Weekly Links!

~ LINKS TO SOME INTERESTING READING & WATCHING, FOR WHAT'S LEFT OF YOUR WEEKEND ~

Faith

-"What Is Gospel Fluency?"


-"Embracing Valentine's Day Disappointment"


-"A Just Silence": This was helpful to me, especially as I've been thinking recently about how I do (vs. how I should) use social media.


-"Submit to the New Sexual Orthodoxy or Risk Losing Everything"

Family

-"A Simple Way to Speed Delivery": Somehow, this just reminds me of HOW HUNGRY I WAS after I delivered my first child.

Fiction

-"Painting a Story"


-"Why Don't We Talk About 'Stranger Than Fiction' Nearly Enough?": I love this movie.


-"Sunny Day": not fiction, but a good poem, worth reading.


-2016 Novelist Income Survey Results, Part One, and Part Two




I hope you have a lovely Sunday, full of worship and rest!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Weekly Links!

~ LINKS TO SOME INTERESTING READING & Watching, FOR WHAT'S LEFT OF YOUR WEEKEND ~

-"Not Writing for Writers": I enjoyed this post about how pursuing non-literary art forms help writers write better. Here's a snippet:

What amazes me the most is that I haven’t lost anything. I don’t have less time to enjoy the audiobooks and films and tv shows and social media I love. But I have incentive to be more purposeful about what I consume, because it has to be better than spending time with my thoughts. I’ve lost patience for the empty noise, I only want the good stuff.

-"On Signaling Versus Displaying Virtue in a Trumpian Age"


-"How the Order of the Beatitudes Could Change Your Life": I can't remember ever seeing this point made elsewhere, and it's a really helpful insight.


-"I Work from Home":  I'm enough of an introvert that I can't identify with much of this, but as someone who does work from home, I still find it hilarious.


-"Dear Supporter, There's So Much More I Wish I Could Tell You": a missionary friend of mine linked to this post, and (for what it's worth) as a missionary kid, I commend it to you.

Pray for the missionaries you know, folks. And then pray for them some more.


-"Ten Meter Tower": I could not look away from this. Weirdly fascinating.


-"C.S. Lewis Talks to a Dog About Lust": So helpful.


-"Why Our Son Doesn't Have a Smartphone"


-"I Was a Black, Female Thru-Hiker on the Appalachian Trail"



-"An Iceberg Flipped Over, and Its Underside is Breathtaking": really gorgeous pictures.


-"Which Paid Marketing Works (and Doesn't Work) for Books": I know this is totally inside baseball, but I like Rachel Aaron's blog (and recommend her book), and found this long meaty post really interesting.



---Finally, on a note of shameless self-promotion, it's almost Lent, and if you don't already have a copy of "Let Us Keep the Feast: Living the Church Year at Home," now is a great time to buy one! Cate MacDonald and Lindsay Marshall do a great job of showing you simple, meaningful ways to bring the church's celebration of Lent and Easter into your own home.

You won't regret getting yourself a copy before Ash Wednesday rolls around (March 1, this year.)---


I hope you have a lovely Sunday, full of worship and rest!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell








This post contains Amazon affiliate links; if you purchase a book from this link, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price.  (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)

Desperate Faith: How to Pray When You Know You're Not Enough

I was listening again to the story in Mark 9, of the time when a father begged Jesus to deliver his son from torment, and Jesus listened, and did.

It's a justly famous story for the father's excruciatingly honest declaration,

"Lord, I believe! Help my unbelief!" ....

Listening to it this time, I realized that the father's belief actually is very strong: he is willing to do whatever is necessary to save his son. Even if what is necessary is to believe.

If there is a miracle on offer, he will believe in it.

If believing is what is required, he will do it.

But he is so desperate, he cares SO MUCH, and--I think this is important--he is SO IN EARNEST--that he has to be honest about what he knows about his own ability - he knows he cannot believe enough, he knows he doesn't have enough faith, he knows he is in desperate, horrible, helpless need ... and that is why he is there in the first place.


