Noah is coming to buy my house, I think. It’s poured for most of the week, the sky weeping in torrents. An ark may have floated past. But the thing I’ve realized is this: I can see the rain from my desk right now. There are a bunch of things I miss about “normal” life, but the fact that I don’t see a window from my office isn’t one of them. The fact that I am surrounded by windows at my desk now is lovely. It’s the little things.

Around the Web

How to Cultivate the Life You Were Born to Live

Jennie Lusko encourages us to cultivate flourishing

Does flourishing in this life seem out of reach? It often feels like that to me.
I often feel an underlying sense of guilt because I’m not measuring up and I’m not where I thought I would be.
If only there wasn’t such a struggle in my soul. The great news, though, is that we are actually in the process of flourishing right now, whether we feel it or not.
A seed is destined to become a mature plant, but it requires the right soil, water, air, light, and temperature.
I want to help you understand that a fight “breaks out” (parach) when the seed hits the soil. It’s not just go time; it’s grow time. And that means it’s time to fight.
Read more

Symbols of Hope in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Rachel Seo reflects on a classic novel.

Shortly after my family began self-quarantining in the middle of March, I read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn for the first time, flipping pages on my iPad while sprawled out on the living room floor. I’d driven home from college over spring break and was confronting the fact that quarantine had shrunk my world to the size it was when I was in middle school. With the increased sense of enclosure came a desire for comfort: I wanted to read something warm and timeless, something that a younger me would’ve enjoyed.
Read more

Wounded by Beauty: Robert Frost, Douglas McKelvey, and Hope in Sorrow

Emily Zaiser Wade explores authors who point us toward hope in sorrow.

It’s currently snowing as I write this in Michigan. In these northern parts, nature is lovely all year round (except for our mucky pre-Spring), but it’s downright resplendent when it’s snowy. But even our most spectacular winter wonderlands are mere mud pies compared with a New England winter. Just Google some pictures for proof; there’s snow everywhere—thick, sparkling, brilliant snow stilling the bustle of the villages, bowing the shoulders of the ancient evergreens, and beckoning you to the glowing hearth of a farmhouse. This is winter’s splendor at its best.
Read more

On Ravi Zacharias

My friend Sally Zaengle wrote this after hearing of Ravi Zacharias’ death this week, and I love the way she captures the influence his life and work had on her.

For him, it was going home. But for us, it’s a time to remember how he touched our lives.
In 1982 (or thereabouts) Ravi Zacharias came to Syracuse and spoke to the college-and-career group at the Christian & Missionary Alliance Church where Bud and I were members. Using the creation story, he spoke about the two different types of thinkers — collative and creative.
Read more

Around the Warren

In Praise of Family Stock Stories

Adam Huntley reminds us of the value of our familiar stories.

You or some part of your family live out some cliché. Mine is the Appalachia-holler one. My grandfather was one of twelve kids growing up in Burrell Holler, NC, in the Blue Ridge Mountains. His momma made legendary biscuits and pork gravy, and his feisty father nicknamed him “cat”. He left home as a teenager to become a cowboy and later worked with his dad running shine.
Read more

Mr. Midshipman Hornblower

Jessica Burke recommends a book about not being ready.

They had to have been crazy. That was the only logical reason why those nice nurses told me I was ready to go home with my newborn baby. Sure, I had been preparing for him during the nine months he had grown inside my womb. I had taken classes and read all the books. But when the nurses turned their backs on me with a final goodbye, I was sure they were crazy.
Read more