My favorite Advent Books

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I'm sharing them at Out of the Ordinary this week. Click on over and join me.

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Minding My Own Affairs

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In 1 Thess. 4:11-12, Paul exhorts the Church at Thessolonica to aspire to live quietly. As part of that instruction, he encourages them to mind their own affairs.  It's not so easy in the internet age. Temptations are everywhere. Blog posts and Facebook statuses invite me into the lives of others, feeding the voyeur within me.  But how much do I need to know?   Is there any benefit in having such a wealth of information about mere acquaintances - their thoughts, their travels, their menus? Status reports and tweets can overwhelm me, stealing valuable time I have to invest in genuine relationships and luring me away from my responsibilities.  One big lie of social media is that if we miss something, we miss something . My world won't shatter if I don't read every detailed status report, insightful link, or witty tweet. Part of a rich, quiet life means that I must properly mind my own affairs by: Prioritizing my involvement in the lives of those around ...
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Increasingly, we are living our lives in the public forum. Hand-written letters to friends were exchanged for emails, which were exchanged for text messages, which have now been exchanged for tweets and notes on a Facebook wall for all the world to see. Secrets among friends, it seems, no longer exist. Meaningful friendships themselves may soon be a thing of the past. Social media has allowed us to collect "followers" and "friends" like trinkets on a charm bracelet.  We are compelled to share intimate details of our lives with complete strangers, yet we are ashamed to ask those closest to us to pray as we wrestle against sin. We foster, as Carl Trueman writes , an "intimacy of strangers which is such a part of celebrity culture - for example, the faux-chumminess of all those tweeted exchanges and retweets, lives lived as soap operas mediated by the internet..." We brand ourselves with carefully crafted personas, afraid the true person cowering behind t...
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Two women stand behind us in line. I judge they are perhaps 10 years my senior, but it's hard to tell. I inwardly cringe as one bursts into a litany of complaints and coarse language. The other can hardly stop talking about who she's tweeting and snap chatting while we wait. One as salty as a sailor, the other as giddy as a schoolgirl. I see myself in these women. A complainer who makes those around her miserable. A foolish woman too mesmerized by social media to be a friend to someone standing right beside her. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Lisa's friend passes away. A woman I've never met, but will one day. Her example to Lisa became an example to me. While she is just beginning to understand what it means to worship God fully, her family and friends mourn a life ended too soon. I consider the woman I long to be. A woman who, in Lisa's words , "...believes the good news of the gospel to be true; she believes it, she needs it, she banks her life on it." ...
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