The Blessing

Caroline and I are excited for a quick getaway to Greenville this weekend.   Greenville has a vibrant downtown area that we love to visit.  We plan to ride bikes on one of the many paved trails and eat some good food.  But this weekend was selected because Kari Jobe and Elevation Worship are leading worship Saturday night at an outdoor venue in Simpsonville.  I have posted music from Kari before.   This tour is called The Blessing Tour, and here is a link to her performing the title song.  I just checked and tickets are still available here if you want to join us in person.

Terror

 At the age of 8, Ali Ehsani was terrorized as Islamic extremists murdered his mother and father in Afghanistan.  His family was one of thousands of families that practiced Christianity in that country, and his parents were sought out and killed for their belief.  Ehsani spent the next 5 years fleeing the country and making his way to Rome.  Since that time, he has dedicated much of his life to helping Christians in Afghanistan.  Ehsani befriended another Afghan Christrian living in Rome who had escaped as well.  His friend's family is still in Afghanistan, and the friend's father has recently been arrested and separated from the rest of the family.  Ehsani has been reaching out to Pope Francis in an attempt to gather any available resources to assist this family and others who are trapped under the Taliban regime.  Pope Francis made this appeal just hours before the Taliban takeover of Kabul, “I join in the unanimous concern for the situation in Afghanistan. I ask all of you to pray with me to the God of peace, so that the clamor of weapons might cease and solutions can be found at the table of dialogue”.  I join him in praying.  For the complete story as reported in the Washington Post, click here.

Just A Farm Boy From Idaho

Neal grew up on a farm in Idaho.  At eleven years old, he declared he was going to make a million dollars raising cows to support his family's missionary efforts.  He aborted that plan when he found out his success would be dependent on very low mortality rates and a very high percentage of heifer twin births.   His tribulations raising cows helped to teach him some great life skills:

1. getting to the heart of what's needed for a project, and what isn't.
2. designing, implementing and launching a prototype to market quickly
3. connecting technical direction with the real goals of a business
4. getting a whole team's work accomplished with only me on the job
5. working on or leading a team

These life skills have paid off for him.  Neal Harmon is the founder of Angel Studios which has produced the highly regarded TV Series, The Chosen.  The Chosen takes stories from the Bible and brings them to life.   The Chosen is different from other TV Series in that it was crowdfunded.  Angel investors and the public pay it forward so that the studio can produce content that is not controlled like it is in traditional production companies.  It inspires me to see men and women use what they have and what they know to help build God's kingdom here on Earth.

Connecting

 Our ConnectGroup from church is getting ready to kick our fall semester.  In our last session, we read and discussed J. I. Packer's Knowing God.   In doing some research for one of our lessons, I found this video of Packer introducing a book by Mark Jones called Knowing Christ.  Jones is a Presbyterian minister in Canada and is a lover of the Puritans.   His doctoral dissertation was on Thomas Goodwin, a Puritan who lived from 1600 to 1680.  After reading several reviews of Knowing Christ, we decided to read and discuss that book this season.  Topics from this book will probably be popping up in this blog, so if you would like to read along, we would love to have you.  If you live in the Braselton, GA area, we would love to have you join us in person.

Fight like a girl

 

Photo Credit: Tim Clayton/Corbis/Getty Images

At the 2016 Olympics, Helen Maroulis became the first USA athlete to win a gold medal in wrestling.   She handed the defeat to Saori Yoshida, who had been the world champion 13 times previous to that match.  In 2017, she won the world championship in Paris, but in 2018, her wrestling world crumbled as she was diagnosed with multiple concussions and PTSD.  Her recovery and questions about her return to wrestling dominated her thinking for the next year.  But, there was a phrase that she remembered when she was battling Yoshida in the 2016 Olympics.  "Christ is in me.  I am enough."  I, for one, will be cheering on Helen this coming week as she competes in the 2020 Olympics.  Check out this video for more on Helen.

Pirate Party

 

My real estate business at Lake Hartwell keeps me pretty busy.  I love what I do, but I sometimes feel like I do a bad job of enjoying the lifestyle I am selling.   For the past several years, Caroline and I have joined up with good friends to host Pirate Camp for our older grandkids.  We have 8 pirates this year.  This is an anything goes, "just say yes", 3-day event.  It takes a significant amount of planning, and I count it as one of the most important things I do all year.  I hope that when they grow up and think back on their time with us, that the memories we make at Pirate Camp will be top of mind.

The Jesus Music

If you follow this blog at all, you know how important music is to me.  My wife, Caroline, and I were in high school band together.  My whole family played in the church orchestra when my kids were in high school.   Caroline and I still play with the Georgia Wind Symphony.   One of my first introductions to contemporary Christian music was through Amy Grant.  One of the first concerts Caroline and I attended after getting married was Amy Grant's.  Two years ago, we went with friends to Amy and Vince Gill's Christmas concert at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville.   I was excited to see this trailer for a new movie coming in October called "The Jesus Music".    Amy is a part of it, along with some of the other artists that have shaped the industry and helped to shape our hearts.  I can't wait to see it.  Check out the trailer here.