Give To Everyone Who Asks Of You

While living in Zambia before, I frequently came in contact with people who asked me for things...like money. I wanted to honor Jesus' command to "give to everyone who asks of you," so I quickly realized that I needed to get creative in how I gave, because I didn't even have 20 Kwacha (1/4 cent) for everyone who would ask.

I don't think that the president of Senegal was thinking of Jesus' command, but he definitely got creative in giving to the victims of the earthquake in Haiti. He offered free land to any of the victims who would want to voluntarily repatriate back to Senegal. Thankfully, they made sure to clarify that "it would be in a fertile part of the country rather than in its parched deserts."

CreamyLingonKukenKaka (AKA Lingonberry and Cream Cheese Stuffed French Toast - Swedish Style)

Some friends of mine have {graciously} been rocking my Swedish world and showing me that not all foods are Swedish just because a Swede cooked it. The most difficult one to accept was Panakuken (Swedish...I mean, Dutch, oven pancake). Apparently, Swedes are good stealers and just like to take credit for other people's recipes - we're convincing though, by just adding a "kuken" or a "kaka."

The other day, I was attempting to recreate a wonderful delicacy that Derek and I had at a B&B - cream cheese stuffed French Toast. Conveniently, the only preserves we had on hand to mix with the cream cheese were lingonberries! So, our breakfast ended up becoming Swedish after all - Swedish French Toast! It was pretty putsy, but it was worth it. Derek said, "It's like having cheesecake for breakfast." Mmmmm...

Why the Time Magazine Trumpeting of New Calvinism Is a Bad Thing

Thabiti Anyabwile's response to the TIME article, including seven reasons why it is not as good as one might think.

10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now-#3 The New Calvinism

TIME Magazine online has a really interesting article about "The New Calvinism," here is part of it: "Neo-Calvinist ministers and authors don't operate quite on a Rick Warren scale. But, notes Ted Olsen, a managing editor at Christianity Today, "everyone knows where the energy and the passion are in the Evangelical world" — with the pioneering new-Calvinist John Piper of Minneapolis, Seattle's pugnacious Mark Driscoll and Albert Mohler, head of the Southern Seminary of the huge Southern Baptist Convention. The Calvinist-flavored ESV Study Bible sold out its first printing, and Reformed blogs like Between Two Worlds are among cyber-Christendom's hottest links." Check it all out here.

A Bag By Any Other Name Is Still a Bag

Cement bags, trash bags, biohazard bags - what do these bags have in common with each other? For millions of babies around the world, these bags become their coffins. People are appalled to hear stories from Africa of live (and dead) babies found in cement bags in a trash pile or thrown in a pit latrine. Yes, that's right to be appalled. Babies don't belong in bags.

In America, we have fancy red plastic bags with big black triangles on it that we put our babies in, sometimes in pieces and sometimes whole. A story from Florida just came out about a young first-time mother who "concluded she didn't have the resources or maturity to raise a child," so she did what countless other mothers do - listen to the women's resource clinic and "terminate the pregnancy." (Of course, there was no mention of adoption as a possibility, but that is another topic for another day).

This would be just another sad story, until it gets worse. The mother delivered too quickly and gave birth to a healthy, premature 23-week baby girl. One of the clinic owners' stepped in to finish the job by cutting the cord, putting the baby and placenta into her red coffin and letting her bleed to death. Tie the bag, throw it in the dumpster, go home, have dinner with the family...all in a days work. Except, babies don't belong in bags - cement bags or fancy red plastic bags.

The lines get way too fuzzy at this point, don't they? How difficult it must be to continually defend the killing of babies. Please, let us keep praying for the day when abortion will be considered as unthinkable as slavery is now.

An appropriate way to close this, I think, is to show you a little friend of ours, whose mom had tried to give a cement bag burial. Mercifully, God did not want Silas to die there, and he was rescued and adopted into a wonderful Christian family.

What Is the Recession For?

Pastor John gave a really good sermon on "What is the Recession For?" You can find it here.

Amazing Pictures from the 2009 Inaugural Celebration

If you want to see some amazing pictures of the Inaugural Celebration of President Obama, go to geoeye. It's amazing to see how far the crowds went back.