Operation Christmas Child

Operation Christmas Child, the world's largest children's Christmas project, run by Franklin Graham’s Samaritan’s Purse, has come under a vitriolic attack in the UK. According to an article in The Guardian, one of England’s largest circulation daily newspapers, the project has a “toxic agenda” and is little more than a cover for “evangelicals who like to giftwrap Islamophobia.” I guess that's what mercy and evangelism have been reduced to in the world of left-leaning prognostication.

In fact, Operation Christmas Child is a remarkably successful ministry of compassion that brings Christmas joy and Gospel hope, packed in gift-filled shoeboxes, to impoverished children around the world. Over the past 10 years, more than 24 million shoeboxes have been delivered in famine-racked, disease-ravaged, war-torn regions across the globe. While I was in Iraq recently, I was delighted to see boxes from the project in isolated communities altogether cut off from other forms of aid or communication.

Our family, our school, and our church have all participated in either this project or the Prison Fellowship Angel Tree project over the whole course of the last decade and we will do so again. I trust you will too. It'll drive the Gospelphobic Lefties utterly bonkers--but far more importantly, it will continue to shine a very bright light into the depths of a very smothering darkness. This is the very sort of thing we were made for--despite all the outraged protestations of this poor fallen world.

Blog Slogging

My regular gleanings in blogdom:

My dear friend, Bruce Green, is not only brilliant, erudite, and visionary, he is also the dean of the new Liberty University School of Law. His blog is not to be missed.

What if G.K. Chesterton actually had a blog? Thankfully, we don’t have to wonder what that might actually be like any longer.

The writers at World magazine now have a collective blog, edited and selected by Marvin Olasky. They offer some very telling behind-the-scens insights into the headlines.

David Mills began the collective blog idea for Touchstone magazine--and it remains one of the best on the web. This is a great resource from a “Journal of Mere Christianity.”

Peter Leithart is finally blogging and his Biblical and literary ruminations are as brilliant as you might expect them to be. I'm hooked.

Likewise, you’ll not want to miss John Barach’s sundry theological insights and ecclesiastical musings.

Jeff Meyers always tips me off to the best SF reading and the most helpful liturgical resources.

The always irreverent, often hilarious David Horowitz has a fascinating blog at his Frontpage magazine site.

The Center for Cultural Leadership posts by Andrew Sandlin are invariably worth reading and pondering.

There are few writers as eloquent--and even fewer journalists as relevant--as Joe Sobran. His site is a marvel.

The surprisingly controversial Bishop of Durham, N.T. Wright, has a site that is not really a blog but that is sufficiently prolific and retro to qualify here.

With incredibly insightful essays from great writers like Rich Lusk and Mark Horne, the Theologia site is well worth regular visits.

I find the Highlands Study Center blog of R.C. Sproul, Jr. provocative, refreshing, and insightful. It's a spiritual kick in the pants.

Remy Wilkins is one of my favorite young writers. I am particularly partial to his bow ties but his poetry is worth a look too.