For The Love of God

The New Sermon on the Mount

2012-12-23T07:21:00.001-05:00

More Parables For Our Times: Not Your Grandma's Prince of Peace Rev. James Martin, S.J.:

"Lord," said Nathaniel, "Did you just say 'Woe to the peacemakers?' The last time you spoke on the Mount, you said they were blessed." 6. "I changed my mind," said Jesus. "Trying to make peace is impossible. Consider the world around you. Look at the beasts of the field. Do they not fight? Do they not tear each other apart with their sharp teeth? 7. It's super dangerous. Do you think anyone can make peace? It's a waste of time." 8. The disciple whom Jesus loved said, "Lord, did you not tell us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us?" 9. "I'm re-evaluating that too," said Jesus. 10. The crowd began to murmur."

Read more...

When Mothers Cry

2012-12-20T05:36:00.002-05:00

By Rick Marschall
Special to ASSIST News Service

SWARTZ CREEK MI (ANS) -- Like a recurring nightmare, we again hear of carnage and senseless violence, a bizarre attack and unanswerable questions; and a school is again the setting. A lone perpetrator, but a million mysteries. Worse than only hearing the news, we see these days the anguish and fear, the confusion and panic; we see distraught children, and we see the tears on the cheeks of mothers.

Before those tears have dried, there are calls from some quarters to change laws and outlaw guns. But in the same week a school in China was invaded, and children died at the hands of a knife-wielding maniac. Arsonists have, throughout history, claimed the lives of men, women... and children. Innocents. History's pages are, in some ways, chronicles of the slaughter of innocents.

Would that we had the power to outlaw hatred and evil, not just guns and knives. Then we might be spared seeing mothers' tears... and mothers themselves might be spared the constant fears, and all-too-common realities, that continuously, cruelly plague them as protectors of their precious children.

Mothers' tears must burn like acid. I write as a man, a father, who cannot imagine that special bond. We grieve for mothers as well as their lost children in these nightmare situations. What I have been slowly comprehending, as time goes on, is the news footage of events around the world, seemingly different, are more and more alike to me. Mideast terrorism, wars in Afghanistan, genocide in Africa, religious persecution everywhere, and random attacks in our own neighborhoods: I used to listen to statistics, see the weapons, read the demands or justifications, the "claims of credit" of armies and groups. They all become as white noise. Now I only see, more and more, the tears on the cheeks of grieving mothers.

Are the tears of a Palestinian mother any less sacred, after a missile strike, than the tears of an Israeli mother after a bus bombing? An Afghan mother whose village has changed "sides" every week for months -- are her tears less precious when one side or the other patrols her streets? A Christian mother in Pakistan loses her child to Muslim zealots; a mother from an African tribe loses all her children when a rival tribe sweeps her village; mothers all over the globe lose their daughters to traffickers and slave masters -- do we harvest those tears to weigh and measure them... against what? The humble teardrop is a leveling agent.

There was one mother in history who shed such tears, and in fact witnessed almost all these separate, horrible events happening to her son. She experienced grief a hundredfold, for her son was persecuted, taken from her, framed, tortured, abandoned by almost everybody except her, and murdered. She witnessed it all. The woman who cried those tears was Mary. It is a risky thing to attempt to quantify grief, but hers was unique because she KNEW these things would happen to her son -- and to her -- 33 years in advance.

Mary was chosen to be the one who would fulfill prophecy, a virgin who would bear the Incarnate God, sent to humankind to assume our sins and suffer the punishment we deserve. Mary knew these Old Testament prophecies, and she listened to the angles who visited her. When she in turn visited her sister (who was pregnant with John the Baptizer), Mary spoke the classic "Magnificat":

My soul doth magnify the Lord. And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior. Because He hath regarded the humility of his handmaid; for behold from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. Because He that is mighty hath done great things to me; and holy is His name. And His mercy is from generation unto generations to them that fear Him. He has showed might in His arm: He hath scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart. He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble. ...

Christians remember Mary's prayer in the Advent season. We remember the promises of God, knowing they are blessings. We meditate upon the ways of God, as Mary ultimately had to; and about the obscene vagaries of life, as Sandy Hook mothers must.

There is sin in the world. A loving God gave us free will, desiring that we experience life. He did not create us as angelic robots. Such beings cannot know sorrow nor joy. Redemption and salvation cannot be experienced by beings who need them not. No angel ever sang "Amazing Grace" with tears of joy streaming down the cheeks.

But with life, in all its fullness, comes the other tears, to which we return in sadness; and, can we all agree, in confusion and bitterness and at times unspeakable grief. There is no escaping it. It is human nature to feel these emotions, even when we trust God fully. In our seasons of pain we can try to understand human nature, and sometimes hear people apologize for it. But our attempts to understand are futile.

In that futility -- beyond the fundamental proposition that it is a sinful nature -- we must recognize on the other hand that God's antidotes are easy to understand. He knows our sorrows, He understands our weaknesses, He feels our pain, He identifies with our losses, He has sent the Holy Comforter on whom we can call, He offers us peace that passes understanding.

Let us pray that weeping mothers and grieving families find that peace, and draw closer to, not farther from, God at these times. To lose one's faith, after losing a child, would intensify the unbearable misery of those who suffer.

It has long been warned that if God were removed, so to speak, from America's classrooms, trouble, danger, and evil would fill the void. This week one Adam Lanza entered a school to fill that vacuum. And all the mothers' tears alone cannot wash away the horror.

+ + +

Mary cried tears of joy and tears of grief, as the mother of Jesus. May the timing of the Sandy Hood school massacre in the Advent season find some little connection as we contemplate the tears of mothers. The beautiful and profound new Christmas song "Mary Did You Know" is coupled with images of Mary and her Son. They are moments of birth and joy, pride and love, loss and death, and are from the movie "Passion of the Christ." As is well known, these are difficult images to behold, so this is a Warning to Viewers; yet they correctly portray the grief of one mother who witnessed, not just learned about, the massacre of her Son.

Click: Mary, Did You Know

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=Faz9MTs8JOY#MondayMinistry_12_17_12

A Matter of Faith

2012-12-14T07:06:00.002-05:00

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

A Matter of Faith
The Power to Change Christmas

By Carol Round
Special to ASSIST News Service

CLAREMORE, OK (ANS) -- "For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given; And the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace" Isaiah 9:6 (NKJV).

Family at Christmas time making greeting cards (Photo: © Ilona75 | Dreamstime.com)

Using plain paper and a pencil, my eight-year-old granddaughter created a birthday card I will always treasure. It wasn't just the simplicity of the card but the words that touched my heart. On the front, Cheyenne had drawn an angel. At the top were the following words: "Happy Birthday, Nana. We believe in God." At the bottom, she had written, "I love you."

Her artistic endeavors spilled over inside, where two more illustrations-one of a heart sporting wings and one of yours truly-graced the pages. What captured my heart, however, were the words, "I love you to the moon and back," and "You have a giant heart as big as this."

How could a grandmother not love a card fashioned from a child's imagination as well as her heart? It's the best gift I could ever receive.

Who doesn't enjoy giving and receiving presents?

However, there is a difference between presents and gifts. Lawyer James E. Faust explains the difference. "The true gifts may be part of ourselves - giving of the riches of the heart and mind - and therefore more enduring and of far greater worth than presents bought at the store. Of course, among the greatest of gifts is the gift of love. Love seeks to give rather than to get. Charity towards and compassion for others is a way to overcome too much self-love."

A scramble to buy gifts at a superstore
on Black Friday

Self-love has led consumers to camp out days before Black Friday at superstores, hoping to be first in line to purchase big screen TVs. Self-love has led to shoppers fighting over bargains and spending more money than they can afford. Whatever you call it, it's not about Christmas. Christmas is about the birth of our Savior over 2,000 years ago.

How can we return the focus to what really matters? While commercialization has blinded many to the real meaning of Christmas, as parents and grandparents, we have the power to change it.

Book cover

A recently-released children's book, "The Sparkle Box: A Gift with the Power to Change Christmas," was written by Jill Hardie.

Because Hardie saw how easy it is for families to be ensnared in the commercial blitz and forget the deeper reason for Christmas, she found a special way to show her children the joy of giving to others and that giving, itself, is a gift. In this heartwarming, powerful book, families can rediscover the true joy of "giving unto others."

"Each year we have continued the tradition (of the Sparkle Box) and have realized that it's not only a gift to Jesus and to those in need, but a powerful way to center Christmas," says Hardie.

In a "me-first" society, it's up to us to make the change. "The Sparkle Box" is more than a book. When people band together to spread the news, in the end, it transforms the giver and the receiver-all in Jesus' name.

Carol Round turned her passion for writing into a full-time career after retiring in 2005 from a northeastern Oklahoma public school system. Her passion, however, is using her writing to inspire others. "A Matter of Faith," her self-syndicated column, is currently running in 12 Oklahoma newspapers. Two collections of her columns are also available in book form and are available through her blog, www.carolaround.com. One of Ms. Round's latest books, "Journaling with Jesus: How to draw closer to God," was just released and can be purchased at www.amazon.com or at www.journalingwithjesus.com. Readers may contact her at carolaround@yahoo.com. Carol's new book, "Sola Fide: by FAITH alone," is now available at www.amazon.com. For more inspiration, check out www.carolaround.com.

Here I Come, Ready Or Not

2012-12-06T06:01:00.000-05:00

By Rick Marschall
Special to ASSIST News Service

SWARTZ CREEK MI (ANS) -- Surveys tell us that an awful (and I do mean awful) lot of people are buying into this Doomsday Scenario. You know, the 12-21-12 Farewell Party supposedly devised by the lost civilization of infant-sacrifice folks, the Mayans. The prophesy is found in pictograms carved into a stone, a very small fragment of which was rescued from a gravel quarry. How coincidental, or not, that someone writing a book salvaged this message from centuries past, just in time for a book he was writing. And what a coincidence, or not, that the due-date for the evaporation of the universe, after all these centuries, is right about now.

There are, supposedly, many other dire predictions from many other cultures, all with the same date circled on their calendars. Or virtually so, because many of these fortune-tellers had no conception of the Christian calendar, or months and years. Ah, skeptics like me are told, it is not about dates, but how the celestial bodies line up. OK, I get it. Folks could divine future events, even to precise moments -- the same folks who were incapable of surviving as societies, much less inventing doorknobs. I might be straying from the fine points of documentary evidence, but you get my point.

Scientists today could be busier enumerating new varieties of nitwits infesting our society, than tracking the veracity of such theories. There are many adherents indeed, and among them are, perhaps not surprisingly, scientists, who are no less immune than others in subscribing to crackpot nostrums. Among them, also, are many Christians, who should know better.

Near the top of many reasons why Bible-believers should not pay attention to a word of this nonsense is God's familiar injunction that "No one shall know the day or the hour" of the end of things. Not angels, not even the Son, will know. It is God's prerogative.

Isn't it odd that so many people caught up in this mania are also worried about the future of the economy, and the Middle East, and, oh, the football season, so fervently? The "fiscal cliff"? Hey, forget about it!

The Doomsday Scenario is nonsense -- just a diversion like news about celebrity infidelities, and tabloid stories about dogs who play chess.

To step even further back, however, there is an extra reason to put the "Fiscal Cliff" in a more proper perspective. I reckon that America's economy went off a cliff a long time ago. Policies, corruption, irresponsibility... we can see now that there were no exit ramps. It was inevitable. The only question is how hard the crash will be. But there are even more serious cliffs we are headed toward at 80 miles an hour, chatting on our cell phones, and scarfing down fast food. Driving at night. With our lights out. And with bad brakes

Christians: what about the moral cliff? How rotten have we let society become on our watch?

Parents: what about the "nuclear-family" cliff? Do we honor the family unit, do we keep our households intact, do we set good examples, do we teach discipline and exhibit leadership?

Businessmen: are we good stewards of the resources we manage, and the welfare of our employees?

Civic leaders: does the government help or hinder average citizens? Are you continuing the Founders' visions of letting free people make free decisions? Are you penalizing success in today's economy?

Celebrities: are you good role models for your audiences? Do you promote moral values and decent behavior? Do you realize the impact you have when you traffic in sex and drugs and self-indulgence? IS it all about money?

Clergy: is it more important to dilute your message in order to attract and keep church members; or, rather, to hold high the gospel message -- sometimes hard, always uncompromising -- and trust the Holy Spirit, that Truth will draw all unto it? Do you really think that watering down the Word will inspire youth to trust it... or trust you, in the essential matters of life?

