Peter Armstrong

Fortunate Son. Lucky husband to Lily, father of Silas and Stella, bassist, 4:10 miler, following Jesus in PDX. Pastor, Parklane Christian Reformed Church.

[Awful Announcing @awfulannouncing]

Andrés Cantor's call of the Gio Reyna USMNT goal on the Telemundo broadcast. 🇺🇸⚽️🎙️ #WorldCup

[Robert Griffin III @RGIII]

Never be afraid to glorify God.

Amazing to see Team USA on the biggest stage there is at the World Cup praying after the game.

God is with us.

#WorldCup

[Erick Erickson @EWErickson]

Maybe the foreigners have it right. Maybe the eagle and the flyover and the canyon and the kindness of a stranger with car keys really are worth crossing an ocean to see. Maybe, watching them fall in love with the place we take for granted, we could fall in love with it again ourselves and decide to be a little more charitable to the neighbor God told us to love, even when we cannot stand how he votes.

https://t.co/9JUUg86dls

[John Fogerty @John_Fogerty]

What a night.

Last night John had the incredible honor of receiving the Johnny Mercer Award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame. To be recognized in this way, for his songs, means more to him than he can really put into words.

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

The World Cup begins tomorrow, and many will watch the matches. Soccer reminds us of something we must not forget: life is not a race to show off on our own, but a path we learn to walk together. Anyone who does not know how to pass the ball, even if they have talent, has not yet understood the game. Anyone who does not know how to live with and for others has not yet understood life. #ApostolicJourney

[Colm Flynn @colmflynnire]

My wife @PaolaArriazaA's new documentary, Sagrada Familia: The Masterpiece Uniting Heaven and Earth, takes viewers to Barcelona for Pope Leo XIV’s historic visit, marking 100 years since Antoni Gaudí’s death and the inauguration of the basilica’s Tower of Jesus Christ.
It's a beautiful journey into faith, architecture, and Gaudí’s vision of lifting humanity’s gaze toward God.

[charity: water @charitywater]

@sqwabb @FIFAWorldCup accidentally making a strong case for clean water access wasn't on our bingo card....

the same cost of their $40 water bottles could give one person access to clean water

[Peter Armstrong @petera354]

@HenryBushnell @TheAthleticFC Love that video. None of those kids care that he didn't make champions league - he's still their hero. Hopefully this is the start of a sea change for soccer in this country! World Cup 2026 let's go!!!

[Andrew T. Walker @AndrewTWalker]

As a Protestant and a Baptist, I’m genuinely looking forward to the papal encyclical on AI tomorrow.

Whatever divides Rome and Geneva, and there is no shortage of things that do, social ethics is not where those fault lines run deepest. On questions of human dignity, the integrity of the person, and the moral ordering of technology, there is real and consequential common ground in defending the dignity of the human person against reductionist visions of humanity.

What also makes this especially interesting is the Roman Catholic appeal to natural law reasoning. Because its moral arguments are not grounded exclusively in revealed theology, but in principles accessible to human reason as such, the encyclical has the potential to speak well beyond Rome itself. It will be fascinating to see how those outside the Christian tradition engage its analysis of AI, human nature, and moral responsibility.

[Boze Herrington, Library Owl 😴🧙‍♀️ @SketchesbyBoze]

Some of you have forgotten that only three years ago you were perfectly capable of writing an essay, writing a eulogy, telling a bedtime story to a child, and it should worry you that powerful companies have convinced us we can’t do things we’ve been doing for 5,000 years.

[Calvin Knights @CalvinKnights]

Sophie Bull repeats as NCAA D3 National Champion in the steeplechase in a new NCAA III Championships time! #gocalvin

[Matt Forde @mattforde]

The single greatest squad reveal video in the history of squad reveal videos

[AFC Bournemouth 🍒 @afcbournemouth]

The next incredible chapter of this football club is written ❤️

We’ll be in Europe for the first time in our 127-year history next season 🌎

On to Sunday for one final push to find out which competition 💪

[Jason Kovacs @jasonkovacs]

Many pastors carry a pressure unlike anything else in history. The temptation to compare, to innovate, to keep up, to launch a podcast, to preach at a certain level, to grow the church, and to produce visible results are just a few. So many begin to feel like failures, questioning whether the ordinary means of grace can really accomplish what today’s demands require.

