The Bible admonishes us to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. Father’s, remember little eyes are watching you.

Help us, Father in heaven, to live our lives above reproach, to live in such a way that we would reflect You to our son’s and daughter’s. We don’t want to be a stumbling block to them. When we do make a mistake, help us to quickly repent so they too can witness and experience Your Mercy and Grace.

Not a Joking Matter  
 
Once, I received a humorous email from a friend that made me laugh so hard that it brought me to tears. So I sent the story to my brother-in-law and my two adult boys.

My youngest son replied, “What’s this?” Deep inside, there was a still small voice telling me that something was wrong. You see, the humorous story had one crude remark. The story was quite harmless, but my youngest son was letting me know that he had higher expectations of me.

But I drowned out the voice of conviction. After all, most of my family had been prodding me for years to lighten up. But then I received an email from my sister-in-law who had read the story before her husband. She wrote simply, “Great story, Pastor Hamby.” Seeing the title “pastor” in the address I could tell that she did not approve. Still, I wasn’t willing to let her rule my conscience . . . the story was no big deal, and besides, her husband would get a good laugh.

Then I received another letter (not an email) from a man named Paul. He was writing to a group of believers who had not understood the cancerous effects of crude joking. This is what he wrote: “Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving” (Ephesians 5:4). God had convicted me, and I realized that He was calling me to repentance and holiness.

The world desperately wants us to join in on superficial fun that robs us of eternal joy. That joy can only come to the pure in heart, for it is the pure in heart who see God, as well as the incredible life He’s planned for us!

-Mark Hamby

http://www.youtube.com/embed/5zEZvPg1itw?rel=0

In July 1969, two human beings changed history by walking on the surface of
the moon. But what happened before Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong exited the
Lunar Module is perhaps even more amazing, if only because so few people
know about it. “I’m talking about the fact that Buzz Aldrin took communion
on the surface of the moon. Some months after his return, he wrote about it
in Guideposts magazine and a few years ago I had the privilege of meeting
him myself.

I asked him about it and he confirmed the story to me, and I wrote about in
my book, “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About God (But Were Afraid to
Ask).”

The background to the story is that Aldrin was an elder at his Presbyterian
Church in Texas during this period in his life, and knowing that he would
soon be doing something unprecedented in human history, he felt he should
mark the occasion somehow, and he asked his minister to help him. And so the
minister consecrated a communion wafer and a small vial of communion wine.
Buzz Aldrin took them with him out of the Earth‘s orbit and on to the
surface of the moon.

He and Armstrong had only been on the lunar surface for a few minutes when
Aldrin made the following public statement: “This is the LM pilot. I’d like
to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and
wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of
the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way.” He then ended
radio communication and there, on the silent surface of the moon, 250,000
miles from home, he read a verse from the Gospel of John, and he took
communion.

Here is his own account of what happened: “In the radio blackout, I opened
the little plastic packages which contained the bread and the wine. I poured
the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity
of the moon, the wine slowly curled and gracefully came up the side of the
cup. Then I read the scripture, ‘I am the vine, you are the branches.
Whosoever abides in me will bring forth much fruit. Apart from me you can do
nothing.’

“I had intended to read my communion passage back to earth, but at the last
minute [they] had requested that I not do this. NASA was already embroiled
in a legal battle with Madelyn Murray O’Hare, the celebrated opponent of
religion, over the Apollo 8 crew reading from Genesis while orbiting the
moon at Christmas. I agreed reluctantly.

“I ate the tiny Host and swallowed the wine. I gave thanks for the
intelligence and spirit that had brought two young pilots to the Sea of
Tranquility. It was interesting for me to think: the very first liquid ever
poured on the moon, and the very first food eaten there, were the communion
elements.”

And of course, it’s interesting to think that some of the first words spoken
on the moon were the words of Jesus Christ, who made the Earth and the moon
- and Who, in the immortal words of Dante, is Himself the “Love that moves
the Sun and other stars.”

How many of you knew this? Too bad this type news doesn’t travel as fast as
the bad does…share it if you’ve felt God’s Love.

The handwritten verse containing the Bible verse that Aldrin recited during his lunar Communion service was offered at auction in 2007.

Shown is a handwritten card containing a Bible verse that Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin planned to broadcast back to Earth during a lunar Holy Communion service and is among items offered in a space-related auction in Dallas, Texas, Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2007. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

Verified on Snopes: http://www.snopes.com/glurge/communion.asp

A July 21 2009 article on the CBN news website notes:

Astronaut Aldrin may have gone down in history as the second person to step foot on the moon, but he does hold one unique distinction. He held the first communion service while he and Armstrong were on the moon.

The Washington Post reported that the service was not broadcast, because NASA was concerned about a lawsuit from atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair. Every year, since the moon landing, the Webster Presbyterian Church of Houston, Texas, commemorates Aldrin’s moon communion service. At that time, Aldrin sat with Armstrong in the Lunar Module, and pulled out his personal preference kit given to him by the Houston church. The kit contained bread, wine and a silver chalice.