We have been driving toward, and over, many "cliffs" in America for quite some time. If you remember thinking you had a smooth ride back in the day, maybe it was because we have been, for some time, sailing through clear air, where there are no bumps in the road. But there will be a hard fall. A dead end.

Oh. Back to "knowing the day and the hour." If you read carefully, the Bible DOES teach that we can know when the Lord signals the End of Time.

Here it is: When we least expect it.

So forget the Mayan Calendar, and think "larger" about Fiscal Cliffs. Let the Bible be your calendar, let the Bible be your roadmap.

+ + +

Often you will hear, in apocalyptic movies and even TV commercials, the music of Carl Orff. So we shall not disappoint here. "Carmina Burana" was composed in Germany in 1935-36, a cantata based on the poems found in medieval works by Benedictine monks from roughly the 14th and 15th centuries. The first movement is titled "Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi" or "O Fortuna," lamenting the hopes and disappointments of worldly desires. The performance in Maastricht, the Netherlands, is by Andre Rieu and his typical, and typically impressive, cast of thousands.

Click: O Fortune

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=4QPU1VpPn2s#MondayMinistry_12-3-12

No Happy Ending-Yet

2012-06-11T12:45:00.000-04:00

By Jeremy Reynalds
Senior Correspondent for ASSIST News Service

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (ANS) -- It was a Saturday morning to take care of some errands and I hadn’t really planned on homeless outreach, but God had other ideas.

Driving down a busy road planning to get on the highway and ultimately head towards Joy Junction, I spotted from the corner of my eye a couple of homeless guys on the other side of the road outside a hotel.

I did a quick U-turn and headed back toward them. I parked in the hotel lot, grabbed a couple of fast food cards and walked a few feet over to the men.

One guy was sitting up. He was wearing a well worn shirt and jeans, and had a backpack and a radio by his side next to a blue Walmart shopping bag. I asked him if he was hungry. He quickly responded that he was. I gave him my Joy Junction business card and a $5 gift card, explaining that he could at least get a hamburger or two and a cup of coffee.

The man got up on his feet, thanked me and shook my hand. As he did I noticed that his hands were terribly swollen. He wobbled a bit as he stood up. Noticing numerous empty cans of Steel Reserve were scattered around where he had been sitting, I suggested he wait a bit before he made his way to get food. He said he would.

I asked the man about his friend, who had been lying down all the time we were talking. He said the guy was okay; he had just been drinking.

I guess our conversation woke him up, because this man, also surrounded by empty cans of Steel Reserve, sat up a bit. He was wearing clothes that had seen better days, and a ball cap turned backwards.

I asked him if he was hungry. In slurred speech he said he was, adding that he was also hot, tired and thirsty.

I gave him a food card, and my Joy Junction business card, both of which he carefully put in his wallet. His hands were surprisingly steady. I pointed north to the fast food restaurant where he could redeem the card for food, but seeing he was even unsteadier on his feet than his friend I also encouraged him to stay where he was for a while before walking anywhere.

Sleeping it off

However, before I knew it, he had grabbed his green bag – about the same size as carry on luggage for a plane – and wobbled precariously between cars across the road where he flopped down outside a local restaurant. Fearing for his safety, I called the Albuquerque Police Dept.

They promised to send an officer. I waited a few minutes, but no officer came, so I drove across the road to the restaurant where the guy was sacked out under a cool tree. In the few minutes I was there, no one appeared to notice the man. It was almost as if he was part of the landscape.

As I pulled back onto the street, the first guy waved. He had also manoeuvered his way across the street and was sitting on the sidewalk. He waved.

As I drove on, I wondered what experiences these two had been through that would make them want to spend the morning drinking. It wasn't like they were having “fun,” or even just getting slightly "buzzed." They'd acknowledged that they were both hot, hungry, thirsty and downright uncomfortable.

Yes, I’m sure by now that they were both chronic alcoholics, but the descent into alcoholism doesn’t come overnight. What made them both begin that downward slide? Genetic predisposition, abuse so bad they just wanted to escape the daily monotony of life, depression? I’ll probably never know!

I can't report any success stories with these two. I pray that ultimately the Holy Spirit breaks through to them, and they find freedom from their addictions and whatever drove them to the place where I found them. I am glad, though, that I spotted these guys-invisible to many, and just “a couple of drunks” to others. Would you please say a prayer for them? A happy ending is still possible!

Jeremy Reynalds is Senior Correspondent for the ASSIST News Service, a freelance writer and also the founder and CEO of Joy Junction, New Mexico's largest emergency homeless shelter, http://www.joyjunction.org He has a master's degree in communication from the University of New Mexico, and a Ph.D. in intercultural education from Biola University in Los Angeles. His newest book is "Homeless in the City."

Additional details on "Homeless in the City" are available athttp://www.homelessinthecity.com. Reynalds lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. For more information contact: Jeremy Reynalds at jeremyreynalds@comcast.net.

New novel ‘Walkout’ learns from religious leaders who have fallen from grace

2012-06-08T08:29:00.000-04:00

Book reveals how love and forgiveness can help their congregations recover

By Michael Ireland
Senior International Correspondent, ASSIST News Service

ATLANTIC, IA (ANS) -- Since retiring as an English teacher, Allen Stark has become an author, syndicated columnist, and newspaper reporter.

For several years he had wanted to write a Christian novel entitled, ‘Walkout’, which has now been published by Tate Publishers.

Journalist and author Allen Stark

Stark told ANS that a great deal of what he shares in the story resulted from watching, listening to, and interacting with those in several Christian communities over the period of years since rededicating his life to the Lord in 1985.

“I have now seen how things work and don’t work, depending on the individual Christian’s focus, and how they ‘walk out’ of situations rather than helping to make things better,” he said.

Stark says he wanted to make it obvious to those reading his book that there have been several religious leaders who have fallen from grace and how many of those in their congregations walked out on them, never to return.

“My intention for writing the story was not to dwell on the fall, but on the restoration process,” he said.

“I wanted to show how God used those who listened to His voice, especially after the fall. I wanted to show how God can work on hearts and minds to bring about change.”

Stark continued: “One of the most important elements I wanted to cover in the story was to try and get readers, especially the younger generation, to understand what religion should be about—helping, serving, and getting out of one’s comfort zone.”

“I have written ‘Walkout’ not as a template and format to follow, but more to present ideas and concepts to think about and hopefully to provide more hope to a hurting world.”

Stark said the bottom line as to why he wrote the story is the fact that love and forgiveness is our most important legacy.

“It’s not what you do, but how much love you put in to it that matters. I hope that those who read Walkout will see God’s love through my efforts to convert fact to fiction as part of my love for writing,” he said.

Stark explained that ‘Walkout’ is about how God uses those who listen to His voice to tell the love story of grace, mercy, redeeming love, and passion for His children.

He stated: “Those who are being called to walk in clear, uncompromising discernment and have watched the stars of religion fall, struggling with becoming critical and keeping their focus on the cross, will find the story thought-provoking.”

Cover artwork for 'Walkout'

'Walkout' contains an original plot, offering not only literary entertainment but encouragement to the reader as well. It offers some interesting views of how God relates to His people. It will not only encourage those who already know Him, but also engage those who have not yet recognized His work in their lives.

Those who have read the story have made comments such as, “What the author shares has the power to convict, draw tears and create hope for a brighter future within the Church.

Using a plot woven with characters to whom anyone can relate, he has created a book that not only entertains but truly makes a reader stop and think about their own heart and motives.”

Another reader commented, “Thank you for writing ‘Walkout.’ It really has me rethinking my walk with the Lord. For some time He has been trying to get my attention on getting back to a closer relationship with Him. It is a book that demands a second and even possibly a third reading.”

Christian author, Dan Parkins, says, “From the first moments of engaging the book ‘Walkout’, written by Allen Stark, I couldn’t help but be drawn into the eerily familiar atmosphere from which much of this book was written. I too had experienced my own ‘walkout’ of sorts, from a triumphantly wonderful pastor falling from sin to people disheartened by the political make-up and fear of man that seems to be so prevalent in church today.”

Parkins added: “Some could say I’ve lived parts of it, and from that vantage point, I couldn’t help but look in the mirror and see my own reflection in this book. I once heard it stated that a good book will not merely entertain, but force you to engage yourself and ask questions that illicit change. ‘Walkout’ does exactly that.”

He concluded: “Stark is a good writer. It seems odd to say this, but in a day and age when even the script seems to be spoon fed to us, Stark writes allegorically with ease and as you work through the story, you catch a glimpse of a man who knows the literary scope to which he is attempting to write in. Honestly, I liked it.”

Stark went on to say that he firmly and personally believes that God’s kingdom does not consist of words, but of power.

“In order for His church, His people, to go forward with the gospel to the ends of the earth, we must have His power. If we want this power in our daily lives, then we must focus on the cross daily. God’s power in us will be great only if we embrace the cross of Jesus Christ. With my writing as a tool, I want to motivate born-again Christians to not move forward alone, but to join hearts together, as did the characters who walked out of the author’s story, and continue the journey God has planned and wants written.”

He states: “I also wanted my writing of the story to bring not only me joy, but joy to others by seeing how, in dealing with spiritual matters God’s way, things work out better. My wife and I have been shown that God reveals who He is by how He works things out. I wanted to share, through my writing, how He wants us to step out in faith so that we can see Him as a miracle-working God and not be surprised by anything He does.

Stark also explained that one of the things that keeps the ink flowing is facilitating of the Southwest Iowa Writers Guild, which he started in 2007.

“We have also published a weekly column called ‘The Write Stuff’. E-newsletters that publish my work include ASSIST News Service, International Press Association, Good News Daily, and Southwest Kansas Faith and Family.

He concluded: “When I am not writing, I keep busy with work in my community, especially with a group known as Circles4Success, a program begun in Ames, Iowa that works with marginalized people in our society, and which my wife facilitates.”

‘Walkout’ can be purchased through either the publisher’s bookstore at www.tatepublishing.com ,www.amazon.com , or www.BarnesandNobel.com and other sources.

** Michael Ireland is the Senior International Correspondent for ANS. He is an international British freelance journalist who was formerly a reporter with a London (United Kingdom) newspaper and has been a frequent contributor to UCB UK, a British Christian radio station. While in the UK, Michael traveled to Canada and the United States, Albania,Yugoslavia, Holland, Germany,and Czechoslovakia. He has reported for ANS from Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Israel, Jordan, China,and Russia. Michael's volunteer involvement with ASSIST News Service is a sponsored ministry department -- 'Michael Ireland Media Missionary' (MIMM) -- of A.C.T. International of P.O.Box 1649, Brentwood, TN 37024-1649, at: Artists in Christian Testimony (A.C.T.) International where you can make a donation online under 'Donate' tab, then look for 'Michael Ireland Media Missionary' under 'Donation Category' to support his stated mission of 'Truth Through Christian Journalism.' Michael is a member in good standing of the National Writers Union, Society of Professional Journalists, Religion Newswriters Association, Evangelical Press Association and International Press Association. If you have a news or feature story idea for Michael, please contact him at: ANS Senior International Reporter

A cave in The Ozark Mountains leads to creation of Silver Dollar City 1880’s Theme Park

2012-06-06T07:28:00.000-04:00

By Michael Ireland
Senior International Correspondent, ASSIST News Service

BRANSON, MO (ANS) -- With his brother Peter, Jack Herschend founded Silver Dollar City in Branson, Missouri based on the location of an old mining cave in The Ozarks. It has now become the leading theme park in the United States as the most-revisited entertainment site in the country.

“It’s been a great Christian culture to raise sons and grandchildren in,” he told me.

Herschend said that in 1946, his parents came to the Ozarks from Chicago to hunt wild flowers.

The Marvel Cave at Silver Dollar City (Courtesy Silver Dollar City)

“There’s a greater variety of wild flowers in the Ozarks here in Southern Missouri than there is any place else in the United States. And they met and fell in love with two old maids in their seventies who owned a cave.

And no electricity, no running water, no telephone -- but they owned a cave. Mary and Hugo (Herschend) ended up leasing the cave from the Lynn sisters because they had no family to leave the cave to.

“We were here in the cave business for four years when I happened to go by the Post Office in downtown Branson and saw that our parking lot was for sale. The parking lot had been school grounds for a town that was at the mouth of the cave. And we had no idea we had to buy back the school grounds in order to make the lease from the Lynn sisters good, and thus was born the idea of rebuilding this whole town.”

