As we look back on 2016 and forward to 2017, let me highly recommend this post by Tricia McCary Rhodes and the exercise she has linked.

Here is the link to the exercise. Here is her opening paragraph:

While the neural pathways in your brain are probably telling you its time to form those New Year’s resolutions, the truth is most of us don’t manage to keep them beyond a couple of weeks, at best.  Far be it from me to discourage you, but there might be a better way to experience enduring change.  A number of years ago I decided to forego resolutions, and seek to discover what one thing God might have for me in the coming year.  I can’t tell you how transformative these have been.  

“At the end of the year we turn with eagerness to all that God has for the future, and yet anxiety is apt to arise from remembering the yesterdays. Our present enjoyment of God’s grace is apt to be checked by the memory of yesterday’s sins and blunders. But god is the God of our yesterdays… Our yesterdays present irreparable things to us: it is true we have lost opportunities which will never return, but God can transform this destructive anxiety into a constructive thoughtfulness for the future. Let the past sleep, but let it sleep on the bosom of Christ.” –Oswald Chambers

Great video for Advent

This video interview with Cornelius Plantiga is based on his recent book https://www.amazon.com/Not-Way-Its-Supposed-Be/dp/0802842186.

Here is a shorter version of it essay form.

We have a hard time talking about sin these days, and that often means we are also struggling to think about it meaningfully.

There is plenty of post-election processing going on out there. You may have had your fill. If not, you might find this worth a few minutes of your time. During the run up to the election one of my consistent prayers (not knowing how or what to pray) was, “Lord, reveal the truth. Expose every deception — in the candidates, the media, our whole nation, the church, ourselves, in me.” This post seems to be coming from the same angle.

 

This video by Jordan Peterson is most thought-provoking.