And that is why we are before Jesus in the first place, too. When we go to church, when we approach the communion rail, when we hold out our hands before him in prayer: we are there because we are in such desperate, horrible, helpless need.

We have some faith (God's gift!), but it is not enough.

We have such need, and it has overwhelmed us.

So, in that place of desperate need and insufficient faith, here is what we must be sure of about ourselves: that we are not enough, that we cannot believe enough, and yet that we desperately need Jesus' help. He is the one who can free us of our demons and our torment.

Lord, I believe. Help thou my unbelief!

The first is needed for the second, and the first LEADS to the second.


And be sure of this: the Lord Jesus will meet us there. There in Mark 9, you see that our Lord responds to our honest confession of insufficiency. He takes our small, weak, desperate cries, and meets them with unshakable, sure, overwhelming strength. He is good and kind.

He will help our unbelief, and he will make us strong enough to see and to bear his mercies.


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Asking Jesus to Leave

If you're visiting my blog today because you found me via The Lent Project, welcome! Take a look around and make yourself at home. :)


And if you're one of my regular readers, please come and stop by The Lent Project today! I have a devotional up about Jesus' healing of the demon-possessed man ... though I take it a bit of a different direction. Here's how it starts:

This is the story about the people who asked Jesus to leave. 

Yes, it is also the story about the horde of demons infesting one naked and helpless man. It’s also the story about the herd of pigs streaming down the cliff to their deaths. The story about the maniacal strength of the fallen angels as they used their host to break iron shackles, to scream their filthiness to the skies, to dance in the dark around the mountains and the tombs, to terrorize everyone who came near them.

It is that story. 

But it is also the story about the people who asked Jesus to leave.

Please head over to The Lent Project to read the rest, and to enjoy and ponder the art and music that accompanies the devotional. (Biola's CCCA does such an amazing job putting together the readings, art, and music for this every year; it's an honor to get to take part in such a beautiful and collaborative piece of work.)


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Weekly Links - gospel, wine, matchmakers, movies, and more!

photo credit: Betsy Barber

I'm still counting this post as getting my links up on the weekend, because my kids are home from school today in honor of Lincoln's birthday. That said, here is your weekly (!) good reading from around the web:


On Faith:
"Why I Don't Share the Gospel" - it's all about joy.

"Our Prayer Instincts Are Backwards" - why we start in the wrong direction when we talk to God.

"Today Is Susanna Wesley's Birthday" - Susanna Wesley is one of my favorite saints. I love reading about her!

"What My Grandmother Taught Me About Church" - a moving memorial from Russell Moore - also good reading for parents and grandparents out there who want their children to grow up loving the house of the Lord.

"When God Writes Your Story" - this testimonial about books and faith is one of the most beautiful things I've read.

"Lord, You Said There Would Be Wine" - one last good piece of reading for Ordinary Time.



General Interest:
"Interview with a Former Professional Matchmaker"

"Fiber: the least sexy weight-loss tool" - my thanks to my friend Becca for this link!

"Old Movie Review: UNBREAKABLE" - this makes me want to watch this one, and ...

"Hail, Caesar!" - and this review really makes me want to watch this one!



I hope you have a good week, and especially a good beginning to Lent on Wednesday.

-Jessica Snell

Weekly Links - All Saints' Day Edition!

My weekly* round-up of interesting reading from around the web:

-As a Christian who appreciates science (and science fiction!), I enjoyed reading this interview with the Pope's astronomer.  A highlight of it:

Rather than learning something theologically new, what I take from my discoveries is a more general sense of the “personality” of the creator. It might be compared to discovering a trove of old manuscripts where you think one of them might be some unpublished play of Shakespeare. You’d be excited because it might be a wonderful new work, or even just a window into what he was thinking while he was writing. But you also need to be sure it really is Shakespeare that you’re reading, not some other writer.

- Our family loves the show "Mythbusters", and so I enjoyed this article: "The Craziest Myths the Mythbusters Have Tackled, According to the Mythbusters".


- Now onto religion and society: "This Is Your Wake-up Call" is a sober reflection on abortion and one of the hardest stories in the book of Judges.


