Danny Lancaster

Happily married. Full quiver. My assistant approves all social media activity.

[Danny Lancaster @DannyLancaster2]

Life is hard and life is sad, but God is real and He is good.

[Ben Sasse @BenSasse]

Friends-

This is a tough note to write, but since a bunch of you have started to suspect something, I’ll cut to the chase: Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die.

Advanced pancreatic is nasty stuff; it’s a death sentence. But I already had a death sentence before last week too — we all do.

I’m blessed with amazing siblings and half-a-dozen buddies that are genuinely brothers. As one of them put it, “Sure, you’re on the clock, but we’re all on the clock.” Death is a wicked thief, and the bastard pursues us all.

Still, I’ve got less time than I’d prefer. This is hard for someone wired to work and build, but harder still as a husband and a dad. I can’t begin to describe how great my people are. During the past year, as we’d temporarily stepped back from public life and built new family rhythms, Melissa and I have grown even closer — and that on top of three decades of the best friend a man could ever have. Seven months ago, Corrie was commissioned into the Air Force and she’s off at instrument and multi-engine rounds of flight school. Last week, Alex kicked butt graduating from college a semester early even while teaching gen chem, organic, and physics (she’s a freak). This summer, 14-year-old Breck started learning to drive. (Okay, we’ve been driving off-book for six years — but now we’ve got paper to make it street-legal.) I couldn’t be more grateful to constantly get to bear-hug this motley crew of sinners and saints.

There’s not a good time to tell your peeps you’re now marching to the beat of a faster drummer — but the season of advent isn’t the worst. As a Christian, the weeks running up to Christmas are a time to orient our hearts toward the hope of what’s to come.

Not an abstract hope in fanciful human goodness; not hope in vague hallmark-sappy spirituality; not a bootstrapped hope in our own strength (what foolishness is the evaporating-muscle I once prided myself in). Nope — often we lazily say “hope” when what we mean is “optimism.” To be clear, optimism is great, and it’s absolutely necessary, but it’s insufficient. It’s not the kinda thing that holds up when you tell your daughters you’re not going to walk them down the aisle. Nor telling your mom and pops they’re gonna bury their son.

A well-lived life demands more reality — stiffer stuff. That’s why, during advent, even while still walking in darkness, we shout our hope — often properly with a gravelly voice soldiering through tears.

Such is the calling of the pilgrim. Those who know ourselves to need a Physician should dang well look forward to enduring beauty and eventual fulfillment. That is, we hope in a real Deliverer — a rescuing God, born at a real time, in a real place. But the eternal city — with foundations and without cancer — is not yet.

Remembering Isaiah’s prophecies of what’s to come doesn’t dull the pain of current sufferings. But it does put it in eternity’s perspective:
“When we've been there 10,000 years…We've no less days to sing God's praise.”

I’ll have more to say. I’m not going down without a fight. One sub-part of God’s grace is found in the jawdropping advances science has made the past few years in immunotherapy and more. Death and dying aren’t the same — the process of dying is still something to be lived. We’re zealously embracing a lot of gallows humor in our house, and I’ve pledged to do my part to run through the irreverent tape.

But for now, as our family faces the reality of treatments, but more importantly as we celebrate Christmas, we wish you peace: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned….For to us a son is given” (Isaiah 9).

With great gratitude, and with gravelly-but-hopeful voices,
Ben — and the Sasses

[Ballislife.com @Ballislife]

Happy 62nd birthday, Michael Jordan 🐐

[Brian Rauf @brauf33]

This stretch…we won’t see anything like this again https://t.co/DPgmrLe4C0

[Mark E. Joubert @mark_joubert]

Going home has been so incredibly painful. The grief comes in unrelenting waves. If the kind of wounds we had were visible, we'd look like we'd narrowly survived an explosion - but these wounds don't show on the outside. It hurts so much because he was such a gift.

"My soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is; so I say, “My endurance has perished; so has my hope from the Lord.” Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall! My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.”

Lamentations 3:17-24

[End Wokeness @EndWokeness]

Kids raised without a dad make up 90% of runaway or homeless kids, 75% of all teen murderers, 71% of HS dropouts, & 70% of incarcerated youth.

Dads. Matter.

[BaseballHistoryNut @nut_history]

Tony Gwynn has more assists in college (590) than strikeouts in his 20 year major league baseball career (434)

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

I’m cool with adults doing whatever they want, so long as it doesn’t harm others, but kids need to be protected at all costs

[Desiring God @desiringGod]

What was the real issue for David in the story of Bathsheba? There is a deeper problem underneath lust, and we can find our solution in this text.

[Danny Lancaster @DannyLancaster2]

@JCRyle Amen! I never win anything like this lol

[J.C. Ryle @JCRyle]

***Give-a-Way raffle***

ESV Church History Study Bible REVIEW and GIVE-A-WAY!!

Crossway publishers were gracious enough to provide me with this study Bible to do a review and give-a-way.

TO ENTER THE GIVE-A-WAY please comment AMEN below and re-tweet this post! 5 winners will be chosen and contacted via private messenger in the next few days.

PLEASE take a moment and read the review below. This is one of the best Bibles I've got my hands on in sometime!

https://t.co/acEorshTri

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Biden’s strategy is very simple:

1. Get as many illegals in the country as possible.

2. Legalize them to create a permanent majority – a one-party state.

That is why they are encouraging so much illegal immigration. Simple, yet effective.

[New York Post @nypost]

NYC launches $53M program to hand out pre-paid credit cards to migrant families https://t.co/pND7FYtPNW

[Nayib Bukele @nayibbukele]

We are HONORED to receive your attacks, just days before OUR election.

I would be very worried if we had your support.

Thank you 🙏🏼

[Matthew Goins @mattgoins77]

I want to thank everyone who prayed for Cora's safe return to her family. Details are still emerging, but I am convinced that God intervened on behalf of this family because of the prayers of His people! We praise God!

[Matthew Goins @mattgoins77]

Please pray for our missionary friends. Their daughter has gone missing from their home in Honduras, presumed kidnapped !!

[Ian Miles @ianmiles]

Vivek gets it. He explains the difference between the new breed of Republicans taking over the party and the old establishment.

[Matt Smethurst @MattSmethurst]

“I seek not a long life but a full one, like you, Lord Jesus.”

On this day in 1956, Jim Elliot, missionary to the Auca Indians, was martyred.

[Jon Acuff @JonAcuff]

As a dad of an 18yo & 20yo, the longer you can keep kids analog the better life goes. Low-tech kids dominate in their 20s because unlike their peers they're not addicted to porn, online gambling, shopping or social media comparison. The world will say you're weird. Good, be weird

[Mitch Chase @mitchellchase]

2000 yrs after Abraham hears of a seed,

1400 yrs after Moses learns of a prophet,

1000 yrs after David hopes for a future king,

700 yrs after Isaiah tells of a son-bearing virgin,

600 yrs after Daniel speaks of a Stone,

9 months after Gabriel appears to Mary,

Jesus is born.

[Vivek Ramaswamy @VivekGRamaswamy]

TRUTH.

1. God is real.
2. There are two genders.
3. Human flourishing requires fossil fuels.
4. Reverse racism is racism.
5. An open border is no border.
6. Parents determine the education of their children.
7. The nuclear family is the greatest form of governance known to mankind.
8. Capitalism lifts people up from poverty.
9. There are three branches of the U.S. government, not four.
10. The U.S. Constitution is the strongest guarantor of freedoms in history.