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....