There once was a man named John. He was born in London, in 1725. His father was the commander of a merchant ship that sailed in the Mediterranean. Little is known about his mother, except that she taught John what he knew about God. She died when John was young. At the age of eleven, John began sailing on long voyages with his father
Read MoreThis morning, after days of heavy rain, the sun appeared. I went for a run through the forest. Sunlight filtered through a thick vapor that was billowing off the mossy tree trunks. The water droplets on the tips of the pine needles and leaves appeared as thousands of tiny glittering diamonds. It was so beautiful, tears came to my eyes
Read MoreI’ve been a church girl my whole life. There was a time when I thought of the message of the gospel as something that I didn’t need to hear anymore, something that maybe other people needed to hear, particularly if they weren’t Christian yet- but if it came up in church, in boredom, I’d let my mind wander. What good did hearing it again do for me? I was already saved.
True, I was a Christian, saved by grace, but a very immature one, and I was wrong about the message of the gospel. The message of the gospel is not just a message of one time salvation or a ticket to heaven.
Read MoreI walked with a group of about fifty children, ages 2-16, through the cobbled village streets of Săvârșin on a summer evening in 1992. We were on our way to the soccer field/cow pasture, to play with the summer camp orphans. It was just after dinner. Tea, dry bread, and an oily “beef” soup (where was the beef?), had not satisfied my hunger, and I hungrily eyed the chickens placidly pecking about in the tidy garden off the side of the path. There must be eggs somewhere in this village, I thought. There sure weren’t any in the camp dining room, nor on the empty shelves of the market. I accepted and ate a sour crabapple, picked off a nearby tree, from six-year-old Nadia.
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