We’re in World War 3. We’ve been in WW3 for some time. You are an active participant whether you understand it or not. It’s better to understand it so you can choose how you respond.
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Our 26th Wedding Anniversary!
Today David and I are celebrating our 26th wedding anniversary. Katherine, my maid of honor, sent us a gift this week.
If you don’t know our story, we met online in 1996 via America Online (AOL). No one knew anyone who had met that way at that time and we were the least likely type of people to do such a thing. There was no way to look people up online. There was no way to share a photo of yourself. You could do a direct message chat. That was about it. There was definitely no mobile phone like on the ornament. I wasn’t looking for David, but I believe an angel was in the room, prodding me on one night to where I found him. Truly.
Our marriage was so unusual, The Grand Rapids Press featured us in a newspaper article.
God Delights In The Details Of Our Lives, right down to buying the bridesmaid’s dress exactly one year to the day before my wedding when I hadn’t even met David. Nine years later, after many long years of praying, we finally discovered I was pregnant – on our ninth anniversary.
God has been very good to us and I give thanks.
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
Ephesians 3:20-21
Here’s What We Think Of The British Museum Deciding The Word “Mummy” Is Offensive To Mummies
I shared this in our family chat today with my daughter who is very into Egyptology and has been for many years.
My daughter responded with this.
Why, yes, thank you. I am a good homeschooling mother who is teaching my daughter to understand ridiculousness whenever she sees it.
(Caroline: “Can I start calling you mummy?”)
We’ll probably also go out of our way to use the word “mummy” as much as possible this week. And the next. And for some time.
Here are a few pictures from the 2015 King Tut exhibit at the Grand Rapids Public Museum. The lighting in there was not conducive to getting great photos, but we did the best we could. The entire exhibit was very good. Caroline was thrilled!
King Tut’s Throne
Rosetta Stone
Coffins
“I was born for the storm, and a calm does not suit me.”
This weekend I was contemplating that this is not the life I had envisioned for myself and my family, but this is the life for which the Lord made and gifted me. That same day, Seth Keshel shared this on Truth Social.
It took me a long time to fully realize and appreciate that I am not wired like other women. I don’t think like most women. I don’t interact with information and truth like most women. But God made me this way for a reason. Because of that, I have both a compulsion and a joy in doing that for which I have been created.
In Chariots of Fire, Eric Liddell spoke of feeling God’s pleasure when he ran because God made him fast. Eric used that gift to God’s glory for a season and then moved on to other ways God wanted to use him (missionary, etc.).
God has given me a burden for women and the truth. I cannot escape using it, even if there are moments I might want to. I was born for the storm in which we find ourselves. Are there moments and hours and days of calm in my life? Yes. There can even be many days in a row that are a bit more calm. I make the most of those calm days and am thankful for them. But even during those times, I know that I have a part to play in the storm.
There will not be calm or peace in this country for some time. How long, I do not know. Accepting that and adjusting our sails to the stormwinds is the best option we have. None of us are going to completely escape this ongoing storm. We can only decide how to ride it out and harness it in our individual lives as God leads.
“I was born for the storm, and a calm does not suit me.”
Andrew Jackson, Seventh President of the United States of America
The Spiritual Destruction Caused By Instagram and Influencers
I’ve always been about pointing people to the truth and Christ. Does that mean I influence people? Maybe in the old-fashioned sense of saying someone is a “bad influence” or a “good influence” on other people. But to be an “influencer” in the way that term is used today crosses a line for me. I can’t always tell you what that line is, but I know when I see/hear/intuitively recognize it. This is one of those lines.
Social media is fraught with so many problems, but I think Instagram has been the worst in terms of destroying women and leading them astray via “influencers.”
(The arrival of TikTok is another matter, especially given that it is tied to the Chinese government and used as a literal weapon against our people. If you think I’m exaggerating, you’ve missed the stories in the news where even prominent Democrats have said that President Trump was correct that TikTok should be completely banned. It’s that bad for our culture.)
Alisa Childers mentioned recently how places such as Instagram and TikTok are filled with broken women with messed up lives who are abandoning the faith. What do these women do? Take time to heal and return to Christ? No. They invite other women to listen to them explain all of the ways their life is ruined and why they are self-destructing and that the Christian faith is rubbish.
Now think about this.
“56% and 40% of white liberal women by age demographic have been told they have a mental illness”
Who are the biggest “influencers” out there on Instagram, etc.? Who are the “big names” telling “Christian women” how to live?
The vast majority of them who have big followings are younger white liberal women. Most of them have lives that are a mess and they are encouraging other women to follow them into a similar mess or straight up sin and/or heresy. How many of these women have been pushing wine and drinking as the “solution” to daily problems and annoyances faced by moms? The white liberal “Christian” women are encouraging their followers to doubt the Bible and blame men for all their problems. Actually, they aren’t just telling women that men are the problem. Now they are telling women to “become men” in order to solve the problem.
Anyone else seeing the destruction cascade here?
- How does this help us build strong nuclear families? It doesn’t.
- How does this help build a strong Church? It doesn’t.
- How does this help us build a strong culture? It doesn’t.
Our pastor is in the midst of a sermon series and he’s mentioned the idea of online “influencers” a few times. Today I realized while he was speaking that “influencers” in the fullest sense today are quite often a form of idolatry. Pure and simple.
And idols always lead us away from the Lord. Always.
“He must increase; I must decrease.” John 3:30 (BSB)
Here’s some more reading to go along with these thoughts.
- The Empty Religions of Instagram (“The whole economy of Instagram is based on our thinking about our selves, posting about our selves, working on our selves.”)
- Women Are Not OK (“I try not to watch videos that extremely socially maladjusted people have recorded of themselves crying in their cars. They seem to go viral too often. And too often, the subjects are women: women who earnestly believe that abortion is fundamental to female flourishing. Women whose nature has been thwarted, disassembled, and denied by a political environment that opposes family formation in every imaginable way. Women whose consumption of spiritually subversive content on the internet is so out of control that they think public demonstrations of extreme emotional incontinence count as a legitimate form of discourse.”)