So Much To Think About

PIGEON FORDGE, Tennessee —
Leave it to Dolly Parton to deliver the good news of the day.
The legendary singer’s theme park, Dollywood, will begin paying full college tuition for all employees who choose to go.
The company will also cover miscellaneous fees and textbooks.
The education perk is available to employees starting on their very first day of work and will be available to all seasonal, part-time, and full-time employees. This tuition coverage starts on Feb. 24.
Dollywood has a reputation for caring for employees.
Along with the new tuition benefit, employees receive access to the Dollywood Family Healthcare Center and are provided free meals for every working shift.
There are also apprentice and leadership training programs offered through the company.
The park also pays a portion of childcare costs for employees who need childcare while they work.

Pain of grief
Unlike people who tried to soothe my pain, part of the comfort God offered me was to never flinch or look away. God saw my pain and knew not to try to make me feel better, but to sit with me in the endless ache. God knows the only thing that can slightly lessen the pain of death is for it to be seen and known. So Jesus wept. And God does not forget, even for an instant, the stories of every single person who is gone.
Hannah Mitchell

RULES FOR LIFE
“vacuum of meaning.” But what Peterson is really concerned about is our “vacuum of morality.” Peterson is a moralist. And you see this most clearly in his popular book 12 Rules for Life. The 12 Rules:
Stand up straight with your shoulders straight.
Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping
Befriend people who want the best for you
Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not the useless person you are today
Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them
Set your house in order before you criticise the world
Pursue what is meaningful, not what is expedient
Tell the truth. Or at least don’t lie
Assume the person you are listening to knows something you don’t
Be precise in your speech
Do not bother children while they are skateboarding
Pet a cat when you encounter one in the street

Vacuum of Morality
Peterson is correct, the modern world is a moral vacuum. Moral norms, much widely accepted, have evaporated. People no longer go to church and families are complete trainwrecks. Young people are lost and aimless. And into that void Peterson says, “Tell the truth” and “Stand up straight.” And millions of people listen on YouTube. Advice, in the modern world, is rain in the desert.  
Can the church take a hint here? Let me say something quite pointed. There are a lot of pastors with MDiv, DMin, or PhD degrees who sneer at topical, advice-giving preaching. These pastors prefer expository preaching, teaching from “the text.” And when they preach “the text” they explain a lot about the Bible and speak in vague generalities about joining the mission of God. The sermon is for everyone and therefore no one. And the young people sit the pews bored, looking at their phones.  
Here’s the truth. Those pastors who preach advice-giving, practical, topical sermons? People follow them. People listen to them. People go to their churches. And the appeal here is the same appeal as Jordan Peterson’s. These pastors are giving concrete moral guidance in a world aching for concrete moral guidance. 
Am I saying that pastors need to give up textual, expository preaching to become more topical and practical? No. What I’m saying is this: Stop sneering at the advice givers and pay attention. Do better. Be a more incisive cultural anthropologist. The modern world is a moral vacuum and people are craving concrete, specific and particular advice. You might, for impeccable reasons that got you an A+ in seminary, decide that your sermon just isn’t the place to give advice. Fair enough. But don’t wrinkle your nose at Jordan Peterson when young people stop listening to you and start listening to him. You can speak into the vacuum. So say something.
Richard Beck

Compassion
One way to nurture compassion is to be honest about the adversity in our own lives. Reckoning with our own hardship and suffering better prepares us to express empathy for others who know adversity. Empathic solidarity with others having a hard time in life can lead us to be more generous, kind, and supportive toward them.
Peter W Marty

Self deception
Perhaps the most broken part of our broken human nature is just how hopelessly self-deceived we are. How else can we account for the levels of sheer chaos in this world? Self deception compounds like inflationary interest until it creates a debt that cannot possibly be repaid. Perhaps the greatest collective self-deception is that there is some kind of collective solution like communism or socialism or even capitalism. There is only a personal solution. We don’t want this to be true, but unfortunately it is, and we can live out our entire lives trapped within our broken selves in an empty way of life. The craziest thing about self-deception is you have no idea of it when you are self-deceived. And it’s in this kind of enslaved condition where we are most apt to isolate ourselves from other people. 
JD Walt

Obedience
The Greek term for obedience, hupakoe (pronounced, hoop-ak-o-ay) means in the most literal sense (hypo) “under” and (akouo) “hear”; to hear while sitting under. You recognize the term “acoustics” as coming from this Greek root. Obedience is all about hearing. So to obey the truth means to sit under the sound of truth “to hear while sitting under.
Obedience does not mean compliant submission to an authoritarian leader. It means a deep kind of submissive listening to the authority of the Truth—which is the Word of God and the God of the Word. Before obedience ever takes a step, it sits down. Before the first hint of activity it is surrendered attention. 
JD Walt

Beyond 
Think of the visible spectrum—all the light we can see—with red on one end and violet on the other. Just past the ends, invisible, there is infrared and ultraviolet. Maybe “ultranatural” is a better word than supernatural to describe this liminal space where we step outside what we know and see and realize there is something else, something beautiful and mysterious.
Mark Geil

STILL ON THE JOURNEY