Blog: June 2018

This blog entry is from a Facebook post written on 6/8/2018... It’s taken me a while to put into words how I’m feeling after hearing the news that Anthony Bourdain took his life this morning. My initial reaction was to throw my phone across the room as I saw the headline. I actually cried out so loud that my family came running into my room! My heart broke and tears began to form (and still are). Why would he do this?! Suicide?! Really??!! WHY???!!! Anthony Bourdain had a deep impact on my life. He was a catalyst for my love of food and ...

As John wraps up his Gospel, twice he mentions that he could have written more about the life of Jesus: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (20:30-31).  “Now there are also many other things that Jesus did.  Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (21:25)....

This unit we will be talking about God’s plan for Paul, who had devoted his life to preaching the gospel and planting churches, in a frightening and dangerous position. As Paul’s third missionary journey came to an end, a prophet named Agabus warned him that the Jews would seize him in Jerusalem and hand him over to the Gentiles. (See Acts 21:10-11.) But Paul did not hesitate, knowing Jerusalem was exactly where God wanted Paul to go. Paul returned to Jerusalem and was seized by a group of Jews who wanted to kill him because of the go ...

The seventh and final novel in C. S. Lewis’s classic “Chronicles of Narnia” is The Last Battle. In this story, the children from our world who’d been magically whisked off to Narnia finally enter “Aslan’s Country”—the endlessly glorious world of the new creation (i.e., heaven!).  And once there, the great lion Aslan, “the Lord of that place,” joyously urges everyone to come “further up and further in.”  The children and the fantastic creatures who join them run through fields, up mountain slopes, even up waterfalls.  All is vast and radiant.  ...