1. God brings us bad to bring us best: Joni Eareckson Tada, “When God lobs a hand grenade into life and rattles our faith to the core, we wonder how he’ll work the pieces of shrapnel together for our good. What does good mean, anyway?”

2. Why we should expect witnesses to disagree: J. Warner Wallace, former cold-case detective explains, “I spent the first nine years of my career investigating crimes as a committed atheist. Even then, I would have approved the notion that witnesses who fail to agree on every detail, raise as many questions as they seem to answer and are inaccurate in some detail of the event, could still be trusted as reliable eyewitnesses. Even my old atheist criteria for eyewitnesses would have been sufficient to make the case for gospel reliability. I now know that the gospels actually exceed what I would require to consider them reliable.”

3. The long defeat of history: This one is probably just for Tolkien fans, and it is long, but it is one of my favorite articles I’ve read in a while. Jake Meador says, “Many speak of being on the right side of history, or knowing what time it is, as if gesturing to the calendar or a clock is itself a moral argument. As if such acts of valour—or cowardice—are determined by the ineluctable march of moments. But Tolkien has another understanding of time and history. In his correspondence, he reacted strongly to the notion of historical progress, writing, ‘I am a Christian, and indeed a Roman Catholic, so that I do not expect ‘history’ to be anything but a ‘long defeat’—though it contains (and in a legend may contain more clearly and movingly) some samples or glimpses of final victory.’”

4. A midlife assessment: I really resonated with Faith Chang’s post on the new challenges of midlife, “I’ve noticed new temptations in ministry that have come with age—temptations to impatience, ungraciousness, pride. This had surprised me then, but I now see this is true not just in ministry. I used to imagine I’d have to fight the same besetting sins my whole life, and while some old struggles still remain, I’ve found I need to also be vigilant for new ones.”

5. The top three loudest animals on earth: Moss and Fog begins with the loudest, the Blue Whale, “Imagine a call so loud it can travel hundreds of miles underwater, cutting through the depths like a vocal sonar. That’s the blue whale’s calling card. At up to 188 decibels, the blue whale’s vocalizations are the loudest sounds produced by any animal on Earth, louder than a jet engine at takeoff and more than enough to rupture a human eardrum if heard up close.”

Photo by Joshua Sukoff on Unsplash