He sings over you

After Zephaniah 3:14-20 

Forget the humiliation,

forget the shame.

The Lord is singing

over you.

 

He takes away

the judgments

against you.

He wipes away

the enemies

arrayed against

you. He gathers

the weak, the outcast,

the oppressed

in his arms,

transforming shame

into praise.

 

He gathers us in,

he exalts over us,

he sings our renown,

he sings our praise.

 

Photograph by Steven Erixon via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

“At the Cemetery,” poem by Robert Cording – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

Honey: A healing gift from the Creator – Creation.com. 

 

When Your Boss Expects You to Lie – John Piper at Desiring God.

 

“Fight the Good Fight,” hymn by John Samuel Bewley Monsell – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

A Given – poem by Seth Lewis.

Some Thursday Readings – July 30, 2026

 

Did Charles Dickens’s Bleak House Inspire Murder on the Orient Express? – Olivia Rutigliano at CrimeReads.

 

Such a thing – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

“The Heart of the Night,” poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Cave Story – poem by Maureen Doallas at Writing Without Paper.

 

“The Rubaiyat of a Persian Kitten,” poem by Oliver Herford – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

The Bard Bites Back – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

I Am the Place That Was Ruled by Three Empires – Emily Jaycox at Missouri Historical Society.

 

Illustration: The cover of the first serial installment of Bleak House, 1852.

 

Revisiting Longfellow with a Memory from Zimbabwe

I employed the poetry of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) as a kind of refrain in my novel Brookhaven. A main character is well known in his family for his lifelong love of Longfellow’s poetry and his ability to recite it from memory.  

What I didn’t realize or remember was just how long I’d been reading Longfellow’s poetry myself. That is, until a recent comment on a post at Tweetspeak Poetry popped up.

 

The comment first arrived as an email. It’s a standard notification that Tweetspeak writers get when someone comments on a post they’ve written. I read it and looked at the date of the post – Oct. 3, 2017, almost nine years ago. Had I actually resumed reading Longfellow that long ago?

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

The Neglected Genius of Hilaire Belloc – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Tools of the Trade – Kelly Belmonte on writing.

 

What-ifs and he Price of Beauty – Elliott Drago at Front Porch Republic.

 

Writer Reads: Jan Carson’s Few and Far Between – Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.

 

Why you must know your book’s genre – Nathan Bransford.

 

The Beautiful Ordinary – Kelly Keller at Story Warren on Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry.

“The Lamp” - A Ghost Story by Agatha Christie

Hercule Poirot? Yes. Miss Jane Marple? Yes. Tommy and Tuppence Beresford? Yes. General mystery stories? Yes. 

Ghost stories? No. Except the answer is really yes.

 

I’ve read a lot of novels and stories by Agatha Christie. The novels wither her trademark and famous detectives. Her thrillers. Her general mysteries without a trademark detective. But I didn’t know she also wrote ghost stories.

 

The Lamp is a ghost story by Agatha Christie.

 

It’s not long, only about 13 pages. It was first published in 1933 in a collection called The Hound of Death. The book was available only in one way – by collecting coupons from the magazine “The Passing Show.” And there it sat, until 1971, when it was published in the United States in a collection called The Golden Ball and Other Stories. In 2013, it was published as a standalone ebook by William Morrow Paperbacks.

 

I was expecting a mystery. Instead, I got a ghost.

 

Agatha Christie in the 1930s

The story is not set in any particular time. It could be anytime between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth century. The only real clue is that the family is attended by servants, including maids, so that might push it back toward the ninetheenth.

 

A woman is looking for a house for herself, her young son, and her father. She finds one she really likes, but she questions the estate agent closely about why the house has been empty for 19 years. He finally admits that there is a story about a ghost, a boy who was left with servants while his father traveled to London. Unfortunately, the father died there, and it’s said that the little boy wanders through the place, crying.

 

The woman does not believe in ghosts. She buys the house, and the family moves in. And all seems to go well until her son and her father begin to hear noises. And see things. Things will not end the way she expects. For that matter, things will not end like the reader expects.

 

The title comes from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The woman’s elderly father quotes this passage:

 

What Lamp has Destiny to guide

Her little Children stumbling in the Dark?

