What an interesting week this last week has been. All sorts of weird things happening to my Christian sisters it seems. One was very ill (she suffers from a rare disease sort of a like an environmental disease ) another hurt her knee running, another's husband had TWO serious heart attacks on Friday and it was also discovered he has diabetes, and another told me doctors have found maybe breast cancer in both breasts plus her ongoing problem with her stomach. Oh boy, makes Home sound so nice! I wondered though, why so much of this has not only been happening but why the Lord has put them all in my path. I wondered why he has given me such a burden for healing in others and that includes their pets....

Every Christmas the Yuletide card portrays a silver star in a navy blue sky and every year the same heavenly object sparkles from the top of the decorated evergreen. At season's end the three wise men and their fellow shepherds gather at a hastily set up manger for the familiar nativity scene. Though it shimmers on the greeting card and its brilliance lights up the tannebaum, it wasn't a star that erupted into a supernova on that dark Judean night. The star that shone so brightly two thousand years ago was wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.

At times when we think honestly, if we stop deceiving ourselves, we are forced to admit that life per se can become an unmitigated horror. Not only are we threatened by wars, financial shifts and joblessness, the calamities of nature and narcissistic manipulators, the very earth itself treats us with supreme indifference. The beautiful and productive world we inhabit slowly but surely converts every plant that sprouts a stalk and each creature that draws a breath into fertilizer to feed yet another doomed generation.

A humorous look at the author's experience at the Crosswalk.com forum.

What is a miracle? What role, if any, do traditional psychotherapies ascribe to the power of the divine to effect healing. Until and unless the role of divine energy can be recognised for its true role in our lives any attempts at healing will fall short of our intentions.

A question I ask myself is, ”Why do I even think I need to understand God’s ways?” Do we think our ways are better? Sure we do at times. Do we need to think about how we are going to get down that river the most effective way on that tube?

All of us have had failures and we have all walked down that lonely fairway of life not knowing if we would win or lose. But what brought Phil Michelson to that moment in time was not the many tournaments that he won in the past, but those that eluded him. Phil could have chosen this weekend to just say here I go again, and dwell on what could have been, yet he didn’t, “today is my day” he thought.

Each day not only on my bike, but with my wife, children and those I love, I live with the attitude that it can all end in a second and with that, every second does counts for something and failure is not an option.”

Even as I started dating a Chinese girl, I knew I was embarking on a remarkable adventure. I just had no idea where and how far the adventure would take me. The more events unfolded, the more I realized that my view of the world and how I lived in it were being profoundly and permanently altered... If the problem with marrying a gentile was that my religion prohibited intermarriage, why should that bother me? Perhaps not everything in Judaism made sense, and as an intelligent and thinking individual I could take from my heritage what I felt was meaningful and disregard the rest...

About a special man....

If you were Satan and your goal is to destroy as many lives as you could, what are the two institutions you could attack that would destroy more lives than wars and natural disasters combined?

Many times, we are blinded to our own sins. This poem is about a man who will not believe what he sees in the mirror in front of him. It represents our sinful state, and the many times we are unwilling to face our flaws and pursue change.

A healthy spirituality can be one of the most effective tools at our disposal for managing stress. However, for reasons as individual as they themselves are, many people feel leery of anything to do with the spiritual. This article draws the all-important distinction between spirituality and religion, and explores how spirituality can reduce stress levels.

The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want.

God has written into divine providence a kind of payday-someday theology.

Acknowledgement of our need of God and reliance upon Him will not always rid us of life’s pressures, will not always remove from us the difficult situations, the dark cage within which we sometimes find ourselves trapped.

Symbolism has always been important in man's development. All things are symbols. They are roadsigns or landmarks of where you are in your thinking at any particular time in the physical world. It is a simple thing to see how one is thinking just by looking at the things one gathers around oneself. But symbols can separate you from the source of your power. Danger lies in the symbol of Jesus, the cross, the Ferrari or anything that causes you to deny your power.

I tell you, my friends do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.
Luke at 12:4

A playful look at habitual or unconscious resistance, the forms it takes, and some suggestions on how we might move towards living a life of continuous acceptance.

Loving Your Neighbors If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
1 CORINTHIANS 13:1–2

I know eyebrows are probably raising about now, but let me tell you this works! How does God know what we want or need if we don't get specific and let Him know?

Based on scripture, here are Barbara Hemphill's 5 tips for paper management.

There are many components that need to work together in order for your self protection plan to be effective. Not surprisingly, most martial arts instructors and self defense experts concentrate on the physical skill necessary to protect yourself. Of course, that seems reasonable, right?