Category: Journaling

Going to Great Links: June 28, 2025

~ Joseph McBee ~ Leave a comment

Here are 7 links I want to share with you this week.

First, I have discovered this excellent pocket notebook from Bookaroo. It’s affordable and excellent. I carry it with everywhere I go.

I love books and reading and books and articles about books and reading so here is an article about reading that I enjoyed.

Here is a helpful and encouraging article about why you don’t need another prayer technique.

This article on a man dealing with terminal cancer as a Christian really got me thinking about my own life and trials and sufferings (MINOR in comparison). Do I honor God? Do I face them with faith in him?

Okay, does it really surprise anyone that AI is making us dumber already? Not me! That is why this blog is and always will be a no AI zone.

I am a proponent of the daily morning Quiet Time (I grew up SBC in the 80’s) so I appreciate this article making the case for morning devotions.

I had the opportunity and honor to preach at my home church last Sunday. You can watch the sermon here. It begins at the 22 minute mark, but the whole service is worth watching.

That’s your 7!

Going to Great Links: June 14, 2025

~ Joseph McBee ~ Leave a comment

Here are 7 links to things I enjoyed this week.

I am BAD when it comes to reading the classics of literature, although I am trying to do better. I appreciated this summary of Italo Calvino’s 14 Criteria for What Makes a Classic a Classic.

Here is some wonderfully strange stuff from the David Lynch archives.

Speaking of archives, here is an interesting one: The National Diary Archive, which seeks to preserve “the diaries and letters of the common person.”

Speaking of diaries, here is some fun stuff from Monty Python member Michael Palin on keeping a diary, which he has done for MANY years and has published some that I have enjoyed dipping into.

Here is more stuff from Palin on keeping a diary from an older article in the Guardian, in which he gives practical tips and talks about how diary keeping enriches your life and brings it more into focus.

I enjoyed this little video from author A.J. Harley, Dalek Website Design for Authors.

Poet Malcolm Guite does these wonderful videos where we are a guest in his study and he reads to us from Tolkien while he smokes his pipe.

That’s your 7!

Going to Great Links: June 7, 2025

~ Joseph McBee ~ Leave a comment

A new (hopefully weekly) feature on my blog where I share 7 of the best links I found on the internet that week.

I enjoyed this peek inside Austin Kleon’s pocket notebook. Kleon is a lot of fun to follow and read. He introduced me (and many others) to blackout poetry, which I have tried my hand at a few times.

I also had fun looking at the 50-year journaling habit of style guru Raymond (who is now 80) in this newsletter from Viv Chen. I absolutely love learning about how people journal and keep notebooks.

And, to continue on journaling, This article from Art of Manliness talks about microjournaling as a replacement for doom scrolling.

The trailer for Wes Anderson’s latest film, The Phoenician Scheme has me really excited. I love his movies.

Another trailer and film I am excited about is The Life of Chuck, which looks like it could be as delightful as all the hype says it is.

And the star of Life of Chuk, Tom Hiddleston shares his top 4 (current) favorite films on this little video from Letterboxd.

And while we are on the subject of art, you might want to give this article from Law and Liberty a read: What is Public Art For?

That’s your 7!

Idolatry, Repentance, and Peace

~ Joseph McBee ~ Leave a comment

Little children, keep yourselves from idols. – 1 John 5:21

Yesterday I was struggling to find peace. I was torn up in my heart about something and the anxiety was building and with that, shame and anger.

As I usually do when things feel overwhelming, I took my journal and started to write about it.

Journaling helps bring clarity.

This time I couldn’t get clarity on why I felt so torn up in my heart, though. Of course, that just added to my frustration. I wanted the stress and anxiety to go away!

I stopped for a moment and asked myself, “What’s REALLY going on here?”

Then I wrote down…

“I don’t trust God. I don’t believe he can be trusted with this.”

Then I begin to write out a prayer about how wrong that was and that God was sovereign and good and loving and kind and that he would always do what was best for his glory and my good.

I repented for my sinful thoughts about him and confessed his goodness and grace.

And all my anxiety vanished. There was peace.

My circumstances have not changed at all. I am still exactly where I was. But my heart is different. The real issue was not my circumstances, it was my lack of faith and trust.

It was my idolatry.

We all want a god we can control, one that bows to our whims, our own personal genie that behaves exactly the way we want. And we build up that god in our minds and hearts and give that idol God’s name.

Then, when that idol let’s us down, and it ALWAYS will, we think we cannot trust the one true God.

And that brings anger and frustration and fear. But God is not the problem. It’s our wrong understanding of who he is. It is our idolatry that is the real issue.

And until we confess that and repent, we cannot know peace.

Thankfully, God is kind and his kindness and his patience lead us to repentance (Romans 2:4).

In his love, God also reproves and disciplines us to bring us to repentance as well (Revelation 3:19) but the goal is always to bring us back to himself.

It is an invitation to come home to him and to know him as he truly is, which is infinitely better than our self-made idols.