"Therefore the Lord longs to be gracious to you..." Isaiah 30:18 | TCK 🇺🇲 🇪🇬 🇯🇴 | Solvitur Ambulando | Have you been outside today?
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Jonathan really shouldn't be staying up this late retweeted
A devotion on agonizing elections and the reign of Jesus Christ: Psalm 110
Whenever elections go poorly in our minds, it’s a common thing for Christians to turn to these words from Psalm 110, these words about Jesus Christ, the Son of David, sitting at the right hand of the Father with His enemies as His footstool. In moments of political terror, we like to remind ourselves not to trust in earthly kings but to trust only the King of Kings.
This is good, right, and salutary, of course. As long as we mean the right thing by it. We shouldn’t mean, “look, God’s still in charge and He’ll take care of us and we’ll all be fine.” We shouldn’t cite these words to make an appeal to political moderacy. Certainly, we all have a tendency to overvalue how dire the stakes are in the moment, but, at the same time, well, sometimes things are dire. Those who refuse to protect the lives of the unborn are inviting God to pour out His wrath upon them. Those who refuse to see the unique threat that Islam has always posed and still poses to the Christian world are inviting bloodshed and chaos into their neighborhoods. And many faithful Christians before you trusted that Christ was on His throne and still were caught up in the earthly chastisement of God or the evil He permitted to fall on them. So while it’s far more likely that those screaming about worst case scenarios are being hysterical than prophetic, it’s still true that Christ being on His throne is not a promise that our earthly kingdoms won’t be torn apart by civil war or nuclear weapons or a thousand other horrors.
Rather, when we confess that Christ is on His throne and that His enemies are under His feet, we are confessing that there is no cell of your flesh that is under the power of the devil, which means that there is not a cell of your flesh that can be lost to bombs or bullets or bayonettes or the jaws of the wolf. We are confessing that, even if your neighbors vote to tear you limb from limb, your limbs don’t belong to them. They belong to Jesus, who will claim those limbs as His own and clothe them in His sin-killing glory on the last day. Christ being on His throne means that, when we in our political foolishness have torn the world apart, our Lord will forgive our evil, lift us out of the muck of our own making, and welcome us into His embrace. Christ being on His throne means that our greatest moments of political glory will not compare to the heavenly glory we witness when He casts Satan into the pit and welcomes us into His embrace, just as it means that our deepest political despair, no matter how bloody, will not survive the moment the One who bled for us calls us out of the grave and into His glorious Kingdom.
Maybe things are not as bad as you think. Maybe they’re unfathomably worse. And maybe every earthly victory you’re boasting of today will be ripped out of your heart by tomorrow. No man knows. But God knows you. The Son He sent to make you know Him now sits on His throne. And in His own time, He will destroy everything that tore you up but could not tear you away from Him.
Jonathan really shouldn't be staying up this late retweeted
here’s what I think might be the essential challenge of parenting:
your children are born not as your peers, but as your dependents. if you treat them like your peers when they’re too young, it’s unfair to them. but if you treat them like dependents for too long, that’s unfair to them too. you can try to be scrupulous about being fair, but you can’t make the cost of that scrupulosity their problem.
your task is to raise them to *become* your peers. meaning you have to repeatedly update how you relate to them. this is hard!! 99% of human interactions aren’t like this! Most interactions happen in comparatively stable configurations. It’s rare that your boss today is your employee tomorrow. But in parenting this dynamism is inevitable. The child ages into the adult, the adult ages into the child.
every parent probably has a phase that they’re uniquely In The Zone for. Alice might be great with toddlers. Bob might be great with 7yos. Claire might be great with preteens. Whatever your strength is, you likely have a corresponding weakness. And your kids, if you’re lucky, will grow through all of the ages. So you’ll inevitably find yourself in a context you’re uniquely unsuited for. And it’s your duty to show up and try your best anyway.
it’s a very elaborate, nested series of balancing acts, which requires a level of attunement you likely didn’t have before. every day you encounter the need to balance humility and confidence, or some other bullshit like that, and the next challenge hits you before you have time to process the last one.
It’s great. Knowing what I know now, I wish we had our kids sooner. I have a lot more to say on the topic (particularly why it’s great, both *despite* the challenge, and *because* but I gotta end this here because we’re in the middle of shopping for Deepavali clothes so ttyl)
Jonathan really shouldn't be staying up this late retweeted
I’m glad to see the Minnesota Appeals Court is not letting this go.
