The Honeymooners -- 00:00
The Boundless team is pleased to announce Mr. and Mrs. Matt Tucker! Matt and Karen dropped by on their honeymoon. That, my friends, is dedication. Lisa, Steve, and I talk to the Tuckers about meeting online, long-distance dating, intentionality, and the maple goodies they brought us all the way from Nova Scotia.

Secondhand Jesus -- 28:49
Glenn Packiam is back in the studio to talk about his book Secondhand Jesus. Glenn says that often times we rely on the "experts" to give us the cliff's notes version of their journey with God instead of walking with Him ourselves. He brings us back to a middle ground of using "well worn paths but engaging them for ourselves."

Shift Work Struggles -- 46:03
She works the night shift and it makes her feel disconnected from her family, friends, and church. What's worse is that the schedule is really draining and she snaps at the people she loves. Candice sympathizes with her sleep deprivation and feeling disconnected but reminds her that there's no excuse for unkind behavior -- even if you do have a terrible schedule.

Thanks to Anna Gilbert our featured musical artist. I've enjoyed listening to her music today. I think you will too.

People watching at a theme park is always interesting. I think I saw just about every age, color, shape, size and variety of person that exists on this earth. But out of the hundreds (maybe thousands?) that I saw, there is one young lady that I remember.

I saw her while waiting on the family to complete the obligatory bathroom/water bottle fill up time. I remember that she was lovely though, to be honest, I don't remember a lot about what she looked like. What I do remember was her t-shirt. It was hot pink and showed her frame off to, umm, advantage. Blazen across her chest were the words "Virginity Rocks."

I had two opposite reactions to this t-shirt. One was encouragement. I was encouraged that this young lady seemed to be making a stand for God's amazing plan for sexuality. But I was also discouraged.

You see, since being married I've learned a lot about the differences between the male and female mind. I've learned how something that may seem innocuous to me may be viewed as sexual by a male. I've learned that a young man reading "Virginity Rocks" on a tight, hot pink t-shirt is probably not going to immediately start contemplating purity. And it was discouraging that this young lady didn't seem to be aware that her message was not matching her medium.

I would have loved to talk with this girl and encourage her to ask some hard questions about clothing and beliefs and whether the two match up. But modesty is complicated -- it's a both profoundly public and intensely personal topic. One best not approached by a stranger at a theme park but by parents, sisters in Christ, pastors and Titus 2 teachers in a trusted community of faith.

So, instead, I looked at myself. I remembered how easy it is to slip into the world's definition of pretty, stylish and sexy. I realized that it's important to take the time periodically to reevaluate what I wear and ask myself the tough questions. What was my clothing saying that day? Was there anything about what I was wearing that disconnected with what I want my life to say? Was God gettting glory from my appearance?

Because, ultimately, modesty is not about me (although I know I benefit from following the command in God's Word to dress modestly). And it's not about men (though I know that I can serve my brothers in Christ through modest dress). It's about God. 1 Timothy 2 tells me why I should be modest -- because modesty is "appropriate for women who profess to worship God."

As C.J. Mahaney writes (in a really thought-provoking chapter on modesty in his book Worldliness):

"Make this your aim: that there be no contradiction between your gospel message and the clothes you wear. May your modest dress be a humble witness to the One who gave himself as a ransom for all."

"Hitched or Ditched" is a one-hour reality show focusing on couples who are in long-term relationships but have not yet taken that big leap into marriage. Nominated by a friend who believes it's either time for the couple to tie to the knot or break up, each episode features a different couple who accept their friend's proposition to set a wedding date in one week’s time.

Throughout the week leading up to the big day, the couple is put through a series of personalized exercises that test their relationship, all while planning their dream wedding. They may have to confront their problems ranging from mending relationships with future in-laws to dealing with jealousy issues. When the wedding day arrives, the couple will make the final decision - will they tie the knot or call the whole thing off?

This week's episode:

Boston couple Anissa, 22, and Jesse, 31, have been dating for four years and their up-and-down relationship has left them looking for more. When Jesse's brother presents the couple with a surprise invitation to their own wedding, Jesse, a mortgage banker, struggles to convince Anissa's family that his playboy past is behind him, while Anissa, a systems analyst, defends their relationship to a long list of discerning friends and family.

When Jesse gets cold feet the night before the wedding, Anissa questions whether he will ever change his ways. There are five days until the wedding; will they be HITCHED OR DITCHED? 

