That the glory of the Lord might cover the dry land as the waters cover the sea
John Gardner, The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers: “English, like most languages, is covertly male chauvinist. It is also, as the novelist Harold Brodkey points out, covertly Christian. Nearly all our most resonant words and images carry a trace of Neoplatonic Christianity. Even so innocent a word as ‘friend’ has overtones. …
Continue reading “Is Fiction Christian? The English Language, Too?”
Last fall at ETS I picked up Bryan Litfin’s first novel, The Sword. I loved it, and interviewed Bryan on it here. At that point he was just finishing the second novel, The Gift, and he asked me about endorsing it. I enthusiastically received the PDF, and here’s what I said in my endorsement: I …
Continue reading “Volume 2 in the Chiveis Trilogy by Bryan Litfin, The Gift”
If you haven’t already done so, high thee to the Rabbit Room to reserve for thyself a signed copy of what promises to be a beautiful and funny, inspiring and exciting, surprising and hope-building narrative of no little silly seriousness. Here’s the description: The Monster in the Hollows Sneakery. Betrayal. And the Deadly Secret of …
Continue reading “We Pre-Ordered ‘The Monster In the Hollows’, Did You?”
John Gardner, The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers, 79: Fiction seeks out truth. Granted, it seeks a poetic kind of truth, universals not easily translatable into moral codes. But part of our interest as we read is in learning how the world works; how the conflicts we share with the writer …
“As in the universe every atom has an effect, however minuscule, on every other other atom, so that to pinch the fabric of Time and Space at any point is to shake the whole length and breadth of it, so in fiction every element has an effect on every other, so that to change a …
Continue reading “Authors of Fiction Exercise Meticulous Sovereign Control”
“. . . nothing can be made to be of interest to the reader that was not first of vital concern to the writer. . . we care about what we know and might possibly lose (or have already lost), dislike that which threatens what we care about, and feel indifferent toward that which has …
John Gardner, The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers, 31: “. . . the value of great fiction . . . is not just that it entertains us or distracts us from our troubles, not just that it broadens our knowledge of people and places, but also that it helps us to …
At my friend Brian’s recommendation, I read John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers. The book is about writing fiction, but what Gardner says can be applied to the writing of anything from a blog post to a scholarly article to a non-fiction book or even to a sermon. William …
Josh Philpot introduced me to this song by John Mark McMillan, “Ten Thousand,” from his album, The Medicine. Matt Damico sang this at the close of the sermon linked in the previous post. He knocked it out of the park. This is what Josh wrote to Matt when he introduced him to the song: “It’s …
Need some help with family worship? Want to communicate the big story of the Bible to your kids in a way that they can easily memorize? Tired of reading board-books to your kids that are about nothing and less than nothing? Here’s a gift for you from me and my son Jake: Biblical Theology for …
Continue reading “Biblical Theology for Kids: Free Download”
Here is Jayber’s lyrical description of God’s glorious inheritance: the saints, “One day when I went up there to work [Jayber is the church janitor], sleepiness overcame me and I lay down on the floor behind the back pew to take a nap. Waking or sleeping (I couldn’t tell which), I saw all the people …
Jayber on those beautiful moments of silence when the congregation stills itself before the living God: “I liked the naturally occurring silences—the one, for instance, just before the service began and the other, the briefest imaginable, just after the last amen. Occasionally a preacher would come who had a little bias toward silence, and then …
Just give these underlined words a smack.
I enjoyed Justin Taylor’s interview with Makoto Fujimura on art and the illumination of The Four Holy Gospels. JT gave this breakdown of the interview: 00:00-2:00 What is an illuminated Bible? 2:00-2:45 Why was this Fujimura’s most “exhausting and “exhilarating” project? 2:45-4:55 Why does he think this will be the project he will be remembered …
Continue reading “The Four Holy Gospels, by Makoto Fujimura”
We enjoyed this video, in which Justin Taylor interviews Trip Lee and Lecrae: And if you visit our home these days, you’re likely to hear Trip Lee’s 20/20 or Between Two Worlds or Lecrae’s Rebel or Rehab. May the Lord bless this gospel driven art. JT has more here.
Bryan Litfin is Professor of Theology at Moody Bible Insitute. His book Getting to Know the Church Fathers: An Evangelical Introduction, is what you would expect from a patristics scholar, but now he has also written a novel, The Sword, which is the first volume in “The Chiveis Trilogy.” The book is set in a …
Continue reading “Interview with Bryan Litfin on His First Novel, The Sword”
Hendrickson Publishers and the British Library have teamed up to produce a new facsimile of Codex Sinaiticus (best price here), an exciting piece of work I hope to say more about later. The facsimile is one of the results of an agreement between the Archbishop of Sinai, the Chief Executive of the British Library, the …
Continue reading “David C. Parker, Codex Sinaiticus: The Story of the World’s Oldest Bible”
If you don’t have a Bible Atlas, this is the one to get. If you already have an older one, the updated graphics and information in this one are, in my opinion, compelling reasons to update. This thing is beautiful, and what a blessing to have such resources! Enjoy. Crossway ESV Bible Atlas, John D. …
Homer’s noble high-born lords Think mainly of themselves, Lasting words and shining swords, Through flesh and soul they delve. Yet the highest truths we have He does not seem to know: For sinful guilt he gives no salve; No peace with God does show. Reading him, one must ask why There’s good in his wide …
I noted recently that my sons and I enjoyed the first two books of Andrew Peterson’s Wingfeather Saga. We’re praying that God will bless him as he writes book 3, and that he’ll hurry up and finish so we can read it! Anyway, the other day my 6 year old brought me this sketch of …