the Prayer book

Andrew Murray and A.W. Tozer must have come out of the same bean pod. They are strikingly similar to me — the kind of authors that say simply what it means to be Christ-like. I sit and read and shake my head along with all they say, wondering all along why I did not see such simple-but-profound insight before.

I borrowed this copy from a friend/co-worker/pastor. I might just have to get one of my own. I've never been one to get my prayer life in order, and I have to admit I came to this book hoping it would do so.

I was reading a pamphlet sent out by Samaritan's Purse (www.samaritanspurse.org) which quoted some of Murray. I shared it with my pastor-friend and the next day he brought me the book.

This is the quote that caught my eye. Hope it catches your heart:

"... He is waiting patiently while he listens to (God's own elect).
"Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth,
and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter
rain" (James 5:7).
The farmer longs for his harvest, but knows that it must have its full
amount of sunshine and rain, and he has long patience. A child so
often wants to pick the half-ripe fruit; the farmer knows how to wait
until the proper time.
And it is the Father, in whose hand are the times and seasons, who
knows the moment when the soul is ripened to that fullness of faith in
which it can really take and keep the blessing.
The insight into this truth leads the believer to cultivate the
corresponding dispositions: patience and faith, waiting and
anticipating, are the secret of his perseverance. ...
... Christian, give God time. He will perfect that which concerns you."



Andrew Murray (1828-1917) served for 60 years in the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa.

Judith's Pavillion

My newest read was recommended to me by a car salesman. The kind of car salesman that doesn't fit the normal prototype. I really like meeting those kinds of people. I haven't gotten far into it yet, but it is the like the vault room of a bank ... the bank being the mind of a neurosurgeon. Somehow it feels like I'm reading something I shouldn't be.

I certainly don't understand all the medical terms, but his fluid and concise writing allows amateurs in the medical field the ability to understand the story without the medical school training.

more to come

el cielo

This hefty piece of nonfiction is in the works.

It's stretching my mind more than it has been stretched in a long time. Some of it is hard to take in.

The concept of eternity when you really think about it, is difficult to comprehend. Driving to school today, I thought about how hard it is to think that the life we live in eternity will last forever. Time won't affect it like it does here. I wont grow old. I'll remain where I am always. That in itself is tearing the sides of the boxes in my head.

and then ... there's so much more

Cautiva

Imagine finding out you aren't who you've been told you are. You were actually adopted, your mother was blind-folded and beaten up when she had you. Your parents, those people you thought you were born to, have lied your whole life. And your real parents have been missing, and are proposed dead.

This is what Christina is told one day at school.

Her best friend turns against her and her godfather is partly to blame for sending her real parents to a concentration camp that existed in downtown Buenos Aires during the 1978 World Cup era when Argentina won.

This tale, although one of fiction, is based on true events and real stories from those who lived under the leadership of President Jorge Videla.

At the end of the film, viewers are told that nearly 30,000 people are said to have disappeared during the Dirty War of Argetina. Many political dissidents where drugged and then pushed out of airplanes flying over the Rio de Plata which runs into the Atlantic Ocean. Some dissidents were sent to torture camps in the hands of the country's naval mechanic school in B.A.


Anyone who has listened to Mana (their version of the original by Rubén Blades) or U2 might have heard the story of the "desaparecidos" or the disappeared. U2's song is about the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a still-active human rights group of mothers of the victims of the dictatorship.

The after-effects still linger, and the story of Sofia (turned Christina) reminds the viewers the old, scientific equation that every action has an equal and opposite reaction.



*The following is from Wikipedia*

Many women gave birth in captivity; they were then killed and their children given illegally in adoption to families and friends of military or police personnel. The task of locating these children and restoring their lost identity has been going on since the restoration of democracy in 1983. Legal proceedings were taken against those involved in these actions even while amnesties were in place for other crimes by the military since appropriating children from their mothers is a crime that lies outside the scope of military procedures, and thus also outside any kind of amnesty law or pardon that implies orders in a military context.

MLK Jr. Day in St. Pauls

ST. PAULS — Thirty-degree weather wasn't going to stop Annie Pearson from marching the two-mile walk in remembrance of Martin Luther King Jr. – she showed up at St. Pauls Elementary School. But the rest of the St. Pauls Bladen County Chapter of Las Amigas never arrived at school.

"I guess they thought it was too cold," Pearson said with a smile on her face. The Las Amigas president got back in her car. "Just come to the church at six – I'll see you there."

Pearson walked into the church and sat on one of the 56 bright blue-cushioned pews. As more and more people escaped the wind-chilling cold and entered the small brick building. Pearson moved from the left row of pews to the middle. She sat alone. Her black jacket that she draped over the back of the wooden pew coordinated with her shoes, her nylons and the color of her skin.

The choir began singing. The crowd was clapping and tapping; Pearson didn't move. Her right hand grasped her thin gold-framed glasses.

She walked up to the podium after the singing stopped. "You know the reason for us being here … remembering the great Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.," Pearson said, serving her role as the organizer of the 11th annual event. "We hope you will be blessed, we are blessed to have you here."

She took her seat, put on her glasses and scrutinized the night's agenda like a professor would a textbook.

The singing started again. She stood up. Her voice rose above the other 40 people in the crowd. But that distinct sound was only heard on certain words. The glasses had moved to her left hand and a tissue was scrunched up in her right hand.

The preacher, Rev. Curtis Barginere, stood up to speak. Pearson crossed her arms on her lap and kept her abnormally good posture.

"Like Moses in his day, God used King mightily to pave a better way," Barginere said with his voice maintaining one noise level – loud. "Let us remember the marches. Let us remember the jail time. Let us remember the water. Let us remember the dogs."

When Barginere referred to King with the phrases "by peaceful means" and "full of love for mankind," Pearson strongly nodded her head.

"King stepped out of that fear only on the foundation of Jesus Christ," Barginere said.

The crowd was no longer an audience, but a part of the show with shouts of "Amen" and hands raised – some people stood up.

Barginere spiced up scripture.

"You are my friends if you do, if you do, if you do what I command you," he said raising his voice to a level that made the microphone buzz. His hands remained in the air waving and shaking, as if they automatically did that when his voice reached a certain level.

He continued: "We are about something. We are about peace and love and happiness, not this violence state. Not drugs and crime … not breaking into houses … ."

After the service, Pearson said she thought Barginere did well.

"It was different from what we've heard," she said. "I liked when he tied Martin Luther King into biblical characters."

Pearson was a college student during the 1963 March on Washington. She said King's ideals are still alive.

"He set the floor for civil and economic justice," she said.

My Flesh and Blood

coming soon...
a little splurb about this intriguing documentary

The Glass Castle

Despite having a selfish mother and an alcoholic father, Jeanette Walls and her three siblings stay afloat amidst an almost-homeless lifestyle.

Walls has a knack for writing well as she tells a fascinating memoir of what it was like to live in a condemned house with no plumbing, no food, and no refrigerator.

Her father uses her beauty to get a few bucks, her mother wont wake up to go to work every day. Walls and her brother go "hunting" for food on a daily basis, sometimes sitting in the bathrooms at school to wait for other children to throw away their leftovers at lunch.

To read a real account of the different effects an impoverished lifestyle can have on American people in recent times from a page-turner of a book, pick this one up.