- Simcha Fisher on "Rogue Laughter in a Flippant Society" - I especially liked this paragraph:

. . . think of the difference between an eleven-year-old boy laughing about sex, and a forty-year-old married man laughing about sex. The grown man has probably earned his laughter; the boy can't have done so, and is laughing partly because he wants to look more experienced than he really is. True laughter, and the best jokes, come when we have some experience with the subject matter -- when we've faced something big and have survived.

- Anne Kennedy on "Celebrating the Reformation". Good, timely stuff:

The church cannot go beyond the gospel. The Christian doesn’t graduate from a saving knowledge of Jesus into something better later on. So also, the Christian cannot ascend to something higher, cannot move on to some better, fancier doctrine. From the moment of Jesus’ first infant cry, to his sorrowful and painful death, to his rising again, to his crushing of his enemies under his feet those who love him can never cry out someone else’s name for help, they can never give glory to themselves or to another, they can never be sustained by some other grace, they can never lean on and be ruled over by some other authority than Jesus’ own Word, they can never be tethered by some other faith.

-Reformation Day yesterday, All Saints Day today - and yet it's still Ordinary Time!  So, here's Anna Gissing on "Living in Ordinary Time":

. . . many Protestant Christians have been re-learning the rituals and habits of living into these churchy seasons as a way to inhabit the gospel and to structure our lives in a way that helps us remember that God is the author of time.

-Speaking of Reformation Day, I enjoyed this dense bio on "Katherine Parr: Reformation Queen of England and Ireland".


-AND, speaking of All Saints' Day, here's a lovely sonnet by Malcolm Guite for All Hallow's Eve.


- Tim Challies is Canadian, but I think his wise words are a comfort in any political climate: "I Went Away for Just 6 Days":

The temptation is not only to put my hope in politicians but to put my despair in them as well. I will be tempted not only to find too much joy in the election of the person I voted for, but also to sink too far into despair in the election of the person I did not. Either way, whether I soar too high or sink too low, I am declaring that I have put my trust in a man more than in God. I have forgotten that, ultimately, it is God who rules over and through earthly rulers.

-Finally, my friends and family and I found this article on "The Things that Drain Each Personality Type Most" scarily accurate.



Happy All Saints' Day, folks!
-Jessica Snell



*Or, if we're honest, biweekly.

Weekly Links!

Some good reading for your weekend:

"Science Shows Something Surprising About People Who Love to Write":

The benefits of writing go far beyond building up your vocabulary . . .

"Ask the Agent: What's hot and cold in publishing these days?": a nice assessment of the latest numbers.

"Gospel of Confession":

The Father eternal speaks forth the Son – an act that we might re-characterize as the Father eternal confessing the Son, telling forth the truth about himself in the eternal Word. If that is the case, then our confession as telling forth the truth of God finds its basis in the far greater, the complete act of the Father from eternity telling forth the truth about himself in the person of his Son. 

"Strange is Good with the Trinity":

In any given church, you'll have people at different stages of their understanding of trinitarian prayer, which leads to some awkwardness. We've all heard prayers that start out, “Heavenly Father,” and then within a couple of sentences are saying, “Thank you for dying on the cross for us.” Or prayers that start, “Dear Jesus” and move on to “thank you for sending your Son to save us.” What's going on here? Probably not outright heresies (patripassianism in the first case, some sort of Jesus-modalism in the second). Probably the person praying has been mentally focused on one person of the Trinity initially, and has shifted his or her attention to another person a few seconds later, without bothering to adjust all the other parts of the prayer or to vocalize a transition. Anybody in the congregation who is more fluent with trinitarian theology will hear something that sounds alarming. But I doubt that the person praying would fail a simple theology test if you stopped them and administered one (which, by the way, please don't).

"Fifty Shades Against Gender Neutrality":

Having repressed healthy masculinity, what bubbles up through the cracks is a crude distortion of the real thing, and our enjoyment of it is confined to the level of fantasy. We’re eating dog food because we’re hungry for steak.

Weekly Links: Rainbow Recipes, Horror vs. Terror, and more!

