I found this video fascinating. Plus, I learned that, pretty much, I  don’t know anything about Vatican City:  

(The PCA’s Special Needs Ministry)   (DesiringGod’s Disability Resources) 

The Lamb William Blake (1757–1827) LITTLE lamb, Who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee, Gave thee life, and bid thee feed By the stream and o’er the mead; Gave thee clothing of delight, Softest clothing woolly bright; Gave thee such a tender voice, Making all the vales rejoice? Little lamb, Who made thee?  Dost thou know who made thee? Little lamb, I’ll tell thee: Little lamb, I’ll tell thee: He is callèd by thy name, For he calls himself a Lamb. He is meek and he is mild, He became a little child. I a child, and thou a lamb, We are callèd by his name. Little lamb,…

I am very much looking forward to reading Chris Brauns latest book: Bound Together: How We Are Tied to Others in Good and Bad Choices And I just saw that the e-version of The Jesus Storybook Bible is available today for  only $1.99 (!). This is a great price and I can say from personal experience that it is super fun for children to be able to read “their” Bible when we’re out and about and needing books—especially without warning/time to pack a book bag. 

The wonderful Jane Patete just sent our family a very encouraging note (about my service at last month’s women’s leadership conference) and a number of treasures from the PCA Bookstore. We are so  grateful and we can’t wait to read them. If you’d ever like to see what books are being added to our family’s library, I try to keep my LibraryThing catalog up-to-date: Tara Barthel’s LibraryThing.Com  

Today, Sophie and I had a fascinating conversation about architects, engineers, and builders. It sprang from a conversation about people who are more strongly gifted verbally versus those who are more quantitative and then the (super fun!) combination of people who excel at both. We then discussed people who are artistic and really good at math and how they often work in a field of creating things … like being architects, designers, or even certain aspects of civil engineering. This discussion led us to miss our dear friend P.Mark (who lives too far away from us!) and who could do anything he’d like in civil engineering, but who excels at designing the roads that lead up to…

Preach it, Dr. Powlison! The Local Church is THE Place for Biblical Counseling I appreciated every word, but especially the postscript (emphases mine): Postscript. By the way, these wonderful advantages to local church counseling do not mean that  “para-church” ministries are per se unhelpful or wrong. God blesses the counseling that occurs through educational institutions, campus ministries, military chaplaincies, publishing houses, crisis pregnancy centers, mission agencies, and many other para-church Christian works. CCEF is a para-church ministry, and I happily work here, as well as participating in my local church.   But there are pitfalls that any para-church ministry must avoid. We must guard against generating an autonomous existence. We…

My body felt like it was 1AM when I finally made it home to Billings on Saturday night and then, after a refreshing and edifying church service, I headed back to the airport at noon. I’ve never had such a quick turnaround before—but that’s the way our week has been ordered. And I may be off the grid because where I am headed is a remote location. So I’ll try to have some posts or re-posts for you—but if I go dark for a few days, you’ll know why. Blessings to you!  Tara B. PS THANKS for all of the prayers for my, um, “thing” last week. I made it through…

The next thirteen days of our family’s life are going to be very hard. I am thrilled to have the opportunity to serve at the PCA Women’s Leadership Conference this week, but it requires two days of flying (Wednesday & Saturday) and a very long day of teaching workshops and a keynote back-to-back-to-back on Friday. On top of that, I will be home for just under twelve hours from Saturday midnight to noon Sunday (just enough time to hopefully do one load of laundry and refill my toiletries) and then I’ll be flying all afternoon/evening Sunday to participate in a training event in Texas related to helping people to appropriate…