Good morning – and welcome to your weekend!  What an interesting (and sad) week it’s been in the world. In all things though, we know Who is in control, who rules the world, and holds all things in the palm of His hand. Nothing happens apart from His say-so.  I’ve been memorizing these verses with some friends of mine that reminds me of these truths:

Thus says the LORD: “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest? All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the LORD. But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word. (Isaiah 66:1-2)

Now to the most interesting things I read, watched, and listened to this week…

Amazing Investigation: This is shocking, and eye-opening, ‘Terrorists Once Used Refugee Program to Settle in US.’ And along similar lines: House sets up task force on Syrian resettlement plan.

Re: immigration and the Syrian controversy, Kevin DeYoung has written a piece that should help Christians think through the situation. How do we balance compassion for others + our American heritage with the obvious danger (not to mention the unfairness) posed by allowing hundreds of thousands of refugees from Muslim lands to skip ahead of the line and get fast-tracked citizenship?

The NY Times has a Map of those settled thus far…

Best blog I didn’t get a chance to read: What Tolkein and Lewis teach us about surviving dark times. 

Article I didn’t get to read by wished I did: The End of ‘One China’

A helpful video review of the new iPad Pro from the Wall Street Journal. Once this thing actually has a way to save files/a file management system that is NOT just in the cloud, I’ll examine it a little closer.

Blog of the Week: A Call for Christian Extremists, by Tim Challies.  This is a must read.

I bet you didn’t know that the day before Parris, Beirut weathered a giant ISIS attack – you didn’t know because no one is talking about it. 

Speaking of France, their retaliation: Drop 20 bombs

Key Op-Ed: Wake up ,Mr. President. Excerpt, “The Paris massacre should mark the end of that self-deception. Jimmy Cartershed his illusions about the Soviet Union after its invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, and Mr. Obama needs a comparable rendezvous with reality. This will be harder for Mr. Obama, a man of great ideological vanity, but perhaps the prospect of defeat for his party in 2016 will force him to see the world more clearly.”

New Topic…Great couple of highly relevant articles I finally got to read from John Freeman at Ligonier Ministries. First, ‘Christ and Sexual Sin‘, and second, The Gospel Remedy for Homosexuality‘. Very thoughtful articles here that are worth scrolling through.

The Presidential…What Carlos Lozada of the Washington Post learned about Donald Trump after reading all his books. More from the post: Carson’s campaign doesn’t know a lot of geography (I kid, I kid)

I discovered a new blog this week written by a guy named Joel J. Miller. Good, short writing here. Two samples:

1. Islam is a religion of violence: Or, why abstract theology actually matters
2. The existential crisis behind today’s Islamic violence

Over at Desiring God, Jon Bloom says, ‘You are Meant to Move Mountains’, and the heart of the blog is meant to answer this question: “How would you live differently if you really believed that nothing would be impossible for you?” Bloom is probably one of the best existential thinkers in the evangelical world right now. It’s worth reading his stuff just to learn to think more like this.

Some Interesting Stuff….

Big movies coming out this winter – obviously the Star Wars movie is going to be huge – but an interesting article from WSJ made me think more about the effects of blockbuster movies on the supply chain of that industry. 

Time Magazine is moving their offices to a new location in Lower Manhattan. So they’ve been publishing different pieces about their archives. Challies linked to this one called, ‘7 Fascinating Letters from the Time Inc. Archives’

Fascinating: World’s Second-Largest Diamond Discovered in Botswana. 

Lastly, I enjoyed this video/story over at Vox about how the internet is spread around the world…underwater!

That’s it!  Have a wonderful weekend.

PJW