Author: sunintheshadowlands

The Shift

I know I’m supposed to be starting on my 1 Peter project, but we have to take a brief detour. As I mentioned in the last post, I memorized the book of Philippians from March through December 2018. By early summer, I was working on 2:12-13.

Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

Over the course of six months, I probably went over those verses hundreds of times.

Continue reading “The Shift” →

Re-awakening

Poke. Poke poke. You awake yet?

My blog has been asleep the past three years. It’s no Rip van Winkle, but it’s definitely hit snooze a few too many times.

I’ve decided on a project to keep this little space from drifting off to silent slumber again. Right before the turn of the year, I began memorizing 1 Peter. This is my second full book of the Bible, the first being Paul’s letter to the Philippians. I’ve never memorized that big a chunk of Scripture before, and I want to keep the momentum going.

My blog project is to track my progress as I memorize. There will be more than status updates. I want to write about what I learn. New insights gained. Challenges faced. Conviction. Tie-ins to other Scripture. Hopefully, my chronicle will be interesting. With the living Word of God involved, how can it not?

Thanks for joining me on this venture! Keep awake out there!

The Apostle Paul’s Advice for Navigating Facebook

You don’t have to look far for warnings and admonitions regarding the use of social media, and its effects on our psyche are well-documented. Everyone’s talking about it. If you search “negative effects of social media,” the first link is to a listing of academic articles from the scholarly side of Google. From time to time, a post crosses my digital path. I click, I read, and then—inevitably—I have an anxiety-filled debate with myself about whether I should purge my Facebook account or not. When I did some poking around to write this post, I discovered that psychological researchers from Norway have even developed a scale for measuring Facebook addiction. (I won’t say whether I took their test or not…)

Continue reading “The Apostle Paul’s Advice for Navigating Facebook” →

Let’s get one thing straight…

This is not the blog of a girl who has it all together. I don’t write because my life makes perfect sense. I have a lot of questions and not a lot of answers.

Some of my questions stem from being single. That’s going to be a focus in my writing. I believe the American church needs a bigger vision for singles, who make up 50.2% of the overall population 16 and older in the U.S. according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (reported in 2014). The U.S. Census Bureau reported in 2014 that there are 107 million unmarried people 18 and over living in the U.S. That’s quite a lot of single people. Continue reading “Let’s get one thing straight…” →