Culture, Death, Spiritual Growth
John Beeson
Planned Obsolescence and My Backpack

I’ve had four bags in my (nearly) ten years of pastoral ministry at New Life. I bought a leather briefcase that was too small and came apart at the seams followed by a leather briefcase that was too large and stiff. I gave up on the briefcase experiment and for the past three years I have used my son’s hand-me-down backpack from his middle school years. My wife and kids constantly teased me about my middle school backpack. But you know,

Four years ago, I was tagging along on my wife’s shopping trip and found a backpack tucked away on a clearance rack. It was love at first sight, and not just because of the 60% off tag.

Planned Obsolescence and My Backpack
Recommendations, Christian Living, Culture, Heaven
John Beeson
This Week's Recommendations

  1. Four good questions to ask your tech: Tim Challies says, “We are in constant communication with our devices and through our devices. And since we are already in the habit of asking them our deep and personal questions, perhaps it would do us good to ask them some good and honest questions about themselves. Here are four questions I propose we ask of any technology that has become (or has the potential to become) deeply embedded in our lives.”

  2. Embracing the silence: Christopher Cook says, “We’re spiritually exhausted, disoriented, and desperate to hear from God. And in our desperation, we turn up the volume, hoping that more input will lead to more clarity. But the Lord doesn’t compete with the chaos. His voice doesn’t cut through the noise. It waits for stillness.”

This Week's Recommendations
Death, Suffering, Wisdom
John Beeson
The Ruin of Me

Today I have the pleasure of sharing a poem by my daughter, Camille (age 21). It is from the perspective of King Ahaz (see 2 Chronicles 28).

The Ruin of Me
Christian Living, Evangelism
John Beeson
Open Dumpster Living

Along the route from my house to the church is an undeveloped intersection on three of its four corners. Two medium-trafficked two-lane roads converge at a stop sign. A while ago, inexplicably, two massive forty-yard dumpsters showed up on one of the undeveloped corners. They sat empty for a few days, and then some observant neighbors, likely determining that the dumpster didn’t have another purpose, dumped a ragged armchair in the dumpster.

The proverbial floodgates opened. Old TV sets, broken dressers, bikes, and couches filled the two dumpsters to overflowing. Over the next two months, the dumpsters were emptied multiple times and then quickly filled.

Open Dumpster Living
Recommendations, Church, Counseling, Culture
John Beeson
This Week's Recommendations

  1. Understanding therapy culture from different generations: This article from Sheryl Jacob resonates with my experience in the counseling room with different generations. “Millennials (born 1981-1996) grew up with therapy as mainstream - encouraged to talk about trauma, set boundaries, process their inner child, and name anxiety. While this openness is good, this generation also normalised many struggles the Church should have addressed long ago.”

  2. Be drunk with love: J.A. Medders encourages, “We get filled with the Spirit—when bottles (barrels) of the vintage gospel hit our bloodstream, our Blood Gospel Content rises above the legalistic limit.”

This Week's Recommendations

Simon van Bruchem

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Four good questions to ask your tech: Tim Challies says, “We are in constant communication with our devices and through our devices. And since we are already in the habit of asking them our deep and personal questions, perhaps it would do us good to ask them some good and honest questions about themselves. Here are four questions I propose we ask of any technology that has become (or has the potential to become) deeply embedded in our lives.”

  2. Embracing the silence: Christopher Cook says, “We’re spiritually exhausted, disoriented, and desperate to hear from God. And in our desperation, we turn up the volume, hoping that more input will lead to more clarity. But the Lord doesn’t compete with the chaos. His voice doesn’t cut through the noise. It waits for stillness.”

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Don’t think about elephants: Simon van Bruchem begins, “How good are you at resisting the anxious thoughts that enter your mind? Most of us can find all kinds of things to worry about. It might be our family members, our sin, our finances, any number of things. And this general underlying anxiety is fed when we scroll through the news or social media. What can we do about these things that are making us unhappy, especially when we know that this kind of anxious thinking doesn’t accomplish anything?”

  2. The sermon on the mount is not an impossible standard to make us feel bad: Kevin DeYoung cautions us, “Too many Christians instinctively set aside the commands of Scripture as utterly impossible to obey on any level. The danger with this mindset is not only that we might be disheartened when we shouldn’t be, but that we might not be warned when we should be. Once we convince ourselves that failure is the norm…we won’t take seriously the many warnings given to us in Scripture that people unchanged by the gospel prove themselves to never really have been saved by the gospel.”

  3. The utter folly of the cross: Jeremy Treat helps us look at the cross with fresh eyes, “When the Bible talks about crucifixion, however, it emphasizes not physical pain but rather social shame. Reserved for the scum of society (rebels, slaves, and outcasts), crucifixion was a public spectacle meant to humiliate and dehumanize the victim.”

  4. The astounding diversity of ocean life: Laurent Ballesta’s magnificent photography is on display here.

  5. Wings of wonder: Fun video about “nature’s helicopters.”

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