In court, ‘guardian angels’ aim to help immigrants facing deportation
They call themselves “guardian angels.” They say they are protectors of the tens of thousands of children apprehended at the U.S. border in recent years after fleeing rising violence in Central America.
Because the government does not provide lawyers to immigrants facing removal, many of the children have ended up navigating complex deportation proceedings alone. Last fiscal year, 72% of children in deportation hearings were not represented by an attorney, according to federal data analyzed by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
Ash Wednesday: Picking and Choosing our Piety
Finally, it also puzzles me that time and energy is spent each year on extolling the virtues of Lent when comparatively little is spent on extolling the virtues of the Lord’s Day. Presbyterianism has its liturgical calendar, its way of marking time: Six days of earthly pursuits and one day of rest and gathered worship. Of course, that is rather boring. Boring, that is, unless you understand the rich theology which underlies the Lord’s Day and gathered worship, and realize that every week one meets together with fellow believers to taste a little bit of heaven on earth.
Last week three Muslim students were killed in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Their murderer was a white professed atheist. I don’t know if this was ‘terrorism’ or a ‘hate crime.’ It was terrorizing. It was hateful. I do know that when there is a shooting of non-Muslims by Muslims there is not a second of hesitation in labeling the acts terrorism. There is not a second lost in searching out the greater conspiracy behind it, usually a major, international terror organization.
Did American media gloss over this murder?
The day after the murders CNN listed the killing further down on their home page than news of the opening weekend of the film 50 Shades of Grey.
Apparently the only time Muslims are newsworthy is when they are on the shooting side of the gun.
Can I Pray for You? | One Question to the Gospel Series
We don’t pray to manipulate anyone. Prayer is not a formulaic evangelism technique. Rather, it is a real confession of our real need of God and it’s a real expression of our real care (and God’s) for the one we are speaking with. When someone detects our authentic faith and care in our desire to pray for him or her, it can connect with him or her in a way that’s different and sometimes more disarming than more abstract discussions or arguments do.
Away from the Body and at Home with the Lord
I understand that some good Christians have an underdeveloped eschatology that rarely touches on crucial New Testament themes. But many of these same Christians have a sweet and simple longing for heaven, a commendable confidence that because of Christ they will, in fact, die and go to a better place. Correcting eschatological imbalances is good, but not if it means undermining or minimizing one of the most precious promises in all the Bible; namely, that to live is Christ and to die is gain (Phil. 1:21). Even the intermediate state is indescribably good–better to be away from the body and at home with the Lord is how Paul put it (2 Cor. 5:8).
Steps You Can Take to Listen More Deeply
- Change the point of conversation from “agree/disagree” to “understanding.” There is no “winner” in a good conversation.
- Be comfortable with the idea that understanding doesn’t mean you agree. And that’s OK.
- Use phrases like “this is what I hear you saying” and see if they agree. If not…
- Ask clarifying questions like, “When you say _______________ do you mean ______________?” If they say “no” then keep asking. Come at it from other angles. Or ask them to rephrase what they are trying to help you understand. Don’t just assume because they spoke some words you are interpreting those words through their filter. Your filter may be different.
- Manage your own anxiety while paying attention to theirs. If they are getting anxious help them calm. You can ask: “You sound a little ________________. Is that how you are feeling?”
Posting a photo is the worst way to get people to see your Facebook posts
Data provided to Business Insider by the social-media analytics company Socialbakers shows just how badly photos perform compared with videos, links, and even simple text-only posts in terms of reach on Facebook.
What makes this data so remarkable is that it wasn’t so long ago that posting photos used to give brand page owners the best chance of their posts being seen by their fans (indeed, a Socialbakers study dated April 2014 declared “Photos Are Still King On Facebook”). Now the algorithm has changed, punishing photos, perhaps in response to page owners trying to game the system by constantly posting photos, or maybe because Facebook has been shifting its strategy ever more toward video in recent months.
Immersive Michael Jordan Simulator Is the World’s Coolest Basketball Court
Here’s what happens when you step inside: your actual surroundings transform. You find yourself on a basketball half-court. At first, the walls around you are white as the THX 1138 set. But then those walls come to life. Suddenly, you’re surrounded by a realistic-looking crowd, because the walls are actually massive LED displays.
But wait, there’s more: The floor beneath you morphs into parquet. Which arena’s parquet? It depends what you selected while you were waiting in line. On wall-mounted iPads outside the scene you choose a scenario, and two of them are storybook moments from Jordan’s career.
You can either try to replicate his game-winning shot in the 1982 NCAA Championship game versus Georgetown, or you can replicate his final shot as a member of the Chicago Bulls in 1998: a top-of-the-key jumper against the Utah Jazz that boosted the Bulls to their sixth NBA championship.