“Often guys will say, ‘I love Susie.’ This does not necessarily mean they are interested in Susie’s best interest, but rather, ‘I really like the sensations which occur in me whenever Susie is around.’ When a boy says, ‘I love ice cream’ he is not seeking the ice cream’s best interest. He loves the sensation ice cream gives him. In short, he loves himself…

So the time a person spends when he is single should be time spent in preparation for marriage. This is important even if he never gets married. This is because biblical preparation for marriage is nothing more than learning to follow Jesus Christ and to love one’s neighbor. In other words, preparation for Christian marriage is basically the same as preparation for Christian living. Christians are to prepare for marriage by learning self-denial, subduing their pride, and putting their neighbor first. Once they learn to love God and love their neighbor, they are prepared to enter into the covenant of marriage with one of their neighbors. These are issues which should be in the forefront of every parent’s mind as their children approach the age when they may court and marry.“ (Her Hand in Marriage: Biblical Courtship in the Modern World, pp. 83-85).

“We are familiar with the picture of a spoiled rich child with a family room full of expensive toys. He sits there in the corner, engaged in a furious sulk. Meantime, across town another little boy is filled with the goodness of life, running around in his back yard all afternoon, wonderfully occupied with a stick. Is the room full of toys a blessing? Only on the surface. Is the poverty of the stick an adversity? Not at all — it is a gnarled key that opens the doors of many worlds. Many of us remember with great fondness how blessed we were with such rich toys” (Joy at the End of the Tether, pp. 70-71).

So there I was minding my own business and a friend recommended I take a peek at Walter Brueggemann’s The Prophetic Imagination. I like prophets, and I like imaginations. What could possibly go wrong?

- Toby Sumpter in his review “Oppresing the Text“

A very delightful book!  A must-read for any aspiring missionary to the modern American evangelical Christian culture.  It begins:

Dear Newbie,
I want to teach you how to chant a daring mantra that, unlike burdensome traditional prayers, God always has to answer.  It is brief, which is really nifty for modern evangelical attention spans - only one sentence with four parts.  You can even shorten it more if you remove all the consonants.  Just hum the vowels.  It’s tucked away in a silly part of the Bible, but I believe it contains an automatic formula for favor with God.

The Mantra of Jabez: Break on Through to the Other Side
(free on Google Books, I already gave my hard-copy away)

“…I didn’t say so, of course. There is a time to call someone an overbearing dishpot, and a time not to. Criticism of the girl he loved might be taken in ill part, as the expression is, and you don’t want an ex-Oxford boxing Blue taking things in ill part with you.”

(Much Obliged, Jeeves. P.D. Wodehouse, p. 25)