“It’s kind of a tradition around here,” said the church’s Gene Fisseler. “It’s still church. It’s not about the moon. It’s not about the astronauts. It’s still about church. But we feel like it’s an important tradition here in this church.”

Another July 2009 article in the Washington Post confirms the information in the message:

Aldrin’s brief and private Christian service never caused a flap, but it could have. Aldrin has said that he planned to broadcast the service, but NASA at the last minute asked him not to because of concerns about a lawsuit filed (later dismissed) by atheist Madelyn Murray O’Hare after Apollo 8 astronauts read from Genesis while orbiting the moon at Christmas.

While the core information in the message is factual, the claim that NASA deliberately kept Aldrin’s communion a secret for two decades appears to be unfounded. Aldrin himself wrote of the communion in a Guideposts Magazine from October 1970, a little over a year after the Moon landing. And as noted in the CBN news quote above, Webster Presbyterian Church of Houston, Texas has openly commemorated Aldrin’s moon communion every year since the landing. While it is well documented that NASA opted not to broadcast Aldrin’s communion message because of possible legal ramifications, there is no evidence to suggest that it subsequently tried to hide the event for over twenty years. At least, if it was NASA’s intention to suppress the information, it was singularly unsuccessful. In fact, Aldrin’s communion is even mentioned in NASA’s own history of the Apollo missions.

The communion was dramatized in an episode of From the Earth to the Moon, a twelve-part HBO television miniseries from 1998.

Have a Blessed Day in the Lord !

I’ll have to admit I cringed on seeing that. Now I know that any high school principal who doesn’t claim this as his/her goal is likely to be accused of not having the students best interests at heart and would also likely be run out of town by indignant parents. But personally, I think there is a major elitism at play here. And ultimately, a lot of those students suffer as a result. Is our goal really to prepare every student for life in a cubicle? In looking at my grandchildren I see those who would weep at such a prospect.

The elitism is in believing that every occupation pursued by a path outside of college is somehow “lower” and not a worthy pursuit for our students. We have become a culture that looks down on labor and craftsman positions. So, really, in this graduating class we will have no Ferrari mechanics, no sculptors, no HVAC specialists, no one I can contact to design another water feature, no skilled carpenters, no stone masons, no welders and no piano tuners?

Two days ago I had a young man come out to do the spring check-up on our air conditioning systems.  Just a check-up, no parts were required.  He was here less than two hours and my bill was $149.  Yesterday my John Deere tractor was returned with new bearings in the front wheels.  Total bill – $2690.78.  Most of that was labor – billed at $70/hour.  At the same time I have a young attorney friend who is working part time at Kinkos at $10 to supplement his income.  The HVAC guy and tractor mechanic – $70 an hour.

In 1942, Joseph Schumpeter wrote that the expansion of “higher education” beyond what our labor market demands creates for white-collar workers “employment in substandard work or at wages below those of the better-paid manual workers.”  And then he added, “it may create unemployability of a particularly disconcerting type.  The man who has gone to college or university easily becomes psychically unemployable in manual occupations without necessarily acquiring employability in professional work.”*  I’m sure you know people who are stuck in $12/hour jobs who would never lower themselves to work in something like being a tractor mechanic.

If we consider our children to be smart and really want the best for them, should we not consider a broad range of occupational possibilities?

via 100% College Admission – How Sad.

Steve Wood/Shutterstock

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Reblogged from agnus dei - english + romanian blog:

Reblogged from The Master's Slave:

Children Fascinate More Than Adults

— • —

When you’re sitting at a meeting, and at stake are big results,
The CEO demands to know with whom you did consult;
But your dreaming of the treasure from an ancient Mayan cult—
’Cause those who dream like children fascinate more than adults.

When you find yourself at tea time with a dozen dolls in dress,
And a gaggle of young girlies who demand a short address,
On the need for courtly manners, you will not be found at fault,
For the children of your household fascinate more than adults.

Grown-ups see their unmown grass as a project not completed;
Children see your jungle lawn as a kingdom undefeated.
It’s a difference in perspective of what’s best to exalt,
’Cause those who dream with children fascinate more than adults.

There’s something truly tragic when adult hearts grow cold,
To the beauty and simplicity of the stories they were told.
Some spend a lifetime hoping that someday they can recover
The dream-like sense of wonder, from the books once read by Mother.

It’s childlike faith, not childishness, which captures our devotion;
The preciousness, the purity and power of their emotion.
They prove an antidote of hopefulness to trials and tumult,
’Cause those with faith like children, fascinate more than adults.

There’s time enough for grown-up things like bank account and bills.
Why miss an opportunity for tea time with your girls,
Or fighting Nazis with your boys-producing great gestalt?
’Cause the children of your household fascinate more than adults.

There’s a wisdom found in boyhood that comes from chasing rabbits,
Unencumbered by the worries of a thousand grown-up habits.
Like fearing, faking, fawning, frowning, and foiling the day
That could be filled with lovely things that children do at play.

