News From the Frontlines: June 20th, 2026
- Joshua Budimlic
- 16 hours ago
- 5 min read
Welcome to News From the Frontlines! Over the past several years at Iotas in Eternity, I have been so heavily focused on content creation that I’ve sorely neglected content curation. As the saying goes, “No man is an island.” In like fashion, no one reads, writes, or learns in a bubble. Much of what I write here at Iotas in Eternity flows directly downstream from the wisdom and insight I glean from the many authors, thinkers, and fellow believers that I am so indebted to on a daily basis—a few of whom you will rub shoulders with today if you interact with any of the articles or videos I have linked to.
The follower of Christ is engaged in a ruthless, day-to-day battle with the world, the flesh, and the devil. We do, however, fight as those with hope—for our Lord has emerged victorious from the grave, having seized power from the jaws of the serpent, swallowing up death itself in the process with glorious life. Nonetheless, as Christians we are at times grieved and weighed down by the many sorrows and sighs of life in this fallen world, in need of frequent encouragement and refreshment from the wellspring of God’s word.
Lord willing, my smithy of words here at Iotas in Eternity has been a blessing to you, serving as words fitly spoken on your journey towards home. I am, however, just one man. This new segment on the blog, News From the Frontlines, aims to do just that—to bring you news and encouragement from around the spiritual battlefield—from the very frontlines—where faithful brothers and sisters of Christ are busy about drawing the Sword of the Spirit in warfare against all manner of darkness, sin, evil, and decay.
My aim will be to share seven links each week on Saturday morning, be it blog posts, articles, essays, videos—or really anything I find to be good, true, and beautiful. Seven is a well-rounded, Biblical number and, conveniently, works out to one recommendation for every day of the week. While some of this week’s links are from the past few days or weeks, most of them are from some point in the last year or so—think of it as my way of honoring the believers who have shaped me as we enter into what I hope will be the first of many News From the Frontlines. Enjoy!
News From the Frontlines:
Recommended Reading, Listening, & Watching
Tim Challies has been a tremendous encouragement—and inspiration—to me over the years, both as a believer and as a writer. And so, it’s only fitting to honor him with the foremost article in the first-ever News From the Frontlines. Amid the hundreds of his articles I’ve read at this point, this one has always remained close to my heart—“Of all the mysteries in this universe, few are more perplexing than the mystery of God’s sovereignty over life and death. Why do some live to so advanced an age while others barely live at all? Why are some who display such promise taken before they can deploy their gifts? Why does God call some early to heaven who surely could have done so much good on earth? Why God, we ask? Why?”
As a reader and writer, this is a particularly encouraging article—and indeed, one of my favorites from the past year. “First, we must realize that though we often read by ourselves, we never read alone. When you open up a book, you sit down with an author. The book is fundamentally a technology of conversation; it fosters the meeting of minds across time and space. The written word captures something of the author and, when read, conjures him.”
As a young dad myself, I deeply appreciated Andrew Ballard’s article about fatherhood over at Desiring God. “Young kids during my own youth are God’s greatest gift to me. If he has given me the greater gift of children, I can trust him for the lesser necessities. But even more than this: Fellow young dads, if you are discouraged at the daunting task of building your own house, rejoice that God has built his. If he took care of his Messiah, he can take care of his Millennials. So, pursue marriage, count children as blessings, work heartily in all your efforts, and eat the bread of grateful toil.”
This article by Kendall Lankford remains one of the most sobering and convicting I’ve read all year—“There is a reason Psalm 31:15 is so arresting: ‘My times are in your hand.’ Not my future is in your hand, though it is. Not my fate is in your hand, though it is. My times. The days themselves. The mornings and the evenings, the Tuesdays and the Decembers, the decades shaped like question marks. David isn’t only expressing comfort, though there is enormous comfort here. He is expressing ownership. These days are not mine to begin with. They have been pressed into my hands like a merchant pressing gold coins into the palm of a steward and saying: Manage this well. I’ll be back.”
Elaina and I have thoroughly enjoyed the PBS show All Creatures Great and Small over the past year. Thus, it was a pleasant surprise to see such a warm, thoughtful reflection on the show over at Gospel Centered Discipleship: “All Creatures Great and Small invites us to slow down and notice that life rarely becomes meaningful through extraordinary moments. More often, it unfolds through ordinary faithfulness—receiving the place we’ve been given and loving well within it. Tomorrow. And then the day after that. Not as proof of our goodness but as grace received.”
June is indeed the month for marriage—in fact, my little sister’s wedding is today! As I was throwing together this new segment, I asked my wife if she had any articles to suggest. She and I exchange articles, podcast episodes, and sermons regularly, and I am thankful that she decided to pass this post my way—Lord willing it is a blessing to you as well. Leah writes, “Over the years, we’ve piled up so many scraps, leftovers of attempts to build in our own wisdom, at the cross of Christ with a sheepish, ‘We tried to do it ourselves. Could You please fix this?’ And like a loving elder Brother, He quietly sets to work repairing the inept handiwork of His foolish younger siblings, returning it to us with a kind, ‘Try not to break it again.’ Somehow, we keep finding more things to break and be repaired. But He is patient. And receiving the better-made craftsmanship of our Lord is teaching us to rejoice in the beauty of a humble, given life. It is better than what we could have manufactured, ourselves.”
In this video from his YouTube channel, Truth Unites, Gavin Ortlund explains not so much why Christianity is true—which it is—but why you should want it to be true.
Photo by Ashni, Unsplash
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