Jack continued: “Now I’d like you to believe that we had this 200-year plan (and that) we knew that two-million people were going to visit and so on, but none of that would be true. We were totally surprised when we built the first phase of Silver Dollar City that four times more people came to see the city than had ever come to Marble Cave and so we scratched our head and said we began to think about this and that’s basically how we got our start.”

Jack, gray-haired, soft-spoken and now in his eighties, shared his love for the Lord and how he came to know Jesus as Savior.

“I was tough, I’m a far left-brained -- everything’s gotta be logical, I gotta have proof. And a traveling hardware salesman instead of playing golf every Saturday he’d grab his Bible and he’d come wherever and I thought ‘Oh gosh, John Shanahan’s here again,’ and he’d just stay with me and stay with me and stay with me, and finally I said, ‘John I’d love to believe, I want to believe partially because I admire you so much, but I can’t believe -- I need proof. So he brought me a book called ‘Those Troublesome Miracles,’ and the book described the New Testament’s thirty-five miracles of Jesus. And as I read that book and thought it’s easier to believe than try to explain away thirty-five miracles. And so that was the turning point for me, and my wife was a believer, she and I had been married six years when I became a believer; she would take our children to church every Sunday and she would invite me, but she would never push and she if she’d pushed I’d have run.

“So John Shanahan was the vehicle the Lord used -- my wife could have been such a liability -- and I love the fact that she would pray for me, she invited me, but she never pushed. That was a tremendous testimony to me of what God was all about, what Jesus is all about.”

Peter and Jack Herschend, founders of Herschend Family Entertainment which runs Silver Dollar City (Courtesy Silver Dollar City)

The Herschends, who have both now retired from running Silver Dollar City, use love as a guiding principle in running the theme park. What are some of Jack’s favorite stories of Silver Dollar City, and how love has been that guiding principle?

“I will try and tell you, but I will admit that as I tell these stories I get emotional, so I apologize if I crack,” said Jack, adding: “There are so many.”

Herschend then told me about one worker at Silver Dollar City who made a distinct impression.

“There was a big six-foot, six-inch tall man who paved roads all of his career and the last ten years he came to work at Silver Dollar City and he was a street sweeper, six-foot, six-inches tall. And one day I was coming into the park and here he was on his knees with a little girl who was in a wheelchair and he was giving her something, and I couldn’t see what it was, but after they parted and the little girl was just beaming I said, ‘Luke, what in the world is going on?’ And he said: ‘I buy five-hundred silver dollars every year and when I see a little child who has a disability I make sure that he or she gets a silver dollar. There’s love in action,” said Jack, who started weeping as he recalled the memory. “Sorry I told you I…,” he said.

“But he’s just a special person. You get to see it all over the place,” Herschend said.

Jack continued: “One of the things that we neither encourage nor discourage is for our Silver Dollar City family to witness to our guests and they find great tasteful ways to do so… They’ll do it in music -- they’ll say ‘If you’d love to stay afterwards and visit with us, we’d love to visit with you.’ They build a relationship, they ask about the guest and what’s going on in their lives and they earn the right to talk to them. So it’s a real common thing at Silver Dollar City.”

I asked Jack to tell me about the phrase used at Silver Dollar City about ‘making memories that are worth repeating.’ I asked him if he could give me one instance of someone he’d heard from that came and had a wonderful memory they said it was worth repeating?

“You ask good questions, but my problem with the questions is there are so many examples,” said Jack. “The Homestead Pickers play on the front porch of the homestead which is over a hundred-fifty-year-old log cabin and they play great Gospel music and secular music as well.

They’ve got a song that they found called ‘On My Father’s Side,’ and the story tells of Christ from the standpoint of his mother and also his father, not Joseph, but meaning God. And it is a gets you by the throat and people come back time after time and there at the front porch of the McHaffie Homestead I hear people say play ‘On My Father’s Side’ one more time. We’re the most-revisited theme park in the United States and it is stories like that you don’t find at Six Flags or Disneyland and that brings people back, and it’s a memory worth repeating.”

I told Jack that in America it seems that we can be amused until we’re out of our minds with 400 cable channels and so many ways to fill our time. Would he speak to the difference between amusement in entertainment, and something that’s godly and spiritual?

Thoughtfully and quietly, Jack responded: “I think there’s a hunger in all of us, whether we’re believers or not and often times we can’t even identify what it is. But in this day-and-age of cell phones and so, on and on, there’s a hunger to get back to some basic, something that is not electronic and Jesus fills that void and so when you let people experience in a very tasteful way…I think of it as seasoning a meal. A certain amount of seasoning makes a meal taste so much better, but if you get just a little too much of it it spoils the whole meal. A little too much witnessing can spoil the experience, but most do a great job of just giving folks an opportunity to experience Christian culture. And we have rides, and we have shows and a cave to go through, but as I listen to people they come back time after time because of the people that they’ve met here and at Silver Dollar City.”

When pressed about IPods and cell phones and everyday electronics, and being asked to go further into what’s happened in our culture, with our families still struggling with the darkness coming into our lives in so many different ways, and yet Silver Dollar City and the Herschends, their company, both Jack and his brother, have been in the midst of that culture but taken a stand, how have they been able to do that in the middle of what is closing in on families today?

“It’s really been easy,” said Jack, laughing. “It’s we’re selling something that people hunger for, as I just described. And so we don’t have to adjust to the changing times -- people are hungry for the basics of faith, the basics of family and flag, and I get emotional every time I watch our opening ceremony when we ask veterans to be a part of flag-raising and you see veterans like me right now with tears running down their face because they’re being recognized, and it’s easy to just be what we are and people hunger for that faith, that flag, that family value, and that’s not going to change. The enemy is going to come up with all kinds of innovative new things that are going to get in the way, but the hunger within all of us, that’s a constant.”

If Jack has a message for folks who may or may not have heard of Silver Dollar City, what would he like to say to them?

“You’re good,” said Jack. “If I could just take a minute I would just encourage them to seek out what is deep down in their hearts going to fulfill them and few of us take the time in our busy existence -- we just we’re driven by all kinds of influences, so taking time to just stop and think about what it is that is really important in our lives and each individual gets a chance to decide that. It’s seldom going to be making that next sale when you think about what’s going to really be important to you.

“And if folks have the opportunity, God is going to reveal Himself. If people will take the time just to stop and reflect on what is it really that is going to fulfill me. So I would just encourage people to take time to think about themselves.”

To find out more on Silver Dollar City, log-on to www.silverdollarcity.org

**ANS would like to thank Robin Frost for transcribing this interview.

Die Young Challenges Readers to Abandon the Pursuit of Happiness

2012-02-26T06:01:00.000-05:00

Bestselling Authors Urge Readers to ‘Bury Your Self in Christ’

By Dan Wooding
Founder of ASSIST Ministries

WHEATON, IL (ANS) -- Award-winning and bestselling authors Hayley and Michael DiMarco live in the real world. They understand that self-fulfillment is part of the American Dream. They also understand that the only way to a truly rich and fulfilled life is death: death to self.

Book cover

Their counter-cultural message is spelled out clearly in the pages of Die Young: Burying Your Self in Christ (Crossway, January 31, 2012). The DiMarcos guide readers into a practical understanding of what it means to become “living sacrifices” for Jesus Christ.

According to a news release from Jana Muntsinger of McClure Muntsinger Public Relations, Die Young is a manifesto written by a transparent husband/wife duo who are committed to living intentionally and helping others do the same. Today’s culture drives people towards selfishness and ego, but Die Young flips that notion on its head and offers a better way—a way that leads to life as God intends. As Paul calls to readers in Romans 12, so the DiMarcos call their readers to become “living sacrifices.”

The DiMarcos weave Biblical teaching with “first person” confessionals from each of the authors, so Die Young is both theologically rich and completely relatable. Hayley confesses how her obsession with perfection permeates led to her first engagement being called off. Michael describes how doing time in jail was exactly what he needed to wake up to whole concept of dying young. Michael explains, “For me, to die young was to remove me as the center of my world, and put God and others in my place, loving and serving them as much, if not more, than I do myself.” Hayley adds, “It’s about an ability to deny yourself so you don’t serve your desires over God’s.”

Michael DiMarco

Based on the premise that the gospel turns life upside down, the DiMarcos explain the paradoxes that result: death is the new life; less is the new more; weak is the new strong; slavery is the new freedom. Throughout Die Young they examine what the life and death of Christ means for themselves, as well as those who have given their lives to Jesus.

The release went on to say that the DiMarcos hope Die Young will turn the reader and his or her priorities upside down. The authors believe “dying young” will show readers:

* How in today’s society people bury themselves in things they hope will save them, or bring them comfort. But it never works.

* The deception of freedom—demanding to make one’s own choices, wanting to be subject to no one. True freedom is only found by surrendering.

* The only path to real life is through death— dying to the obsessive need to please yourself, to comfort yourself, and to enjoy yourself, so that you can live only to please God.

* By dying young, you give all of your needs, fears, worries, wants, hopes, dreams, and failures over to God, who can handle them.

While many of the titles published by this popular husband/wife duo have been geared toward youth, Die Young expands their target audience to all age groups. The DiMarco’s are convinced that no one is too old to die young. Michael explains, “It is never too late. Too much of your life has not passed. You have not made too many mistakes for God to forgive. But when you are determined to completely bury yourself in Christ so deep that nothing can ever really harm you again, that’s when his love is all that surrounds you and all that contains you and all that you contain. Then life is a whole new ball game.”

Hayley DiMarco

Hayley and Michael DiMarco form Hungry Planet books. Since their first book hit the shelves in Fall 2003, Hungry Planet has published more than three dozen titles and, as of 2011, sold over 1,000,000 books. Their newest title, Die Young: Burying Your Self In Christ, is a challenge to readers to die to self and live for Christ, in ways that are completely counter-cultural. Hayley has written numerous best-selling books, including God Girl, Mean Girls, Idol Girls, Dateable, and the 2007 and 2010 ECPA Christian Book Award winners, Sexy Girls and B4UD8. Michael’s best-selling books include; God Guy, Cupidity, Unstuff, All In, Almost Sex, and the 2010 ECPA Christian Book Award winner, B4UD8. Michael and Hayley live with their daughter on the shores of Old Hickory Lake just outside of Nashville, Tennessee. More information can be found at hungryplanet.net.

Crossway is a not-for-profit Christian ministry that exists to proclaim the gospel through publishing in order, by God's grace: To assist individual Christians and the church in growing in knowledge and understanding of the Christian life; To bear witness to God's truth, beauty and holiness, and to the Lordship of Christ in every area of life; To help bring men, women, and children to Christ as their Lord and Savior; To glorify our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in every way. Any surplus that may arise is used solely to further the publishing ministry of Crossway.

Review copies, reprint permission and interviews are available.

Contact Jana Muntsinger, McClure Muntsinger Public Relations, 281-251-0480 orjana@mmpublicrelations.com

Note: Some years back, Crossway published my autobiography, Twenty-Six Lead Soldiers (now updated as From Tabloid to Truth), and also a book by my son, Andrew Wooding, with the intriguing title of I Wonder If Chocolate Kills Brain Cells. Both are still available via www.amazon.com

Dan Wooding, 71, is an award winning British journalist now living in Southern California with his wife Norma, to whom he has been married for 48 years. They have two sons, Andrew and Peter, and six grandchildren who all live in the UK. He is the founder and international director of ASSIST (Aid to Special Saints in Strategic Times) and the ASSIST News Service (ANS) and was, for ten years, a commentator, on the UPI Radio Network in Washington, DC. He now hosts the weekly “Front Page Radio” show on KWVE in Southern California which is also carried throughout the United States. The program is also aired in Great Britain on Calvary Chapel Radio UK and also in Belize and South Africa. Besides this, Wooding is a host for His Channel Live, which is carried via the Internet to some 192 countries and also provides a regular commentary for Worship Life Radio on KWVE. You can follow Dan Wooding on Facebook under his name there or at ASSIST News Service. He is the author of some 44 books, one of which is his autobiography, “From Tabloid to Truth”, which is published by Theatron Books. To order a copy, press this link. Wooding, who was born in Nigeria of British missionary parents, has also recently released his first novel “Red Dagger” which is available this link.

** You may republish this story with proper attribution.

I Do: Holding

2012-02-16T05:44:00.000-05:00

by Emily Wierenga

Editor's Note: This month we're in a series exploring the joys and struggles of marriage, broaching the topic from multiple angles for the sake of helping, healing, and considering.

