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A Compass For Our Changing World

We’re a few days into another new year, and nobody knows what the next 12 months will bring. What we do know is this: the world is changing fast. Culture is changing. Economics are changing. Demographics are changing. Beliefs are changing. As the world shifts around us, there’s plenty of disagreement about which of these changes are moving us forward, which are holding us back, and what the path of progress should look like. That’s a vital question. Years ago, C.S. Lewis made an important point about it:

Top Books Of 2023

I’d like to finish the year out by sharing the six best books I read this year, and some recommendations from my family as well. These are not books that came out this year—some of them are old, but I read them this year and enjoyed them. You might, too.

A Christmas Selection Box 2023

It’s Christmas, and in Ireland that means chocolate selection boxes are multiplying everywhere. It’s a great tradition—who wouldn’t like a box filled with a variety of different chocolates to enjoy over the holidays? Today I’m joining in with the spirit of this tradition. I can’t give you chocolate, but I’ve collected a variety of treats for you from around the internet. Enjoy!

Christmas Should Humble Us

Christmas is wonderful. The lights, the decorations, the music, the cookies, the nativity scenes, all of it. And in the nativity scenes, a baby. A baby who was the High King of Heaven. In a feeding trough. It’s a shocking picture, really, when you think about the humility of Christ. To step down from the literal throne of Heaven itself, take on our humanity, and enter our world as an infant born into poverty among an oppressed people is hands down the most extreme display of humility in all of history. Nothing else comes close.

Don’t Let All The Conspiracies Be Evil

The headlines are usually bad. Nations conspiring against nations, scandals and corruption in governments, corruption and abuse in charities, organised crime, businesses cheating the system, people cheating each other, and so on. It seems there are a lot of people in this world working hard to devise evil plans and then working together to carry them out. Which is nothing new. Isaiah wrote about the same thing hundreds of years before the first Christmas:

“…the schemes of the schemer are evil;
He devises wicked plans
To destroy the poor with lying words,
Even when the needy speaks justice.” – Isaiah 32:7 (NKJV)

Hot And Cold (a poem)

Thanksgiving is an American tradition that our family will never, ever give up. The feast is amazing, but so is the logic: a holiday especially made for giving thanks! You have to give the pilgrims credit: they were clever. Giving thanks is one of the healthiest, happiest things you could ever do. Not just with a feast, and not just on the fourth Thursday in November—it’s a habit that can reshape our perspectives and grow contentment in our hearts all year long. That’s what this poem is about:

Finding A Bigger Story

This is a guest post written by my friend, Isabel Quinlan. She shared her story with our local Bible study group last week, and I asked her to write it up for you as well. Isabel writes a blog at https://isabelquinlanblog.wordpress.com

“Ruairí wants to go in there” my 2 year old said excitedly, prodding the picture of a farm in the board book i was reading him. I had a jolt of realisation, struck by the profound nature of stories. My 2 year old doesn’t yet know that this little farm is fictitious, but he instinctively knows that stories contain little worlds. Little imaginary offshoots of our own world.

I grew up with a Christian worldview. A view of our world as the creation of a being outside it, a 3D offshoot of his imagination. Through my teens my view changed. Like many other young people in Ireland at the time, I shed the narrative of a creator and dove into atheism, and began to view our world not as an imaginative creation spoken into physical existence, but rather as a collection of matter, governed by laws of physics.

He Didn’t Have To Promise

What do we have that God didn’t give us?

Our bodies are the work of his hands. Our hearts beat with his gift of life. Our lungs fill with his air. Our minds are aware with his gift of consciousness. Our strength and abilities come from him. Even the abilities we work hard to develop ourselves come from him, because what are we developing except his gifts, using the strength and life he gave us?

Around The Web

Today I’d like to share a few articles from around the web that I’ve enjoyed recently. Maybe you’ll enjoy them, too.

How Satellites Changed How I See The World

I grew up on the edge of a new world. I was the first of my friend group to own a mobile phone—an indestructible Nokia that could call and text, but I didn’t use it to text because that was expensive and who would I text anyway? No internet. No satellite navigation system.

I was 16. My parents gave me the phone because we lived in the country and I had just gotten plastic proof of my adulthood: a full driver’s licence. I drove our little Toyota pickup truck with a tape deck that was so old the tapes would play faster or slower according to the engine rpms—so the tempo of the music changed every time I changed gears. It was hilarious. And really annoying. That truck was mostly reliable, but only mostly. I remember it breaking down on top of a mountain and how thankful I was that I could just barely coast into the driveway of the first house after miles of forest. I didn’t know the people there, but they helped me. I couldn’t always depend on the car, or the phone signal, so I had to depend on strangers. Gradually, as the cellular towers sprang up and the satellite networks became more reliable, our family breakdown stories changed. Helpful strangers began to feature less often in them.