I put this up every year, despite the inaccuracies. 

Most of our nativity scenes, depicting the holy family in a wooden shed with some animals, a shepherd or two, and three kings, are—how can I put this gently—wrong. I wrote earlier about the visit of the unknown number of non-royal persons. But the whole picture, especially the lonely couple relegated to a lean-to, doesn’t match what scholars know of that time and place.

In teaching our advent study this year, based on Adam Hamilton’s excellent book and video The Journey: Walking the Road to Bethlehem, I added a new word to my Greek vocabulary: καταλυμα, or kataluma.

It appears here:

And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. (NRSV)

The same word is used in Luke 22:11 to identify the upper room where Jesus observed Passover with his disciples.

A kataluma is a guest room. So why does almost every English translation have “inn” at 2:7 but “guest room” at 22:11? Much as I’d like to lay all the blame on King James’s translators, William Tyndale did the same thing.

Dr. Kenneth E. Bailey wrote, in the Theological Review of the Near East School of Theology, “the Arabic and Syriac versions have never, in 1900 years, translated kataluma with the word ‘inn.’ This translation is a product of our Western heritage.”

Bailey goes into great detail about first-century life in the holy land and Middle Eastern culture. It comes down to this: A room on the ground floor would be used by the family during the day, but the animals would be brought into it at night for safety. So it would have feeding troughs in it. The family and guests slept on an upper level.

Hamilton points out that since Bethlehem was Joseph’s hometown, they probably stayed with family. Instead of a wooden shed, Mary and Joseph were likely in what Bailey calls “the family room.”

So although some newer versions, like Today's New International Version, put “there was no guest room available for them,” many translators stuck with “no room in the inn” for no better reason than: That’s what we’re all used to. 

Mind you, it doesn't really matter whether it was a barn or a four-star resort. The apostle John reminds us of the important thing: God put on flesh to dwell with us. Praise be to God.

Learning about practices that edify the church

Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations by Robert C. Schnase
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I taught this as a small-group study at church, and the class loved it. You know the book is good when your students tell the preacher he should read it.

Schnase's book is full of thought-provoking ideas. I was pleased to say that a lot of suggestions we could check off as "got it," but there were still plenty of creative ideas to implement.

The author is Methodist and most of his examples come from that tradition, but I am sure any Protestant church -- any church, probably -- can glean information from this book to use in its own congregational life.

I found the author's Biblical examples to be a little thin, but then he wasn't writing a Bible study. I was teaching one, though, so I found a parable to illustrate each practice.

I especially appreciated the way Schnase shows how each practice provides a foundation for those that come after it.

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The wedding garment parable? It’s not about clothes.

David Stuart | iStockphoto

Matthew’s parable of the wedding feast contains an odd aside about an improperly attired guest. The king’s invited guests have failed to show up, so to fill the house and consume all that food, the king sends his servants out to find all and sundry and invite them to the party. So one fellow shows up in his workaday clothes, and the king says, “‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?’ And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’” (Matt. 22: 11-13)

This seems harsh. I mean, this improperly robed fellow could hardly be blamed for not dressing up when he didn’t get the invitation until long after the last minute.

Some commentaries say the guest is in trouble because the king would have supplied a robe, so the guest’s refusal to wear it was rude. But others say there’s no evidence to support this idea that hosts supplied clothes for guests -- especially a bunch of hastily rounded-up substitutes.

The Interpreter's One-Volume Commentary on the Bible said, as I suspected, that this passage isn’t about a literal garment. It’s about righteousness.

I pulled out William Barclay’s And Jesus Said, which examines the parables. Barclay’s theory is that Matthew recorded this as a warning against the sort of misconception Paul later addressed in his letter to the Romans. Some people apparently thought forgiveness means we can continue in sin so grace can abound. To which Paul replied: “By no means!” Barclay puts it this way:

It may well be, then, that Matthew is saying, “It is true that there is a free invitation from God to the most unlikely people; but that does not absolve them from the duty of trying to fit themselves to be His guests.” (And Jesus Said, page 159)

The ejected guest lacked three things: propriety, understanding, and reverence. He didn’t know what was appropriate, he didn’t know why the occasion was important, and he didn’t respect his host, the king.

How does this relate to our Christian walk?

We practice propriety in church buildings but forget that God is everywhere. Barclay writes: “It is not only in churches but in all the world that life must be fit for God to see.”

We forget what worship really is. We go through motions and recite creeds without understanding why it’s important to praise the One who made us.

We worship irreverently. Barclay notes that people will stand at attention for the national anthem, but slouch through a hymn; “and yet the hymn is sung to the King of Kings who is present at the service.”