Some good reading for your weekend:

"27 Rainbow Recipes that Will Bring Joy to Your Life": So pretty.

"Why the Shift from Horror to Terror on 'CSI' Is a Problem":

There is a fine line between accurate storytelling—wherein a crime show might show some violence to tell an honest story about the consequences of wrongdoing—and gratuitous depiction, in which violence is portrayed not for the sake of the story but for the spectacle of it. 

"Fittest Type of All Disciples: Bartholomew/Nathanael":

Because of the way Nathanael is brought to Jesus, commentator Rudolf Stier calls Nathanel "the fittest type of all disciples." God has already been at work on him in multiples ways; he is summoned by the witness of another disciple; and he is introduced directly to Jesus, converted by his word. Nathanael's faith is the occasion of Jesus first "truly, truly I say to you" statement.

"Mincemeat: on Writing":

As a writer and a mother of two children, I thought I didn't have any spare time. And then we added twins to our family, and I wondered what I used to do with all that spare time. 

"The Likely Cause of Addiction Has Been Discovered, and It Is Not What You Think":

. . . human beings have a deep need to bond and form connections. It's how we get our satisfaction. If we can't connect with each other, we will connect with anything we can find -- the whirr of a roulette wheel or the prick of a syringe. He says we should stop talking about 'addiction' altogether, and instead call it 'bonding.' A heroin addict has bonded with heroin because she couldn't bond as fully with anything else. 

So the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. It is human connection.

"Am I Empty?":

Empty.  It needs to be said.  Infertility and miscarriage leave one empty.  There is pain.  There is loss. Someone is missing. That needs to be acknowledged. Years later, there are scars.  I felt it then; I feel them now.  I contemplated the starkness of the word, the label.  My label.  My label?

"Measles Is Horrible":

Before the vaccine, the United States saw approximately 4 million cases of measles each year and 400 to 500 deaths. These are the stats that vaccine-deniers tend to emphasize—a relatively low number of deaths compared with the number of infections. However, those statistics alone leave out a big part of measles infections. Prevaccine, almost 48,000 people were also hospitalized each year because of measles and measles complications. One in 20 of those infected developed pneumonia. More rarely but more seriously, each year 1,000 became chronically disabled due to measles encephalitis. 

Measles is not a benign disease.

Luke 10: Passive Questions and Active Questions in the story of the Good Samaritan

Jacopo Bassano, The Good Samaritan, via Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

In Luke 10, we read the story of the Good Samaritan. And though I've heard this story over and over again in my life, this last time I went through it, I noticed something new.

I noticed that the question the lawyer asks Jesus ("Who is my neighbor?") is not quite the same question that Jesus asks back at the end of the parable ("Who was a neighbor?", or, "which of these . . . proved to be a neighbor . . .?")

The Lawyer's Question
The lawyer asks a question that requires no action on his part, if that makes sense. He's not asking who he is, he's asking who other people are to him.

Jesus' Question
But - and I'd never quite noticed this before - Jesus doesn't answer his question. Not exactly. Jesus doesn't tell him, exactly, who his neighbor is.

Jesus tells him about a man choosing to be a neighbor.

In other words, the lawyer asks, "How do I know which people are my neighbors?"

And Jesus says, "By what fruit is a  neighbor known?"


The Command, and it's not just for the lawyer, but also for us . . .
And then, of course, "Go thou, and do likewise."


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

the Gadarene Demoniac

Jesus heilt den Besessenen von Gerasa Mittelalterliche Buchillustration (PD:USA, old) via Wikimedia Commons

The story of the Gadarene demoniac is found in Luke 8:26-39, and it was in my reading for this past week.

As I listened to the story over and over, I noticed a few things.

Undesirables
First, I noticed that there were two undesirables in the story:

1) the demonized madman who could not be securely bound, even with chains,
2) and the Man who could command the demons to leave.

And it was the Man who could command the demons to leave that, in the end, the townspeople could not abide staying with them.

Divine Authority
The other thing that stood out to me is that Jesus commands the healed man to, "tell what great things God has done for you" . . .

