toddcast

The recent 16-day government shut down affected some friends of mine in ways that I never expected.   A couple of friends were out of work.   Another had to postpone a mission trip since her passport could not be processed.   National news spotlighted other unforeseen consequences of the shutdown:   Monuments in Washington D.C. were closed to the public; the tourist economy at National Parks was curtailed;   federally funded medical research was put on hold.     I guess it was one of those "you never knew what you had until it was gone" type of things.   I wonder what would happen if there was a heavenly shut down.   Would we'd wake up one morning and find that today's sunrise has been postponed until further notice?   Would we look up at the stars on a clear night and notice that 30% of the stars have been blacked out due to lack of funding?   Would we get down on our knees at the end of the day to pray and hear a boomin...

On those evenings when our family can all sit down around the table for dinner, one of our standard questions for our sons is, "How was your day at school?"   Often there's just the perfunctory "fine" or "it was school" but recently one of our sons told us that one of their teachers made a comment suggesting that being a Christian was easy.   My first reaction was anger, horror, outrage, annoyance, indignation (righteous indignation, of course).   How could anyone make the claim that Christianity was easy?   It sure isn’t easy for me!   But then I got to think about the claim and thought maybe the teacher was right!   Perhaps having faith is easier than not having faith.    After some thought I suppose it must be hard not believing. It must be hard getting up on a beautiful morning, seeing the sunrise and feeling a sense of gratitude towards whoever is responsible for such beauty and then realizing that the feeling you have is just some neur...