“A Blind Understanding,” Heaven replied.

 

The story seems odd for a work by Agatha Christie. It also seems a little creepy. You’re not going to see Hercule Poirot using his little gray cells or Miss Marple knitting away listening quietly. Instead, you get the innocent if discerning understanding of childhood and the wisdom of age and how those in between can easily miss what’s really going on.

 

Yes, it’s an Agatha Christie ghost story.

 

Some Tuesday Readings

 

“Vivien’s Song,” poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Three Poems for Robinson Jeffers – Lucas Smith at The Sprawl of Quality.

 

Two Moccasins Tied Together – poem by Emily Patterson at Every Day Poems.

 

Fire in July – poem by Rosa Gilbert at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

Some Monday Readings - July 27, 2026

 

Make do – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher. 

One Tool to Rule Them All – Brad Littlejohn at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

Two Ways of Looking at a Sparrow – Alexander Fayne.

 

Britain: Tome policing – Bijan Omrani at The Critic Magazine.

 

The Year I Taught in Prison – Michael Connolly at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

The Creatives Behind the Festival of Britain: Jacquetta Hawkes – A London Inheritance.

 

Don’t have blocks of time to write? Pockets work great! – Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach.

 

Sounds of the Forest – Timber Festival.

 

I Read All These Books and Boy Are My Lips Tired – Greg Sullivan at Sippican Cottage.

 

Christianity and the Three Cultures – Michael De Sapio at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Photograph: Jacquetta Hawkes (1910-1996) and J.B. Priestly (1894-1984) in 1960.

The fuller's soap

After Malachi 3:1-4

 

He’s coming, both

as a fire and as 

a cleansing, a washing

like the fuller’s soap

used to clean and

cleanse linen, taking

the soiled garment

and making it white

as snow, cleansed

of all impurities,

making us acceptable

and righteous to the Lord,

making us an acceptable

dwelling place of the Lord.

 

Photograph by Sincerely Media via Unsplash. Used with permission. 

Some Sunday Readings

 

Six Ways to Shepherd Kids Through Loss – Kirsten Black at Gospel-Centered Discipleship.

 

It’s Hard to Grow Up – Melissa Edgington at Your Mom Has a Blog. 

The Words We Need to Speak – Glenn McCarty at Story Warren.

Saturday Good Reads – July 25, 2026

When I had American history in both high school and college, I can vaguely remember reading or classroom discussion about only two ministers – Jonathan Edwards, who was always cited for his “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” and not much else, and John Wesley, who started Methodism in England and was instrumental in the First Great Awakening in America. But there were other well-known pastors, and they played a significant role in the American Revolution. 

Darryl Dash is a pastor in Toronto, author of a few books, and a columnist for The Gospel Coalition Canada. He was on vacation last week, and he and family visited a small church. They more stumbled into it than visited and had to be directed to the right room. And he discovered the beauty of a remarkably ordinary church.

 

Netflix has been hemorrhaging subscribers, and it’s affecting the value of their stock. Ted Gioia at The Honest Broker thinks something else is going on – the most popular strategy in the tech world has stopped working. And it may be good for all of us.

 

More Good Reads

 

Life and Culture

 

The Thousand Injuries: The Not Qwhite Voter and Politics of Recognition – William Matthew McCarter at Front Porch Republic.

 

Like Grass – Sarah Silflow at Front Porch Republic.

 

British Stuff

 

The migrant crime cover up – Rob Bates at The Critic Magazine.

 

America 250

 

13 Places Where American History Began – Kate Orlando at Only in Your State.

 

George Washington, The Fall of Charleston & The Battle of the Waxhaws – Keli Holt at Just Enough History.

 

How Courage and Compromise Secured American Liberty – Robert M.S. McDonald at Real Clear History.

 

Faith

 

Every Christian Has the Same Story – Michael Kelley at Forward Progress.

 

Tolkien invented a word to describe the Gospel’s turning point – Biblitodo News.

 

Aging Wisely in an Anti-Aging World – Tim Challies.

 

Poetry

 

The Reveal of the Rocks – poem by Kyle Fisk at Society of Classical Poets.

