For your inspiration and your exhortation, although some of these probably also need your concentration too:

1) 10 Lessons on Parenting Little Ones – Parenting is such a sensitive topic. We might ask at what stage is someone ever qualified to give advice or share wisdom on Christian parenting? After all, when do you stop being a parent!? Tim Challies steps up and offers some reflections from the first ten years. And I for one am glad he did.

2) “We Must Distinguish!” – A friend I was at college with has just spent his final-year dissertation looking into how Christians should talk about our disagreements, particularly those concerning what are often termed ‘secondary issues’. This summary article raises some good questions and categories for discussion.

3) British Christians must start to think and act like a minority – This piece was in The Spectator this week and makes some important points, including acknowledging the impact a Christian worldview will inevitably make to a society (note the comparison with Turkey). That said, I’m not quite sure the answer is to “keep the churches open,” as much as it to keep the churches alive – which of course means unashamedly holding out the hope and life of Jesus Christ.

4) Word Alive Live Stream – It’s been a delight to be part of this Christian holiday-conference for six of the last seven years. And generously for the first time the main sessions from this year’s event, including music, interviews and preaching, will be freely live-streamed online – at 6.15pm every day (upto and including Wednesday this week). And yesterday’s seemed to be available afterwards too…

5) 5 Books Every Writer MUST Read – This showed me up, not owning a single one! So, if this isn’t your cup of tea but you want to be generous to an apparently inadequately-equipped but wannabe writer…

6) The Lahore attacks reflected hatred of Christians. Why must we deny it? On Easter Sunday, just last weekend, 72 Pakistanis were murdered, nearly half of them children and most of them Christians. Charles Moore calls us to wake-up.

7) Four Minutes of Epic Football to Take Your Breath Away – Watch this. Incredible. And, wonderfully, it’s non-league.

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Seven links which mostly weave around the Easter events that we particularly remember this weekend…

1) A Horribly Beautiful Friday – A reminder that God takes horrible things and works them for good.

2) Brussels points us to Calvary – It can seem like there’s a disconnect between the terrible events reported from Belgium this week, and the celebratory tone of Easter. But actually there needn’t be.

3) Holy Saturday and a theology of waiting – Wesley Hill writes a helpful reflection on how we all we need to learn and live a theology of ‘waiting’, in between sharing in Christ’s death and our future sharing in his resurrection after we take our final breath.

4) Five reasons to believe Jesus rose from the dead – An engaging post to share, in Adam4d’s comic-book style.

5) Free Music from Songs for Saplings – SfS aim to produce Scripture-filled songs for children to enjoy. Generously they’ve made their whole catalogue available for free download today, including digital music, sheet music, lyrics sheets, and associated crafts. Use the code 2016Easter during checkout by the end of Easter Sunday.

6) The Red Herring of Bible Application – We often talk a lot about ‘applying’ the Bible – but what should that mean? Perhaps not what we sometimes think.

7) Have you spotted God’s Little Resurrection Trumpets? – Ok, so I wrote this one myself. But I hope you’ll never look at a daffodil the same way.

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Some heptagonal goodness coming right up…

1) Free E-Book: “Why Trust the Bible?” by Greg Gilbert – This is really worth getting your hands on: a simple and accessible case for why we can trust the Bible. Easter time often can bring up questions about why we’d even bother trusting the New Testament accounts of Jesus’ resurrection. Not sure how you’d answer? Download this.

2) 30 Thoughts on our 50 Days Overseas – Since reading Just Do Something and What Is the Mission of the Church?, I’ve been greatly helped by Kevin DeYoung’s writing. He’s just finished an epic 7-week trip to the UK and his reflections are definitely worth hearing (although is our fast-food really that far behind?!). If you want a taste of Kevin himself, here’s a question and answer session with him from one of the churches he visited on his trip.

3) The Top 20 Countries for Christian Growth – You may be surprised (and encouraged) by some of these!

4) 6 Ways We Ignore Unchurched Guests at Easter – Not rocket science, but some good reminders as we come up to a busy ‘guest season’.

5) John Kerry: ISIS is committing genocide in Syria and Iraq – An important step in recognising the extent of what’s happening at the hands of ISIS, so long as that recognition is now followed up with action.

6) Could your pastor be close to burnout? Our Survey says Yes – The folk over at the Good Book Company have been carrying out a survey about working patterns and stress levels among people in paid Christian work. And the results are quite alarming, including most working double the amount of hours they are paid to work.

7) How to sound smart in your TEDx Talk – The TED talk phenomenon has taken the world by storm, with many conferences now offering ‘TED-style’ elements in response. But its popularity also makes it ripe for ripping, and Will Stephen does that hilariously here.

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