I just listened to “Until We Have Faces“, CS Lewis’ favorite and even finest book, according to his friend JRR Tolkien.
Have any of my thousands of FB friends read it? What did you think of it? It is not an easy read. A key comment is that God will not show his face until we have faces (an authentic self-awareness). Here is the link to the audio book.
Click to watch the video Hope in Crisis | Episode 4 | Brian C. Stiller Well put. Worth reposting.
Sandy Brown and her family have just moved to Spokane, Washington where her husband, Scott, is pastoring a new church. With a fresh start, Sandy is determined to devote more time to her four children. But, within weeks of settling in their new life, the Brown family is plunged into turmoil.
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A message of hope from Elie Wiesel – YouTube
#weremember
Our hearts were created to be filled with rising hope. For each of us in this New Year, hope is a choice. Will we be hopeful or hopeless, thankful or thankless, joyful or joyless? The late Billy Graham said that people in the most affluent societies are feeling this sense of despair and hopelessness.Sandy Brown and her family have just moved to Spokane, Washington where her husband, Scott, is pastoring a new church. With a fresh start, Sandy is determined to devote more time to her four children. But, within weeks of settling in their new life, the Brown family is plunged into turmoil.
s which can be listened to by clicking on the following link. Along with myself, Mark Hird has preached a number of sermons on the Psalms both in audio and video format. You can watch Mark’s YouTube message on Psalm 42 pt 1 and pt 2 entitled ‘Soul Hope when God seems Distant’. You can also watch Mark’s message on Psalm 107 pt 1 and pt 2 entitled ‘Crying Out to the Lord in Our Times of Trouble’.Sandy Brown and her family have just moved to Spokane, Washington where her husband, Scott, is pastoring a new church. With a fresh start, Sandy is determined to devote more time to her four children. But, within weeks of settling in their new life, the Brown family is plunged into turmoil.
What gives us hope as we remember the heartache of 9/11? Our past is gone, never to be retrieved again, except in our memories. But we can safely rest, for God is nigh. In the uncertainty of the unfolding future, we can say ‘It is well with my soul’ for God is nigh. In the pain of grief, tragedy, and unexpected suffering, we can say that there is hope, because God is nigh.
Taps is a very sad bugle song. Few songs touch our hearts more deeply. That is why it is so appropriate at military funerals. At the 1999 Taps Arlington Ceremony, Chaplain Colonel Brogan said the following:
Sandy Brown and her family have just moved to Spokane, Washington where her husband, Scott, is pastoring a new church. With a fresh start, Sandy is determined to devote more time to her four children. But, within weeks of settling in their new life, the Brown family is plunged into turmoil.
Both Catherine Parr Traill and her sister Susanna married economically-challenged Scottish soldiers who were offered land grants in the colonies. Canada began to be seen as the land of milk and honey! Altogether 655,747 people sailed away from British shores between 1831 and 1841 (almost three times as many as had moved abroad during the previous ten years).
Catharine’s book The Backwoods of Canada quickly sold its first printing of eleven thousand copies, being translated into German in 1838 and French in 1843.
Catharine Parr Trail had a remarkable ability to rise above adversity and make the best of every situation. Charlotte Grey: writes in her book about ‘the stamina, talent and determination that allowed two English ladies to overcome the hardships of pioneer life and leave a powerful legacy to Canadian culture.’ It is hard for us almost two hundred years later to fully imagine the miseries of hunger, disease, cold, and disappointment faced by our early Canadian pioneers. I was shocked to discover that both Catharine and her sister’s families came down with malaria, a widespread problem in Canada as pioneers were struggling to drain mosquito-infested swamps.
And Perseverance!’. She would assure her relatives back home that Canada is the ‘land of hope.’ Her sister Sarah spoke of Catherine/Kate: “Her blue eyes always sparkled with happiness and curiosity about the world. She had a warm smile and an air of stolid contentment, and even as a baby, Catharine ‘never cried like other children –indeed we used to say that Katie never saw a sorrowful day – for if anything went wrong, she just shut her eyes and the tears fell from under the long lashes and rolled down her cheeks like pearls into her lap. We all adored her.”
Charlotte Grey commented that in future years, Catharine would rely on her love of nature, the beauties of which she saw as the expression of God’s will, to carry her through one disaster after another:Sandy Brown and her family have just moved to Spokane, Washington where her husband, Scott, is pastoring a new church. With a fresh start, Sandy is determined to devote more time to her four children. But, within weeks of settling in their new life, the Brown family is plunged into turmoil.To purchase any of our six books in paperback or ebook on Amazon, just click on this link.