 

“To Helen,” poem by Edgar Allan Poe – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient & Modern.

 

“Thy Beauty’s Field,” Sonnet 2 by William Shakespeare – K.S Bernstein at Apple Blossoms in a Mournful Wood.

 

“The Charge of the Light Brigade,” poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

“Beloved, Thou Hast Brought Me Many Flowers,” poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Writing and Literature

 

Does it matter if you don’t like the characters? – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

Why Am I So Negative About Traditional Book Publishing? – Dean Wesley Smith.

 

We Are Thankful – Sovereign Grace

 Painting: Reading Girl, oil on canvas by Alexei Harlamoff (1840-1925). 

A refiner's fire

After Malachi 3:1-4 

The one foretold

is coming,

coming like a fire,

a purifier’s fire,

a refiner’s fire

sifting like a refiner

of silver and gold,

purifying and whittling

away of impurities.

The purified will bring

offerings, offerings

pleasing to the Lord

as they did in days

of old.

The fire of righteousness

purifies and cleanses,

making the offerings

making us, pleasing

and acceptable to the Lord.

 

Photograph by Yasin Hemmati via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

“Eschatology,” poem by Jose Tolentino Mendonca – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

How to Wait for Cultural Reckoning – Joe Carter at The Gospel Coalition.

 

“Away With Our Sorrow and Fear,” hymn by Charles Wesley – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

Poetry Helps You Open Your Heart to God – Catherine Lawton at Glimpses of Glory in the Unfolding Story. 

 

The Skill That Unlocks Other Skills – Seth Lewis.

 

An Ear for the Outsider, Part 2 – poem by Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.

Some Thursday Readings – July 23, 2026

 

The Spider Taketh Hold with Her Hands, and is in Kings’ Palaces – Kilby Austin at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

“Idyll,” poem by Siegfried Sassoon and “There Is a Garden in her Face,” poem by Thomas Campion – – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Thirteen Ways of Looking at My Mother’s Bible – poem by Megan Willome. 

 

“When I consider how my light is spent,” sonnet by John Milton – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

Talking about ‘The Nameless Isle’ – Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street. 

 

A Picture That Paints a Thousand Words – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Dumpling Pond: Legend, Folklore, and Local Memory in Greenwich, Connecticut – Lisa Figlioli at Journal of the American Revolution. 

 

The Bell and the Blackbird – poem by David Whyte.

 

George Cruikshank’s Summer in London – Spitalfields Life.

 

Eighteen Months, a Dark Teesside short story by Glenn McGoldrick, is free on Amazon today. I have a short review here. 

 

Illustration: At the Royal Academy (1835) by George Cruikshank.

Looking Back at a Crazy Job

I’ve spent a few weeks reflecting on my incredibly short, and incredibly long, eight months with St. Louis Public Schools. What began with the strangest job interview I ever had, the weirdest first day on the job, and the ongoing chaos of every single day ended with a very quiet farewell.  

In previous jobs in corporate communications, I’d experienced periods of media blitzes and controversies. But I’d never experienced a job in which every day was a media blitz, every day was a controversy, and I had to work and publicly communicate in a highly political environment where it was difficult to know who was telling the truth, whose information was accurate, and who was trying to help or merely trying to gain an edge on an opponent. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Photograph: St. Louis Public Schools headquarters building by St. Louis Public Schools.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

6 Enjoyable Ways to Read Classic Novels –or Pretty Much Anything – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

Goodness Will Come Back for You – Lara d’Entremont at A Mother Held.

 

Of Steamrollers and Hummingbirds – Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.

 

Swan Upping on the Thames – Spitalfields Life.

“The Dark Road” by Luke Davis

The story starts with a flashback. Detective Inspector Gareth Benedict of the North Wales Police is on a holiday with his wife Heather. And he watches in his horror as his adventure-loving wife is soaring in the sky, paramotoring, until the motor fails, and she falls more than 300 feet into the sea, killed instantly. 

Flash forward seven years, Benedict and his team, based on St. David’s Island, are called to Reno Medical Logistics to investigate the death of one of the company’s financial executives. His body has been found in his office, seated and slumped over his desk. At first, it appears he’s the victim of suicide. But there’s no suicide note, and no explanation for the wound on his head. 