Final Disclaimer: This blog post is not an endorsement of "Hitched or Ditched."

HT: Boundless reader Elisabeth May

I read Boundless from my home and during brief breaks in my job working for the Canadian federal government. Ottawa is a pretty city with lots of opportunities for enjoying nature: parks, hiking trails, ski hills, and camping sites are all within an hour's drive. There is also a healthy Christian community, which has been a huge blessing to me.

Some Ottawa trivia: Since I moved out here 6 years ago, I have been told many times that Ottawa is the second coldest capital city in the world. Actually, it isn't (according to Wikipedia), but it does have the third coldest January temperatures, after Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia, and Astana, Kazakhstan.

We Ottawans take it in stride, however, and enjoy the winter with lots of skating, skiing, and hot chocolate!  This photo shows the Rideau Canal, which is a 7km-long outdoor skating trail, worth checking out if you're here for our Winterlude in January/February.

God bless,
Maggie

"I can't stand cigarette smoke," said Cindy. "It's like I can feel cancer developing in my lungs —"

How snobby. How self-centered. How very much like me. I actually said something similar to this a couple weeks ago standing outside a Ruby Tuesdays. I was with a group of girlfriends and as we were talking I kept smelling smoke. "Why does it smell like smoke out here?" I asked with obvious disdain.

It was sort of a rhetorical question so it didn't bother me when none of my girlfriends answered. A few minutes later a friend on my left switched standing positions which gave me a clear view of a lady with a cigarette not 5 yards from us. My stomach sank. I knew she'd heard me.

When she went back into the restaurant I apologized to my friends for my comment. Well, I don't know if I actually apologized but I said something to the effect of, "Man, I feel like a jerk." One of my more honest friends said, "You are a jerk when you speak without thinking."

Ouch. That stuck with me for at least a week afterward. The kind of sticking with you that makes you cringe with every remembrance.

I really do have a problem with public smoking. A dear friend of mine has Cystic Fibrosis. Secondhand smoke isn't just a nuisance for her; it's a health risk. So I'm not minimizing the danger associated with secondhand smoke. But those risks don't justify blatant rudeness.

Cindy and I have a lot in common. We're both more worried about our preferences than the people God is putting around us. In my experience, when God puts people around me it's not because other parts of the planet were too crowded. It's because he wants to use them to teach me something or use me to extend His love to them. As a believer I want to lay down the things I think I'm entitled to (like fresh air) so that my personal preferences don't hide the light of Christ in me.

Then there's Mark Sanford the undisciplined husband who had an affair with Argentine Maria Belen Chapur and sought out other sexual encounters with a "handful" of young women.

Of course the South Carolina Governor presents it differently to the press. He didn't "seek out" sexual encounters; they just sort of happened. According to this Associated Press article, they're referred to as "casual encounters" from trips with his buddies.

He said that during the encounters with other women he "let his guard down" with some physical contact but "didn't cross the sex line." He wouldn't go into detail.

Sanford said the casual encounters happened outside the U.S. while he was married but before he met Chapur, on trips to "blow off steam" with male friends.

The whole "let his guard down" thing is just an attempt to salvage anything left of his dignity, to imply that sexual affairs were never his intentions. It seems, however, he never had his guard up. Take for example the way his "love story" began with Chapur:

He said he saw her two other times, including their first meeting in 2001 at an open-air dance spot in Uruguay.

"There was some kind of connection from the very beginning," he told The Associated Press, though he said neither that meeting nor a 2004 coffee date in New York during the Republican National Convention were romantic.

Hmm. Going to an open-air dance spot and arranging coffee dates aren't exactly what I'd consider hedge-building. The likely truth is that Governor Sanford enjoys being sexually aroused by young women and puts himself in position for such encounters. One such encounter led to an adulterous relationship that may ruin his career.

Mark Sanford the politician is known for his passion to protect taxpayer money. He went to extremes to act it out in his career, often sacrificing his own personal comfort. Mark Sanford the husband should have shown the same passion for protecting his marriage.

Now these politicians are in a lovely pickle: The folks they've been shaking down are running low on money to give. And yet the spending continues.

And so, naturally and obviously, the politicians are finding themselves in a financial crisis.

What to do? Cut spending? Limit the growth of spending? Increase taxes? Print more pieces of paper with numbers and dollar signs on them?

