Mostly This Month...
In a dark and looong month where payday seems a mile away and diet’s can suck some fun out of life here’s some joy-fuel - things I’ve read, seen and heard that I reckon you’ll enjoy too!
🍿 WATCH THIS 🍿
Like a lot of people we loved Traitors as a family, but this game show (also on Amazon Prime) got us shouting at the TV in outrage and amazement. 1000 people play to win $5 000 000 which makes the BBC's £97 000 seem a little measly!
It's very American (read: overly dramatic, intense and full of unreasonably emotional characters) but there's some great moments. In one game, some people turn down a million dollars for the sake of remaining loyal to group of almost complete strangers!
😂 ENJOY THS 😂
🎵 LISTEN TO THIS 🎵
1. I binged on this fantastic podcast by Simon and Anna Brading.
2. Listened to this Audiobook.
🗞️ YOU SHOULD READ THIS 🗞️
1. Is Eastern Orthodoxy the Next Big Thing For Young Men? Probably not but there's much the evangelical churches need to learn from this trend...
2. Enough with the Valorising of Doubt. Good point, well made.
3. The Surprising Re-Birth at Oxford. Encouraging insights into the changing mood on campuses.
📖 Books. 📖
This month I read these two books and highly recommend them both.
Loved this book and found it really helpful personally. Gavin’s charitable and broad-hearted attitude toward truth and the gospel is refreshing, and his clarity about some of the important differences between Protestant Christianity, Catholicism and Orthodoxy is hugely helpful.
Cuts through the caricatures many Protestants have of Catholicism, but doesn't shrink back from important differences. Made me glad to be not just a Christian but a Protestant!
A great bedtime read even if a little silly and bit too progressive in places.
🤩 QUOTES 🤩
In the Old Testament the blessings came very largely, indeed mainly, in a material and temporal sense. It was estimated then whether a man was blessed or not by the number of cattle he had, the number of sheep and goats, and the extent of the land he possessed. God’s way with men in the OT times was more pictorial. He frequently acted in a visible manner. He was then teaching the people as infants, as it were, so he gave external, obvious blessings which, being mainly earthly, could be seen here on earth. But as we enter the NT we come into an entirely different realm. Heere the blessings are ‘in heavenly places’. We must look for those blessings, not so much here on earth but in the heavenly places beyond sight.
And also this one...
The non-christian puts his faith in conferences and imagines that if only men could have a Round Table Conference, and agree never to use the atomic bomb or the hydrogen bomb again, the world would then become more or less perfect. But this never seems to come about… He believes that man will get better as he becomes more educated and that eventually he will banish war.
But thank God there is another message; and the greater tragedy in the world is that the Church, instead of preaching her own true message, is preaching an earthly, human, carnal message. Has the church nothing better to preach than an appeal to statesman to solve problems?
…lectures on temperance will never make people sober, or statistics of war casualties put an end to war. We know the problem is spiritual, and that the solution must be likewise spiritual.