Don’t Ask Moms to Stand in Church This Sunday
It’s not just infertile couples who may find it awkward to attend church on Mother’s Day. The list can also include:
- Singles who desire to be married and have children.
- Parents who’ve experienced miscarriage, stillbirth, or the death of a child.
- Stepmoms helping to raise children who don’t value them.
- Couples facing hurdles in the process of adoption.
- Foster parents who’ve chosen to refrain from being called “mom” and “dad” for the emotional health of a child in their care.
- Parents who’ve placed a child for adoption.
- Mothers who’ve had an abortion (and fathers who encouraged them to do so).
- Women with wayward, distant, or estranged grown children.
With so many emotions attached to the subject of motherhood, churches can find it difficult to know how to navigate Mother’s Day, which—like Father’s Day—always falls on a Sunday.
Blacks more likely than others in U.S. to read the Bible regularly, see it as God’s word
Indeed, more than half of black people in the U.S. (54%) – both Christian and non-Christian – say they read the Bible or other holy scripture at least once a week outside of religious services, compared with 32% of whites and 38% of Hispanics, according to data from the 2014 Religious Landscape Study. Indeed, relatively few black people (24%) say they seldom or never read the Bible, compared with 50% of whites and 40% of Hispanics.
Jesus and Joysticks: Why the Church Should Stop Making Fun of Video Gamers
The question becomes: Are video games an aspect of culture from which Christians should refrain? Are they irredeemable like pornography, or are they more like movies and other forms of entertainment that can become objectionable in certain circumstances?
If they are the former, they deserve a more serious response than snarky dismissals and jokes. If they are the latter—and that seems to be the case—they deserve a better response than clichés and stereotypes.
Starting anything is hard. It takes all of your effort, and then a whole helping of God’s grace to establish a gospel outpost in a hard place. But the God who called you there didn’t call you to work without ceasing. He gave you the work and invites you to rest. So, here are a few rest tips from a rest failure like me, learning how to lay down my work so I can take up some Sabbath habits.
Life gets better after 50: why age tends to work in favour of happiness
A 2008 study by economists David Blanchflower and Andrew Oswald found the U-curve – with the nadir, on average, at age 46 – in 55 of 80 countries, and they cited more than 20 other papers finding the U. It tends to show up in wealthier countries where people live longer, healthier lives. Life satisfaction statistics for the UK in 2014-15 show happiness declining from youth through middle age, hitting a low at 50 and rising to a peak at 70.
New app helps Kenyan herders cut drought risks
As well as providing detailed grazing maps showing water and grass conditions, herders can contribute information about livestock diseases, predators, and conflicts.
The app so far has about 3,000 users in Kenya, though PCI hopes to increase that to 4,000 once it finishes mapping Samburu County, home to the Samburu herding community.
The app is already used in Tanzania and Ethiopia and PCI plans to deploy it in Niger soon, said Brenda Wandera, the organization’s acting representative in Kenya.
How ‘Unconscious Bias’ Can Trick Your Brain Into Trusting People (Even if You Shouldn’t)
According to a study by researchers at the University of Utah, oftentimes when we’re trying to decide whose judgment to trust, how people talk or present themselves has greater sway over our opinion than their actual knowledge or qualifications. Traits like confidence and extroversion can easily be mistaken for expertise.
Apple took 8 days to give me the data it had collected on me. It was eye opening.
The zip file I eventually received from Apple was tiny, only 9 megabytes, compared to 243 MB from Google and 881 MB from Facebook. And there’s not much there, because Apple says the information is primarily kept on your device, not its servers. The one sentence highlight: a list of my downloads, purchases and repairs, but not my search histories through the Siri personal assistant or the Safari browser.
Authorities Say Man Was Killed Trying to Take a Selfie With a Bear
On Wednesday, taxi driver Prabhu Bhatara was driving a group of passengers from Kotapad to Papadahandi when he stopped the SUV to relieve himself in a nearby forest. Bhatara spotted the wounded bear on his way back to the car, the Hindustan Times reported.
Despite warnings from his passengers, Bhatara reportedly approached the bear while it was drinking water from a pond. As he was getting his selfie, Bhatara slipped and got too close to the bear. That’s when the bear attacked Bhatara.