Get in the Word

I am shocked about how many people have actually never read the Bible or even a book of the Bible all the way through! I was listening to statistics of how 71% of high school graduates will never read another book and how 48% of college graduates won’t either. I realized that literacy for Americans is on the wane. Recently, I began reading the Bible like story again. Did you know in Matthew chapter eight there were actually two demon-possessed guys that were delivered when the demons went into the pigs? I didn’t and I have a Masters Degree in Theology. How come we only hear about the one? Did one become a disciple or did one simply not follow? So many have never even read the wonder of it all and others have become too familiar and approach the Bible in snippets. (I’m guilty of that at times.) “Faith Comes By Hearing” has a mp3 player where in 28 minutes a day you can listen to the entire New Testament in 30 days—and it’s very well done. There are dozens of reading programs online that can take you through the Bible in a year. I challenge you to start somewhere and fall in love with the beauty, the mystery and the power of God’s Word.

What is Tyranny?

With the bailout of Wall Street and the pervasive incompetence of our goverment, I consulted the declaration of independence and found these words comforting : "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
Immediately following are a list of grievances against the King--most of which presently exist and a whole new modern list could be added. Democracy has afforded us the opportunity to vote in and out the representatives that lead us the problem now it seems is that these leaders flock together in partisan huddles immune to the voices of the people that placed them there. Tyranny is when the people against their wishes have a government do something else. Abortion, prayer removed from schools, unjust war, free market bailouts, taxation without representation....and the list goes on.

Childlike Faith

Last week my eight year old decided she would bake five loaves of bread every week for 50 weeks and charge $5 in order to raise money for the Student Center building fund. If she was faithful she’d be able to give $1250.00 to the building. This week she received a check in the mail for $1250.00 and the contributor said they only wanted one loaf. Instantly my little entrepreneur went to doing the math, and realized, as she put it “It’s a miracle--God multiplied the loaves and I’ll be able to give $2500.00 to the Student Center.” We were all amazed as we watched God provide in a miraculous way. No wonder He says ‘you must come to me as a child to enter the kingdom.’