Here is a selection of quotes from books I am currently reading:

“Centuries before the advent of smartphones, email, and instant messages, Lord Chesterfield warned his son against the dangers of multitasking. ‘There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once,’ he said, ‘but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time’.” (Hyatt, Free to Focus)

“We save the most compelling lesson for last. We have already introduced the idea of the insula housing with inter-connected rooms that were added to accommodate extending families. Bringing a new bride into the family would be a celebrated event, and the home would expand with the growth of the household. As Jesus prepared his small band of disciples for the forthcoming tumult of his arrest, trial, and death, he comforted them with the assurance that in his Father’s house there were many rooms. Better yet, he was going to prepare a place for them, and he promised them that ultimately, they would be with him there (John 14:1–3). In other words, they were assured that they were added to God’s family. The symbolism of the bridegroom preparing a place for his bride, the church, is powerful and enduring.” (Lexham Geographic Commentary on the Gospels)

“Perhaps our failure to be hospitable explains why so many Christians have few non-Christian friends and find themselves far removed from evangelistic opportunities.” (Anyabwile, Finding Faithful Elders and Deacons, 72)

“Now, the question is, why? Why does that matter? Well, the reason it matters is because usually when we read the Sermon on the Mount, we often dip into it. It’s what I call in many instances a Viking exegesis. We do this with all the Bible, but we do it with the Sermon as much as anything, where we are like Vikings who land on the shore of the Bible, run in, grab a few things, put them in bags over our shoulders and pillage the area, and run back to our ships and then sail away. That’s how we often treat the Bible. We sort of pillage it for what we’re interested in. But I want to suggest to you that that can really result in—at worst, wrong readings, but even at best, just not very nuanced and not very careful readings. The best kind of reading of the Bible is one that really pays attention to context and really pays attention to literary structure, because these books are classics. They’ve been written and tested and preached—in Matthew’s case, he probably preached these sermons and put together this material in these ways for thirty years before he finally wrote it down. This is his magnum opus.” (Pennington, Sermon on the Mount)