If you’re like me most days, you don’t ask God for miracles.You don’t expect them, and they don’t happen.
My arthritis flares up. I mutter and take an aspirin. A lymph node feels enlarged. I make a note to ask the doctor about it. I need to avoid eating wheat, or my digestion is interrupted. And so on.
I went to an amazing Global Awakening prayer conference just recently in Orlando. I and others laid hands on a woman and prayed for her back, injured in an accident. She pitched forward suddenly from the waist and then straightened. She had felt the vertebrae in her back realigning, she said. She could bend and twist without pain now. So cool. Thank you, God!
I’ve been studying 1 Corinthians 12 about spiritual gifts this week, along with lots of other folks around the world in Bible Study Fellowship.
Some researchers looked into the question of what makes music listeners cry. British psychologist John Sloboda asked music lovers to identify passages that set off a physical reaction. Looking at 20 such music passages, he found that 18 of them contained an appoggiatura. That’s fancy music-speak for a note that lands just off the target and then slides home.
Do you have a problem with getting tired doing the Lord’s work? I do. I’ve been struggling with it lately. How much is too much? What do I need to accomplish in my personal life, vs. my church work? How can I balance them? These questions have been driving me nuts because I can’t seem to answer them. And I find myself getting tired.
I went to a Martin Luther King commemoration yesterday. The speaker, an associate professor of architecture at Washington University, challenged us all. Bob Hansman, who is white, is an artist and activist who set up his art studio in the Clinton-Peabody Housing Project and challenges his students to work there with him.
My friend and coffee shop proprietor is planning a hobbit birthday bash for Sept. 22. I have a long time to plan what I’m going to wear. But I’m puzzling over it. What do you suggest?
We were surprised though that one of the goats had leaped out of the pen and came to greet us personally, like a dog. We went to find the other one, which was still bleating. Well, turns out he had his head stuck in the fence. He wasn’t in big trouble yet, but he wasn’t happy.
One of my blog readers emailed me and asked me to define Christian fiction. “Is it a story that doesn’t go directly against any Biblical teaching? Does the story have to teach some Christian lesson? Is it simply a story without all of the gratuitous sex and violence of the natural world?”
Jerram Barrs, a professor at Covenant Theological Seminary, thinks we need to be reading stories. But not just any stories.
“The greatest stories not only entertain and enlighten us, but also teach us something about who we are–and how we fit into God’s True Story of a redeemed creation.” That’s from an article just published in the seminary’s magazine, Covenant, fall/winter 2011, p. 10. He goes on to quote Tolkien’s “On Fairy Stories,” and urges us to read not only the gospel story but “many other stories as well that echo its joy and hope.”
I’ve written a novel about a prodigal daughter, tentatively titled Finding Home. I wanted to let you all know about it!
I’m reading a book by Billy Graham summarizing what the Bible says about angels. Here’s a quote: “While angels have tremendous authority, it is limited to doing only the will of God. They never deviate from God’s message, never dilute His message, never change God’s plan. Throughout the ages they have glorified only Him, never themselves.”