. . . and that man went away telling "what great things Jesus had done for him."

And that this is exactly right. Because Jesus is God, the Son of God.


New Insights
And I'd noticed that before, but I hadn't noticed this: that the demonized man becomes an evangelist. He goes his way, telling the Good News of Christ.

Not only is his affliction taken from him, not only is he freed from his enemies, not only is the bad thing not there anymore . . . but a good thing takes its place.

He not only is not a demoniac anymore . . . he is an evangelist.

He's not left neutral. He's not defined by what he isn't.

He is an evangelist. He is a bearer of good news.

He's not only saved from damnation, but he's given a job, a role, a place in the Kingdom of God.

This is the good news.


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

The angry - and the poor in spirit

Providentially, just after I wrote that last blog post, on anger, I found myself copying over some notes that seemed to apply to the same subject.

(I keep a notebook in my purse, and every month or two, I go through it and copy the handwritten stuff there into a Word document on my computer.)

These notes are from a sermon preached by our deacon, Ryan Bradley, and I seem to recall he said he'd gotten a bunch of this from Dallas Willard. Anyway, it was on the Beatitudes, and it seems to me that it answers a bunch of my questions about what to do with anger. Here are my notes:

That it is safe to be a good person in the kingdom of God. You can afford to be a peacemaker – you don’t have to pay everyone back. You don’t have to do it out of vengeance and you don’t have to do it to protect yourself.

You can afford to be someone who restores relationships – it’s safe to do that in the kingdom of God.

The French embassy is sovereign territory of France, even though it’s on U.S. soil. We are embassies of the kingdom of God. Our very selves are sovereign territory of God’s kingdom.

We are also refugees – allowed into this new, benevolent, oh-so-foreign land and we have to learn to live by the laws of this new land.

“Poor in spirit” – if you’re needy, the kingdom of God is for you.

“Is Christianity a crutch?” “Yes, well, I happen to be a person who needs a crutch.”

We all need a crutch – just some of us are trying to wobble along on broken legs.

“The needy who know it.”  We aren’t the strong, whose lives God is just making better. We are the weak, who desperately need God constantly.

And so we can’t look down on others. They’re right where we are, right?

We are fundamentally the desperate – the ones who need God.

Links! Time, Light, and Space

Lars Walker writes about Talented People. His take on the parable of the talents is one of those brilliant things that makes you say, "well, of course! that's blindingly obvious! but I never saw it that way till now - thank you for pointing it out!"

For those of you in Southern California - my friend, Emily Moothart, is a doula who has a passion for helping women have great births. If you're in the market for a doula or know someone who is, check her out!

John Scalzi looks forward to the year 2012 in science fiction movies. I took three things away from this article:
   1. I didn't know "Old Man's War" had been optioned for a movie. Cool!
   2. Scalzi has much higher hopes than I do for "John Carter" (of Mars). I saw the preview in theater and snickered through the whole thing. Taylor Kitsch, get back into your football jersey!
   3. There are a fair amount of sci-fi movies coming out next year. Yay!

It's almost Epiphany, and the way to celebrate it is with light and space. This is just so beautiful. And appealing.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Links! just two!

Anne Kennedy on sharing the gospel. Go read this. It's so good.

Ooh, a new Dr. Who trailer:

Links! - Marie Curie's daughters, a Dutch superbus and a gospel-sharing priest

Just a few links today!

I remember reading a biography of Marie Curie when I was young, but I'd never heard about her daughters. Wow, what a story!

I want a Dutch superbus! This think is like the Batmobile meets and 24-passenger van (is there such a thing as a 24-passenger van?); it's amazing.

This story about an evangelical (as in, evangelizing) Catholic priest is inspiring! I think Father Tony has the right idea! We should all share our Lord's love as easily and as cheerfully. (Hat tip to Conversion Diary for the link.)

links

This is a very short links post, but I'm publishing it today because the second link is timely. :)

Interesting article about an American who makes his living playing an American . . . in Chinese movies and television.

Best Valentine's Day activity for kids EVER. (You figure out if I'm kidding.)