Reverence is remembering that you are in the presence of the Lord Almighty, and behaving accordingly. The lesson of this odd little parable is that we ought to prepare ourselves for worship. Yes, we may approach the throne of grace with confidence. But we ought not do it five minutes late, disheveled, and preoccupied with worldly minutiae. We ought to do it with mindful care, clothed with “the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator.”

As Silver Refined: Learning to Embrace Life's Disappointments by Kay Arthur
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is one of those books I filled with Post-It notes and highlight marks. I filled a legal pad with notes. The insightful wisdom in this book helped me through a difficult time by getting my eyes off of me and my petty problems and onto God. Kay Arthur's teaching is firmly based in scripture and has been a major contributor to my maturity as a Christian.

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Letting the Spirit foster change

Paola Murias — stock.xchng

How many Presbyterians does it take to change a light bulb?

What do you mean, change? We’ve always had those light bulbs!

Despite our willingness to joke about being the “Frozen Chosen,” we Presbyterians are stuck in our ways, and we don’t like change. But when you look back at the 2,000-year history of the church, it has been nothing but change.

The first Christians were Jews who followed Jesus’ way. Then the church changed as more Gentiles joined, and you can read in the New Testament how Peter and Paul led the church through those changes.

In the first century, women were leaders in the church: Priscilla, Junia, Phoebe. Then that changed, and it was a millennia and a half before we had female church leaders again.

The Gospel is given to us as an inheritance, and as such, it must be passed on. But not in a dead, petrified way. The word of the lord is living and active, as is the Holy Spirit.

In the parable of the talents, the one who buries his talent, preserving it but not investing or earning interest on it, is scorned by his master.

In the same way, to pass down the faith unaltered and stagnant dishonors it. Faith directed by the Spirit should be re-thought, re-minted in each generation. The church reformed, always reforming.

Just don’t put in those spiral-ly fluorescent bulbs, and we’ll be fine.

Pay attention to God

“Can one reach God by toil? He gives himself to the pure in heart. He asks nothing but attention.”—W.B. Yeats, Autobiographies

Billy Alexander—sxc.hu

I resisted for many years the advice to take time in the morning to meet with God, even though I heard it repeatedly from multiple ecumenical sources. Chief among those was Chip Ingram, whose podcast I listen to regularly. He returns to this topic often. In his book Good to Great in God's Eyes, he identifies this as a habit of great Christians.  Good Christians, he says, can meet with God anytime. But the point of the book is that we don't want to be mediocre Christians or even good Christians, we want to be great Christians. And great Christians, Ingram writes, "give their first and best time to meet with God before anything else."

Pride is among the worst sins, and there is nothing more arrogant than believing we can handle everything this fallen world will do to us without help from above. We may think we can manage our lives, but how much better could we manage if we took time to consult the King of the Universe before we begin?

“The only way to receive the Spirit is silently and prayerfully to wait upon the Spirit.…For [one] whose every waking moment is occupied, and who even steals time for work from the hours of sleep, there may be necessary a complete reorganization of life if [one] is to find time for this silent waiting on the Spirit.”—William Barclay, The Promise of the Spirit

As one who has indeed stolen time for work from sleep, I can attest that a reorganization need not be complete -- sometimes a minor adjustment is enough. Setting the clock five minutes earlier each week worked for me, along with increased diligence about not staying up half the night.

We make time to watch our favorite TV shows, yet we resist making time to meet with the One who made us. Maybe that's because a morning devotional requires not only stillness and quiet, but concentration. But it can be done.

"All my life I have risen regularly at four o’clock and have gone into the woods and talked to God. There He gives me my orders for the day."—George Washington Carver, quoted in The Man Who Talks with the Flowers by Glenn Clark

A morning devotional, what some call "quiet time," ideally includes reading the Bible, meditating on its message, and prayer. It can also include devotional reading and journaling. I also use this time for reviewing three-by-five cards of scriptures and inspirational quotes I'm using to train my brain.

Jesus modeled the practice of communing with God early in the day: “In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.” (Mark 1:35)

It is appropriate for us to do likewise.

Winter preview

This is the promotional trailer for Winter by Keven Newsome. I had the privilege of editing this phenomenal book. It's a supernatural thriller with a powerful story of redemption.

Hiking up recovery mountain

If you, like so many others, are still hurting financially, you may wonder what the economists are thinking when they talk about our economy being in recovery.

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the recession ran from December 2007 to June 2009. If we've been in recovery for a year and a half, why does it still feel like a "recession" to so many?

It's important to understand what economists mean when they speak of "recession." If you graph them, periods of growth, or expansion, are rising lines leading to peaks. Periods of contraction, or recession, are descending lines that lead to troughs.

The GDP, one of the main factors in measuring economic growth, has been rising since June 2009. Though that growth was sometimes small, the numbers were positive, as opposed to the negative numbers seen during the recession.

Photo by Christophe Libert
stock.xchng

So why does recovery seem so crummy?

Imagine you're climbing a mountain. When you reach the peak, you stand in the bright sunshine and can see for miles.

Then you fall. You roll down that steep slope for a year and a half. You land in a valley. Bruised, but not broken, you stand up. That mountain behind you now blocks the sun. You're in shadow.

You can't go back the way you came. Ahead of you is another mountain -- maybe not as tall as the one you fell from. It has a shallower slope. You begin climbing. Slowly, surely, you ascend. You leave the valley floor behind. But the next peak is still far away, and you are still in shadow.

In The Great Reset, Richard Florida compares the 2007-2009 recession to earlier ones. "Recovery from both the Long Depression of the 1870s and the Great Depression of the 1930s -- the First and Second Resets -- took the better part of two or three decades."

He says forecasting where we'll be once the present crisis is history would be like predicting "the full flower of postwar suburbanization from the vantage point of Franklin Roosevelt's inauguration day in 1932."

As we climb, remember we have a mighty counselor who climbs with us out of the valley. "The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned." — Isaiah 9:2

A slightly different version of this essay originally appeared at the Central Florida Christian Chamber of Commerce blog.

Candy confusion

I once received an e-mail message that went something like this:

Photo by Gary Scott | www.garyslens.ca

“A candymaker in Indiana wanted to make a candy that would be a witness, so he made the Christmas candy cane. He incorporated several symbols from the birth, ministry and death of Jesus Christ.
“ … a stick of pure white, hard candy. White to symbolize the virgin birth and the sinless nature of Jesus, and hard to symbolize the solid rock, the foundation of the church …
“The candymaker made the candy in the form of a ‘J’ to represent the precious name of Jesus … it could also represent the staff of the ‘Good Shepherd’ …
“The candymaker stained it with red stripes … three small stripes to show the stripes of the scourging Jesus received … the large red stripe was for the blood shed by Christ on the cross.
“Unfortunately, the candy became known as a candy cane — a meaningless decoration … but the meaning is still there for those who ‘have eyes to see and ears to hear.’ ”

There are even several children’s books that tell something like this story, calling it the “true” origin of the candy cane. The problem is, the “true” story changes with each retelling.

In some versions, the candy cane is said to have been a secret sign among persecuted Christians — although the persecution of Christians in Europe ended long before the invention of stick candy.

Straight white candy sticks have been around for centuries. According to the National Confectioners Association, the first cane-shaped candies in America appeared in Ohio, where, in 1847, a German-Swedish immigrant named August Imgard decorated his tree with them. The shape is meant to evoke not the letter J, but the shepherd's crook -- still religiously symbolic, if you think about it. Besides, you can hang a crook on a branch. Doesn't work so well in the "J" orientation.

The truth may seem boring in comparison to a fanciful story. Gracious, I'm in the business of telling fanciful stories. But we must be clear when we are using fairy tales to share our witness, and not pretend that fables are fact.

Yes, I love Jesus. Now can I get back to work?

I suppose they mean well, the people who craft those e-mails that go on for pages and amount to, "If you love Jesus you'll send this to X more people." I suppose the people who forward them mean well, as do the ones who forward the forward.

By Carl Dwyer | stock.xchng

But I doubt this is how God keeps score. When Paul said we'd be held to account, I don't think he meant God will scold us at the end of days for not forwarding e-mails.

I think He'll ask whether we made good use of our time and talents or wasted them on trifles. I think He'll ask whether we shared knowledge or kept it to ourselves. Did we nourish His sheep or stuff them with junk food?

One such message challenged whether we make time for God at work. Why yes, I do, thanks for asking. Here are my tips for staying close to God while you work:

• Keep a stack of 3 x 5 cards printed with Bible verses on your desk. Pick verses you've been meaning to memorize, or ones that help you deal with office stress.
• Subscribe to a daily devotional e-mail.
• Add "Verse of the Day" to your webfeed reader.
• Use an inspirational desk calendar.

All of these help keep my mind on things that are above. Or at least help me re-focus when I drift.

I know senders mean well, but messages that imply we're unfaithful if we don't forward them just create false guilt, which can be a stumbling block. Perhaps, instead of forwarding messages that demand "proof" actions from recipients, we should just give words of encouragement and expect nothing in return. We might be surprised by the response.