What I'm reading, writing, and thinking about.
This week I finished this book by Timothy S. Lane and Paul David Tripp who serve with the Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation. It was required reading for my Biblical Counseling certification through the Association of Biblical Counseling. I learned several helpful things that I was able to use in two ongoing counseling relationships I have.
Here’s a devotional thought for you about how, if you’re in Christ, you are a conqueror.
This week I finished the final book in a brilliant trilogy about a phenomenal president, American, and human being. This trilogy made me wish I could forget it all so I could go back and re-read it to experience the same excitement again.
Roosevelt was larger than life, and his reputation still persists to this day.
I’ve not felt this before, but while nearing the end of the third book I found myself dreading the inevitable section on Roosevelt’s death. I knew it was coming, but wished it wouldn’t arrive. I actually felt grief. This was excellent writing about a remarkable man.
This short book has been a help to me. It’s well-formulated and sensible. Zinsser argues that the best way to learn something, anything, is to write about it.
It’s impossible to write seriously on a subject without thinking deeply about it. Zinsser delves into several examples of good writing from authors: how they assemble their arguments and information, describe the subject(s) in question, and bring the readers into a narrative through their writing.
These are skills I’m working to develop.
After finishing Theodore Rex, the second book in a biographical trilogy on Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris, I had to move immediately to the third one. From Goodreads:
“Of all our great presidents, Theodore Roosevelt is the only one whose greatness increased out of office. What other president has written forty books, hunted lions, founded a third political party, survived an assassin’s bullet, and explored an unknown river longer than the Rhine?
Packed with more adventure, variety, drama, humor, and tragedy than a big novel, yet documented down to the smallest fact, this masterwork recounts the last decade of perhaps the most amazing life in American history.”
President Roosevelt was the right man for this time in the life of the United States of America. I’m reminded that men like this aren’t borne out of easy times, but hard times. We can wish for more men like this, but do we wish for the times that create them?