Wow.

Two confessions: first, I didn’t save enough for my kids’ college education.  Second, $140,000 is a lot of money to me.  Not surprisingly, adding another $210,000 to the pot more than doubles the pain.  But that is what I’m paying — $350,000 – to send two kids to college.  One is at a very good state university – but paying out-of-state tuition; and other is at a top private university where he is getting $10,000 a year in scholarships.  So, all-in, I’m doing better than I might have: the real out-of-pocket expense for many private colleges is approaching $60,000 per year.

via Paying for College (When you haven’t saved enough) - Forbes.

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.

The kind and quantity of nutrition you received in the womb; the pollutants, drugs and infections you were exposed to during gestation; your mother's health, stress level and state of mind while she was pregnant with you — all these factors shaped you as a baby and a child and continue to affect you to this day. This is the provocative contention of a field known as fetal origins, whose pioneers assert that the nine months of gestation constitute the most consequential period of our lives, permanently influencing the wiring of the brain and the functioning of organs such as the heart, liver and pancreas. The conditions we encounter in utero, they claim, shape our susceptibility to disease, our appetite and metabolism, our intelligence and temperament. In the literature on the subject, which has exploded over the past 10 years, you can find references to the fetal origins of cancer, cardiovascular disease, allergies, asthma, hypertension, diabetes, obesity, mental illness — even of conditions associated with old age like arthritis, osteoporosis and cognitive decline.

via TIME.

Matt is using Instagram - a fun & quirky way to share your life with friends through a series of pictures. Snap a photo, then choose a filter to transform the look and feel of the shot into a memory to keep around forever.

via instagr.am.

Sherlock Holmes never said “Elementary, my dear Watson.” Neither Ingrid Bergman nor anyone else in “Casablanca” says “Play it again, Sam”; Leo Durocher did not say “Nice guys finish last”; Vince Lombardi did say “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing” quite often, but he got the line from someone else. Patrick Henry almost certainly did not say “Give me liberty, or give me death!”; William Tecumseh Sherman never wrote the words “War is hell”; and there is no evidence that Horace Greeley said “Go west, young man.” Marie Antoinette did not say “Let them eat cake”; Hermann Göring did not say “When I hear the word ‘culture,’ I reach for my gun”; and Muhammad Ali did not say “No Vietcong ever called me nigger.” Gordon Gekko, the character played by Michael Douglas in “Wall Street,” does not say “Greed is good”; James Cagney never says “You dirty rat” in any of his films; and no movie actor, including Charles Boyer, ever said “Come with me to the Casbah.” Many of the phrases for which Winston Churchill is famous he adapted from the phrases of other people, and when Yogi Berra said “I didn’t really say everything I said” he was correct.

via Notable Quotables : The New Yorker.

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.