We need to end welfare for noncitizens.
The U.S. is not a beacon for free stuff, welfare, and fraud.
Minnesota appeals court revives $7.2M Medicaid fraud conviction a Dem-appointed judge threw out trib.al/VZmyRtQ
Now men can think about it even more.
Tomorrow we're releasing a full UATX course for free: all 19 lectures of Professor Isabella Reinhardt's Rise and Fall of Ancient Rome, filmed in class with our students.
It runs from Rome's mythical founding to the Third Century Crisis. It ends on a question the class spent a whole session arguing about: did Rome ever really fall?
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Jonathan really shouldn't be staying up this late retweeted
On Sunday I love to reflect on the global Church in worship: from forests and paddocks to chapels, churches, and livingrooms, across continents & countries & climates - everyone giving glory however & wherever they are able.
From arches of wood to marble, let there be praise!
Jonathan really shouldn't be staying up this late retweeted
Happy Saint Crispin’s Day, to all who observe
Jonathan really shouldn't be staying up this late retweeted
All abortion should be illegal.
"What about rape and incest?"
Good point. Rape, incest, and all abortion should be illegal.
Jonathan really shouldn't be staying up this late retweeted
Until defense tech startups start making kitchen appliances I won’t believe we have successfully reindustrialized.
Jonathan really shouldn't be staying up this late retweeted
Intelligent Design does not argue that something is designed simply because it is complex.
The pattern of dirt in the ground is complex. We don’t infer design from it.
ID points to certain kinds of complexity that, in all our experience, have only been observed coming from intelligent minds:
Specified complexity: a complex pattern with an independent functional specification.
Irreducible complexity: a system that requires a minimum number of parts to maintain function.
These are specific arrangements that produce a functional outcome - like the gears of a clock arranged to keep time.
No observed natural process, including evolution, has ever been observed to construct such systems.
Evolutionary accounts are historical inferences and extrapolations founded on huge assumptions - not direct observations of the process building them.
Only intelligence has been observed producing this kind of functional complexity.
That is why intelligent design is the best explanation for Life.
It's the only observed Cause of the Effects we see in Life.
Jonathan really shouldn't be staying up this late retweeted
This is no less sad than a baby being abandoned by his mother and left with strangers. But we’re supposed to laugh because his parents are gay.
This baby is desperately acting out his instincts to search for not just sustenance but comfort. We do not fully know the psychological and physical damage caused by repeatedly denying that. But we risk it anyway because his parents are gay.
We wouldn’t treat a puppy or kitten this way. No one does. You leave them with their mom for weeks to get the nourishment they need. We treat these human babies worse than we treat animals. And it’s all justified when the parents are gay.
We say we’re against buying and selling people. Everyone shudders at the thought of trafficking. But surrogacy by two men purchases eggs, rents a womb, and buys a product in the form of a baby. And we’re all supposed to celebrate because the parents are gay.
I just want to let you know: you don’t have to be okay with this cruelty just because the parents are gay. You can be brave enough to muster the most basic level of human decency and say: babies deserve a mom.
It’s not okay just because the parents are gay.
Jonathan really shouldn't be staying up this late retweeted
Your problems probably aren’t special and therefore your solutions probably aren’t either
But no one wants to believe this
I learned this the most back when I worked in IT — yes, you probably just need to turn it off and on again…and everyone will hate you for suggesting that
No one wants to believe that a healthy weight is the result of diet and exercise, they want to believe their body defies thermodynamics
No one wants to believe that you will feel better mentally if you sleep, walk, and socialize, they want to believe that their depression is something humanity has never seen before (and depression is great at convincing you of this)
No one wants to believe you CAN learn math or a foreign language, they want to believe their brain is just flawed
Because we think our problems are so special, basic advice seems insulting
We think "How DARE you suggest the obvious, don't you know I'm different?"
And sure, sometimes you will have a super rare disease. Sometimes turning it off and on again won't work. Sometimes your depression will require more than just lifestyle tweaks and time.
...but most of the time it is a very obvious problem with a very obvious solution
Jonathan really shouldn't be staying up this late retweeted
No one likes changing the clock, me included, but Congress has enacted permanent Daylight Savings Time multiple times before and repealed it each time once Americans experienced absurdly late sunrises in the winter. Arkansans don’t want their kids going to school in the pitch dark, and I’ll always put Arkansas first.
Jonathan really shouldn't be staying up this late retweeted
Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.” John 4:34
For strength I eat divine purpose.