 

And down the investigation trail the police officers go. And it soon becomes clear that there’s nothing straightforward about the case. The man had apparently been investigating unusual activity involving three supply locations in southern France, but it’s unknown what that activity might have been. There’s a connection to the man’s ex-wife, a cafe owner Benedict knows well and who isn’t thrilled to be asked questions. The investigation also develops a sub-theme of romance; if Benedict hasn’t figured it out yet, we have – there’s more than a professional relationship developing with Rachel Griffith-Thomas, his detective sergeant. 

 

Then, in the middle of the investigation, Benedict discovers an unknown and unwanted truth about his dead wife, and it nearly wrecks him and the investigation.

 

Luke Davis

The Dark Road is the third DI Gareth Benedict mystery by Luke Davis. It’s both a solid and entertaining police procedural. It’s also a flat-out good story. Davis is an American, but the Gareth Benedict series read like they’ve been written by a lifelong and native Welshman. The place names, the highway directions, and the general sense of these stories seems so Welsh that I have to keep reminding myself that Davis lives in a suburb of St. Louis.

 

Davis teaches at Westminster Christian Academy in St. Louis and chairs the Bible Department there. He’s also taught at schools in Louisiana, Florida, and Virginia. He describes himself as “Presbyterian body, Lutheran heart, Anglican blood, Orthodox spirit,” all of which have served him well in writing the Cameron Ballack mysteries. He has published three Ballack mysteries, Litany of Secrets (2013), The Broken Cross (2015), and A Shattered Peace (2017), and Joel: The Merivalkan Chronicles Book 1 (2017). He blogs at For Grace and Kingdom.

 

The Dark Road is a great story; that’s the simple fact of it. And I’m glad to learn that a fourth one, All Snares of the Enemy, is in the works.

 

Related: 

 

My review of Tides of Death by Luke H. Davis.

 

My review of Island Games by Luke H. Davis.

 

Redemption: The Church in Ancient Times by Luke H. Davis.

 

Reign: The Church in the Middle Ages by Luke H. Davis.

 

Reform: The Church at the Birth of Protestantism by Luke H. Davis.

 

Renewal: The Church That Expands Outward by Luke H. Davis.

Reading a Novel that Stars Your Hometown.

 

My review of Litany of Secrets.

 

My review of The Broken Cross.

 

My review of A Shattered Peace.

 

My review of Tough Issues, True Hope by Luke Davis.

 

Some Tuesday Readings

 

An Offering of Breathing Poetry – poem by Rob Jones at Cultivating Oaks Press.

 

Winners and Rankings of the Great American Poetry Competition – Society of Classical Poets.

 

Loneliness and solidarity – Padraig O Tuama on The Dance: Poems by Christian Wiman.

 

The Sun – poem by David Whyte.

 

‘A Poet at the Tower’ and Other Poetry – Michael Paul at Society of Classical Poets.

 

Pink – poem by Carol Berrett at Every Day Poems.

Some Monday Readings - July 20, 2026

Rehabilitating Time: Memory & the Writing Life – Daniel Sundahl at The Imaginative Conservative.

Charity That’s Just Ducky – Annie Nardone at Cultivating Oaks Press.

 

At Waltham Abbey – Spitalfields Life.

 

Want More Babies? We Need More Friends – Robert Henderson at City Journal.

 

“The people here are liberty mad…” Nicholas Cresswell and the American Independence – Rob Orrison at Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

 

Archaeologists Found a 2,000-Year-Old Garden Beneath a Church. It May Be the Site of Jesus’s Tomb – Michael Natale at Popular Mechanics.

 

The Hazards of Public Life – Jeffrey Bilbro at Plough.

 

Up the Hudson and Into the Heart of America – Megan Pidcock at The Wall Street Journal (unlocked). 

 

How a Chance Meeting Gave Me Some Tools to Help Mr. Wild Dog and Rejuvenated My Dream – Katie Andraski at Katie’s Ground.

 

St. Pancras Church and the Loss of the Steamship City of Boston – A London Inheritance.

