News From the Frontlines: September 19th, 2026
Welcome to what I believe is already the 14th Edition of News From the Frontlines! I’ve been curating these recommendations since around June, and I hope they’ve been a blessing to you!
News From the Frontlines:
Recommended Reading, Listening, & Watching
Tim Challies shared this long-form piece a few weeks ago, and as someone who grew up on Calvin and Hobbes, I really enjoyed it. “1978, Kenyon College, sophomore year. Bill Watterson is lying on his dorm room bed, staring up at the ceiling. He hasn’t yet invented six-year-old Calvin and his tiger, Hobbes — though his studies have made him familiar with their philosophical namesakes — because the strip that will make Watterson’s name is almost a decade away.”
And speaking of Tim Challies, I appreciated his levelled answer to a question I have wrestled with over the years. “I am often asked variations of this question: What do we do with books written by fallen pastors? Sadly, it needs to be answered more frequently than we’d like—we look at our bookcases and wonder what to do with the books by pastors we once admired but who have since been disqualified from ministry. It’s possible that their books or other forms of teaching helped us, shaped us, or even made us who we are. Yet now we wonder whether they could be as good as we remembered, or whether they could now actually lead us astray.”
Wes Lauver responds to the growing trend among young men in particular who are converting to Roman Catholicism. He rightly notes throughout the article that this is no small issue, as though casual experimentation with Rome is harmless—especially in light of the Gospel and justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.
As a teacher in the public school system—albeit at the high school level, whereas this article is written from an elementary perspective—I appreciated much of what this Christianity Today piece had to offer. “As a public school teacher and a Christian, I’ve empathized with friends as they pray and toil over the weighty, complex question of how to educate their kids. I believe we can honor God in any schooling choice. Are you loving Christ? Are you caring for your neighbor as yourself? Are you discipling your children? Parents living within these biblical guardrails have much freedom to discern God’s specific will for their circumstances, including where they send their kids to school. But it’s important to realize that our individual choices have communal consequences.”
I haven’t shared anything by Samuel Sey before, but you may be familiar with his blog, Slow to Write—what a great name. In this article, Samuel reflects on a distressing issue that, as a teacher, I too have witnessed time and time again, even at the secondary level. “I was shocked on the first day of school last year to learn that 2/3 of my grade 3 class had less than a grade 1 level of reading proficiency. One of my students couldn’t even read the word ‘in.’”
I’ve often thought about this: to what degree are unpleasant creatures a part of God’s original design? Namely, are things like mosquitoes or horse flies or ticks foreign to God’s good design, and indeed a part of the curse He issued upon our world because of sin? Sometimes it would seem so, given there are many creatures in our world with seemingly no redeeming qualities. And, to push the question further, will these sorts of creatures—spiders, mosquitoes, flies, ticks, rats, and so on—find a place in the New Heavens and New Earth when Christ redeems all of fallen nature? Randy Alcorn offers an interesting answer.
In this video, Gavin Ortlund walks through what the Bible has to say about spiritual gifts—What ‘gifts’ are mentioned in Scripture? What is the purpose of spiritual gifts? And, how has God gifted you for His glory and the good of others? An encouraging watch, indeed.
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