Teeny Tiny Bibles!

 This is magnificent.

Pick one up asap.

Website:  Tiny Bibles

Get a Bit of Re-edjamacation on those Crusades

Douglas Wilson REVIEWS one of my favorite history books entitled God's Battalions by Rodney Stark.

A decade ago I read this for the first time, and have picked it up several times since and re-read large portions because it's just that great.  Pick it up and get re-edjamacated.

The Revolution Myth

I read the The Revolution Myth by Gene Fisher and Glen Chambers to come to understand that the American War for Independence was not a "revolution" but rather was FIRST a breaking of covenant by King George III.  I highly recommend this book.

We Americans have neglected our history and have only baptized what we want to hear about ourselves, and we have come to really enjoy characterizing ourselves as "rebels", revolutionaries and do-it-our-own-way independents.  Hence, we have neglected the facts that plainly show that isn't what are foundation was composed of.

Read this book and understand why so many followers of Lord Jesus knew it was their manly duty to fight that tyrant King George and his Parliament to the death.

An Excellent History of Christmas

This is a wonderful book chronicling how we've lost our way in the United States concerning Advent and the Christmas Feast.

Mr. Nissenbaum is not a Christian but I found him fair and objective in his historical reporting.  He is an engaging, clear writer and details the history of the celebration of Christ's birth from early colonial times to our present predicament.

Highly recommended if you're at all concerned with the present materialism and narcissism of what is termed Christmas now.

Be warned that you will not "see" your current understanding of Christmas time in the same way ever again.

Countryside Journal

I stumbled upon a magazine recently that I really enjoy, and I think I'll officially endorse it and pass on the info here.

It's called "The magazine of modern homesteading", and the official title is Countryside & Small Stock Journal

It's been around since 1969 and is basic and simple, full of great "keepable" articles on growing and preparing food, raising smaller animals for food (rabbits, sheep, goats, chickens, bees etc) and self-reliance topics.

Here's their stated philosophy:

"It’s not a single idea, but many ideas and attitudes, including a reverence for nature and a preference for country life; a desire for maximum personal self-reliance and creative leisure; a concern for family nurture and community cohesion; a belief that the primary reward of work should be well-being rather than money; a certain nostalgia for the supposed simplicities of the past and an anxiety about the technological and bureaucratic complexities of the present and the future; and a taste for the plain and functional."

I really appreciate the line in there about "the primary reward of work should be well-being rather than money".  

It is geared primarily for those who have land away from the city limits, but many of the articles are city applicable.  

It's published six times yearly and is $18.  No frills or over-the-top glossy paper.  Just chalked full of experience, common sense, and advice.  I dig it.

Of the Reading of Books

"In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you."

      - Mortimer Adler

A Great Children's Book for Resurrection Day

In anticipation of Resurrection Day coming up this March 31st, I wanted to recommend an excellent children's book to read during Holy Week.  The Tale of Three Trees is a fictional account of three trees hopes and dreams, and while they didn't see those dreams realized they come to know that their Creator's predesign for them is so much greater. Really great!

A Book for Lent

This is a terrific book of readings for Lent and Resurrection Day published by Plough Publishing. Selections from authors: Chesterton, Wendell Berry, Frederich Buechner, Soren Kierkegaard, John Updike and Dorthy Sayers, just to name a few.  It is excellent reading. Highly recommended.

Messiah the Prince

Pick it up.  Read it.  Meditate on it. Then talk to others about it. 

Jesus' kingship over Earth (not just the Church or your "heart") is an essential and central aspect of the Good News that we are commanded to herald to those walking in darkness. Jesus is King and He extends pardon to all those who repent of their rebellion and obey Him.  This is the Gospel message, and we have been goose stepping and compromising with Satan and the World for far too many generations in regards to Him being creation's King. This idea has been ignored and shamefully covered up for too long.  It's time once again for Christians to declare who the true, second Adam is. We need this teaching concerning Jesus and His Gospel.  

Buy it HERE and get this deep down in ya.

A Fairytale, Dear Sir...

"A fairytale, dear sir, in relating miraculous happenings as though they were the normal events of everyday is a humble acknowledgment of the fact that this universe is a box packed full of mysteries...Heaven alone knows what will pop out of it next."

- Elizabeth Goudge, excerpt from her book The Blue Hills

Fantasy is a Necessary Ingredient in Living

"I like nonesense, it wakes up the brain cells.  Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living.  It's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope...and that enables you to laugh at all life's realities."

- Dr. Seuss (Theodore Geisel)

Recently Read Books I'd Recommend

This is the single best presentation of the Crusades I've read.  Eminently readable for the average joe (like myself).  Objectively disputes and dispels many of the silly myths about those wars without any hint of bias, or giving some sense of having a Muslim axe to grind.  A must read for Christians. 