This food is still available.
Jonathan really shouldn't be staying up this late retweeted
Conservatives need a **vision** for the City ... if they want to win them back
The one I would propose is centered on families. Not just children, but on multi-generational families. Neighborhoods where there are young children, parents, cousins and grandparents.
Jonathan really shouldn't be staying up this late retweeted
Atrocities like this are the direct result of the normalization of abortion and the dehumanization of unborn humans. If we don't change course, this trajectory will lead to the undoing of Western civilization.
All abortion stories are sad but the ones that make me the saddest are the women in my due date group who got pregnant again and say although they and their husbands do want another baby, the timing isn’t right, so they’re going to abort.
So you already have a baby, which means your life has already been changed drastically. You WANT another baby. You are married. Your husband also wants another baby. But the timing isn’t perfect so you’re going to kill your child. It’s unfathomable.
Jonathan really shouldn't be staying up this late retweeted
If you're a Christian, stop right now and read this verse:
"God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8)
Believer, God didn't wait for us to turn our lives around. He didn't wait for us to be "good" people.
In the midst of our sinful rebellion, he still sent Jesus to bear God's wrath for us in the place of all who will trust in Christ.
And as the very next verse says, if God did such wonderful things for us while we were his enemies, how much more then will he faithfully redeem, rescue, and keep us (Rom. 5:9)?
The love God has for his children is beyond comprehension!
We need to refresh ourselves in the unconditional love of God regularly, as it fuels us to live faithfully for his glory.
Jonathan really shouldn't be staying up this late retweeted
I consider Dryden a friend, but:
No idea could ever come close to being as monumental as Christ’s birth, crucifixion, and resurrection. His humanity and divinity. Our salvation through Him.
This is The Idea.
Today’s pompous, futurist AI-cultists will, just like the last two millennia of Sadducees and pagans and renaissance men and ideologues, will claim that Christ is a particularly insightful instantiation of “The Good” or some such abstraction. However, they claim, it is “obviously” an anachronism for this or that reason.
Christianity is not part of the past, nor is it the defining characteristic of the future. He exists throughout eternity, outside of time, long before and after and beyond the tribulation of artificial intelligence.
Jonathan really shouldn't be staying up this late retweeted
I was recently in the Dominican Republic for a ministry trip. During it, I attended Sunday morning church in Santo Domingo. Without exception, it was the most joyful worship experience I've had in a long time. The people sang with their whole heart in a way that can be hard to find in America. There was nothing muted or timid about the corporate worship; it was rich and full and <dare I say!> emotional.
Here's the funny thing: this experience was with men and women who speak a different language than me. In ethnic or linguistic terms, some would emphasize that these weren't "my people." But that's just it: we Christians are not a localized people, ultimately. We are a global family. Christ is our common bond, not anything else (Eph. 2:15).
Don't be misled, believer. Don't be poisoned. Don't be lured away from the goodness of the gospel. The joy of fellowship in the name of Christ is sweeter than anything else on earth--local associations, family gatherings, political conventions, alumni networks, corporate connections, heritage celebrations. You name it; nothing is better than sharing faith in Jesus.
The family of God is our forever family.
Jonathan really shouldn't be staying up this late retweeted
"Trotting out the toddler" has long been an argument utilized by the pro life and abolition movements to illustrate how evil abortion is.
The argument goes: you wouldn't kill a toddler, because it's obviously wrong, and since a preborn baby is just a younger version of a toddler, therefore abortion is also clearly wrong.
It's actually a great argument, but as a standalone argument it does have a flaw: it assumes that the other side has even the most basic level of moral decency. This is a mistake.
They do not.
Abortion is murder, and it's wrong (just as murdering a toddler is wrong) because God says so, and God ties that prohibition explicitly to the fact that human beings are made in God's Image, and therefore have infinite value.
I want to encourage and invite all pro-lifers who have opposed abolition to reconsider the facts. Consider that abortion is murder, and that this is Biblical. Consider that God hates partiality, and unequal justice. Consider that there is no opportunity for common ground with the opposition.
Consider supporting equal protection for preborn babies TODAY.
Dutch officials say first toddler euthanized under new state law was “handled well”
notthebee.com/td152
Jonathan really shouldn't be staying up this late retweeted
Moms and dads play with kids differently. And it's developmentally profound.
One Mom. Two moms. 10 moms... will never replace what a father delivers.
If "love makes a family" means children lose their dad, that's not love that's cruelty.
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