Plumfield Moms Plumfield Moms

”Don’t you love this sort of pithy proverb? You can toss the platitude to a teenager whose friends you don’t approve of with the assurance that its truth is indisputable and needs no context – exactly the way we like our favorite Bible verses.     

Because the maxim is simple to understand and examples of its truth abound, it was a perfect topic for an essay assignment for my writing class. Since I asked my class to contemplate the saying, I thought I should do the same. What, precisely, do the few words mean? Do they have anything to say to me?”

Hello, friends! We are working on some big projects behind the scenes and realized the need to take a little break from recording new book clubs. Also, we have gained quite a few new followers in the last twelve months. And so, we thought that now might be the right moment to revisit three of our most popular book clubs: the books of the CS Lewis Space Trilogy. A few years ago, I (Sara) wrote a short article about the trilogy and it has had almost 6,000 views since then. Last March, we released Out of the Silent Planet and it quickly became one of our most popular book clubs. In April, we released Perelandra, and in May, we released That Hideous Strength. While we work on some other things for you, we will be re-releasing each of those podcasts in the same format. Thank you for listening in! We are so glad that you are here!
 
https://plumfieldandpaideia.com/show-notes-that-hideous-strength/

”What child wouldn’t love to discover a living dinosaur in the backyard? What if that dinosaur could talk? That’s what happens to Joey and Joan Brown, freckled, red-headed twelve-year-old twins. On the first few pages of the story, we are made aware of the family Problem.”

Part of the plan to sneak the gold out right under the noses of the Nazis involves teams of Riswyk children each carrying 75 pounds of gold on their sleds down to a fjord where the crew of a fishing boat waits to load the gold for transportation to America.
The plan works seamlessly. Until the snow starts to melt before they have transported half the gold. And until the Nazi Commandant decides the lazy, impudent children need to go back to school. And until the children realize they have been discovered by one Nazi soldier who has been spying on them.

The Pharisees dogged Jesus so relentlessly they should have known his teachings as well as his disciples did. It’s tragic that they weren’t trying to learn anything from him other than how to discredit him.  

Have I learned what Jesus meant when he said, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice”?

It is hard to misunderstand what he means in the first chapter of Isaiah.

“‘What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices;’ says the Lord; ‘I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of well-fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats . . . Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean! Remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.’” (Isa. 1:11, 16, 17 ESV).

”If you are a believer, someone had to plant the seed in your mind. Someone else watered it. Acknowledging these gospel gardeners gives us perspective. When it seems like life has been mostly dark, it can remind us that Jesus has been there all the time.”