I absolutely, absolutely, loved this: “Some Thoughts on Writing” by Thomas Sowell.
HT: Between Two Worlds.
Also linked by Justin: Some great advice for single women and married women in “When You Don’t Have a Better Half: Encouraging Biblical Roles as a Single Woman” by Carolyn McCully as published in The Journal For Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.
How to Have an Emotionally Healthy Church at Faith at Work Blog.
"The sad reality is that too many people in our churches are fixated at a stage of spiritual immaturity that current models of discipleship have not addressed. Many are supposedly "spiritually mature" but remain infants, children, or teenagers emotionally. They demonstrate little ability to process anger, sadness, or hurt. They whine, complain, distance themselves, blame, and use sarcasm—like little children when they don't get their way. Highly defensive to criticism or differences of opinion, they expect to be taken care of and often treat people as objects to meet their needs. Why? – from The Emotionally Healthy Church by Peter Scazzero
McLoughlin also paraphrases C. S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain, calling pain God’s megaphone for getting our attention so we can address some serious personal and community issues. It is not something to be moved away from but rather toward in order to find edifying resolution to problems. His hope for his church
is for us to be a community that does not continue to re-offend and re-experience relational pain but that we learn to love one another deeply, so deeply that no amount of pain or disappointment or anger will ever again come between us.
Amen. This is my prayer for both myself and my church as well.
