Articles to make you think or make you laugh. No endorsement nor agreement implied.
An American Life, Lived in Shadows
The routines of life as an immigrant in the country illegally now vary widely by location — perhaps more than ever. Last year 11 states, including California and Utah, passed laws permitting illegal immigrants to obtain drivers licenses, while 15 states now let immigrant students pay in-state tuition regardless of legal status, up from 11 in 2012.
Some other states have followed a different path. Oklahoma led the way in 2007 with legislation that made it a crime to knowingly shelter or transport unauthorized immigrants, while preventing them from obtaining licenses, credentials and public benefits.
Not Against All Cuba Sanctions, Just Dumb Cuba Sanctions
Any sanctions on Cuba should be targeted toward those individuals directly involved in human rights violations on the Island. The rest of our policy should be focused on empowering the Cuban people to freely determine their own futures.
Twelve Reasons to be Optimistic about the Future of Local Congregations
But, in the midst of the gloomy facts, I remain an obnoxious optimist about local congregations. I do believe there is a very good possibility that we won’t go the way of many other places that have seen the decline of churches to the point of irrelevance. Allow me to share twelve reasons why I remain hopeful.
Sharpen Your Affections with Fasting
Fasting, like the gospel, isn’t for the self-sufficient and those who feel they have it all together. It’s for the poor in spirit. It’s for those who mourn. For the meek. For those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. In other words, fasting is for Christians.
Our life situation gave us three options. We could pay someone else to provide childcare; Rebecca could be the full time parent; or I could be the full time parent. With a grueling residency which could demand as much as 100 hours a week still ahead of Rebecca, we realized that if we both worked, we would have little or no family time for the next three years. Alternately, if she stayed home with Elisabeth, it would be far more difficult to do a residency later in life – and without a residency, she wouldn’t be able to practice medicine at all. By contrast, I had experience in a successful consulting team, and an advanced degree in education. I could step out of the workforce and step back in with relative ease. Becoming a full-time father was, from our perspective, the only viable option.
Perhaps the one television show in recent memory to nail fatherhood was Friday Night Lights. Coach Taylor sounded like Andy Griffith reincarnated. Whether he was navigating his relationship with his wife, trying to relate to his high-school daughter, or mentoring one of his troubled players Coach Taylor lived according to the same virtues.
Maybe that’s what we need more of: men who approach life with Godly universals—integrity, trust, fidelity, courage, compassion, and honesty. After all, clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.
Why People Who Sleep Longer Achieve More
Bottom line: Instead of thinking of sleep as self-indulgence, we need to think of it as self-improvement.
There’s nothing wrong with doing more with less, but if we’re not smart about it, we can really hurt our productivity and even our health. It hardly matters what the short term gains are if we try making that our norm.
If we want to get ahead, we need to go to bed.
Kids Don’t Read Books Because Parents Don’t Read Books
Is the problem that kids don’t read books, or is the problem that nobody reads books because our culture has become anti-academic and anti-intellectual? We’d prefer to read magazines and blogs that are subtly self-promotional in their incessant questioning the value of the humanities, liberal arts education, and those university degrees that are more dependent on books than algorithms and databases. The popular rhetoric tells us we need more STEM education, more engineers, more entrepreneurs. We’re surrounded by an implicit anti-book agenda, and still we wonder why kids don’t read books.
Ten words to cut from your writing
- Just
- Really
- Perhaps/maybe
- Quite
- Amazing
- Literally
- Stuff
- Things
- Got
Worship Service Excuse and Release Form
P.S. I got the Worship Service Excuse and Release Form as an email forward, but can’t find it anywhere online. If you know who the genius behind this marvelous bit of church comedy is please let us know.
Jealous Puppies are Destroying Smartphones at an Alarming Rate
Some 28 million Americans report having had at least one digital device damaged by a pet, according to a new survey from SquareTrade, the aftermarket warranty vendor. Four out of 10 say their pets gnawed through a power cord; one in three say their beloved companions mistook a phone for a bone — or worse. (Let’s just say fluids were involved and leave it at that.)