CHICAGO, IL (June 10, 2016) — Covenanters routinely share links to social media articles and videos that Covenant News Service believes may be of interest to others. Each Friday we post five of them. Following is a sample of those submissions—their inclusion does not represent an endorsement by the Covenant of any views expressed.

Jack Nicklaus Designs Course for Wounded, Disabled Vets

Jack Nicklaus designed American Lakes Veterans Golf Course in Tacoma, Washington, as a nine-hole course for disabled veterans back in 1957. The golf legend, who has designed 400 courses, recently redesigned American Lakes and turned it into a full 18-hole course that opened earlier this month. There are no others like it. It also happens to be run entirely by volunteers.

From the article: “ ‘I’m telling you, anyone who comes out here will think they’re in heaven,’ (board member Ken) Still said.”

Phone Sick at Camp

Many kids—and their parents—have struggled to some degree with separation anxiety when they go off to camp. In this age of cellphones and constant connection, that challenge has intensified. But this article suggests that a week without access to phones can actually foster better communication.

From the article: “A study [showed] that sixth graders who spent just five days at a tech-free sleepaway camp developed greater understanding of real-world interpersonal communication cues, including a better ability to read facial expressions, make eye contact, and interpret tone of voice and other prompts, such as posture and keeping an appropriate spatial distance with others.”

Myth of Young Artistic Genius Robs Adult Creativity

Our God is a creator and has placed within each of us a desire to create in one way or another. Why would we reject that? The truth is, too often we come up with plenty of reasons, but Julia Cameron isn’t buying any of them. In other words, don’t give in to the thief who comes to kill, steal, and destroy what God has placed in our hearts.

From the article: “Because many people haven’t tried painting or poetry since they were young, they make the mistake of believing that youth and creativity are inextricably linked. But creativity is always with us. It doesn’t mysteriously dry up when we hit age 65. Or 55. Or 35. Or 85. Or any other arbitrary number we might assign. It is never too late to explore our creativity, despite what an ageist society might want us to believe.”

Passive-Aggressive Hymns to Help Children Grow in Morality and Develop Character

From the article: “As parents and teachers, we just seem to want something cheesy, easy to remember, and ever so slightly passive-aggressive to pull out in those moments when we’re trying to convey, for the zillionth time, that biting your preschool friends is not living your best life.”

The Sun Is Always Shining in Modern Christian Pop

No passive aggressive hymns here. The writer and researcher offers data to support what you probably already knew about the pervasive optimism in contemporary Christian music. What’s unclear is why the author chose to compare current lyrics to those in shape-note hymns.

From the article: “I took a look at the last five years of Billboard’s year-end top 50 Christian songs to see whether Christian pop is unrelentingly cheerful. I looked at pairs of concepts across the entire collection of lyrics (life and death, grace and sin, etc.) and calculated the ratio of positive to negative words. For every pair I checked, positive words were far more common than negative ones.”