Nah, they're adopting a solution they learned in middle school: They're scribbling IOUs.

Yup, politicians in the state of California haven't been able to figure out how to make their expenditures equal to their income. And so instead of paying their financial obligations with real money, they're handing out $3.36 billion this month in pretend money.

Cute.

The chairman of the state Budget Conference Committee explains how they've come to find themselves with a $24 billion deficit: "'Live within our means' doesn't mean anything."

Maybe I should be encouraged by this attitude. Maybe this particular politician has been pursuing God's wisdom by immersing herself in Ecclesiastes.

Or maybe these politicians are just financially inept.

This is a shot of the Bluefield College campus, taken from the steeple of the Chapel. I’m a former student and current employee of the college – just loved it so much I couldn’t leave!

I read Boundless at my desk in the library every morning, spending some time with good devotions and prayer before the day gets crazy. Things are pretty quiet here in the summer, with students and faculty getting a break from studying. Everything slows down a little, and we enjoy the warm weather in nature’s air conditioned city, surrounded by the beautiful mountains. (Yeah, mountain girl – born and raised!)

It’s so good to be on a Christian campus, to live in such a beautiful place, and to be blessed enough to share it with others. Thanks for the opportunity, Boundless!

Tabi

I searched the pantry. OK, it wasn't a "pantry," just a cupboard with random stuff in it. I pulled out a loaf of white bread and a jar of Prego.

Sauce went on slice of bread went in microwave went in mouth.

Yeah, I did not know how to cook.

I've since learned how stinkin' easy it is to make simple, relatively healthy meals. How hard is it to boil some whole wheat spaghetti, drain it after 15 minutes, and stir in a jar of mid-priced sauce? Not hard at all. Add some freshly sautéed mushrooms, and broil a few spears of asparagus, and you've got a respectable meal. That's Cooking 101 stuff. Stuff I wish I'd known when I was 18 and on my own.

I've learned that, in the words of Ratatouille's Chef Gusteau, "Anyone can cook."

I'd like to start a series here on the Boundless blog offering simple recipes, simple techniques, a simple approach to the therapeutic, hospitality-facilitating craft of cooking. I'll wrap up this first one with some photos I took yesterday of my little back yard garden that'll give you a sense of where I'm at now in my culinary journey: a pair of apple trees, rows of tomato plants, a pepper plant, squash, basil, dill, cilantro, thyme, rosemary, mint....

And to think that not so long ago I was content with microwaved spaghetti sauce sandwiches.

Hi Boundless!

I'm writing from Papua New Guinea, where I live and work as a missionary doing research on languages that aren't written down yet and don't have the Bible. (Did you know there are over 196,000,000 people from more than 2000 languages without a single verse of God's word in their languages?!)

Even though I spend most of my time working in an office in the Highlands of PNG, I get to travel to different parts of the country to do research. (In the picture, I'm interviewing a local church leader during a recent survey trip, while some kids and young guys look on.) The survey team and I are headed off to the rugged Western part of the country next month and hopefully out to the tropical island of New Britain in the fall.

Using the internet here is really expensive, so while I can still read a no-pictures version of the Boundless Line, I patiently wait for my sister in the US to burn the podcasts onto a DVD and mail them to me. Mail can take a few weeks to get here - I just listened to the Christmas episode in June! But the Boundless podcast is good enough to wait for, and like the saying goes it's "better late than never!" :-)

Thanks for the godly advice and thought-provoking articles!

Sara

That approach is all wrong.

Some government officials like the idea because they're worried about falling birthrates. Again, in itself, it's not a great reason for encouraging marriage.

What about the churches? Some are making money on the trend by charging for prayer services. Yes, charging!

The irony (which will surprise few of you savvy Boundless readers) is the overabundance of women in such deliberate settings, and the dearth of marriage-minded men. (But really, given the conditions, can you blame them?)

Apart from Ephesians 5, and a bold commitment to live it out, our human efforts at getting, and staying, married are doomed to end in divorce, or at best, survive in misery.

To the single men and women of Japan, I say, "Start reading Boundless--you'll get a lot more help getting married than you will hanging out at the Green Bar!"

Desperate to turn around his money-losing singles bar last summer, Yuta Honda decided that marriage would be his only salvation.

