Recommended Books (Spring 2022)
Beautiful days are back! Spring has sprung in most areas of the country, and we are all excited about the possibility of getting outside and soaking up some wonderful vitamin D. However, we should not let the outside lead us away from sharpening our minds and spirits through good books. Below you will find a collection of reading material that we have found beneficial. We hope you will find some to place on your reading list for the...
Glimmers of Grace: A Doctor’s Reflections on Faith, Suffering, and the Goodness of God
For the past few years I have been training to be a professional chaplain in a medical setting. One training regimen involved exposure in a level 1 trauma center and behavioral health unit. In my current professional setting, I work in Hospice care where I spend each day in this liminal space of death and dying. The patients I currently see are required to have a terminal diagnosis; given natural disease progression, these patients...
Thinking Biblically About Political Discord
Do you find yourself frustrated and exhausted by political discourse—even among Christians?[1] Are you concerned that some seem to think of themselves first as Democrats, Republicans, or Independents, and second as Christians? Few things create strife like conversations about faith and politics. For that reason, many learned as children not to discuss politics or religion in polite company. That advice is helpful but only to a point....
C. S. Lewis and the Cardinal Virtues
I first read C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity when I was a teenager. I distinctly remember finding the first two sections of the book relating to apologetics very interesting, but I quickly became bogged down in his following examination of Christian behavior and the doctrine of the Trinity. Recently, however, I have found this back half of the book much more enriching than before. In particular, I have been intrigued by Lewis’s use of...
Seeing Clearly: C. S. Lewis and Imagination
It may have begun with a toy garden in the lid of a cookie tin. C. S. Lewis’s brother Warnie had put moss, twigs, and flowers in the lid, and made a garden-forest for his younger sibling. Lewis said that it was the first beauty he had ever known. He stated, “As long as I live my imagination of Paradise will retain something of my brother’s toy garden.”[1] For Lewis the life of imagination and joy started early. Of course, people are...
A Borrowed Morality
You will find very few people who are unwilling to condemn Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The news of innocent Ukrainian civilians fleeing their own country, Ukrainian orphans being forced to flee orphanages and find housing in neighboring countries, civilian fathers hugging their wives and children goodbye as they prepare for combat without knowing if they will see them again, Ukrainian maternity hospitals being...
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