My Commonplace Book

If I were called upon to state in a few words the essence of everything I was trying to say both as a novelist and a preacher, it would be something like this: Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no [...]

Once a day . . . call yourselves to account what new ideas, what new proposition or truth you have gained, what further confirmation of known truths, and what advances you have made in any part of knowledge. — Issac Watts

In 2006, I worked thru Diary of an Old Soul by George MacDonald. This is a collection of his poems for each day of the year–most of them rather abstract and disjointed. Nevertheless, I’ve stuck with it because occasionally the cream will rise to the surface. MacDonald concluded the year’s collection with [...]

I’ve got a theory. You can hoard holy things: talent, knowledge, abilities, spiritual gifts, anointings, etc. If you hoard these “things” that God gives you, He’ll stop giving them as freely. The “plumbing” gets clogged. God intends for us to be a free flowing pipe from Him to the world…a vine [...]

Scot McKnight of Jesuscreed.org introduced me to the writing of Joseph Epstein, an essayist from Chicago. Last night, after working all day to insure my internet access operated at the highest upload and download speeds possible, I read Epstein’s essay embarrassingly entitled “An Extremely Well Informed SOB.” This morning, as I looked around [...]