It’s not so much that I enjoy sharing three things I liked each week with you as much as I enjoy sharing life with you. Each weekly post invites you into my life, and you invite me into yours by relaying to me how one or more of these items connected with you in a meaningful way.
So, let’s keep this going.
My first like for this week comes from Martin Laird’s book Into the Silent Land. In his chapter, “The Liturgy of Our Wounds,” he distinguishes between genuine repentance and preoccupation with sin. I found this distinction helpful, and here’s why:
For whatever reason, Christians sometimes confuse thoroughgoing repentance with incessantly replaying their past sins. Maybe we think this continual self-flagellation will prove to God and others that we’re truly sorry. I honestly don’t know.
But I think Laird is onto something when he warns that sorrow for sin can be (not that it has to be) co-opted by our mind games, and that it’s possible for preoccupation with sin to “become a type of obsessive-compulsive disorder” (130).
Here’s what we—or should I say I—need to remember: Genuine repentance turns Godward. True, self-examination is a biblical injunction (2 Cor. 13:5). And also true, there’s a “godly grief” that “produces repentance” (2 Cor. 710). But God’s grace is far more astounding than my continual rehearsals of my past failures. Turn to God, repent, make amends when and where necessary, and move on.
My second like for this week comes from Brett Stephens’s op-ed, “I’m Begging You, Never Write with AI.” While I’m sure many people (including Christians) will disagree with Stephens’s overall thesis, I can’t help but agree with his overall point: Constantly using AI to help us write papers, craft arguments, or compose emails is “mentally enfeebling.”
As someone who feels called to write and wants to improve as a writer, I can tell you: Writing is hard. It’s supposed to be hard. I’m not saying it’s wrong to use AI for certain things—of course not (though I won’t take the time to list those things here). But I want my readers to know that the words they read are written by me. Hence all the imperfections!
Finally, I liked Margaret Elizabeth Sangster’s poem “Oft for Our Own.” As you’ll see, the poem centers on the rather sad truth that we often reserve the worst treatment for those closest to us.
If I had known in the morning
How wearily all the day
the words unkind
would trouble my mind, that
I said when you went away;
I would have been more careful, darling;
nor given you needless pain;
But we vex our own
with a look and tone
We may never take back again.
For though in the quiet evening
You may give me the kiss of peace;
Yet, it might be, that never for me
The pain of the heart may cease.
How many go forth in the morning
and never come home at night,
and hearts have broken
for harsh words spoken
That sorrow can never set right.
We have careful thoughts for the stranger
and smiles for the sometime guest;
But oft for our own,
the bitter tone,
though we love our own the best.
Oh, lips, with curve impatient
and brow with a look of scorn
‘ Twere a cruel fate
were the night too late
to undo the work of the morn.
Recent Comments