I lie in red pajamas on the living room sofa, my husband, Trenton, on the other side in his comfy clothes—his green-ribbed shirt with the hole and his fuzzy pants that have no waist. “Our good times were more than our bad,” he says in a voice that aches.

“Yes, but our bad times were so bad.”

“But we never went to bed angry,” says Trenton. “We never stopped holding each other. Even on the worst nights, we would still watch shows together until finally you fell asleep in my arms. We ate pizza together, and I made you wings…”

“That was my one meal of the day,” I say. “I guess I was so focused on making it to that meal that I didn’t notice the rest.”

“But there was the other,” he says. “There was always the other. We never had a fight we couldn’t fix. I don’t even remember what we were fighting about. We had, maybe, four big fights, but the rest of the time, it was good. And we never stopped holding each other. Never.”

And we didn’t. We haven’t. Thirteen years after meeting at Bible School, eight-and-a-half years since kissing in my parents’ backyard under the white trellis, and six years after me trying to drive our marriage into oncoming traffic, we’ve never stopped holding.

But there were days he didn’t want to, for the skinny, and there were tears in his eyes as his wife undressed and all he could see was rib.

He married a girl he didn’t know, a girl who didn’t know herself, a girl who became anorexic like she had as a child, and he knew this the night he tried to make me popcorn, the night I screamed about the butter, asked why he had to ruin it like that?

“It’s just a bit of butter,” he said, but it wasn’t. It was him attempting to control me as my father had done, and so I made my own popcorn and the salt fell to the bottom of the bowl.

And it was three years of me drinking nine cups of coffee a day and him holding me at night while I tried to fall asleep and the insomnia always winning, it was three years of me starting awake and crying and crying and then lying on the couch and reading and reading and wondering when this would all end, this war I’d brought upon myself.

And one day, the two of us fighting again on the highway home, I turned the car into oncoming traffic.

Trent took the wheel, told me I needed to choose: him or food.

I chose him, then, the farm-boy who’d stood on my doorstep those years ago and couldn’t find the words to ask me to go on a walk, but later vowed ‘til death do us part.

I’m eating now, and sleeping now, and he doesn’t cry anymore when I undress.

And some nights, when the kids are asleep, Trent pulls out a blanket and we lie by the wood stove and talk about the day and our boys.

But mostly, we just hold each other.

As if clinging for dear life.

* * * * *

The "I Do" Collection

Image by Mary Clark. Used with permission. Sourced via Flickr. Post by Emily Wierenga, author ofSave My Children: The Story of a Father's Love.

Christianity's 'secret history' in China is long and fascinating

2012-01-03T12:33:00.000-05:00

Though Western companies, from American automakers to European luxury firms, have recently gained a foothold in China, Christian religion has played a role there for much longer than General Motors or Hermes - writes Paul Bennett.

Nonetheless, Christianity's presence in China has been "hidden from the West for many years," says Wenguang Huang in the introduction to his translation of God is Red: The Secret Story of How Christianity Survived and Flourished in Communist China (HarperOne, 2011) by Liao Yiwu, a dissident writer whose previous book landed him in jail.

Wenguang reports there are about seventy million practicing Christians in China. "In a society tightly controlled by an atheist government, Christianity is China's largest formal religion," he says in the introduction. But for many years it was severely repressed by the Communist government. The book gives voice to numerous stories--from rural backwaters to big cities--of bravery and faith under extremely trying conditions.

The book's first-person narratives are one of its many strengths. In one story, a nun born in 1908, Sister Zhang, relates how she survived under extremely dire circumstances during the Cultural Revolution, becoming a farmer after the church she lived in was confiscated by the government. In another, a Tibetan Christian, Jia Bo-er, recounts how found his path to Christianity. A Catholic, he is a firm believer in interfaith harmony, but won't pledge loyalty to the Vatican because he doesn't want to be monitored by the government.

Perhaps the most impressive story in the book is that of a man named Dr. Sun, who gave up a successful career as a surgeon to minister to impoverished communities in remote Yi and Miao villages. Sun introduces Liao to a number of people he'd never have found on his own.

"The Bible taught me to be in awe of God and to love, two important qualities that the Chinese people lacked. Too many Chinese will do anything for trivial material gains and have no regard for morality, ethics, or the law," says Sun in one passage. "How do we change that? Can we rely on the Communist Party? Can we rely on government rules and regulations? Apparently not."

Sun left his position as a prominent surgeon because he felt he couldn't be a Christian and a government official. Instead, he performs surgeries in areas where doctors are scarce and hospitals nonexistent.

Liao also recounts the tale of Wang Zhiming, who lived and preached in China's Yunnan province. Wang was arrested in 1969 for his religious work, and executed in 1973. A statue of him stands at Westminster Abbey, along with nine others recognised as Christian martyrs from around the globe.

The shadow of totalitarianism hovers over each interview. Though there are state-sanctioned churches in China now, many Christians refuse to be part of them, preferring to perform forbidden services in private homes and other locales.

Though Christianity provides a spiritual haven, says Liao (who is not a believer), he also asks some hard questions. "Will the Christian faith, like Buddhism and Taoism, make people more submissive to totalitarian power? There is an ongoing debate among Chinese scholars as to whether some Christians forgave the murderous government as a genuine display of God's benevolence--or as an excuse for cowardice."

On the other hand, Liao also suggests the remote places he has visited in order to find the subjects for his book serve as a sort of "centre point" where East meets West. Though there has been a collision of cultures, Liao says, "there is now a new Christian identity that is distinctly Chinese."

Readers of this engaging book will find that even this "distinctly Chinese" identity contains multitudes.

[With acknowledgements to ENInews. ENInews, formerly Ecumenical News International, is jointly sponsored by the World Council of Churches, the Lutheran World Federation, the World Communion of Reformed Churches and the Conference of European Churches.]

[Ekk/3]

All the New Year’s Resolutions You Need

2012-01-03T11:45:00.000-05:00

By Rick Marschall
Special to ASSIST News Service

SWARTZ CREEK MI (ANS) -- Another year, another celebration, another “back to work.” Yet if we can remind ourselves each morning that “this is the day that the Lord has made,” we can take a fresh look at 2012 and declare, “This is the year that the Lord has made!”

Let us be glad and rejoice in it!

The Year of the Lord Two Thousand Twelve. Are there challenges that loom up to the left and right? It Dozen matter! And are you one of the folks who make resolutions every New Year? If rules are made to be broken, many of our resolutions seem made to be... postponed.

Well, not surprisingly, the Bible provides all the Resolutions we need to face the new year, day by day:

1: I am the Lord your God... You shall have no other gods before Me.
2: You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything… For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God....
3: You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.
4: Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
5: Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you.
6: You shall not murder.
7: You shall not commit adultery.
8: You shall not steal.
9: You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
10: You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife… nor anything that is your neighbor's.” (Exodus 20:2-17 NKJV)

Most of us have problems with long lists. Jesus knew this, and whether He was announcing the cancellation of the Law -– since He was its fulfillment -– or wisely providing us with spiritual Cliff’s Notes, the better for us to obey and practice, He gave us two Resolutions we can adopt:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. (Matthew 22:37-40)

Two for Twelve. Happy New Year!

+ + +

And to the extent we are able to follow these commandments, keep these resolutions, we must remember that obedience is due to God. Commandments are more for our well-being than for God’s dispensation of gold stars. It is His grace, not our works, that bring favor in His sight. His Amazing Grace. Whenever you need an emotional nudge as a reminder, watch this video – a large orchestra, starting with a pennywhistle, a violin, a bagpipe, then hundreds of bagpipes performing before tens of thousands of worshipers in Berlin. Andre Rieu at a nighttime outdoor concert.

Click: Amazing Grace

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=ydwAZXG9cjM&feature=related#MondayMinistry_1-2-12

Rick Marschall is the author of 65 books and hundreds of magazine articles in many fields, from popular culture (Bostonia Magazine called him “perhaps America’s foremost authority on popular culture”) to history and criticism; country music, television history, biography and children’s books. He is a former political cartoonist, editor of Marvel Comics, and writer for Disney comics. For 10 years he has been active in the Christian field, writing devotionals; co-author of The Secret Revealed with Dr Jim Garlow. His biography of Johann Sebastian Bach for the “Christian Encounters” series (Thomas Nelson) was released in April, 2011. His history of cartoon Advertising, Drawing Power, will be published in July 2011 by the Marschall Books imprint of fantagraphics Books. In October his major biography of Theodore Roosevelt, BULLY!, will be publ;ished by Regnery History of Washington DC. He is currently working on a One-Year CDevotional for Tyndale House; and edits the the reissue of Harper's Weekly -- the Civil War Years for NOVOink e-books. Rick is a former Director of Product Development for Youth Specialties. He is recipient of the 2008 “Christian Writer of the Year” award from the Greater Philadelphia Writer’s Conference, and produces a weekly e-mail devotional, “Monday Morning Music Ministry.” His e-mail address is: RickMarschall@gmail.com.

** You may republish this story with proper attribution.

God’s Post-Christmas Present

2011-12-27T11:44:00.000-05:00

By Rick Marschall
Special to ASSIST News Service

SWARTZ CREEK MI (ANS) -- Let us turn from questions this season about “the meaning of Christmas” to the better question – “the meaning of being a Christian.”

A story:
The two men were good friends, “brothers” with the same sense of humor, who shared interests, and who could finish each other’s sentences. Ed was passionate about politics, but Kenneth was totally apolitical, so disagreements on that score never arose. Kenneth was also areligious –- somewhere between agnostic and intellectual hipster -– so the fervent Christian Ed found a challenge in his friend. Kenneth never objected to debating or receiving tracts or casual points or heavy witnessing. But he never cared much either, one way or the other.

Ed moved away from their “zone” of neighborhood contacts and frequent lunches. Several states (geographical, not psychic) separated them. Their friendship and common profession mandated continued contact, but, as these things usually go, they spoke less frequently.

After one quiet stretch, Kenneth called Ed and learned that an enormous amount of “life” had occurred since their last chat.

Ed went down a sad checklist: his work had dried up, and money was scarce. His wife was extremely sick with multiple ailments, and there was no insurance to cover the situations. Ed’s mother was dying in far-off Florida, and on the way to the train station he was rear-ended at a red light, and his only car was totaled. “Those are just the highlights,” Ed joked in their typical fashion. “It gets pretty grim after that. But we’re OK now.”

“How are you OK?” Kenneth knew that Ed was being serious here.

“Well, it was a series of amazing events, really,” Ed said. “My wife is in pretty good shape now –- the doctors were good and performed terrifically, but in a couple of instances they saw healings they couldn’t explain. After the first hospitalization, a friend in church who is an insurance agent told me that my business activities, though slim, actually qualified us for a group plan. We signed up, and there was full coverage for the later surgeries, not even a ‘cap.’”

Kenneth slipped into his old mode: “So, don’t tell me, your mother rose from the dead.”

“No, she died, but I was able to be with her in time and share a beautiful Good-Bye. While I was gone, some friends in church whose house is so big they almost have their own Zip Code, took the kids in and drove them to school each morning. And the car? Yes, it was totaled, but our pastor lent us his van -– an extra since his daughter went to college, for as long as we needed it.

“God seemed to provide at every turn.”

Kenneth was silent for a moment. When he spoke, it surprised Ed slightly. “You know, you’re always saying how God provides this, and Jesus answered that. Why don’t you listen to what you just said? The doctors were good, on their own. Your friend was looking for an insurance commission. It was friends who offered their house to your kids, not Jesus. And the van was a spare in the driveway. It was your FRIENDS who did these things for you, not Jesus.”

Now Ed was silent for a moment. “No... it was Jesus,” he said. “He was just working through my friends.”

Christmas is over, but the Gift remains. No, let us put it the proper way – Christmas is over, and the Gift remains! Hallelujah! A gift can be seen as neutral, by itself. Its significance derives from who gives it; the intention of the giver; the attitude of the recipient; the use to which the gift is put. Christ was God Incarnate, God with us, our means to forgiveness, salvation, eternal fellowship with God. We accept Jesus into our hearts. But what we DO with this Gift from God is the real significance.

Jesus “in our hearts” is not to hide Him, but to make Him part of our relational DNA, an aspect of our new selves. It can happen. He shines forth, He affects our natures. We show Him, we share Him. That is the real gift – the miracle of Christmas. You don’t have to hunt ancient or arcane scripture to see this happen.

