Janet Benlien Reeves

When I was in college, one of my professors used to say something to the effect that faith is going out on a limb with all your eggs in one basket. My classmates and I would laugh while looking at each other in alarm and shifting uncomfortably in our seats. We were ministry students set on following Jesus and leading others to do the same. Still, the metaphors made us think. There was more to it, though. As I remember it, my professor said that if there was any uncertainty, he liked the outcome he faced if he was wrong better than the outcome unbelievers face if they are wrong. We couldn’t argue with that logic. I learned just yesterday that this argument for faith has a name: prudential apologetics (Phillips 347). Essentially, the person trying to convince an unbeliever to believe argues that it’s prudent to believe because they have a lot less to lose by believing than they risk by refusing to believe. This is also known as Pascal’s Wager, named for Blaise Pascal, a French philos...

I’m not usually a podcast person. My husband and I listen to true crime on road trips, but that’s about it. I’m a visual learner; I like reading books. But when Marji, a friend from college and former prayer partner, asked me to listen to her new podcast, Breaking Free from Insecurity , I was excited to give it a try. I’ve been listening for five weeks now. Whenever a new episode appears in my Spotify library, I go for a walk with Marji and listen to what she has to say. (The podcast is available in Apple Music , too.) Episodes are short and succinct, ranging from thirteen to twenty-three minutes. I appreciate the way Marji has broken her points down into easily processed bits. She gives her listeners one new idea each week, then builds on that teaching week by week. At the start of each episode, Marji introduces the new concept and illustrates it with Scripture, life experience, and simple analogies. In the episode I listened to this morning, she introduced core beliefs and tal...

I don’t remember the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970, but I was alive for it. When I was in elementary school, the teachers would give us magnets and send us door-to-door to collect aluminum cans to be recycled and save the world. The magnets, in case you were wondering, helped us distinguish between aluminum and tin. Recycling aluminum was essential because, my teachers taught, the world had almost used it all up. Tin, I guess, could still be tossed. I don’t remember recycling that before the 90’s. But using the magnets to collect aluminum is my earliest memory of environmental action. I didn’t know on that first Earth Day that special interest groups across the nation united their efforts for the first time ever or that college students, politicians, business leaders, and activists spent that day learning, teaching, and making others aware of issues regarding the health of our world’s environment. Our world has come a long way since then. Those who use up are taught to give back....

This week I started reading The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams, and I am entranced with it. I can’t write a review because I am only on chapter 3, but I can’t wait to see what happens to Mukesh, Aleisha, and others introduced, but yet to be identified. And though I have already read most of the books on the reading list contained in this particular book, I have added those new to me to my own TBR pile. I am writing about this now because one of the main characters, Aleisha, has my dream job. She is a librarian. However, she is a teenage librarian working only for the summer. (How did this happen?!) Library patrons annoy her if they need help. She attempts to ignore them, hoping they’ll find what they need without bothering her. If they cannot, she is impatient and rude. She admits that she doesn’t know much about books and, therefore, can’t make recommendations. She can only help people find books if they know what books they want, and even then, she directs them to the computer i...

I’ve been meaning to look up the difference between thankfulness and gratitude for some time now. The other day, however, I stumbled across the information in a book called Up, Down, or Sideways by Mark Sanborn. In chapter 10, he explains that thankfulness is what you feel when someone does something nice for you or gives you something you need or want. Gratitude is your response to that feeling. So, when someone pays you a compliment, you feel thankful and show your gratitude by saying, “Thank you.” When someone brings you a meal because you’ve been sick, you feel thankful and show your gratitude by writing a thank-you note or returning their dish with a home-baked treat. Other responses to feeling thankful include holding someone in higher esteem, returning the favor, or paying the action forward. John said, “Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 John 4:11, NIV). We are thankful for God’s love, and so we show love to each other. Tech...

“When [the king] takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law, taken from that of the Levitical priests. It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees and not consider himself better than his fellow Israelites and turn from the law to the right or to the left. Then he and his descendants will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel.” –Deuteronomy 17:18-20, NIV Deuteronomy 17 contains instructions from God to Moses for the newly founded nation of Israel, God’s own people descended from Abraham and rescued from Egypt. Some of the instructions in this passage are specifically for Israel's king. However, at the time of this instruction, Israel didn’t have a king. In fact, Israel wouldn’t have a king for approximately 350 to 400 more years. At that time, th...