****My Unborn Grandchildren: Womb Mates

Any day now, our daughter is expected to give birth. We have discovered that having grandchildren can be much more fun than having children and so we are pleased and excited at the prospect of two more coming into our lives.

We have known for a long time that she is carrying twins. What will they look like? What color will their hair and eyes be? I guess we will just have to wait and see but there are some things that we know about them already.

Through the miracles of modern technology, we know that they are boys. Approximately eleven or twelve weeks after they were conceived, when they were less than two inches tall and almost indiscernible, every single one of their organs had begun to function. By that time their little hearts had been beating for almost eight weeks. They were breathing (fluid) and their little brains were already coordinating the movements of their muscles and organs. Their taste buds were formed, milk teeth had appeared and they could swallow. Their stomachs already had working digestive juices. Their livers were producing blood cells and their kidneys were functioning.

They could bend their tiny little fingers (already engraved with their own unique prints and equipped with nails) around objects and they possibly were already thumb suckers. They could squint their eyes, knit their brows, smile and frown. They urinated and had bowel movements. They slept, dreamed and awakened. Their bodies were sensitive to touch; they could feel pain and heat, they reacted to light and noise, and they were able to learn things.

We are all busy preparing a place for them in our family and are looking forward to their arrival.

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you were born I set you apart.” Jeremiah 1:5

User Friendly Church

“ The church the world loves is the church that God abhors.”

Charles Spurgeon

Self-Esteem and Mush for Brains

“We could focus on the latest worrisome news in education: the results of an international test released last week that show American 15-year-olds don’t know much about science and are falling behind their peers in other industrialized nations. But why get depressed? There is an aluminum foil lining: The test also found that our teens don’t let their ignorance bother them. They may not know as much as students in Finland, Canada or New Zealand, but they think they do. When asked to rate their own scientific abilities, they put themselves at the top with their better-educated peers. This is the real trend in American education. No one can match us when it comes to self-esteem.”

Los Angeles Times

Read And Study The Scriptures

"The meaning of the Bible must be known and understood if it is to make a difference in our lives, and I urge all Americans to read and study the Scriptures. The rewards of such efforts will help preserve our heritage of freedom and signal the message of liberty to people in all lands."

Ronald Reagan

Always Room For Lunch

Rhinoceros

The ravenous rhino
Is big, strong and tough,
But his skin is all baggy and flappy,
Which means that there’s plenty
Of room for his lunch,
And that makes him terribly happy.

Genius And Stupidity

“The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.” —

Albert Einstein

How To Resolve Personal Conflict

(My politically correct rendition of Matthew 18:15-17 for the 21st Century Evangelical Church in America)
15. Moreover if your brother (or sister or whatever) errs against you, remember, he (or she or whatever) is a victim and it is probably not his (or her or whosever’s) fault. Go and discuss your feelings between you and him (or her or whomever) alone. If he (or she or whatever) hears you, he (or she or it) may sense your compassion and you will have regained your brother’s (or sister’s or whomever’s) warm and fuzzy affections.
16. But if he (or she or it) will not embrace you, take with you a team of one or two who are more sensitive than you, that, by consensus, every misunderstanding may be sympathetically acknowledged.
17. And if he (or she or whatever) still has unresolved issues, appeal to the church that it might assume it’s collective responsibility for his (or her or it’s) misdeeds and make appropriate reparations that he (or she or whoever) will feel comforted. But if he (or she or it) refuses even to be restored by the church, publicly praise him (or her or whomever) and shift the blame to someone else, that his (or her or its) self-esteem shall not be damaged.

The Well-Meaning Rhinoceros Who Wanted To Be Different

Long ago the Rhinoceros didn't have a horn. Just a long, gray head.

Now the Rhinoceros wanted to be different. He thought of every thing. A mane, but the lion and horse already had that. Speed, but the Cheetah had that. Everything he thought of someone already had it.

One day the Rhinoceros was walking across the beach, when he saw a shell, shaped like a horn. He said "This is a very nice shell, I will keep it."

The next day the Rhinoceros gathered all his friends to decide what the Rhinoceros should have to make him different. Suddenly the Platypus started shouting "A flat tail, a flat tail."

"But you have that" said the Cheetah.

"Oh" the Platypus exclaimed. Just then the Platypus's tail got caught on the shell and flicked it onto the Rhinoceros's head. The animals pulled and pulled to get it off, but the more they pulled the more it got stuck. The Rhino thought and said "stop, this will make me look different."

The animals all looked back. He was right it did look different.

So from then on the Rhinoceros raises its head proudly, and says "look at my horn, you will never see anything like it again."

The end



By Rachel - age 11, Leichter, England

Living With Conflict

Living with conflict is a lot like having a rhinoceros in your living room.
It is irritating.
It is destructive.
It is distracting.
And besides that, it stinks.

One More Compelling Argument For Accreditation

Study: Most college students lack enough literacy for common tasks

Nearing a diplo­ma, most college students cannot handle many complex but com­mon tasks, from understanding credit card offers to comparing the cost per ounce of food. Those are the sobering find­ings of a study of literacy on college campuses, the first to target the skills of students as they approach the start of their careers.

More than 50 percent of stu­dents at four-year schools and more than 75 percent at two­ year colleges lacked the skills to perform complex literacy tasks. That means they could not interpret a table about exercise­ and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, compare credit-card offers with different interest rates and annual fees or sum­marize results of a survey about parental involvement in school.

"It is kind of disturbing that a lot of folks are graduating with a degree (from accredited schools) and they're not going to be able to do those things," said Stephane Baldi, the study's director at the American In­stitutes for Research.

Most students showed inter­mediate skills, meaning they could perform moderately chal­lenging tasks such as identifying a location on a map, calculating the cost of ordering office sup­plies or consulting a reference guide to figure out which foods contain a particular vitamin.


College students do have superior skills, over the majority of adults across the nation, in searching and using information from documents. "But do they do well enough for a highly educated popula­tion? For a knowledge-based economy? The answer is no," said Joni Finney, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, an independent and nonpartisan group. "This sends a message that we should be monitoring this as a nation, and we don't do it," Finney said.


BY BEN FELLER THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, Feb. 2006

The Inevitable Coming Firestorm

“It does not take a majority to prevail... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.”

Samuel Adams

Political Correctness

"Politically correct means ALWAYS having to say you're sorry."

Destroy Stupidity

You must have no mercy-it is necessary to identify and recognize folly, stupidity, and evil for exactly what they are and go at them to destroy them, giving no quarter.

Jim Rohn

Just The Truth

"The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it and ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is."

Winston Churchill