I’m hoping to make this a weekly feature when I return from my blog break because I fully believe that we will ultimately end the scourge of abortion by changing hearts, not laws. Yes, I believe that the law needs to change, too. But many people will not obey a law that is not written on their hearts. So, “life links” is my small way of telling everyone who comes to this blog that God is the Creator and Sustainer of every single human life, that our lives and the lives of our children are gifts from His hand, and that we as children of the Heavenly Father cannot continue to devalue the lives of others by tolerating abortion in our country or in our world.

I found this old post from 2005 at the Common Room. It’s about a time when the Headmistress was feeling very poor and very frightened. I’ve copied an excerpt, but you should really read the entire story.

I cried myself to sleep many nights, wishing I wasn’t pregnant. Even typing those words tonight, two decades later, I feel sick at the thought. ‘Ending the pregnancy’ was never, ever, not for one second something I even considered- but wishing God would end it for me— well.

I was so blind. So blind. Because I could see no light at the end of our tunnel, I thought there was only darkness ahead. But I could not see the light because I had lived too long in darkness and my eyes were not accustomed to seeing things through faith. I was a Christian. I believed. I loved my Heavenly Father. But I did not yet have enough faith to comfort me in what I foolishly thought was a fiery trial.”

Et Tu: How I Became Pro-Life.

I got lured into one of the oldest, biggest, most tempting lies in human history: to dehumanize the enemy. Babies had become the enemy because of their tendencies to pop up and ruin everything; and just as societies are tempted to dehumanize the fellow human beings who are on the other side of the lines in wartime, so had I, and we as a society, dehumanized the enemy of sex.

It was when I was reading up on the Catholic Church’s view of sex, marriage and contraception that everything changed.”

The Pursuit of Happiness at Et Tu: Diary of a Former Atheist: “I’ve come to believe that when we chase happiness, what we really want is peace.”

This is a video made from an actual phone call to our local (Houston) Christian radio station by a 12 year old boy named Logan.

Funny: Sarah Beth Durst on cabbages, sentient household tools and Death. She even has links at the bottom of the post to her commentaries on other obscure fairy tales. Hilarious.

Serious: Mark deVine on C.S. Lewis and Evangelism. “Lewis admitted that from the time of his conversion in 1931, he understood his whole life as one of evangelism. To know Christ is to want Him known. Clearly, Lewis’ selective silences did not hinder his outstripping of many a Bible thumbing collar-and-back-into-a-corner style evangelist in terms of effectiveness.”

Bookish: Cindy at Dominion Family lectures on book-reading in public. “PG Wodehouse may be a safe choice. Jeeves has never been shown on the cover in his braces and he is understandable in stressful situations. You won’t easily lose a Wodehouse plot during a slide into home.”

Thought-provoking: Today at the Mission writes about the Creation story and a Mythed Opportunity. “The creation story tells me that God is present in our world in ways that are simply beyond our knowing – as scientists or religionists or anything else. The first chapter of Genesis tells me that God created a place where he could connect with people like you, and people like me . . .”

Vulnerable and encouraging: Shannon at Rocks in My Dryer tells the story of her battle with depression and panic attacks. “So, it turned out, I was experiencing God’s presence, though not in the warm and fuzzy way I expected. It was more like a helicopter rescue. He was the guy on the ladder, hanging on desperately to me while the waters churned below. If He let go, it meant sure death. But if He would just hang on to me, then maybe, maybe I could make it out of this terrible place.”

Educational: Reading aloud at lunchtime at The Common Room.

Hopeful: David Darlington wrote in July about building and repairing houses in Biloxi, Mississippi. With the media attention gone, and the casinos and WalMarts running close to normal, there’s the impression that things are ok on the gulf coast. This is most certainly not the case. Indeed, a frequent refrain — from local restaurant owners to local Baptist pastors to, believe it or not, the garbageman who stopped his truck to check out the progress we’d made on our house — was that “if it wasn’t for the churches, we’d have been forgotten long ago.”

Compassionate: Amanda at Wittingshire on Diversity and Junior High Girls. “I spent all week praying for those girls, but as so often happens, the people I want to bless ended up blessing me. In this case, it happened mostly because of a girl who was different from the others. She had Down Syndrome.”

Politically engaging: Athol Dickson asks Should We Give Up? His answer is “No!” “With a growing sense of desperation, my wife and I have been begging the Lord to raise up someone to lead this country. We will never cast our votes for a politician who thinks killing unborn children is a basic human right. That means we may not in good conscience be able to vote in the next presidential election.”

Culturally engaging: Christian film critic Jeffrey Overstreet on Phillip Pullman and his books. God is not threatened by Phillip Pullman. And people who stop to think through Pullman’s story, and how it is that he “refutes” Christianity, will see what a feeble “attack” against Christian belief it really is.

Thankful: iMonk writes about the faith of a suffering servant named Doc.

