When we knew Alex and Brett Harris would be in town for the DG Pastors’ Conference, we wanted to catch them for an interview. Who better to interview two popular young bloggers than another young person? The guys were glad to sit down with Talitha Piper, 12, and answer her questions.

The message of the 19-year-old twins is, “Do hard things.” That’s also the title of their book, available in April.

They are high school grads, homeschooled all the way, and applying now to colleges for the fall or spring. In the meantime, this year is filled with writing, organizing Rebelution conferences (4 in 2007; 7 in 2008) and answering the emails they receive through their website.

Talitha's I

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Sometimes I fall into thinking of abortion as an American issue, or worse, an American political issue. Most of the stats I read, after all, are about abortions in this country. And when I consider voting for a candidate, one of my first questions is "Are they pro-life?"

So I find it helpful to remind myself that abortion is not American and it is most certainly not primarily political. Those stats are kids, not numbers. And the kids are from many colors, cultures, and countries.

Life International is a ministry that actively remembers that abortion is a world-wide scourge. They note,

Abortions in the U.S. and Canada (1.4 million) amount to 3% of abortions worldwide. …

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May I encourage you to build a global dimension into your daily prayers? “Grant that your name be hallowed. Grant that your kingdom would come. Grant that your will would be done on earth as it is in heaven.” These are global prayers—with personal implications. Both kinds of prayer are good: specific, local, personal prayers, and general, global, sweeping prayers for the church and the nations.

Here is the way I keep the world in my prayers. I use the Online Operation World. I keep it in my bookmark bar on the browser and click it every day. If you go there, click in the left hand column “Pray Today.” Each day there is a different global focus. On February 7, they will start to lead us …

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Eric Redmond, pastor of Hillcrest Baptist in Temple Hills, MD, helps us see the lay of the land in the African-American church by doing two things.

• He celebrates Anthony Carter’s and Thabiti Anyabwile’s books as rallying points for a different hope than the black mega-churches offer (giving credit also to Carl Ellis, Bruce Fields, Ken Jones, and Wy Plummer).
• And He points us to a paper he wrote in 2006, “Megachurches and Megaphones,” where he describes what he sees as the difference between these two ways of seeing the Christian faith fleshed out in African-American life.

Read and rejoice and say yes to God for these good things.

I wrote this story about four years ago to tell the children at Bethlehem's Christmas Eve service.

The Poor Man and His Cow
And the Rich Man and His Wall

Based (very loosely) on a story in T. H. White’s The Once and Future King.

Once upon a time there was a very wise old man named Job. In his old age God gave to him a daughter whom he named Jemima, which means little dove. He loved his little girl and she loved her daddy.

One day Job decided to go on journey and asked Jemima if she would like to go along. “Oh, yes,” Jemima said. “I would love to go along.”

But Job said, “It will be a journey that takes us several days. So we will be staying each night wherever people wil…

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As long as I am lingering over the value of Jonathan Edwards’ essay on the Divine Decrees, here is one more quote that is worthy of extended biblical reflection. It comes from Section 19.

Objectors may say, God cannot always prevent men’s sins, unless he act contrary to the free nature of the subject, or without destroying men’s liberty. But will they deny, that an omnipotent and infinitely wise God could not possibly invent, and set before men, such strong motives to obedience, and have kept them before them in such a manner, as should have influenced all mankind to continue in their obedience, as the elect angels have done, without destroying their liberty? God will order it so, th

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Oshea Davis just published in a self-standing volume (for the first time that I am aware of ) Jonathan Edwards’ Dissertation Concerning the Divine Decrees in General and Election in Particular. I am thankful for this service to the church. This 75 -page essay (in Davis’s work) proved enormously helpful to me along the way in my thinking about God’s sovereignty.

Here is one excerpt from that essay (quoted from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library to save me having to type the excerpt from Davis’s book). It will give you a taste for the depth and complexity of Edwards' book, and the seriousness of his effort to tackle the hardest questions.

It is a proper and excellent …

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Here are 5 “Ds” that I have made part of my daily prayers:

Whatever it takes, Lord, give me...

• Delight in you as the greatest treasure of my heart.
  
  Delight in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. (Psalm 37:4)
  
  
• Desire to know you, be with you, and seek your kingdom above all else.
  
  Delight in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. (Psalm 37:4)
  
  
• Discernment that comes from a renewed mind that I might know your will.
  
  But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. (Hebrews 5:14)
  
  
• Discipline to plan for what I discern as your will.
  
  Look careful…

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On August 2, 2007, Charles Simic was selected to be the 15th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. His poem, “Full of Pictures” may have a word to fathers who study theology—or anything else for that matter.

Full of Pictures

Father studied theology through the mail
And this was exam time.
Mother knitted. I sat quietly with a book
Full of pictures. Night fell.
My hands grew cold touching the faces
Of dead kings and queens.

There was a black raincoat
in the upstairs bedroom
Swaying from the ceiling,
But what was it doing there?
Mother's long needles made quick crosses.
They were black
…

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To help you stay encouraged to pray for huge Christ-exalting movements of God, here’s what we read this morning. Each day, as part of our family devotions, Noël and Talitha and I read the daily reading from the Global Prayer Digest. Today we read this:

"David, what do you think about this quote from Ahmad Al Qataani which was posted on the Al Jazeera web site regarding Africa? It says, 'In every hour, 667 Muslims convert to Christianity. Every day, 16,000 Muslims convert to Christianity. Ever year, six million Muslims convert to Christianity.'" Paul, a Christian worker among Muslims, was asking a fellow worker about the report. David replied, "It is true that there are more Mus…

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