A college professor told me he gets the most response from his students by exposing them to the first question of the Heidelberg Catechism. It challenges contemporary assumptions and calls out our faith.
“What is your only comfort in life and death?
“That I am not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from all the power of the devil. He also preserves me in such a way that without the will of my heavenly Father not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, all things must work together for my salvation. Therefore, by his Holy Spirit he also assures me of eternal life and makes me heartily willing and ready from now on to live for him.”
Here’s some other reading from this weekend.
Reaction: Kevin Holtsberry reviews the novella Trust by Italian author Domenico Starnone. “I enjoyed the story as a mediation on the way we create stories and perceptions of ourselves and our lives, about who we are and why we do what we do, etc.”
Paul Auster: Locked in a room, unsure of many people and things, the writer in this Auster novel wrestles with the difficulties of knowing and telling the truth. (via Books, Inq.)
Jewish Book Council has released its list of winners of the 2021 National Jewish Book Awards. The winner for fiction is Joshua Cohen’s The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family. (via Literary Saloon)
Writing: What could happen if you committed to writing at least a little every day?
One Nation Under the Pope: Some politically and theologically conservative leaders today dislike the secular government we have in America and would like to unite the country under one holy, Roman high priest.
Glynn Young: A grassroots level summary of a major problem with journalists and how the Internet changed the news.
Photo: Main Street, Columbus Junction, Iowa. 2003. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
(2003), a novel about a writer who gets up around 4am, lights a fire and writes while his family sleeps, Baker himself practised this ritual, then went back to bed for a second sleep.