Morning Musing: 1 Thessalonians 4:10-12

“In fact, you are doing this toward all the brothers and sisters in the entire region of Macedonia. But we encourage you, brother and sisters, to do this even more, to seek to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you, so that you may behave properly in the presence of outsiders and not be dependent on anyone.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

We live in a fame-obsessed culture. Social media has made it possible for anyone to become known and followed by millions of people. My boys are all currently taken in by the Minecraft YouTube star, RageElixir. Gary Woo (his real name) started making videos about playing Minecraft when he was in high school. For some reason they started going viral, and now he’s a millionaire because of it. Yet by every observation I’ve made from being forced to watch along with them, he’s just a regular guy. There’s nothing particularly special about him that would seem to make him an obvious choice for YouTube stardom. But the cultural phenomenon of people like Gary becoming rich and famous has planted the idea in many other young hearts and minds that if he can do it, then so I can. Actually, the thinking of many young people today goes a step beyond this. Not only can I become famous, if I want my life to amount to anything, I need to become famous. This kind of thinking has taken over the culture…and the church. If I am going to accomplish anything meaningful for God, I need to be famous first. What Paul writes here, though, points us in exactly the opposite direction.

Read the rest…

Constantly learning and organizing

So I write…a lot.  And I’m still a learning, work-in-progress when it comes to this whole blogging thing.  Pacing when it comes to managing a blog is a learned skill with a bit of a curve to master.  There’s a balance to it.  If you don’t publish enough, you won’t keep people around long enough to get invested in what you have to say.  But, if you publish too much, you wear people out and overwhelm them to the point that they give up on you.  As your email inbox or Facebook feed may have clued you in, I’m not likely to fall victim to the former challenge.  The latter, however…well…I might possibly lean in that direction from time to time.

With that in mind, I’m going to try something new going forward.  I’m going to dial back posts to just three days a week: Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.  On each of those days there will be a combination of Morning Musings and Digging in Deeper posts.  But now, instead of having so much pressure to read right away because the next wave is coming, interested readers will have a bit more breathing room before the next set of posts will run.

Prayerfully, this will be a bit better a pace both for you, my faithful readers, and also for me, the verbose writer.  Thank you for coming with me on this journey and learning with me as we together explore how the Christian worldview serves as the nexus for all of life.  If you like what you are finding here, sign up to follow this site at the bottom of the page and share it with your friends.  Together we can build a community here that grows day by day (okay, well, three days a week for now) to not just understand, but live out of the life that is truly life.