Christ never called pastors to be celebrities, brands, or ministry entrepreneurs. He called them to be faithful shepherds. The Word preached, the sacraments administered, prayer offered, and people loved may seem ordinary in a world obsessed with metrics and platforms, but God has always delighted to work through what appears weak and unimpressive.

The pressure to produce what only God can give is crushing. Results belong to Him. We plant, water, but God gives the growth (1 Cor 3:6). Pray for pastors today!

[Camus @newstart_2024]

“TikTok is the fentanyl of social media.”

Jonathan Haidt didn’t mince words on the High Performance podcast. He called it the number one destroyer of attention, focus, and executive function in kids, and by extension, human potential.

He sees students in his class spending six hours a day on it. Not scrolling casually, living there. Skipping homework, skipping friends, just endless algorithm-fed dopamine. The Chinese version keeps kids focused and limited. Ours? It weaponizes micro-pauses to push pro-anorexia content to teenage girls in days. No social graph, just pure brain-hijacking precision.

That hit me hard. We’ve normalized something that’s quietly rewiring an entire generation’s ability to think deeply or sit with discomfort. I’ve gotten stricter at home because of stuff like this - the data is too consistent to ignore.

In a world selling constant distraction as entertainment, protecting real attention might be the ultimate parenting (and self-parenting) battle left.

What’s been your line with TikTok or short-form apps — full ban, strict limits, or something else?

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Winston Churchill fought his depression with bricks. He'd lay them for hours at his country home in Kent. He joined the bricklayers' union. And in 1921 he wrote about why it worked. It took psychology another 75 years to catch up.

He called his depression the "Black Dog." It followed him for decades. His method for fighting it back was as basic as it sounds: laying brick after brick, hour after hour.

Churchill spelled out his theory in a long essay for The Strand Magazine. People who think for a living, he wrote, can't fix a tired brain just by resting it. They have to use a different part of themselves. The part that moves the eyes and the hands. Woodworking, chemistry, bookbinding, bricklaying, painting. Anything that drags the body into a problem the mind can't solve by itself.

Modern psychology now calls this behavioral activation. It's one of the most-studied depression treatments out there. Depression sets a behavior trap. You feel bad, so you stop doing things, and doing less means less to feel good about. Feeling worse makes you do even less. The loop tightens until you can't breathe inside it.

Behavioral activation breaks the loop from the action side. You schedule the activity first, even when every part of you doesn't want to. Doing it produces small rewards: a wall gets straighter, a painting fills in, a messy room gets clean. Those small rewards slowly rewire the brain. Action comes first, and the feeling follows.

Researchers at the University of Washington put this to the test in 2006. They studied 241 adults with major depression and compared three treatments: behavioral activation, regular talk therapy, and antidepressants. For the people who were most severely depressed, behavioral activation matched the drugs. It beat the talk therapy. A 2014 review of more than 1,500 patients across 26 trials backed up the result.

Physical work like bricklaying does something extra on top of this. It crowds out rumination, the looping bad thoughts that grind people down during the worst stretches of depression. Bricklaying needs both hands and gives feedback brick by brick: each one is straight or crooked. After an hour you can see exactly how much wall you built. No room left for the mental chewing.

The line George Mack used in his post, "depression hates a moving target," is good poetry. The science behind it is sharper. Depression hates a brain that has somewhere else to be.

[Peter Armstrong @petera354]

BLAZERS WIN! Bring on the spurs, let's go boys

[Wes Huff @WesleyLHuff]

This Easter, I invite you to look at Jesus, consider what he said and did, and ask for yourself what I believe is the most important question you will ever answer: Did he really leave behind an empty tomb? And if he did, what does that mean for you?

This video was made possible and in collaboration with my friends at @ChildlikeMedia.

[Scotty Smith @ScottyWardSmith]

"Legalism was a poor religion which only tended to make me gloomy, stupid, unsociable, and useless.” John Newton (Author of Amazing Grace).