Recently I’ve been reading and re-reading Kenneth Bailey’s “Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes”, which has been eye-opening to my modern western eyes!
Among many other topics, Ken spends significant time on the Lord’s Prayer…
“Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does.” –John 5:19-20 NIV
How might Jesus have seen his Father’s sacrificial love? How did the Father show him?
In July 2018, my 17-year-old daughter Lydia and I joined 20 or so other adventurers from the U.S. and Kenya for a two-week service project in south-central Kenya – a week in Nairobi and a week in Embu. We cleaned windows, chairs, cabinets, etc. in the children’s ward of Kenyatta National Hospital, renovated a playground in Embu, spent a good deal of time with kids, and got up close and personal with giraffes.
Sunday, 8th October - It hurt so much, and went so well!
In May 2020, I was on a Saturday run with the Dick Pond Lisle Trailheads, chatting with Adam. Turns out he makes sourdough bread. He’s also in Information Technology. (That makes several IT breadmakers I know; I guess it’s a thing).
Anyway, two years later my pandemic sourdough is still going. I’ve discovered that it’s fairly hard to kill. It will keep for weeks in the fridge, and wakes back up in an afternoon. Based on Adam’s recipe graciously translated from the Polish, the following commentary is my sourdough routine.
These are the notes from the last session of a six-session course I taught in November 2012 in the West region of the Chicago Church of Christ. This session is inspired by a class taught by Dr. Willis Hames during an International Apologetics Conference in 2007 in Elmhurst, Illinois, hosted by the Chicago Church. Dr. Hames is a professor of geology at Auburn University and a Christian since 1990.
Before the corn and soybean harvest, my brother Aric wanted to do a hiking trip. We’ve done something about every year—Mount Whitney last year, Half-Dome before that, and Wilson’s Prom in Australia before that.
Aric typically starts brainstorming around January, and planning around March. This year the Grand Canyon Rim-to-Rim caught his eye–a 24-mile day hike from the North Rim, 5,700 feet down to Phantom Ranch and 4,400 feet up to the South Rim.
From darkness and chaos, God created a magnificent world in six days. And then he rested.
The Bible Project published a video about the Sabbath that resonated with me deeply–especially in the way it portrays Jesus’ ministry and message as the ultimate fulfillment of the Sabbath rest.
My brother Aric is a great farmer and enjoys what he does, but his heart also inclines toward mountain adventuring. In 2018, after persuading a few of us to join him up Half Dome in Yosemite, he began looking for a Bigger Thing and settled on Mount Whitney, at 14,500 feet the highest point in the contiguous U.S.
Excerpts from DES update…Rene’s tour, a trip to the local quarry, and Aric’s FB.
In early July, our own Rene Duquesnoy began serving a tour of duty in Kuwait for six to eight months with the Air National Guard. We send a package his way every handful of weeks. If you want to send something, let us know.