This book starts with a lot of technobabble, seems to finish a couple hundred pages early, and then gets unexpectedly trippy. I am new to #startrek books, but I enjoyed this one.

"I saw more clearly than ever, that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was to have my soul happy in the Lord. The first thing to be concerned about was not, how much I might serve the Lord, how I might glorify the Lord; but how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man might be nourished." George Mueller

Love is the overflow of joy in God that meets the need of others.

The concept of the differences between Relief, Rehabilitation, and Development was a major takeaway from this book for me. Often we fail to identify what type of assistance is needed when we engage the materially poor.

I enjoyed listening to this audio book. It demonstrated convincingly that the American Civil War was fought on the northern side primarily to preserve the Union. I found myself wishing for a more foundational explanation of the beliefs of Unionism, given that our retrospective look at the Union tends to amplify anti slavery motivations, but the concept of perpetual Union as a vindication of the American republic seems foreign to us.

“Theology teaches of God, is taught by God, and leads to God.” #ThomasAquinas

Further, rationalism is defective ethically considered, in that it shows a tendency towards glorification of its own present (that is, at bottom, itself) over against the future no less than the past. It reveals a strong sense of having arrived at the acme of development.

My Uncle Walt gave me a copy of Shelby Foote's Civil War and told me to read a bit every night. I'm still a ways from completing it but my goal is to finish it this summer.

On Saturday I returned home from the 2017 Diaconal Summit of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. The keynote speaker was Dr. David Apple who discussed the urban mercy ministry at 10th Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. It was very convicting and I'm looking forward to putting some of the ideas he discussed into practice at my church. Soli Deo gloria.