1. God wrote a book. This is a moving and important video released by John Piper and Desiring God:

2. Celebrating the legacy of Hudson Taylor, 150 years after his death:

“It’s been 150 years since Taylor prayed for 24 “willing, skillful laborers” to join him in reaching the inland provinces of China, marking the start of the China Inland Mission (CIM). Known for dressing in traditional Chinese clothing “that by all means we may save some,” Taylor devoted 51 years to evangelizing China, and CIM sent 800 missionaries into the country before the Communist takeover forced them out.

Rather than returning home, CIM workers moved their headquarters to Singapore and refocused their energies to other nearby countries—Mongolia, Indonesia, and Thailand.

Today Taylor’s legacy is felt in all corners of Asia. In Taiwan, some of the older generation who immigrated from mainland China credit Taylor and CIM—its name later changed to Overseas Missionary Fellowship International (OMF)—for leading them to Christ. Taylor’s descendants (James Hudson Taylor II and III) started two of the major seminaries on the island, training many of the pastors leading Taiwan churches today. Local ministries follow practices modeled by OMF, such as faith missions, or trusting God for financial provision rather than soliciting donations. So without Taylor, it’s possible many of those students wouldn’t be attending the mission conference at all.

Yet things have shifted greatly in the last century and a half: While Taylor helped the West see China as an untapped mission field, the church in Asia has emerged as its own powerful mission-sending organization.”

3. This is an article from the Onion on the prevalence of Youthful Tendency Disorder, which is afflicting millions of children in our nation:

““As horrible as the diagnosis was, it was a relief to finally know,” said Beverly. “At least we knew we weren’t bad parents. We simply had a child who was born with a medical disorder.”

Youthful Tendency Disorder (YTD), a poorly understood neurological condition that afflicts an estimated 20 million U.S. children, is characterized by a variety of senseless, unproductive physical and mental exercises, often lasting hours at a time. In the thrall of YTD, sufferers run, jump, climb, twirl, shout, dance, do cartwheels, and enter unreal, unexplainable states of “make-believe.”

”The Youthful child has a kind of love/hate relationship with reality,” said Johns Hopkins University YTD expert Dr. Avi Gwertzman. “Unfit to join the adult world, they struggle to learn its mores and rules in a process that can take the entirety of their childhood. In the meantime, their emotional and perceptive problems cause them to act out in unpredictable and extremely juvenile ways. It’s as though they can only take so much reality; they have to ‘check out,’ to go Youthful for a while.””

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