I am the man who has seen affliction under the rod of his wrath; he has driven and brought me into darkness without any light; surely against me he turns his hand again and again the whole day long... But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:

The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

"The LORD is my portion," says my soul, "therefore I will hope in him."

Frank Kermode provoked me to think in fresh ways about the Bible.

Frank Kermode, who rose from humble origins to become one of England’s most respected and influential critics, died Tuesday [August 17, 2010] at his home in Cambridge, England. He was 90.

More...

...in his best-known book, “The Sense of an Ending,” Mr. Kermode analyzed the fictions we invent to bring meaning and order to a world that often seems chaotic and hurtling toward catastrophe. Between the tick and the tock of the clock, as he put it, we want a connection as well as the suggestion of an arrow shooting eschatologically toward some final judgment.

via NYTimes.com.

Luther’s genius was to infuse his translation with the words he heard on the street in his bit of Saxony, in east-central Germany. He obsessively asked friends and fellow scholars which dialectal words would be most widely understood. The common touch was so successful that a Catholic opponent complained that “even tailors and shoemakers…read it with great eagerness.” It was the bestseller of the century and remains the most popular German translation. Rarely has a single man had such a mark on a language.

via The Economist.

I found this a thought-provoking read.  It's a very sad situation with so many heart-breaking factors; at the same time, it poses questions worth struggling through on poverty, religion, charity & welfare. Each time I think through the complexity of poverty and read about a particular policy-based attempt to do something about it, I find myself just so much more disillusioned with policy as a means to shalom.

Senegal's capital Dakar is a lively and colorful city with, until recently, an army of beggars on the streets — both children and adults.

Many of the beggars in the metropolis have disappeared, at least for now, after the government recently began enforcing a 2005 ban on public begging, except near mosques and other places of worship. The crackdown came in August under international pressure, after a Human Rights Watch report estimated that tens of thousands of young boys are forced to beg on the streets.

In September, for the first time, the courts in Senegal applied another 2005 law against forcing minors to beg. A number of religious teachers were found guilty of the practice and were given suspended prison sentences and fined.

The issue is causing something of a social storm in Senegal, a majority Muslim country of 12 million where begging — and giving alms — are commonplace.

via NPR.

More...

The Senegalese are conflicted about the ban on beggars. Social commentator and blogger Hamadou Tidiane Sy, editor of the website ouestaf.com, says in predominantly Muslim Senegal, people are taught to follow their religion and their conscience and to give to the poor. He says it is part of the culture.

"One, you have this sense of solidarity, this sense of sharing that Muslims are taught to have towards people in need in general," Sy says. "And then you have extreme poverty, because we are in a society where you don't have social security, a good welfare system. So welfare has always been informal. This has always been the social welfare system here."

He adds that when this tradition is transferred to an urban setting — such as the streets of Dakar — "where you don't know who is in need and who is not and where those in need have to go out to beg, it creates the phenomenon we have here," and people lose face and dignity.

Thought-provoking words from Richard:

I’ve been reading the book, Radical by David Platt and blogging my response to each chapter.  If you interested in how others are working their way through the book then I encourage you to check out Marla Taviano’s blog HERE.  She was the brain child behind creating this Radical Read-along online.

As for chapter 5 titled The Multiplying Community, I was particularly struck by this one quote that I think sums up this reading.

“God’s design for taking the gospel into all the world is a slow, intentional, simple process that involves every one of his people sacrificing every facet of their lives to multiply the life of Christ in others.” (104)

I don’t know about you, but I find those words to be pretty challenging. And yes I am a pastor currently transitioning to full on church planter. More on that later this week.  So I have been challenged really reading each chapter to first of all not forget the lost.  The joy and fellowship I share with Jesus is what He desires for everyone.  I know this.  I can quote the bible verses to reference.  The question to me is…”am I doing it?”  making disciples that is.

via Richard Westley.

For just $50,000 each—half off for kids—I can buy a fractional share of the Terra Vivos underground shelter network, a project that will include at least 19 more “community bunkers,” each of them located within 150 to 200 miles of a major American city. Terra Vivos is a concrete-and-steel solution to the end times, whether brought about by climate change or nuclear war or even an unavoidable realignment of the cosmic order. Wherever I happen to be at that terrible moment, I’ll have a place to live the morning after.

It all came together for Vicino in 1980:

The idea to build and sell post-apocalyptic bunkers weighed on Vicino for many years before he acted. In 1980 he saw a replica of the Mayan calendar, the ancient stone carving that predicts that the world will end on December 21, 2012. Vicino recalls the moment clearly. “It just gave me this gut-wrenching feeling that I needed to convert a mine to a shelter for 1,000 people with everything you’d need to survive for a long period of time.”

via Popular Science.

Words fail me.

Aldo Sassi has claimed that he can guarantee that the seven riders he coaches are not doping. The Italian, who oversees the training of Ivan Basso (Liquigas-Doimo) and Cadel Evans (BMC), was speaking in response to comments made by CONI anti-doping investigator Ettore Torri on the pervasiveness of doping in cycling. “In the bible, the prophet Jonah speaks to God of the city of Nineveh, which is overrun with criminals. ‘How many just men are there?’ they ask. Maybe five. ‘Then I won’t destroy it,’ said God. In my cycling Nineveh, I can count on seven just men,” Sassi told Gazzetta dello Sport.

via cyclingnews.com.

I love reading such creative mashups of the text!