What I can’t help but think in the midst of this all is that many actually have such disdain for meeting together with believers as The Church that they view Sunday worship as “lacking compassion.” And I’m left just shaking my head. Is it really that bad? Meeting together with our family which is closer than blood? With people closer than blood – with whom we share the Holy Spirit? Is it really that bad? Hearing the Savior tell his people from his Word that he loves us? Is it really a burdensome yoke that God would call us together?
Incarnation Through Middle-Eastern Eyes
We asked our language helpers what we had done wrong. Laughing they explained “On festival days, the small visit the big, and the big give out presents”, for example everyone in a family visit their eldest brother, or their parents or grandparents. When they arrive they would kiss the hand of the older person to show respect and honour. The host would then make sure that their guests are well looked after, feed them, serve them, give them gifts such as good quality chocolate or sometimes money or other presents. Being newly arrived foreigners who didn’t speak the language and thus having no social standing or relatives, naturally no-one came to visit us. We are considered ‘small’ by the culture so we are the ones who need to do the visiting.
Why in the World Did I Leave America?
And so, I choose missions all over again. I do not like leaving my friends and family who understand me to come to a place where I am not understood. I do not like leaving great Christian role models for my kids to come to a place where we can count the number of Christians we know on one hand. And I do not know if, even after a life of work, the Bakoum will even read the Bible. I do not think God is ripping these kindnesses out of my hands in being a missionary, but rather he is calling me to lay them down before him over and over again, trusting that he is keeping better kindness safe for me in Heaven. Come what may, I am all in and glad to be back.
Members of the Eagles find common ground through spiritual devotion
The Philadelphia Eagles’ recovery pool was transformed into a place of ritual one Thursday in late October at the team’s practice facility.
Five players — linebackers Jordan Hicks, Mychal Kendricks and Kamu Grugier-Hill, and wide receivers Paul Turner and David Watford — were baptized by the team pastor and tight end Trey Burton as approximately 15 Eagles players prayed around them.
The Cosmic Importance of Children’s Sunday School
If you’re walking through a time of fear and anxiety, you may scan the whole Bible to find relevant words, but I’ve found the best way is to have intuitions so shaped by the rhythm and flow of the text that most of it lies there submerged, poised to rise to the forefront at just the right time.
That’s why children’s Sunday school is not just another program. It can be a matter of life and death.
They’ll be home for Christmas: Five homeless children get a holiday surprise
The five brothers, ages 4 to 11, have seen a lot of places in the past year. An apartment complex that kicked them out. Crowded rooms where relatives let all five of them sleep on the floor, for a while. A rehab facility where their whole family crammed into their father’s hospital room.
But when they pulled up to the brick house in College Park with the blue shutters on Saturday afternoon, they’d never seen anything like it.
“We have a surprise for you: this is y’all’s new home,” a friend said. All five boys looked around, dumbfounded. A home of their own — the biggest Christmas surprise these boys could receive, delivered thanks to a community that made it happen.
Villager in China uses grenade to crack open walnuts for 25 years
A hand grenade was used to crack walnuts for 25 years by a villager in China who had no idea what he was using until he saw a photo of a grenade on a leaflet handed out by local police.
The man from Ankang, in China’s Shaanxi province, saw that his walnut cracker looked similar to a grenade pictured on a leaflet warning about forbidden explosives, according to Huanqiu.com.