History, Spiritual Growth, Suffering, Wisdom
John Beeson
Lord, Reach Your Justice Down

I had outsized emotions as a child. Games, especially, would get the best of me, whether cards or boardgames or sports. In response to a stroke of bad luck, a hot surge of anger would erupt, followed quickly by tears and then embarrassment.

Emotions are God’s gift to us in many ways. They are one of his kind ways of showing us where our deep attachments lie.

Our son started his freshman year at the University of Arizona this fall. It’s been a great experience for him, but not without its adjustments. The climate of a secular school is quite different than the Christian school he graduated from

Lord, Reach Your Justice Down
Culture, Generosity, Nature, Relationships
John Beeson
Marshmallows and Friends

Most have heard of the famous Stanford marshmallow experiment. In 1970, psychologist Walter Mischel invited kids into his lab. A child was offered a marshmallow that they could eat, or, if they waited until the researcher returned, they were given a second marshmallow. About one-third of the kids waited approximately fifteen minutes for the additional reward.

The study then tracked those children over time and found that children who waited for the second reward tended to have higher SAT scores and lower body mass indexes. Later tests have challenged those outcomes, but it hasn’t stopped parents everywhere from running the experiment on their kids, often with humorous results.

Marshmallows and Friends
Christian Living, Culture, Politics
John Beeson
Uprooting Our Political Identity

Happy election day!

In 2016, data scientists Eitan Hersh and Yair Ghitza analyzed data among registered voters to determine how often Democrats and Republicans married. They learned that 9% of marriages had the spouses registered in the two parties. Over the next four years that meager number would drop precipitously, down to 4%.

 As Jonathan Haidt and others have successfully argued, the ideological disparity between FOX News and CNBC are child’s play compared to the engineered social media algorithms that create hermetically sealed echo chambers for our political views.

Uprooting Our Political Identity
Abortion, Christian Living, Culture, Politics
John Beeson
Protecting the Voice of the Voiceless

The tide of public opinion on abortion has ebbed dramatically over the past two years. On Friday, June 22, the Supreme Court handed down one of the most critical decisions in our lifetime: Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Forty-nine years of nationally enshrined abortion rights were pushed down to the states. The battle was not over, but had just begun. Pro-lifers who thought this was the beginning of a new pro-life era were in for a disappointment. The reaction from the pro-choice community was strong and their response led to a wave of support for their cause leaving many pro-lifers flat-footed.

Protecting the Voice of the Voiceless
Christian Living, Culture, Death, Fear
John Beeson
What Spooks You?

Across the street from our home is the holiday house. You probably have one in your neighborhood. They go all out for every holiday. On Saturday, cars stacked up on the main road leading into the neighborhood as families drove by slowly, taking in the massive display that must have cost the owners thousands of dollars.

 

Last week I drove by a home whose Halloween decorations weren’t as massive or ostentatious, but the lawn display was undoubtedly the eeriest I’ve ever seen. A life-like severed head hung from a tree limb. A decapitated corpse with a visible spinal cord jutting out between slumped shoulders sat underneath.

What Spooks You?

Vocation

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How to Get Better

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How to Get Better

We all want to get better. But how do we improve?

After "good job" and "thank you," I think the next most frequent response I've received after preaching in my fifteen years serving as a pastor has been "you've improved so much since..." That has been a challenging compliment for me to receive. I tend to hear it as a veiled critique of my preaching in the past (how bad did I use to be for you to comment on my improvement?), and an unintentional criticism of my current preaching (my hope would be you wouldn’t notice my preaching, but that God’s Word would come alive, convict, and transform the hearer through the power of the Spirit).

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Young women are leaving church in unprecedented numbers: Daniel Cox and Kelsey Eyre Hammond report, “For as long as we’ve conducted polls on religion, men have consistently demonstrated lower levels of religious engagement. But something has changed. A new survey reveals that the pattern has now reversed.”

