Musings of a Snickerdoodle

" Far from our personalities being like eye color (something you are born with and can't do anything about), our personalities are something that God gave us so that we would have something to put on the alter and offer to Him…We are naturally full of instincts and desires that are contrary to what God wants us doing.   That means that those things are something to obey with, not something to obey around." Rachel Jankovic From her book:  You Who:  Why You Matter and How to Deal With It. See more quotes on my quote collection blog:  https://snickerdoodlesquotes.blogspot.com/

I think it was the cover of this book that really caught my attention.  It shows a girl with her face scribbled out. Sick of Me: From Transparency to Transformation by Whitney Capps attacks the current fad, in American Christianity, of presenting ourselves to each other in all our weakness. Of course, Capps doesn't think that admitting our faults is a bad thing, the problem is that we don't want to change. We are happy in staying in our unchanged, broken state, and ironically, using it as a springboard for glorying in ourselves rather than in Jesus Christ.  As the author states, "The Christian life is never meant to make people think more or better of me.   The goal is for me to look more like Christ, and, should people happen to notice me in the process, for them to think more of Jesus.   " But that of course, is not biblical and it is not godly.   This book addresses that quite well.   If we are truly convicted about something, we won't feel com...

"We don't want to be like Jesus because we like plain old us better.  We value what we see as our uniqueness apart from Him.  On some level, we are all tempted to believe that we ourselves, even in our sin, are more interesting than we would be in Christ……On one hand, this is what reveals our darkest bit of idolatry- our desire to cling to Me, no matter what.  Rather me in in sin than Him in me.  This is ultimately hell; being left to ourselves and our desires, and being given free reign."    Rachel Jankovic From her book:  You Who:  Why You Matter and How to Deal With It. See more quotes on my quote collection blog:  https://snickerdoodlesquotes.blogspot.com/

Want a book about mankind's challenging journey to the Moon that will interest kids? Moon Mission: The Epic 400 -Year Journey to Apollo 11 by Sigmund Brouwer is a very interesting book.  I read it with a couple of my sisters and we were all very interested in it.   The book is divided into eleven "Episodes" ( they're basically Chapters), Episode One: Countdown, Episode Two: Liftoff, Episode Three: Escaping Earth…etc.   Each Episode has three sections, or "Stages".   The First Stage of each episode puts you on Apollo 11 as one of the astronauts.   It addresses you as an astronaut, explaining what you are experiencing in each stage of your journey, and what you know and do.   "The three of you are in bulky space suits in the CSM, still strapped into position, flying upside down.   Except now there is no up or down…."   Stage Two introduces you to various historical people that made it possible for 'you' to travel to ...

Shoot for the Moon: The Space Race and the Extraordinary Voyage of Apollo 11 by James Donovan is a truly riveting book. I read it out loud to one of my sisters and we were both pretty glued to it. We read it over the space (no pun intended) of about three or four days.  We have never really read a book about the race to space and this book was a good introduction to it all. As the title implies, it details the space race between the Russians and Americans to get someone into space, and on the moon, first and thus doing it as fast as possible. The timeline is a little mixed up, but it works.   Generally speaking, the account is heading toward the Apollo 11 landing on the moon. But first, you are going to learn how this all got started.   You learn how NASA came into being and the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs, and details about the efforts of both the Russians and the Americans just to get out of our planet's atmosphere. It is quite inte...