It is not enough to sing a love song once at one’s wedding. We need to re-sing it every day in a thousand ways. After 41 years of marriage, I have learnt that love needs to ‘have legs’. Love needs to be practical. Love is taking out the garbage. Love is driving the kids to school . Love is doing the dishes when you are feeling exhausted.
No one can figure out love. It just is, or it just isn’t. Love brings a contentment that makes no sense. Love is stronger than death. Thirty-three years later I realize more than ever how deeply I need my wife, how much she calls forth the best in me and our children. My wife, to put it frankly, is irreplaceable.Sandy Brown and her family have just moved to Spokane, Washington where her husband, Scott, is pastoring a new church. With a fresh start, Sandy is determined to devote more time to her four children. But, within weeks of settling in their new life, the Brown family is plunged into turmoil.To purchase any of our six books in paperback or ebook on Amazon, just click on this link.
Job went through horrendous suffering for 42 chapters, and yet he never once gave up. He was tormented by insults from his friends, harrassed by their insensitive advice and browbeaten into admitting wrongdoing that he never committed. Under attack, Job groaned, he wailed, he doubted and fell into deep depression, he lashed out like an infuriated animal….but he never cursed God. No matter how discouraged he was, he clung to his integrity. He never gave up his rock-bed conviction that he was not to blame for his terrible illness. Thousands of years later, we modern, scientifically-sophisticated people are still often blaming people when they become sick. Even in 1997, we can too easily be just like Job’s three comforters who just made their friend feel worse. “Oh, you’re sick in hospital with cancer…Obviously you are not thinking enough positive mental thoughts, or jogging enough, or eating enough granola.” One way or another, we can slip into psychosomatically blaming others for their illnesses.
philosophers, and scientists have turned time and again to the book of Job? Perhaps because it easily takes its place among the masterpieces of the world’s literature. The author of Job was a poet of rare genius who powerfully expressed our deepest feelings and thoughts. Sooner or later, we all identify with Job because suffering is part and parcel of life. We are bonded to Job through our common experience of pain. Many reject God, but no one rejects Job. Simply by suffering so greatly and hanging on for dear life through it all, Job has won our hearts.
Job in his sufferings, said Mike Mason, resembled Jesus on the cross. The only person who has ever endured more than Job was Jesus of Nazareth. We do not need to have nails driven into our hands and feet to know what a cross is. A cross is a cross. To be crushed is to be crushed, and we all have had a taste of this. Job in his suffering was looking for what could only be found in a manger, on a cross, in an empty tomb. The key to Job’s sufferings, and indeed to life itself, is the cross. Jesus did not rise above suffering; he went through it. Jesus let himself be captured by soldiers, tried by legalists and bureaucrats, condemned by a mob, scourged by mockers, and finally pinned and exhibited like a specimen insect… No amount of suffering could shake either Jesus or Job from their rock-bottom clinging to God. Though he slay me, said Job, yet will I trust in Him. We can either curse God and die, or bless God and live. May we choose Life today that we and our children may live.Sandy Brown and her family have just moved to Spokane, Washington where her husband, Scott, is pastoring a new church. With a fresh start, Sandy is determined to devote more time to her four children. But, within weeks of settling in their new life, the Brown family is plunged into turmoil.
Dr. Swindoll met a man who told Chuck of his need to work hard at being happier. He said that he had been reared in an ultraserious home. “We didn’t talk about our feelings…we worked…Funny thing…in my sixty-plus years I have achieved about everything I dreamed of doing and I have been awarded for it. My problem is that I don’t know how to have fun and enjoy these things hard work has brought me. I cannot remember the last time I laughed–I mean really laughed.”
and downside of our drive to achieve. Jokingly speaking of an ‘elite club’ High Achievers Anonymous, Chuck spoke compassionately about the high cost that our work addictions play in our primary relationships. The tragedy is, enough is never enough. Life becomes reduced to work, tasks, effort, an endless list of shoulds and musts…minus the necessary fun and laughter that keeps everything in perspective. Chuck says that there is always one telltale sign when pride takes charge of our life: the fun leaves.
G.K. Chesterton also commented: “I’m all in favour of laughing. Laughter has something in common in it with the ancient winds of faith and inspiration; it unfreezes pride and unwinds secrecy; it makes men forget themselves in the presence of something greater than themselves; something that they cannot resist.”Sandy Brown and her family have just moved to Spokane, Washington where her husband, Scott, is pastoring a new church. With a fresh start, Sandy is determined to devote more time to her four children. But, within weeks of settling in their new life, the Brown family is plunged into turmoil.life is a gift
Journey • Explore • Discover: Being human beings in a technology dominated world—The Technojungle
Lectures in Jewish History and Thought. No hard questions, please.
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