Just ask Ed.

+ + +

Joy Williams has written an anthem about what it means to be a Christian. First, to accept Him. Second, to “be” Him to other people. That’s not a long list. But Joy puts it so beautifully.

Click: Do They See Jesus in Me?

** You may republish this story with proper attribution.

Advent Traditions

2011-12-13T12:46:00.000-05:00

by Laura Boggess

The morning we trim the tree, fat flakes dress the earth in threads of white. In the boughs of the naked maple—a flash of red—a cardinal in a nest of snow. I watch from the window, my feet planted in warm. The house glows soft with twinkling light.

It’s quiet—quiet here, quiet inside the walls of me. I touch the moment gently—feel around inside my heart.

Is this how it feels, I wonder?

I’ve been looking for Christmas for 18 years—ever since I married my husband and felt free to open my heart to this beloved tradition. I grew up in a home that did not celebrate the birth of the Christ-child, see. And every year when December 25 approaches, I feel the bindings of those roots. I want to leave a different legacy for my children—one that delves deep into the mystery of Christmas. Every year I look for just the right formula, try on different activities with my family in the quest for the perfect tradition.

So, when when my friend Charity asked me to help her with an Advent Community Writing project this year, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to spy on the traditions of others. We would like to invite you to consider what Advent means to you, its old traditions, its new lessons, and join us for a community writing project, Charity said. And I thought: Yippee! Maybe…just maybe, I will find the perfect fit for my own little family amongst these Advent experts.

But when I visited each of the fifty-five participants who linked up, I did not find the perfect tradition formula. What I found instead was a deeper appreciation for the sacred season we call Advent.

Over at the blog Straight Meandering, I was reminded to slow and savor the passing moments:

And so it is in every moment of every day. God is here, inhabiting the small and the humble. But we hurry from moment to moment and forget to see. We forget to dwell now, be still, know God.

Member KD Sullivan’s words from Journey to Epiphany urged me to open my eyes and see with Advent eyes every day.

And I find Him in the most common of places.
A bench. In a park.
A King. Amidst the ordinary.

Kimberlee Conway Ireton wonders, “Who will show us the way to the Christ child?” And in her reflectionThe Road to Bethlehem, she leads me there.

Sandra Heska King’s words were such a gift, as she celebrated the life of her mother and grieved her loss.

The joy of seeing deep in simple things. It’s a gift…I think of One who was born in a simple place, cradled by simple hands. His own hands healed the hurting and stretched out to conquer death. And so we dance. And the gift goes on.

Marilyn Yocum encouraged me to let the story fall fresh on my ears this Advent. Linda Chontos shared her family’s sweet tradition of baking a birthday cake for Jesus. And what is one to do when the empty next shanghais Advent? Write a poem about it, of course. I think Jim Schmotzer has the right idea about new traditions.

If you are Nancy Franson and her friend Ethel, the annual Christmas photo with Santa takes on new meaning—fuzzy slippers and all! Pastor and blogger Brian Owen shared the wonder of waiting for his own child to be born during the Advent season. John at the beautiful due suggests that our Advent celebrations may be a bit too sedate and challenges us to crank up the volume.

There are so many beautiful essays and I wish I could quote them all but when I read Patricia Spreng's reflection called Trying on Advent, I realized this is it. This is how I feel. I am growing into Advent. And it's okay if I don't have it all figured out. That's part of the mystery of it all.

The snow that piles in the eaves where branches meet reminds me of home. There is a great open field between me and that place now and today it is blanketed in snow. The cries of the past are muffled by this insulation and I don’t even think about the what-ifs. Today—I remember how beautiful the snow slept in the trees of my childhood home. This quiet as the snow drifts silently down.

This must be it, I think. This must be peace.

The water that has passed under the bridge is frozen and the light in the sky fades fast. But this shimmer—this glimmer--stays inside of me.

Let it shine, I pray. Let it shine.

If you'd like to visit all of these beautiful Advent reflections, hop on over to Charity's blog Wide Open Spaces. Be prepared for a retreat when you enter in. And here is a big thank you to all our community writing project participants. Happy waiting, sweet friends. Let's wait together.

Image by Noukka Signa. Used with permission. Sourced via Flickr. Post by Laura J. Boggess.

Not Just a Crown, But Diamonds

2011-12-12T10:34:00.000-05:00

By Rick Marschall
Special to ASSIST News Service

SWARTZ CREEK MI (ANS) -- “As each long day rolls by and falls behind me, In the lonely night there's a peacefulness I've found. Though I'm weary even then, when I rise to start again, there'll be a diamond, a diamond in my crown.” Crown? Diamonds? For US?

Heaven awaits those who believe in their hearts that Jesus is the Son of God, and share the news that He overcame death. That should be enough, more than enough, to encourage sinners whose rebellion against a just and holy God would otherwise condemn us to eternal separation from Him.

Yet the Bible occasionally talks of “treasures” in Heaven, and “crowns.” We already have mansions awaiting us -– “if it were not so,” Jesus asked, “would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you ?” -– but treasures? crowns? Will there be a hierarchy in Heaven? If so, that is God’s business, but my guess is that we won’t care. God’s children will want to be gathered shoulder-to-shoulder around the throne, singing Holy, Holy, Holy for eternity.

But let us think for a moment, as we always should once we are assured of a room in our Father’s house, of this side of Heaven’s line. James 1:12 tells us that “God blesses those who patiently endure testing and temptation. Afterward they will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love Him.” But for some who endure testing and temptation -– and so much more -– in this life, there is also the promise of virtual diamonds in that crown.

That is to say: like a diamond in the diadem, to use an ancient word for crown. The repeated word is for emphasis, like “sacrosanct,” which literally means holy and sanctified besides.

A crown with diamonds! The promise that awaits the faithful serves as a blessing beforehand.

Sweet security, unearned, and Christ besides. Some day we will understand this fully, and rejoice with each other. I’ll look for you around the Heavenly throne. God willing, you’ll be one of those with the diamonds in your crown.

+ + +

A beautiful song about this mystery and beautiful promise is highlighted by image-montage by the Beanscot Channel: “There’ll Be a Diamond in My Crown.” Written by Emmylou Harris, who sings harmony here with Patty Loveless -– two of the most beautiful voices on this side of Heaven’s line. The lyrics are sensitive and encouraging to those who are resisting life’s testing and temptations.

Click: There’ll Be a Diamond in My Crown

** You may republish this story with proper attribution.

Good News for South Asia’s Ganglords

2011-12-09T08:14:00.001-05:00

Gospel for Asia
For Immediate Release

As part of the program, these missionaries performed a cultural dance for the inmates.

An audience of 2,500 prisoners listened as missionaries shared the Good News.

Many inmates were touched by the message and afterward prayed to the Lord.

SOUTH ASIA (ANS) -- On October 2, 25 Gospel for Asia-supported missionaries brought a message of peace to 2,500 prisoners in a South Asian high-security prison.

The outreach event centered on Matthew 5:9, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” GFA regional leaders communicated to their audience of convicts, including high-profile ganglords, that all peace originates from a relationship with the living God. As one leader explained, “Peace with God, peace within our hearts and peace with one another begins with inviting the living God into our hearts.” Prisoners and guards responded positively to the message.

The program also included prayer and worship music.

At the end of the day, the team of missionaries distributed 50 New Testaments and 63 Christian books. The outreach blessed both the prisoners and the missionaries.

The missionaries ask for prayer for all the inmates and officials, that they will read the literature and it will move them to turn their hearts toward the Prince of Peace.

Read about other prisoners who also openly received the Good News.

Join your life with a national missionary’s and reach thousands like these prisoners with the love of Christ!

Gospel for Asia is an evangelical mission organization based in Carrollton, Texas, involved in sharing the love of Jesus across South Asia.

** You may republish this story with proper attribution.

Where Faith Abounds, Clothes Don't Burn

2011-12-08T10:58:00.000-05:00

This is Naina, a sixth-grader in one of Gospel
for Asia’s Sunday school programs.

Naina is an 11-year-old girl in South Asia, and she has seen the Lord answer her simple, faith-filled prayers to conquer a demon.

Seven years after Naina and her family came to Christ and joined a Gospel for Asia-supported church, Naina’s mother, Fadheela, encountered an unusual problem. Her clothes often acted as if they were being burned—while Fadheela was wearing them! Many of her dresses were ruined this way, and the anomaly frightened the family. No medical advice gave any explanation, nor did any treatment offer a solution.

A few months after the problem started, Naina learned about God’s love and miraculous power while attending GFA Sunday school. During the lesson, Naina stood up and told the class about her mother’s predicament. Her teacher encouraged her with Scripture to pray in faith for her mother.

The Lord answered Naina’s simple prayers
of faith for her mother, seen on the left.

Naina started praying. Then, one morning, this sixth grader took out one of her mother’s new dresses and pleaded with her to put it on. Afraid her nice dress would be ruined, Fadheela refused. Naina persisted, however, and after her mother reluctantly put on the dress, she expressed her faith, saying, “Mummy, don’t worry. I am continuously praying for you. I believe today your dress will not get burned.” The Lord gave Naina what she asked for: Her mother’s dress remained intact the entire day!

Later on, the family learned the significance of what Naina had asked the Lord to do. The burning of the clothes had been the work of an evil spirit, so when Naina had asked the Lord to stop the problem, she had been praying against the power of darkness. In answering Naina’s faithful prayers, the Lord counteracted the work of that fire-breathing demon.

Seeing their daughter’s faith in action helped Naina’s parents grow in faith, too. They are growing in knowledge and learning to trust the Lord even more now.

§ Learn more about Gospel for Asia’s ministry to children.

§ The faith of children like Naina opens parents’ hearts to Christ. Watch Nibun’s story.

Crying in LaGuardia

2011-12-07T09:20:00.001-05:00

by Susan DiMickele

I’m pretty good about rolling with the punches, and I’ve had my share of mistakes at work. But this was different. Worse.

After landing in LaGuardia, I checked my email messages as we prepared to de-board the plane. A note from a good friend inquired, “How was that conference you spoke at today?”

Huh?

“No, the conference is tomorrow.” I typed back. “I’ve just landed in New York.”

My friend responded back right away. “Um, you might want to check the brochure, because I think it was today.”

Radio silence.

Beads of sweat started rolling down my forehead as I headed to baggage claim, rummaging through my briefcase for the conference material—the same conference that was advertising Yours Truly as a key speaker. I finally found it and stopped short, looking at the date in disbelief. “No. No! NO! This can’t be right!” My heart dropped into my shoes. I had missed the conference by a day.

I wanted to crawl out of my skin right there in the middle of baggage claim. But I couldn’t. So I let out the kind of scream that no one sees—the kind that turns your stomach, rips your insides around, and then ties a double knot so you can’t breathe.

Mortified, I remembered that some of the top lawyers in my field were among both the panelists and guests. People were paying to hear me speak. But it was too late now, and there was nothing I could do about it.

My first reaction was to find someone else to blame.

I’m sorry, but you must have sent me the wrong date.

Don’t you people send out reminders? It’s not my fault.

My secretary booked the wrong flight.

I even thought about telling a teeny tiny lie—you know, the kind that is partially true.

I came down with an unexpected illness. (No kidding, I was feeling really sick.)

I had an emergency come up. (It’s called a brain lapse.)

I got stuck in traffic. (Just on the wrong day.)

But all I could do was say, “I’m sorry,” so I picked up my phone and made the dreaded call. No excuses. No lies.

I quickly reached the conference organizer and apologized. As it turned out, she was genuinely worried about my safety and said she understood the mix up. She even promised to include me in next year’s program. I knew I would have to make further amends—like apologies to the conference panelists, something I wasn’t looking forward to. But I’d have to deal with that later.

I had blown it, and I desperately needed God’s grace once again. As much as I try, I just can’t keep it all together on my own strength. Grace wipes my tears and reminds me of my humanity. Grace is the hard floor that catches me when my knees give in. It’s the net that holds me, keeping me from falling into the endless abyss.

I sat down in LaGuardia airport and cried.

Image by Meredith Farmer. Used with permission. Sourced via Flickr. Post by Susan DiMickele.

The Master of the Storm

2011-12-07T09:10:00.000-05:00

By Rick Marschall
Special to ASSIST News Service

SWARTZ CREEK MI (ANS) -- How can you best tell God how big your storm is today? Is there a way we can make Him understand? Or… does the storm need to hear about your God?