Convicting, and just in under the wire: Queen Shenaynay, who’s earned the right this year to speak from experience, says, “And even when you make a resolution that falls short of the span of the year, you will have cast your cosmic vote that the personal pursuit of what is good and worthy is still good and worthy. There’s something to be said for that. . . . Even when I fall short, I still like the way resolve feels. It’s fire in the belly. I like it.”

Psalm 23 from the Mouth of a Child. Surely goodness and love will follow me . . .

Jennifer on turning the other cheek: “Thinking about all this made me realize that I had always mentally compartmentalized people into two different groups: the people who live through horrible tragedy who I hear about on the news, and the people who I interact with in my daily life. The people on the news had almost theoretical status: they were people who I will never actually meet but, if I hypothetically were to meet them, I’d be extra motivated to be as perfectly Christ-like as possible, no matter what, so that I didn’t add to the suffering they’d seen in their lives. However, the thinking went, I don’t actually know anyone like that.

But of course I do.”

In a different vein, what could be better than a combination of Bible verse memorization and a storytelling daddy? I think this, too, is contagious faith.

Et Tu? The Diary of a Former Atheist: “Out of the blue, I suddenly saw writing items on my grocery list in a completely different light: I realized what an incredibly — almost unimaginable — luxury it is to be able to simply write down what I want to feed my children, and be able to go get it. Quickly. Easily. Cheaply.”

iMonk tells the story of a suffering servant: “When I hear this kind of story, it is almost more than I can take. My faith is small and my tolerance for pain and loss is low. Questions of suffering and loss are not easy for me to contemplate. What would I do? Would God keep me? Would I despair, quit, abandon faith?
And here is Doc. Standing in front of our students, saying again and again that God is good. His suffering and loss can’t be measured, but his faith has grown every step of the way. In his gentle, Minnesota accent, he says over and over, ‘God is good. I’m so thankful.'”

Jim at The Culture Beat: “I wonder how many people are caught in a similar dilemma – wanting to thank someone, but not knowing who. I wonder if they feel that predicament more keenly this time of year.
Out of tradition or nostalgia, they may sing a hymn like, ‘Come, ye thankful people, come, raise the song of harvest home …,’ only to stumble at ‘God, our Maker, doth provide for our wants to be supplied.’ They are grateful for their families or their jobs or the food or for living in the richest nation on earth, but who to thank for that?”

Cindy (Dominion Family) suggests some Thanksgiving reading.

At a Hen’s Pace is thankful for candlesticks of abundant grace: “Last week we saw an incredible children’s theater performance of the musical ‘Les Miserables.’ The power of that story is unequalled, and the music is hauntingly beautiful. (I blogged about it the last time I saw it, too–as a parable of grace and law.) It’s been over a week, but still I can’t shake a truth that was conveyed by that story.”

Advice from Barbara at Mommy Life: “Since many of you are about to go into hyper-holiday mode as well – where you are preparing a wonderful event to delight your family, setting the stage to bring them closer to each other and closer to God in gratitude and prayer – I just want to remind you to Practice the Presence of God today.”

Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

Ariel at BitterSweet Life thought up this whole Indie Blog thing. To be an indie blogger, you’re supposed to have minimal overall influence and negligible financial impact, and also be fiercely unique, illogically dedicated, unapologetically eclectic, and typically ignored. Or at least five out of the seven. Ariel thinks I qualify, and I’m honored to be an Indie Blog. Go here for the origins of the Idie Blog tag.

Now, these blogs that I’ve chosen are INDIE, not likely to become the most influential or talked-about blogs in the blogosphere. In fact they all feature material only a confirmed bibliophile (or bibliomaniac) could love, but I’m hooked:

The Book Inscriptions Project: “We collect personal messages written in ink (or pen or marker or crayon or grape jelly) inside books.
Pictures count. So do poems. So do notes on paper found in a book. The more heartfelt the better.
Send a copy of the cover and the inscription and any details about how, when and where you found it.”

Wonders for Oyarsa is blogging the Bible: “Blogs about reading a book I’ve read all my life don’t sound too exciting. And maybe it isn’t exciting, and I don’t really expect that many readers. However, it does seem like a really good idea for any Christian – to read the entire Bible, reflect on it, honestly write what comes to mind, and welcome conversation from others.”

Postman’s Horn is “a daily selection of correspondence by authors, writers, painters, poets and others: A letter can provide that sense of everyday life, a glimpse of the the trials and tribulations of another human soul; and they can underscore the humanity of writers who have become so very famous. I enjoy reading them, as does my wife, and we thought it would be a type of commonplace book where others could read them as well.”

Chesterton and Friends is “a site dedicated to G.K. Chesterton, his friends, and the writers he influenced: Belloc, Baring, Lewis, Tolkien, Dawson, Barfield, Knox, Muggeridge, and others.” It’s a case of independent bloggers celebrating some rather independent writers.