Don’t get me wrong: I recognize the need for grown-up themes,
And putting aside milky treats to chew on meaty dreams.
Adulthood clearly is the goal; our end maturity,
But notice please that this is what our children aim to be.

The boy who cuts up worms today, tomorrow is a doctor.
And the patriot girl sewing flags, tomorrow is a mother
Who’ll teach the generation next to know their history,
And through her joyful play today, sew seeds of liberty.

It’s the childhood dreams of little girls and little boys at play
That make for truly visionary kings and queens some day.
So don’t be too dismayed or take this as insult:
But the children of your household fascinate more than adults.

— • —

By Douglas Winston Phillips

Where Can I Fly?

The new American Airlines will offer more than 6,700 flights daily to 336 destinations in 56 countries around the world, including Brazil, China, Japan, Spain and many others, while bolstering its industry-leading position in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The combined airline will be equipped to offer our customers an expanded global network, providing greater access that will increase domestic and international travel options and benefits for customers.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/02/11/171409656/why-even-radiologists-can-miss-a-gorilla-hiding-in-plain-sight

Why Even Radiologists Can Miss A Gorilla Hiding In Plain Sight

by ALIX SPIEGEL

February 11, 2013 3:33 AM

Listen to the Story

Morning Edition

4 min 36 sec

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Notice anything unusual about this lung scan? Harvard researchers found that 83 percent of radiologists didn’t notice the gorilla in the top right portion of this image.

Trafton Drew and Jeremy Wolfe

This story begins with a group of people who are expert at looking: the professional searchers known as radiologists.

"If you watch radiologists do what they do, [you're] absolutely convinced that they are like superhuman," says Trafton Drew, an attention researcher at Harvard Medical School.

About three years ago, Drew started visiting the dark, cavelike "reading rooms" where radiologists do their work. For hours he would stand watching them, in awe that they could so easily see in the images before them things that to Drew were simply invisible.

"These tiny little nodules that I can’t even see when people point to them — they’re just in a different world when it comes to finding this very, very hard-to-find thing," Drew says.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vJG698U2Mvo#at=54

YouTube

In the Invisible Gorilla study, subjects have to count how many times the people in white shirts pass the basketball. By focusing their attention on the ball, they tend to not notice when a guy in a gorilla suit shows up.

But radiologists still sometimes fail to see important things, and Drew wanted to understand more. Because of his line of work, he was naturally familiar with one of the most famous studies in the field of attention research, the Invisible Gorilla study.

In that groundbreaking study, research subjects are shown a video of two teams of kids — one team wears white; the other wears black — passing two basketballs back and forth between players as they dodge and weave around each other. Before it begins, viewers are told their responsibility is to do one thing and one thing only: count how many times the players wearing white pass the ball to each other.

This task isn’t easy. Because the players are constantly moving around, viewers really have to concentrate to count the throws.

Then, about a half-minute into the video, a large man in a gorilla suit walks on screen, directly to the middle of the circle of kids. He stops momentarily in the center of the circle, looks straight ahead, beats his chest, and then casually strolls off the screen.

The kids keep playing, and then the video ends and a series of questions appear, including: "Did you see the gorilla?"

"Sounds ridiculous, right?" says Drew. "There’s a gorilla on the screen — of course you’re going to see it! But 50 percent of people miss the gorilla."

This is because when you ask someone to perform a challenging task, without realizing it, their attention narrows and blocks out other things. So, often, they literally can’t see even a huge, hairy gorilla that appears directly in front of them.

That effect is called "inattentional blindness" — which brings us back to the expert lookers, the radiologists.

Drew wondered if somehow being so well-trained in searching would make them immune to missing large, hairy gorillas. "You might expect that because they’re experts, they would notice if something unusual was there," he says.

He took a picture of a man in a gorilla suit shaking his fist, and he superimposed that image on a series of slides that radiologists typically look at when they’re searching for cancer. He then asked a bunch of radiologists to review the slides of lungs for cancerous nodules. He wanted to see if they would notice a gorilla the size of a matchbook glaring angrily at them from inside the slide.

But they didn’t: 83 percent of the radiologists missed it, Drew says.

This wasn’t because the eyes of the radiologists didn’t happen to fall on the large, angry gorilla. Instead, the problem was in the way their brains had framed what they were doing. They were looking for cancer nodules, not gorillas, so "they look right at it, but because they’re not looking for a gorilla, they don’t see that it’s a gorilla."

In other words, what we’re thinking about — what we’re focused on — filters the world around us so aggressively that it literally shapes what we see. So, Drew says, we need to think carefully about the instructions we give to professional searchers like radiologists or people looking for terrorist activity, because what we tell them to look for will in part determine what they see and don’t see.

Drew and his co-author Jeremy Wolfe are doing more studies, looking at how to help radiologists see both visually and cognitively the things that hide, sometimes in plain sight.