Storms of life are to be expected, and in a way are even promised by God. The rain falls on the just and unjust. This is –- in God’s providence -– entirely compatible with the verse that “all things work for good... for those who love God.”

Sometimes we feel like “taking on” that storm, letting the rain drops sting our faces. Sometimes we pray for an umbrella. Sometimes we plead for a mighty fortress, for we wrestle not just against men and princes, but against powers of the air, for which storms are metaphors.

Yet we need to remind ourselves that as horrible as a storm can seem, God is above all these things. Sometimes behind those things, like the sunshine behind the storm clouds. And more than that -– much more! a great comfort! -– we know the Master of the wind and the Maker of the rain. He can calm a storm, make the sun shine again.

You know the Master of the wind. And He knows you.

“There’s many a true word spoken in jest,” and a good friend, Mike Atkinson, proves it jest about every day in a site everyone should visit and subscribe to, “Mikey’s Funnies.” Recently amidst the wise humor and humorous wisdom was some straight-out wisdom that puts the truth of this in a simple and direct fashion. Brilliant:

“Stop telling God how big your storm is. Tell the storm how big your God is.”

+ + +

The words “Master of the Wind” above are the chorus lines of the great Gospel song by the Hemphills and emotionally sung here by daughter Candy Hemphill Christmas. And the site for the terrific “Mikey’s Funnies” is www.mikeysfunnies.com -- be sure to catch the ministry Mike supports, too, the Marine Recruit Letter-Writing Campaign.

Click: The Master of the Storm

** You may republish this story with proper attribution.

Once Upon a Time: A quiz (Part 1)

2011-12-01T09:38:00.000-05:00

By David Buckna
Special to ASSIST News Service

CANADA (ANS) -- Washington Post TV critic Hank Stuever calls the new fairy tale drama"Once Upon a Time"--which premiered October 23, 2011 on ABC and CTV--"the fall TV season's most charming and elegant surprise."

In the Pilot episode, 10-year-old Henry travels to Boston and tracks down his birth mother, bail bondsperson Emma Swan, and tells her he's the son she gave up for adoption. If this news wasn't shocking enough, he also tells Emma that fairy tale characters actually exist, and an Evil Queen's curse has trapped them all in the town of Storybrooke, but they don't remember who they are. (www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCDDwx1Njn0)

"Once upon a time"--those words take us back to an enchanted past, not so much to escape reality but rather to enter a world of perils and possibilities. Fairy tale figures are always seeking redemption, often in worldly terms, but this time there is far more at stake, not just for the inhabitants of Storybrooke. Untainted by evil, Henry, the innocent yet knowing child, joins forces with his mother Emma whose wicked rival runs the town and has deprived it of its soul. Emma herself was once an innocent child, the victim of the worst curse imaginable in a fairy tale world, and she becomes a savior who must find a collective pathway to "happily ever after." --Maria Tatar, Chair of the Program in Folklore and Mythology, Harvard University

"Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened..." --C.S. Lewis (letter to Arthur Greeves, 1931)

As Season One runs for 22 episodes, test your knowledge of some of the biblical connections to the show with this 22 question quiz. (Episodes 1 and 2)

Questions

1. What's the biggest difference between the 1812 version of the Brothers Grimm "Little Snow-White" and Walt Disney's 1937 animated film, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs"?

2. What floral emblem is seen on the tunics of Prince Charming's knights?

3. He tells Snow White and Prince Charming: "This infant is our only hope." Who said it?

4. The Blue Fairy announces: "The tree is enchanted. If fashioned into a vessel, it can ward off any curse." What did Geppetto and Pinocchio fashion it into?

5. Who's the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming?

6. After their daughter is born, what is she wrapped in?

7. The Evil Queen orders her Black Knights to find the infant Emma. In Mathew's gospel, what did King Herod order his soldiers to do in Bethlehem and vicinity?

8. Prince Charming battles Black Knights before and after placing Emma in the wardrobe. Did the sword that mortally wounds the Prince pierce his left or right side?

9. On her 28th birthday, Emma wishes upon a star. What star?

10. Emma tells Henry: "I have one skill. Let's call it a superpower. I can tell when anyone is lying, and you, kid, are." In Acts 5, the Holy Spirit gives this apostle the ability to discern Ananias and Sapphira were lying. What apostle?

11. What color is Emma's leather jacket?

12. What does Mary Margaret wear around her neck?

13. According to Mary Margaret, what's the most important thing anyone can have?

14. In the closing seconds of the Pilot episode, Henry sees the clock tower's minute hand move forward. What's the new time?

15. The figure of what creature is found at the top of Maleficent's staff?

16. Who's the editor of the Storybrooke Daily Mirror?

17. The editor tells Regina that Emma gave birth to Henry in what Arizona city?

18. What drink do Emma, Henry and Mary all like?

19. What "code name" does Henry give to his plan to break the Evil Queen's curse?

20. He tells the Evil Queen: "Revenge is a dark and lonely road. Once you go down it, there is no heading back." Who said it?

21. When the Evil Queen tells her father that Snow White must be punished, he asks: "But if the price is a hole that will never be filled, why do it?" Name the U2 song with the lyric: "Lookin' for to fill that God shaped hole".

22. The Evil Queen kills her father with a swift jab of a hidden knife. In Isaiah 37, which sons of Sennacherib (King of Assyria) "cut him down with the sword, and escape to the land of Ararat"?

Answers

1. In the 1812 Brothers Grimm version, Snow White "fell to the ground dead" after biting into the red half of the apple. Later, one of the prince's servants "opened the coffin, lifted Snow-White upright, and said, 'We are plagued the whole day long, just because of such a dead girl,' and he hit her in the back with his hand. Then the terrible piece of apple that she had bitten off came out of her throat, and Snow-White came back to life."

In Walt Disney's 1937 animated film, Snow White collapses into a death-like sleep after taking a bite of the poisoned apple. After some time, the prince visits her coffin. Captivated by Snow White's beauty, he kisses her, which breaks the spell and awakens her.

Ken Priebe says of the Disney version: "For Snow White, it is a 'sleeping death' that can only be awakened by a kiss from her Prince. For Adam and Eve, it is a spiritual death that has been passed on to us, that can only be awakened by faith in Christ." (http://hollywoodjesus.com/disney_snow_white.htm)

Maria Tatar writes in The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales: "Ever since the Garden of Eden, apples have been invested with powerful symbolic significance."

(Note: Genesis doesn't mention the forbidden fruit was an apple, only that Adam and Eve ate fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.)

Religious Implication of Disney's Snow White
http://juliaannettepower.webs.com/biblicalovertones.htm

2. white rose

In heraldry, a charge is any emblem occupying the field of an escutcheon (shield). The prince's shield consists of 7 white roses, a red chevron (shaped like an inverted letter V), and a lion.(http://new.roneyzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/snowwhiteguardpatch.jpg)

A white rose symbolizes love, faith, charm, and innocence. The lion symbolizes bravery, valour, strength, and royalty.

3. Rumpelstiltskin. In German, Rumpelstilzchen means "little rattle stilt". (A stilt is a post or pole which provides support for a structure.) A rumpelstilt or rumpelstilz was the name of a type of goblin who makes noises by rattling posts and rapping on planks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O99MTHOI6k0

Rumpelstiltskin: No more happy endings.

Snow White: What can we do?

Rumpelstiltskin: We can't do anything!

Snow White: Who can?

Rumpelstiltskin: That little thing growing inside your belly....The infant is our only hope. Get the child to safety. Get the child to safety and on its 28th birthday the child will return. The child will find you, and the final battle will begin! Ya-ha-ha-ha-ha!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O99MTHOI6k0

Prince Charming to Snow White: "If you believe him (Rumpelstiltskin) about the curse, then you must believe him about our child. She WILL be the savior!"

"Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope" (1 Timothy 1:1)

Carmen Andres writes: "I can't help but appreciate how this echoes our own Story. A child is born--Jesus--who saves us all, defeats the curse, releases us from the clutches of death itself, restores us to the relationships we were created for and carries our Story towards the happy ending we were always intended for."
(http://intheopen.blogspot.com/2011/10/good-stories-that-begin-once-upon-time.html)

Yisrael Avraham (www.crownofmessiah.com): "What did Yeshua do? When he embarked on His mission He gathered an inner circle of the people who were most devoted to Him, and He began to train them. He began to teach them. And I guarantee you He began to teach them about the evil one, and about what was happening, and about what He had to do to break the curse on humanity." (54:47) (www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIAfqHGqiKM)

Prince Charming placing Emma in the wardrobe

4. a wardrobe is fashioned from the enchanted tree stump

"A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit." (Isaiah 11:1)

"Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: 'Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.'"

(Galatians 3:13) (The Greek word for "tree" is xuvlon (xoo'-lon) meaning "timber" or "something fashioned from wood")

Snow White tells Prince Charming: "Take the baby to the wardrobe....We have to send her through. We have to believe that she'll come back for us. We have to give her her best chance!"

The wardrobe is a nod to "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" by C.S. Lewis (1950), the first published novel of the Chronicles of Narnia series. Lewis would have as his central Christ-figure the lion Aslan.

John writes in Revelation (5:5): "Then one of the elders said to me, 'Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed...'"

The lion became a favorite symbol of medieval heraldry because of its association with Christ.

C.S. Lewis wrote in a 1931 letter to Arthur Greeves: "Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened: and one must be content to accept it in the same way, remembering that it is God's myth where the others are men's myths: i.e. the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there, while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call 'real things'. Therefore it is true, not in the sense of being a 'description' of God (that no finite mind could take in) but in the sense of being the way in which God chooses to (or can) appear to our faculties. The 'doctrines' we get out of the true myth are of course less true: they are translations into our concepts and ideas of that which God has already expressed in a language more adequate, namely the actual incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection."

Retelling the Gospel as a Fairy Tale: C. S. Lewis
http://faithandfamily.com/article/c-s-lewis-051101/

Heaven May Be a Fairy Tale, But Who Said Fairy Tales Aren't Real?
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/05/17/stephen-hawking-says-heaven-is-a-fairy-tal/

5. "Emma is the new fairytale...her fairytale is that she is prophesied to save all fairytales. So we're going to see the journey of this new character and how that plays out."--Jennifer Morrison (Emma) on Hollywood.com

"Imma" (pronounced EE-mah) means "mother/mommy" in Hebrew. Emma is derived from the Germanic word "ermen" meaning "whole" or "universal". For some, Emma is a diminutive of Emmanuelle--the feminine form of Immanuel (Isaiah 7:14) meaning "God with us". The pronunciation of Emma is almost identical to the ancient Greek word "haima", meaning "blood".

Revelation 1:5b "To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood..."

Liquid [Jars of Clay]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAFEsINZ0Ck

6. a white wool blanket with a purple bow, and "Emma" embroidered with purple thread (http://images5.fanpop.com/image/photos/26200000/1x01-Pilot-once-upon-a-time-26290414-1280-720.jpg)

White symbolizes purity, and purple symbolizes royalty. The first recorded use of royal purple as a color name in English was in 1661.

"Come now, let us settle the matter," says the LORD. "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool." (Isaiah 1:18)

From U2's song "White As Snow": "Once I knew there was a love divine/Then came a time I thought it knew me not/Who can forgive forgiveness where forgiveness is not/Only the lamb as white as snow..../If only a heart could be as white as snow"

"The soldiers led Jesus away into the palace (that is, the Praetorium) and called together the whole company of soldiers. They put a purple robe on him, then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on him." (Mark 15:16-17)

7. kill all boys two years old and under, in the hope of killing the one born king of the Jews (Matthew 2:1-18)

8. his left side

John's gospel doesn't indicate which side of Jesus was pierced: "Instead, one of the soldiers pierced Jesus' side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water." (John 19:34)

Dr. Truman Davis relates there was "an escape of watery fluid from the sac surrounding the heart. We, therefore, have rather conclusive post-mortem. Evidence that [Christ] died, not the usual crucifixion death by suffocation, but of heart failure due to shock and constriction of the heart by fluid in the pericardium."

(www.greatcom.org/resources/areadydefense/ch20/default.htm)

"They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son." (Zechariah 12:10b)

Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe." (John 20:27) (www.whoisjesus-really.com/english/preview.htm)

9. the star (blue candle) on top of Emma's birthday cupcake. "When You Wish Upon a Star" is sung by Jiminy Cricket in Walt Disney's 1940 adaptation of Pinocchio. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKh6XxYbbIc) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMKz5K_DcKU)

Emma also has a star on her keychain.