This blog post illuminating the structure of Matthew's gospel was educational (and I mean that in a good way).

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

we do what we can

I’m facing writing the chapter in my book that terrifies me to write, because I’m not equal to it. It’s the heart of the story, and I’m so scared I’m going to get it wrong. It is, in fact, not the place where the gospel is told, but where it is shown, and I'm scared I'm going to get it wrong. 

(I’m not scared that I’m wrong about what’s supposed to happen; it’s that what’s supposed to happen is so exactly right that I’m scared I won’t be able to write it well, because I am not exactly right.)

But then I was reading Fr. Reardon’s commentary on this week's readings today and read this section, where he is discussing Luke's accounts of the women who went to Jesus' grave to anoint his body after his death (emphasis mine):

Now there is a certain kind of “practical” person, an efficiency expert, who does not much appreciate what the Myrrhbearers were up to. Had he encountered them on the road that morning, he might well have asked them, “Just what good do you think you are going to accomplish?” Anointing a dead body, after all, does not make good business sense. It achieves nothing very practical. It is the sort of activity that fails to contribute to the Gross National Product. Except for its very small influence on the myrrh market, spice trading, and nard futures, it barely shows up on the Dow Industrials. It has no measurable results. The corpses thus anointed cannot be interviewed to ascertain if they are satisfied with the product, or which brand they prefer, or whether they would recommend it to their neighbors. Anointing dead bodies resists a quantitative analysis.

Over and against this quantitative point of view stands the completely unproductive, uneconomical, inefficient assessment of the ointment-pouring scene at Bethany: “She has done what she could” (Mark 14:8). In that assessment of the thing, we arrive very near the heart of the Gospel. Quite simply: We do what we can. We do not attempt to measure what we do, certainly not by its perceived results. We act solely out of love, letting God alone determine whether we have “loved much” (Luke 7:47). The final quality of our lives will not be assessed by what we have accomplished, but by our love (1 Corinthians 13:24). Only the God who reads the heart can put a value on that love.

Prominent in the midst of the Church, then, are those Myrrhbearers who came that morning loaded down with their spices and without the foggiest idea how they were going to enter a sealed tomb guarded by a massive stone. What an exercise in inefficiency, lack of cost analysis, and failure in planning. As it turned out, they could not even find a body to anoint. All that myrrh, just going to waste.

And I am reassured. “We do what we can. We do not attempt to measure what we do, certainly not by its perceived results. We act solely out of love, letting God alone determine whether we have ‘loved much’.”

Well. Now, at least, I know how to approach my work today. I will do what I can. I will do it out of love. I will pray for God’s mercy on me.

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

Links:

Amy at A Joyful Journey writes about the living with the loss of her eldest daughter and the hope of Christ in Grief in the Shadows. This is the gospel. Thank you for sharing this, Amy.

For my fellow writers: This Is Your Job.

A post from Matt Kennedy: Why Read the Bible? I especially appreciate his reminder that we all worship something.

The customer's not always right . . . especially when it comes to those new-fangled computers. This is hilarious - thanks for the story, Josh!

And again, thanks to my brother: check out this ceiling covered in beetle carapaces. It's beautiful!

After reading up on growing out my hair, I couldn't help but find this trailer really interesting. I have no authority to speak to the issues this movie is about, but the way culture and personal appearance interact is eye-opening.


Hope you had a good weekend!
peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

bother!

And I was so determined not to miss it!

I've been terrible about remembering to celebrate saints' days, but I was convinced that I would remember St. Mark's this week. Alas, today is NOT the 24th, and so St. Mark's feast day is not tomorrow, but yesterday.

All the same, praise God for St. Mark, evangelist! Go take a peek through his gospel, and just try to count all of the "suddenly!"'s. It's like the Herman kid's account of the appearance of the angel in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever: "Suddenly, out of the black night, SHAZAM!" I've heard Mark's gospel called "the comic book gospel", and that's not a bad description. Lots of action. For a world that sometimes sees Christianity as dull, Mark's gospel is a good antidote. In it, we see Christ actively loving his people who he has come to save.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica