maturity

We’ve all been there. A decision looms ahead, one that could take our life in one of two (or three!) very different directions. The excitement of having options transforms into anxiety that we will choose incorrectly. And if you are a person who believes in a good and powerful God, at some point you will probably pray, “What should I do!?”

Usually those questions are met with supernatural silence.

Does God not care about our future and his silence is therefore a giant celestial shrug? Or perhaps the problem is me: I’m not listening hard enough or trusting deeply enough.

John Ortberg suggests an alternative view, one that reframes our concerns about God’s will for our lives from actions and events to persons and character. Continue reading →

In On Three Ways of Writing for Children, C. S. Lewis says:

When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

I’ve gone through the same cycle. I loved kid’s books when I was in elementary school. But then I became known as a “reader,” which for some reason felt like I needed to step up my game. I read The Three Musketeers in sixth grade, and I got hooked on the classics. I read Austen, Brontë, Shakespeare, Fitzgerald. I became a bit of a book snob (the Harry Potter series excepted), and I spent all of my time in book stores and libraries scanning the “Literature” section. I took great pride in being a teenager not in “Young Adult” section. Continue reading →