The following is an excerpt from an article by Rev. Dr. Robert Newton, president of the California/Nevada/Hawaii District of The Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod. The title of the article is “Facing Challenges of the Post-Christian World” and it appeared in the November-December, 2013 issue of The Lutheran Layman. The world’s antagonism toward God’s Word…
In order to be admitted into the United States as a state in 1896 the state of Utah was required to write into its constitution a law banning polygamy. Skip ahead to today. Just in time for Christmas, U.S. District Judge Robert J. Shelby struck down Utah’s ban on same-sex marriage, saying the law “conflicts with…
The world lost a great world leader this past week; Nelson Mandela died at the age of 95. Most people are familiar with the details of his life story. One thing that everyone can agree on is that he inspired hope in people. He grew up in one of the most racially segregated places on earth. In the early days…
This was the week of the long-awaited Des Moines Quilt Show. Once again the show did not disappoint. One of the highlights of the show for me was a group of quilts from Caohagan, a tiny island in the Philippines. About 15 years ago a quilter moved to the island and started teaching the natives to quilt.…
The August, 2013 issue of Financial Insights from Thrivent Financial for Lutherans has an interesting article about speculative investing. The article talks about stock market participants who “buy the rumor, sell the news.” According to the article, here’s how it works: Suppose XYZ Corp. is known to be developing a new product that savvy outsiders…
There are a number of things recorded in the book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, that are confirmed by the physical world around us. Let’s look at four of these “predictions.” Genesis chapter one, verse one says that the earth had a definite beginning; “In the beginning God created the heavens and…
A fail-safe device is one that is capable of compensating automatically and safely for a system failure. A common example is traffic lights. Traffic lights have a controller known as a conflict monitor unit to detect faults or conflicting signals. When conflicting signals are detected the fail-safe unit switches all the lights at an intersection to flashing red. The traffic…
What, to my surprise, was the topic of conversation among the second and third graders during snack time at Vacation Bible this year? The angelic little darlings were talking about zombies and vampires! Then they proceeded to get up from their snacks and act out being zombies with great enthusiasm. At one point one of the…
When I was a kid there was a man who knew how to do some very creative things with cow horns. The first step in the process was to use pieces of glass to scrape the horns to make them smooth. This pictures shows what he was able to do with the horns that I…
Mirror Neurons 