"I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star." (Revelation 22:16)

10. Peter (Act 5: 1-10)

11. red (http://www.zap2it.com/media/photo/2011-08/271922760-17161711.jpg)

Which shade of red is Emma's jacket? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Shades_of_red)

12. a small cross

Snow White to Evil Queen: "She [Emma] got away! You're going to lose. I know that now. Good will always win."

"But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." (1 Corinthians 15:57)

13. hope

Mary Margaret: "Look, I gave the book to him because I wanted Henry to have the most important thing anyone CAN have--hope. Believing in even the possibility of a happy ending is a very powerful thing."

"Adam [Horowitz] and I just wanted to write about something hopeful that for one hour a week allows one to put everything aside and have that feeling that your dreams just may come true."--Edward Kitsis, Co-Creator/Executive Producer

"Remember your word to your servant, for you have given me hope." (Psalm 119:49)

Emma has "unfrozen" time in Storybrooke

14. 8:16

Romans 8:16 "The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children."

Just as "the fullness of time had come" when God's Son enters the world (Galatians 4:4-5), time was "unfrozen" when Emma enters Granny's Bed & Breakfast and makes the decision to stay.

See: "In the Fullness of Time: A Historian Looks at Christmas, Easter, and the Early Church (Kregel, 1997) by Dr. Paul L. Maier (www.paulmaier.com/index_files/Page374.htm)

Part 1
http://100huntley.com/video.php?id=mBmAWwpZqXk

Part 2
http://100huntley.com/video.php?id=-kMrZX4trE0

15. a dragon

"The great dragon was hurled down--that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him." (Revelation 12:9)

16. Sidney/Magic Mirror, played by Giancarlo Esposito. From Zap2it: "The Magic Mirror is a character who is under the Evil Queen's thumb. He tells her the truth but in a very interesting, snide and challenging way because she can't hurt him anymore....In Storybrooke, I play Sidney, who is the editor of the newspaper and knows everyone in town, he's quite affable. A little bumbling once in awhile because he gets nervous when he's around the Mayor. She's obviously very forceful, very powerful and a little threatening. I wanted to make the characters very, very different. One having a sense of bravado and the other having a sense of vulnerability." (http://blog.zap2it.com/frominsidethebox/2011/10/once-upon-a-times-giancarlo-esposito-on-the-magic-mirror-and-evil-queens-interesting-relationship.html)

"For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known." (1 Corinthians 13:12)

Medieval Christians appropriated the phoenix as a symbol for Christ

17. Phoenix. Jack Swilling, a Confederate veteran of the American Civil War, wanted to name the city "Stonewall", after General Stonewall Jackson. Finally, Lord Darrell Duppa suggested the name "Phoenix".

According to Baylor University philosophy professor Scott Moore, the original pre-Christian symbol of the phoenix--the mythical sacred bird reborn from the ashes of its own nest--was appropriated by medieval Christians as a symbol for Christ.

Jesus said: "The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life--only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father." (John 10:17-18)

The Jews then responded to him, "What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?" Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days." They replied, "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?" But the temple he had spoken of was his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken. (John 2:18-22)

18. hot chocolate with cinnamon sprinkled on top

Cinnamon is a spice long coveted for its aromatic qualities. In Song of Solomon 4:13-14, it's called one of the finest spices. Cinnamon is one of the ingredients of the "holy anointing oil" (Exodus 30:22-25), and along with myrrh and aloes, is a perfume for a bed (Proverbs 7:17).

19. Operation Cobra

"The infant will play near the cobra's den, and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest." (Isaiah 11:8)

20. Henry, the Evil Queen's father

"Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD." (Leviticus 19:18)

21. "Mofo" (1997)

"There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus"--Blaise Pascal (French mathematician, philosopher and physicist, 1623-1662)

From Augustine’s autobiography, Confessions, written in A.D. 397 to 401: "You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find rest in You."

22. Adrammelech and Sharezer (Isaiah 37:37-38)

Emma [Poster]
http://www.experience-it-all.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/o1.jpg

Evil Queen [Poster]
http://joyhog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/OUT_WitchPoster110720121011-522x783.jpg

Prince Charming [Poster]
http://www.mikethefanboy.com/site/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/once_upon_a_time_ver4.jpg

Snow White [Poster]
http://www-tvline-com.vimg.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/OUT_SnowPoster110720121001.jpg

Rumplestiltskin [Poster]
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-STBOOyjoZP4/Tig78vPLyGI/AAAAAAAABo4/-

8EKtn2v7O4/s1600/abc_once_3.jpg

For further reference

Haase, Donald, ed. The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales. Greenwood Press, 2007.

Lewis, C.S. They Stand Together: The Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (1914-1963). Macmillan Publishing Co., 1979.

Tatar, Maria. Off with Their Heads! Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood. Princeton University Press, 1993.

Tatar, Maria. The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales. W. W. Norton & Company, 2002.

Tatar, Maria. The Classic Fairy Tales. W. W. Norton & Company, 1999.

Zipes, Jack. Why Fairy Tales Stick: The Evolution and Relevance of a Genre. Routledge, 2006.

Twitter

Catherine Lough Haggquist
http://twitter.com/#!/catlh

Josh Dallas
http://twitter.com/@joshdallas

Once Upon A Time
http://twitter.com/#!/OnceABC

Lana Parrilla
http://twitter.com/@lanaparrilla

Jessy Schram
http://twitter.com/#!/jschramer

Lee Arenberg
http://twitter.com/@leearenberg

Mig Macario
http://twitter.com/#!/MigMacario

Ginnifer Goodwin
http://twitter.com/@ginnygoodwin

Jamie Dornan
http://twitter.com/@JamieDornan1

Once Upon a Time Podcast
http://twitter.com/#!/ouatpodcast

Raphael Sbarge
http://twitter.com/@RaphaelSbarge

Jennifer Morrison
http://twitter.com/@jenmorrisonlive

Jane Espenson
http://twitter.com/#!/janeespenson

Adam Horowitz
http://twitter.com/#!/adamhorowitzla

The Evil Queen
http://twitter.com/@TheEvilQueen108

Faustino Di Bauda
http://twitter.com/#!/FaustinoDiBauda

Once Upon a Time
http://twitter.com/#!/OnceStorybrooke

Once Upon a Time [search]
http://twitter.com/#!/search?q=%23onceuponatime

*
Once Upon a Time fan
http://www.ouatfan.com

Once Upon a Time
http://once-storybrooke.net

Secrets of Once Upon a Time
http://onceuponatime.sqpn.com

Once Upon a Time
http://www.facebook.com/OnceABC

The Gospel in Prime-Time by Erik Raymond
http://www.ordinarypastor.com/?p=9046

Once Upon a Time [CTV]
http://shows.ctv.ca/OnceUponATime.aspx

Once Upon a Time Podcast
http://feeds.feedburner.com/ouatpodcast

Snow-White [1812]
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0709.html

Once Upon a Time [CTV Video]
http://shows.ctv.ca/OnceUponATime/video.aspx

Once Upon a Time [ABC]
http://beta.abc.go.com/shows/once-upon-a-time

ABC's Once Upon a Time: Trailer [1:17]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15__iA1MTqc

Interview with Lana Parrilla And Robert Carlyle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5FgA4ezeUY

'Once Upon a Time' Offers a Mix of Hope and Cynicism
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/tools/print/150307

Once Upon a Time [TV recaps]
http://tvrecaps.ew.com/tv-show/once-upon-a-time/

Fairy tales in a wide-awake world
http://www.theprovince.com/story_print.html?id=5740375

Once Upon a Time could live happily ever after
http://www.vancouversun.com/story_print.html?id=5657775

TV's new magic kingdom
http://www.vancouversun.com/story_print.html?id=5589412

The Annotated Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/sevendwarfs/index.html

Once Upon a Time Wiki
http://onceuponatime.wikia.com/wiki/Once_Upon_a_Time_Wiki

Once Upon a Time: The Comprehensive Character Guide [pp. 1-3]
http://seriable.com/once-upon-a-time-complete-character-guide/

Once Upon a Time episodes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Once_Upon_a_Time_episodes

Archive: Once Upon a Time
http://intheopen.blogspot.com/search/label/once%20upon%20a%20time

Once Upon a Time [Nik at Nite]
http://nikkistafford.blogspot.com/search/label/Once%20Upon%20a%20Time

Archive: Once Upon a Time
http://new.roneyzone.com/category/blogs/once-upon-a-time-tv-show-blogs/

Steveston Transformed Once Again by Once Upon a Time

http://insteveston.com/steveston-transformed-once-again-by-once-upon-a-time

TV review: 'Once Upon a Time' has magic to spare
http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/television/tv-review-once-upon-a-time-has-magic-to-spare/2011/10/17/gIQA9G1Y0L_print.html

Freelancer David Buckna produces -- THE POP GOSPEL -- a column that communicates Judeo-Christian truth to the postmodern culture using a Q & A format. Questions are gleaned from movies, television, music, literature, current events and other aspects of pop culture. Buckna's previous quizzes for ANS can be found at the ANS Search Archive page, searching for Buckna. Copyright 2011 by David Buckna. THE POP GOSPEL. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Buckna reads email at dabuckna@direct.ca

** You may republish this story with proper attribution.

Advent: Old and New Traditions

2011-11-29T14:11:00.000-05:00

by Charity Singleton

Yesterday was the first Sunday of Advent, and so we begin a season of waiting and expectation. For most of us, December can easily slip into one big blur of holiday parties and gift exchanges, of decking the halls and maxing out credit cards.

Or, maybe it’s not too late to make something different of this season. We would like to invite you to consider what Advent means to you, its old traditions, its new lessons, and join us for a community writing project. Come on over to my place for a cup of egg nog and a formal invitation.

Head over to Wide Open Spaces for more.

Photo by Philippa Willitts. Used with permission. Sourced via Flickr. Post by Charity Singleton.

Still Walking the Hard Road -- Now What?

2011-11-28T06:12:00.000-05:00

By Rick Marschall
Special to ASSIST News Service

SWARTZ CREEK MI (ANS) -- My friend Jim Watkins recently reported on a remark overheard during a missions trip to Zambia: “Americans pray for burdens to be lifted. Africans pray for stronger backs.”

This is one of those unexpected stop-sign concepts that we occasionally meet on life’s road. Theology? Both halves of the sentence are theologically valid. Jesus offered to be our yoke, and our Strong Arm. And then, as the entire Book of James and many other parts of Scripture remind us, we must forbear; that Jesus identifies with our suffering. “Burdens are lifted at Calvary.”

There is no contradiction. Both viewpoints are support beams of that bridge whose builder and maker is the Lord, a bridge that will carry us through life.

Whether Americans and Africans have different attitude toward burdens is a question that ultimately leads to self-examinations as cultures, as residents of certain points in history, and as food for thought. Of course, there might be implications about societies and economies and such; but all are beneficial to think about. We can especially notice the fact that “center of gravity” of the Christian church is moving to south of the Equator. Some people have the impression that Islam, for instance, is overwhelming Africa. Its numbers are increasing, but not as fast or in greater numbers than a rapid spread of Christianity! On-fire, evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity likewise is growing in great numbers in the Pacific Rim and in South America. As an example, there are more Charismatics than traditional Catholics on Brazil today.

As I say, there is food for thought in the comment overheard on that missions trip. But on the “stronger back” side of the equation, let us remember, as we did a few weeks ago, that no matter how difficult things get, Jesus is always there to assist us.

There is a song that reminds us of this truth in a haunting, aching manner. It was written by an elderly lady who had not written other songs that we know of, and has no other music in songbooks or hymnbooks. Back in the 1960s a small gospel group, The Hallelujah Minstrels of Fort Smith, Arkansas, wanted to record an album but couldn’t afford the studio time. A friend of the leader Ray Lewis asked several times if the group would listen to a song his sister, Audra Czarnikow of Liberty, OK, had written. Finally, Mrs Czarnikow offered to contribute to the studio costs if they would record her song. She dug out an old reel-to-reel tape she had made of it… the group was so impressed that they recorded it... and even named the album after the song, “God Walks the Dark Hills.”

The evocative song speaks not of defeat but of encouragement, while not ignoring the challenges, snares, and pitfalls of life that we all know are too real. But God walks the dark hills for you and me.

God walks the dark hills, the highways and byways.
He walks o'er the billows of life's troubled sea.
He walks in the cold, dark shadows of midnight --
God walks the dark hills for you and me.