(God's Battalions)

If you're darn sure you understand forgiveness -- and you probably think you do -- you probably don't and you need to read this book.  I thought I did...and I learned alot from this book. 

(From Forgiven to Forgiving)

Gives you much to chew on (hee, hee...) and you'll learn a great deal.  Great writing throughout.  Makes the complicated clear. Unfortunately, loaded with crackpot darwinian theories throughout.  Besides that though, it is a super book. 

(In Defense of Food)

Read of the King's Work in History

"The truth is this: The march of Providence is so slow, and our desires so impatient; the work of progress is so immense and our means of aiding it so feeble; the life of humanity is so long, that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing wave and are thus discouraged. It is history that teaches us to hope." 

- Robert E. Lee, from a letter to Lt. Col. Charles Marshall (September 1870)

I'm looking out at the two Presidential candidates, and the next four years with either of them, and even as a post-millist I find the outlook a bit discouraging.  We Americans are in a pickle ethically and financially and neither of these two yahoos are gonna do anything to reverse any of it.  

    So, if you're thinking the same as me, let me recommend that you pick up a history book and, as General Lee related in his quote above, be encouraged by how far Christ's Bride, equipped with the Gospel, has advanced over time against the gates of Hell.  And I have just the book for ya: The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World's Largest Religion by Rodney Stark.  Overall it is an excellent, readable history of the Church since the time of the Ascension.  I'd caution you on his view of Scripture though (he doesn't believe in the inerrancy and infallibility of the Word) and many of his interpretations of texts are dreadful and should be ignored, but his fluid recounting of history is wonderful to read.  Pick it up and receive hope from reading about Jesus' sovereign, incremental, widespread, unstoppable work in history.

Of the Reading of Difficult Books

"If a book is easy and fits nicely into all your language conventions and thought forms, then you probably will not grow much from reading it. It may be entertaining, but not enlarging to your understanding. It's the hard books that count. Raking is easy, but all you get is leaves; digging is hard, but you might find diamonds."

John Piper, from his book God's Passion for His Glory: Living the Vision of Jonathan Edwards

Six Rules for Writing

1)  Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are accustomed to seeing in print.
2)  Never use a long word when a short one will do.
3)  If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4)  Never use the passive when you can use the active.
5)  Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6)  Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

 -- George Orwell

Poetry Collections for Young Ones

All three of these books below are outstanding poetry collections filled with excellent pictures.  We've read these to our children for years now, and the books don't ever seem to get "old".  These have been, along with the Psalms and Proverbs, just right for starting our little ones out into the sea of metaphor and language.
 
1)  Sing a Song of Popcorn
2)  Climb into my Lap: First Poems to Read Together
3)  Poems for Children: A Delightful Collection for Boys and Girls

Sniffing Old Books

"Lignin, the stuff that prevents all trees from adopting the weeping habit, is a polymer made up of units that are closely related to vanillin. When made into paper and stored for years, it breaks down and smells good. Which is how divine providence has arranged for secondhand bookstores to smell like good quality vanilla absolute, subliminally stoking a hunger for knowledge in all of us."

From Perfumes: The Guide by Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez

Bookshelf Porn

If you dig the Logos, and too, ink on thin pieces of wood stacked in some way along with each other -- as I do -- then likely you will enjoy Bookshelf Porn.  Here's a little teaser to wet your whistle until the site loads...

(My thanks to my brother-in-law, Jared, for passing this along!)

RePost: Stellar Picture Books for Young Boys

If you're looking for some new books for your son, here's a list of delightful, imagination inducing, true "boy" books, for ages 4 to 7ish.  Though some are not necessarily "christian" they are -- in my judgment -- biblically sound.
1)  Saint George and the Dragon by Margaret Hodges
2)  The King's Stilts by Dr. Seuss
3)  The Oxcart Man by Donald Hall
4)  Cowardly Clyde by Bill Peet
5)  Pierre Bear and Good Night Little Bear by Richard Scarry
6)  The Dragon and the Garden by N.D. Wilson
7)  The Biggest Bear by Lynd Ward
8)  Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel by Virgina Burton
9)  Stone Soup by Marcia Brown
10)  The Knight and the Dragon by Tomie DePaola

10 Super-duper, For-all-the-kids Picture Books

1)  The Droodles Storybook of Proverbs by Ray Cioni

2)  The Jesus Storybook by Sally Lloyd-Jones

3)  The Giant Leaf by Davy Liu
4)  The Adventures of Harold and  

       the Purple Crayon by C. Johnson

5)  The Relatives Came by C. Rylant

6)  All the "Frog and Toad" books 

       by Arnold Lobel

7)  The Stinky Cheese Man and
      other Fairly Stupid Tales
      by Jon Scienszka and Lane Smith
  8)  The Sleeping Rose by Angela Hunt


9)  Mr. and Mrs. Pig's Evening Out by Mary Rayner
10)  The Ant and the Elephant by Bill Peet