So today marks our 39th anniversary together. That is a long time to be married to the kind of woman who is, as my father put it the other morning at our Christmas breakfast banquet, “amazing.” I haven’t really gotten over it, but, on the other hand, why should I?
Lila
Title: Lila Author: Marilynne Robinson Genre: Fiction Publisher: Macmillan Release Date: October 7, 2014 Pages: 272 Abandoning her homeless existence to become a minister's wife, Lila reflects on her hardscrabble life on the run with a canny young drifter and her efforts to reconcile her painful past with her husband's gentle Christian worldview. Wonderful description, …
Sexual Smithereens
In a remarkably prescient joke, Bob Hope said this back in the seventies. “I’ve just flown in from California, where they’ve made homosexuality legal. I thought I’d get out before they make it compulsory.” As we look at what remains of sexual ethics in America — the old sexual norms that somebody took a weed …
The Dawning of Indestructible Joy
Title: The Dawning of Indestructible Joy Author: John Piper Genre: Religion Publisher: Crossway Books Release Date: August 31, 2014 Pages: 94 This book of 25 devotionals from John Piper helps readers refocus and meditate on the one thing that makes the Christmas season worth celebrating: the birth of Jesus, Israel's long-awaited Messiah. Nancy and I …
Racial Animosity
The cross of Christ deals with real sins, not imaginary ones. It deals with real sins by offering free and full forgiveness. It “deals” with imaginary sins by enabling us to see them for what they are — vain constructions of our own imaginations. When it comes to issues of race, the cross of Christ …
The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats
Title: The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume I: The Poems Author: William Butler Yeats Genre: Poetry Publisher: Simon and Schuster Release Date: June 15, 2010 Pages: 576 The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats includes all of the poems authorized by Yeats for inclusion in his standard canon. Breathtaking in range, it encompasses the …
L’Affaire Sony NORK
If festivals of hypocrisy were to be compared with the riotous celebrations that are actually already on the calendar, L’Affaire Sony NORK would have to rank right up there with the Mardi Gras in Rio. Let us recap and without any snorting. Sony made what I have no doubt was a perfectly appalling movie called …
God the Poet
Title: God the Poet Author: Jeffrey Jay Niehaus Genre: God in literature Release Date: April 1, 2014 Pages: 159 In readable and nonscholarly fashion, Niehaus, who is both a theologian and poet, provides a theological and literary analysis of the epic poems of Dante (Divine Comedy), Milton (Paradise Lost), Cowper (The Task), and Wordsworth. Niehaus …
Does It Not?
Like an Out-of-Control Office Christmas Party
“Much has been made of the Puritan opposition to Christmas, but more than a little bit of the problem was caused by how Christmas used to be celebrated . . . The problem was actually comparable to us objecting to the drunkenness and fornication at Mardi Gras, only to be told that we have a …