Chorus
God walks the dark hills to guide my footsteps;
He walks everywhere by night and by day.
He walks in silence down the lone highway,
God walks the dark hills to show me the way.

God walks in the storm, the rain and the sunshine,
He walks in the shadows of glimmering light;
He walks o'er the mountains, the rivers, and valleys,
God walks the dark hills to guide you and me.

God walks in silence in the stillness of midnight,
He walks in your Garden of Gethsemane;
He walks through the halls and aisles of the Temple,
God walks the dark hills to guide you and me.

+ + +

This song became a signature song of the Happy Goodmans, and is performed here, solo on the piano, by the plaintive voice of Iris Dement. Countless people have gone to contemplation, and uncountable people have been touched, by this lone song of a nearly anonymous, creative servant, Audra Czarnikow. Whether your burdens are lifted or more easily carried, it will encourage your spirit.

Click: God Walks the Dark Hills

** You may republish this story with proper attribution.

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

2011-11-24T08:20:00.000-05:00

by Jennifer Dukes Lee

It’s just a newspaper.

That was my first thought as I willed my fingers to dial the circulation office in Des Moines, Iowa.

My second thought—you are so melodramatic, Jennifer—materialized when a stubborn lump lodged itself in my throat.

Like I said, it’s just a newspaper.

Only, it’s not.

My oldest daughter, age nine, must have known. She pressed up against me while I dialed. It may seem no big thing, to cancel a subscription. But as I punched in the numbers, it struck me. I was about to ask a lifelong friend—a daily guest in my home for 39 years straight—to never come over again.

Even the woman who answered the phone sounded surprised. “Sooooo, you want to stop the paper for a few days, like, … during a vacation?” she asked.

“No,” I told her. “I’m stopping the paper for, like, ever.”

I felt my daughter squeeze my hand. In her own quiet way, she was reassuring me, and perhaps herself. I looked down my arm at her, a miniature version of me, shoulders drooped and eyes blinking with resignation. I remembered how this child learned her first words on newsprint. She would clutch an ink pen in her fist to circle words like “the” and “said” on the front page. (You can’t do that on a computer screen.)

My daughter knows the kinship I had with the daily paper, and she had begun to develop her own. (She likes Peanuts, Garfield and Sudoku.) I’ve told her about mornings when I was a child, devouring news with my two eggs and toast. Even as a kid, I imagined the whole state waking up to the same information. I knew instinctively that this was good and right, though perhaps a bit idealistic.

I was a consumer of news, but also of the artfulness of words. Even the crustiest curmudgeons at the daily paper could coax a laugh—or a cry—out of me on a Sunday morning. I wanted to be able to do that.

I remember when, as a grown up, I stepped for the first time onto the newsroom floor of The Des Moines Register. I carried a faux-leather briefcase over my shoulder. It seemed a dream that I had landed a job next to the same curmudgeons who entertained me during breakfast all those years.

I considered news-reporting an honorable profession. I still do, though some folks try to convince me that you can’t trust anything you read in the paper anymore. They say the news is too depressing, or too “fluffy” or too (fill-in-adjective-here). Besides, they say, no one can be expected to wait for tomorrow’s paper, when they can access the same information with a Google search or Twitter hashtag. And they can get it for free.

Me? I’m old-fashioned. I like the feel of the paper in my hands, next to my two eggs, sunny-side-up. My daughter prefers her news with Captain Crunch.

I don’t know. Perhaps I’m just reaching that age where all of my tales of yesteryear start with the phrase: “Back in my day …”

I do wonder this: when my children have children, will anyone get a newspaper anymore? Will people read from actual bound books? I wonder if, on Sunday mornings, folks will stand side-by-side singing out of those—what are they called again?—oh, yes, hymnals.

“Ma’am?” It was the customer-service representative, still on the line. “Can we do anything to keep your business?”

I explained that I had received a letter making it clear that I would no longer be able to receive same-day delivery. I had been offered an e-edition—a gracious offer, really—but that didn’t feel right. I thought it most honorable to close the door and remember my friend the way I knew her best, next to me at the kitchen table.

I pressed the phone's OFF button—remember when we used to hang it up, right on the wall?—and then my daughter pulled me over to see something. She’d read the funniest thing in the comics, and she knew it would make me laugh.

Image by Kelly Sauer. Used with permission. Post by Contributing Editor Jennifer Dukes Lee.

Editorial note: Today is the last day to submit photos and/or poems to November's PhotoPlay and RAP.

Good Work: Born Inside or Out?

2011-11-24T08:15:00.000-05:00

by L.L. Barkat

I walked into the classroom. No books on the shelves. Linoleum floor, cracked. No area rugs. Crayons, paper, glue, scissors, blocks? Nope. Well, at least there were desks and a blackboard.

The principal was cheery when I asked about curriculum. “This!” she said, sweeping her arm towards the window and the river beyond. Then she smiled like she’d given me the biggest gift an administrator could give a new teacher who would welcome 30 kids to an empty classroom in just a few short days.

Looking outside, the river seemed far off. Our view was enviable, in its way, but we wouldn’t be skipping down to the water anytime soon. For all intents and purposes, the river was not going to replace my need for pencils and math books.

That year was one of the worst years I spent, in any profession. The school’s philosophy was that children are endlessly creative and could make the curriculum, direct their learning. Everything depended on what was inside the kids. But each day felt like a monumental struggle, as the gaping external environment sat waiting for us to magically fill it with creative products and responses.

Six years later, I entered a different classroom—not as the teacher, but as a parent. Books lined shelves. Bright red paper apples were strung along walls, inscribed with children’s names in black marker. Plastic stackable containers held math manipulatives, blocks, paints, scissors, and paper. Children sat in neat circles around oblong tables. Before each child was a sheet of paper with the letter “l” in bold, followed by blank lines. It was the end of the year, the alphabet taught long ago. But kids were carefully copying the letter and raising their hands to wait for the teacher to check their work.

Here, it didn’t seem to matter what was inside the kids. Their external environment—the room—was filled with colorful things and teacher-directed products and responses. It was quiet and orderly and, suddenly, terribly stifling. I couldn’t wait to leave.

Two rooms. One where everything depended on what was inside the kids, and the other where everything seemed focused on what was outside the kids.

Where was the room that saw the necessity for both-where inside and out were purposely, inextricably linked?

This is not just a classroom question. It is an artistic and a work question.

One of my current roles is to help people write poetry. I begin with them where they are, and that’s exciting. Some fledgling poets come with image stacked upon image and form upon form (usually a kind of rhyme scheme). These poets rely on externals. Indeed, they are not so far off – except perhaps in particular points of skill – from certain published poets whose work does everything “right” but lacks an emotional center.

Other poets come bursting with emotion, spilled verse after verse in abstract language. I know the poets are sad or happy or confused or in love, because they tell me in so many words. However, if I were to line their poems up on the apple wall you might not discern the difference, except that each is stenciled with a distinct name.

Before I go any further, let me be very clear. This is not a criticism of beginning poets. I absolutely love the enthusiasm, efforts and warmth, the beautiful relationships I form with people who offer their words to me. Furthermore, I struggle with the same issues, especially when I’m trying to write poetry that is a first-try at a fresh life theme.

So you’ll believe me, let me share a poem I composed as part of an endeavor to write about my childhood loss—of three homes to fire. Losing three homes in any fashion is hard; losing them to fire is a deeply emotional reality. This was my first try at putting it into poetry:

After the Fire
Come with me to chicory
laced foundation, gutted,
where sit the stones,
burned and blackened,
like memories obscure
they stole away. I will take
your hand, lead you up
the thistled hill at back, where
stood three lilacs purpling
in rising mist. We can lean
and lift, cart soot-dust rocks
to nearby field, let greening
timothy lick them clean in
rain and wind. I will search
for new pine, iron nails, glass
to set in place. Such trifles
will not raise lost reveries
to life, but they can trace
my love, erect as grace.

While nice things are beginning to happen structurally—things having to do with momentum and subtleties in rhyme (blackened and back, greening and clean), the poem is not there yet. My favorite lines are I will search/for new pine, iron nails, glass/to set in place. I also like the lilacs purpling, as well as the thistles, chicory, and timothy.

What’s happening here? Most likely, I’m still lacking on two points: inside and out. What is inside me regarding the fire losses is buried too deep and perhaps afraid to assert itself more clearly with emotional power, much like the children tentatively raising their hands in that orderly, predictable classroom. So I’ve relied on abstract language (e.g., love and grace) to attempt an emotional expression. Unfortunately, the externals I bring to the poem do not make up for the emotional lack. The blackened stones could be in anybody’s poem. They are as undefined as the empty classroom that overlooked the river from a great distance. How could they elicit a deep emotional response in me, or you?

My troubles in writing on this childhood theme will only be addressed with a two-fold solution: attend to both inside and out, through time and repeated attempts. Someday I hope to come back with a fire poem that will take a person’s breath away. But before I do, I’m going to have to feel more and sensemore. Maybe I will need to visit a burned building or spend time free-writing to unearth the finer details of my lost homes and how I feel about their disappearance.

In any case, are the troubles I’m experiencing confined to the poet? I don’t think so. It’s my belief that managers, strategists, classroom teachers, and many other professionals whose work lacks power might try a similar approach: cultivate both inside and out, then let the two ignite, embrace.

This article is a modified reprint, courtesy of Curator Magazine, by L.L. Barkat, High Calling managing editor and author of Rumors of Water: Thoughts on Creativity & Writing. Curator Magazine, a publication of the International Arts Movement, announces the signs of a “world that ought to be” as we find it in our midst, and seeks to inspire people to engage deeply with culture that enriches life and broadens experience.

Image by Rachel Titiriga. Used with permission. Sourced via Flickr.

Penn State Crisis: What God is Saying

2011-11-12T06:37:00.000-05:00

OPINION, Nov. 11, 2011 /Christian Newswire/ -- In the midst of the crisis at Penn State, God is speaking. In an article called, "The Fall of the Lion: Four Things I Believe God Is Saying To Lion Country," writer and State College resident Chris Heinz shares four things he believes God is saying to Lion Country.

"There are many words flying right now -- words by media, by lawyers, by the public. It's easy to get consumed by them. But I think God is speaking into this situation, and if we heed his words, we can find our way out of the free fall we are in," said Heinz.

Heinz believes God is saying important things that are key to the recovery, healing, and future of the community.

"I believe God is saying he cares for the brokenhearted, he is exposing the 'acceptable' idolatry that exists in our town, he is asking us to turn our sex lives over to him, and he is challenging us to look at the planks in our own eyes," said Heinz.

In response, Heinz has developed a prayer guide with scriptures and prayer points. He has also filmed a video and posted a radio interview.

These resources are available at www.CSHeinz.com.

About Chris Heinz
Chris Heinz is a writer and director of marketing from State College, PA. From his website www.CSHeinz.com, he writes about prayer, discipleship, and adoption.

If we only knew…Remarkable True Stories of God’s Intervention. by John Murray

2011-11-10T14:53:00.000-05:00

VANCOUVER, B.C. CANADA (ANS) -- “John Murray’s If we only knew…” is a testimony to the intervention of God in the lives of his children. Drawing upon his twenty years traveling in Eastern Europe as the Director for Eurovangelism Canada, John gives us a glimpse of God’s care and protection over the persecuted Church and individual believers.

These true-life stories of Divine intervention will touch your heart and stir your emotions. To answer eight searching questions we all ask at times, such as, Does God Answer Prayer? Does God Heal? Does God Protect? the book presents Biblical support and practical illustrations to answer each question.

One reviewer stated that the book “will stimulate your faith, challenge your complacency; nourish your soul and stir your heart.” The book will motivate, challenge and encourage all who rejoice in God’s sovereignty and enjoy knowing what He is doing among His people.

###

Author John Murray

“If we only knew…” Published by Xulon Press 2009, ISBN 9781615791507
is available through Christian Bookstores, through Amazon.com, directly from the Publisher at 1-866-909-2665 or from the author athttp://www.jmurray.ca/

Biographical Sketch.

John Murray served for over 20 years as the Executive Director for Eurovangelism Canada, a mission working in Eastern Europe. He traveled into many of the former communist countries, from Russia in the north to Albania in the south. John’s previous experience covered Pastoral and Christian journalism, as well as business.

John studied theology in Birmingham, England and in Toronto, Canada. His many years of speaking engagements have taken him across Canada, into the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and the Caribbean. Although retired, he continues his ministry through speaking and writing. He now resides in Vancouver, Canada.