Abandoning a marketing plan based on the ephemeral attractions of one-night commitments, Mr. Honda rechristened his place a "konkatsu bar," a place for "marriage hunting."

These days, his Green Bar is packed with marriage-seeking singles in their twenties and thirties -- a rare success story in the Roppongi entertainment district, where businesses are closing right and left in the economic downturn.

Singles bars have always been notorious for opening their doors to people looking for all types of relationship connections, but Mr. Honda found success in narrowing his target audience to those who were specifically seeking marriage.

My sense is that Mr. Honda provided a valuable service to his patrons by allowing them to self select among those who wanted to skip relationship games and cut to the chase of their primary desire--marriage.

What's your impression on this approach? Does it seem too blunt to immediately hold up the possibility of marriage in a gathering of singles or does this filtering approach actually sound appealing to you?

Hello! I read Boundless articles when I’m sitting in my cubicle at work. You’ll probably be able to guess where that is if you look closely at the concentric circles in the photo!

At least once a week, I eat lunch at my computer and read Boundless articles. I jot down discussion topic ideas for the singles small group I lead and e-mail articles that remind me of situations my friends are in.

I spend a lot of time in this little box. It’s nice to take some time during the work day to be refreshed in the Lord, united with other Christian singles like me from all over the world. 

Thank you for being a light!

Sarah

Columnist Sharon Jayson writes,

No matter what their chronological age, most people say that they aren't yet "old" — and that they feel younger than their birthday count, according to a new nationally representative survey of almost 3,000 adults by the Pew Research Center.

According to the study, the reason for this young at heart, and in mind, feeling is the volume of people growing old (or older).

"We are becoming an older society, as are most advanced societies around the world, and we are about to hit a big new wave of adults entering older age," says Paul Taylor, who directs Pew's Social and Demographic Trends project.

The study notes that about 39 million Americans, or 13% of the U.S. population, are 65 and older — a figure that has tripled from 4% in 1900. In two years, the oldest of the nation's 76 million Baby Boomers will turn 65. And by 2050, according to Pew Research projections, about one in five Americans will be over 65, and about 5% will be ages 85 and older, up from 2% now.

And what is it that ties the newly graying population together?

Frederick Augustyn Jr. of Greenbelt, Md., who heads the Aging and Senior Culture area of the Popular Culture Association, says Baby Boomers fuel such resistance because they grew up as a youth culture and don't want to give in to old age.

The good news for Boomers is that old age isn't as bad as it's made out to be:

Among those age 65 and older, the perceived downsides of aging (such as memory loss, illness, inability to drive or an end to sexual activity) aren't experienced as much as younger people think they'll be.

Still, the survey rings hollow. I think the reason we feel young, no matter how old we get, has everything to do with what happens when aging ceases,

"He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end" (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

I came to love their music, and have since come to appreciate a swath of contemporary Christian music. Sure, a whole lot of it is worthless pabulum: uninspired lyrics spit out by some Random Christian Cliché Generator, skill-less musicianship, tired rhythms and chord progressions, sterilizing production. But some Christians creating music for today's generation speak with a relevance and passion and quality that inspires me in my devotion to the Lord and my devotion to excellence.

So today I'm listening to RED, a band whose lyrics wrestle with our disposition to sin, that explore our struggle to honor the Lord with integrity. That they use distorted guitars and edge into metal/screamo at times does not distract from the urgency and desperation of their message. Indeed, I find that it promotes it, helping me better engage it.

I don't know that I would have denounced this kind of music a decade ago; I may have just dismissed it. But these days I adamantly appreciate the breadth of musical styles embraced by many of today's Christian musicians.

I had a conversation with someone earlier this week who was condemning the music of today's Christian artists because it's "loud" and "rhythmic" and "extreme." Such music, because it may provoke a physical response, he dismissed as "sexual." His judgment reminded me of Michal, King David's wife, who mocked her husband for the "vulgar" way he was "leaping and dancing before the LORD." God's judgment against her? Barrenness.

I'm learning not to be so quick to write something off as ungodly simply because it's not my preference. After all, the Lord's ways are not like my ways. And where Scripture doesn't express a clear judgment, perhaps I should be slow to express mine. At least in the realm of music.

Well, that's a little peek into where some of my thoughts are today: affected by a discussion I had a few days ago and by my current iPod playlist. May what you find here -- our articles, blog posts, and podcasts -- effect some engaging discussions for you! :-)