  2. Advice for the anxious generation: Jonathan Haidt offers loads of wisdom to parents  in his new book The Anxious Generation. “As for your own interactions with your child, they don't have to be "optimized." You don't have to make every second special or educational.”

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What's On Your Whiteboard?

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What's On Your Whiteboard?

Four years ago my dad suffered a series of seizures that significantly impacted his health. His seizures were unusual. Because of the location of a brain tumor, his seizures were hard to detect unless you knew what to look for: confusion, facial droop, and right-side mobility limitations. While my dad’s medical care overall was very good, multiple times during his stay he had seizures that went undetected by nurses even though they saw him during the seizures. Their oversight was not intentional, but it was frustrating nonetheless. 

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Anger, Retaliation, and My Scion xB

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Anger, Retaliation, and My Scion xB

I drove a little manual 2005 Scion xB for about eight years. It finally gave out after 230,000 miles. I loved that little car. It was fuel-efficient and required minimal maintenance. But it is undeniably close to the least powerful car on the road. I’m pretty sure that on its specs, next to 0-60mph, it says, “Eventually!”

Unless I was lined up against someone from a nearby retirement community, I was the last car to reach the speed limit coming off a stoplight. Unsurprisingly, more aggressive drivers with more powerful vehicles tended to treat my little Scion like a safety cone on the road, more like an obstacle than a fellow traveler.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. ·  Geopsychology: your personality depends on where you live: Take a look at where you live and have lived on this and see if it lines up. Agreeableness and conscientiousness stood out to me.

  2. ·  The professionals most likely to be paired up in marriage: Andrew Van Dam stuffs a lot more than you might think in this report. He begins, “The top spot goes to medical doctors, according to our analysis of responses to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey over the past decade. Not-that-kind-of-doctors, also known as college professors, come in second.”

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A Warning for Those Considering Co-Leadership

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A Warning for Those Considering Co-Leadership

While my last article told how and why Greg and I chose to become co-lead pastors, I’ve also experienced plenty of frustration as a co-leader. Greg and I have very different personalities. Among those differences is my propensity to plan every detail and Greg’s propensity to have a go-with-the-flow approach.

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A Case For Co-Leadership

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A Case For Co-Leadership

Who hasn’t heard of Walt Disney? Born in 1901, he left a legacy that has impacted generations across the globe. But, for all his genius, none of Walt’s dreams would have come to fruition were it not for his partnership with his brother, Roy. Walt lived in the clouds while Roy had both feet planted on the ground. Jim Korkis wrote, “Walt may have dreamed castles, but it was Roy who got them built.”

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Limitations and Sabbatical Rest

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Limitations and Sabbatical Rest

On Monday, I start my first sabbatical as a pastor. For the next two months I will be enjoying a season of rest and recuperation. It feels strange to step away from pastoral ministry for so long, but I look forward to this upcoming season.

Do you, like me, struggle to believe that God’s limits on your life are good and protective? Do you believe your days would be better if they were 25 hours long, and your years would be better if they had 53 weeks?

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In Praise of To-Do Lists

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In Praise of To-Do Lists

One of the most important verses about our purpose is found in Ephesians 2. There, Paul says that we are God’s “workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” What are the good works that God has prepared beforehand for you? Do you know? Do you have an inkling of what they are? How are you going to do those good works? Do you have a plan to walk into the calling for good works God has placed on your life? That involves meta-planning, to be sure (one, three, five year goals, for instance). But it also involves the daily routines and habits of your life. How is your life structured to accomplish the good works that God has called you to?

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The Best of the Bee Hive in 2022

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The Best of the Bee Hive in 2022

In 2017, I began The Bee Hive out of obedience to a call I knew God had on my life, but I wasn't sure who God would use my writing to shepherd. In my first year of blogging, I was encouraged to have 1,767 unique visitors to my website with 3,939 page views. I was glad that my writing was being read and hopeful that it blessed some. I was concerned that maybe after an acquaintance read the blog a couple of times out of curiosity or courtesy, the interest would diminish, and the impact would wane.

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