 

Painting: The Beeches, oil on canvas (1845) by Asher Brown Durand (1796-1886), part of the Hudson River School, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.

In this place of waste

After Jeremiah 33:10-16 

In this place of waste,

this place so depopulated

even the beasts are gone,

in this place will be

laughter and sounds of mirth,

in this place will be

shepherds guarding flocks,

in this place will be

sounds of rejoicing and

gladness, in this place

will be the voice of

the bridegroom,

the voice of the bride,

in this place will be

the voice singing praise,

in this place will be

choruses of thanksgiving

and offerings made

in the house of the Lord.

 

It is not over.

The day is coming.

 

Photograph by Wolfgang Hasselmann via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

Cultivating Fatherhood: Stories from Scripture – “Help My Unbelief” – Adm Nettesheim at Cultivating Oaks Press.

 

Gen Z Churchgoers Attend More but Often Lag in Application – Aaron Earls at Lifeway Research.

 

Rest Is Not a Thing to be Bought, but Received – Sarah Reardon at Mere Orthodoxy.

Saturday Good Reads – July 18, 2026

I know exactly where I was on July 16, 1969. Six weeks after high school graduation, three friends and I were parked along the Banana River at Cape Kennedy, part of an estimated one million people who had come to Florida for the same reason and to the same destination. We had spent the night in the car, ensuring a clear view across the river to a site about a mile or so away. Parked behind us was a young couple from Canada, who, like us, had spent the night there. We had been the first car to park. We tried to sleep, but lights from cars and vans kept us awake all night. Later that morning, July 16, 1969, we watched and cheered the launch of Apollo 11, carrying the crew that would land on the moon. 

I had heard this anecdotally before, but it’s still surprising (and to see it confirmed) to learn which Americans are the most generous, in terms of giving to non-profit organizations. The confirmation is a book, Who Really Cares, by Arthur Brooks, professor of Public Administration at Syracuse University. It turns out that the Americans who give more are the ones who mistrust big government and generally live in the so-called red states.

 

For the first time in more than 900 years, the Bayeux Tapestry has returned to Britain for an exhibition at the British Museum. It is a woven account of the Norman Invasion of 1066, and it’s almost 230 feet (70 meters) long. The BBC describes five of its key scenes. 

 

More Good Reads

 

British Stuff

 

A chaplain’s vindication – Andrea Williams at The Critic Magazine.

 

American Stuff

 

165 Years Later, First Bull Run Still Explains Why Americans Misjudged the Civil War – Ryan Thomas LaBee at Military.com.

 

America 250

 

George Whitefield: America’s Forgotten Founding Father, Part 2 – Peter Lillback at Institute for Faith & Culture. (Part 1 is here.)

 

Life and Culture

 

Feeding My New Orleans Habit – John Shelton Reed at Portico.

 

Like Fujimara’s ‘Slow Art.’ The Creative Process Takes Patience – Isaac Hans at The Anselm Society. 

 

Faith

 

Beyond the End Times: What evangelical support for Israel really reveals – Motti Inbari and Kirill Bumin at Religion News Service.

 

Was the Multiplication of the Early Church a Miraculous Movement? – A.W. Workman at Entrusted to the Dirt.

 

Questions to Ask a Deacon or Elder Candidate at an Ordination – Jack Wellman at What Christians Want to Know.

 

Poetry

 

“One Hundred Visions of War,” poems by Julien Vocance and “Anecdote of the Jar,” poem by Wallace Stevens – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Compulsive Memory and Poetic Composition – James Feichthaler at New Verse Review.

 

Writing and Literature

 

Teachers of Evil: Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Melville – Thaddeus Kozinski at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

The Looting of Science Fiction – Ali Riza Taskale at Aeon Magazine.

 

An Ear for the Outsider – Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.

 

My Posts This Week

 

Decision on the Stairs, a short story – at Cultivating Oaks Press.

 

Tina Kelley and Field Guide of North American Words – at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

The Scenes That Stick from a Chaotic Job – at Dancing Priest.

 

Sarah Dickinson Snyder and To Eve – at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

“The Day is Done” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – Read by Kishore Raghoobar

 Painting: Old Man Reading, oil on canvas (1909) by Albert Anker (1831-1910).