A Reflection of Christ– from Insight for Today by Charles R. Swindoll
Excerpt regarding the commentary on Genesis 43:33-34

Joseph’s life offers us a magnificent portrayal of the grace of God as He came to our rescue in the Person of His Son, Jesus. So many come to Him, like Joseph’s guilty brothers, feeling the distance and fearing the worst from God, only to have Him demonstrate incredible generosity and mercy. Instead of being blamed, we are forgiven. Instead of feeling guilty, we are freed. And instead of experiencing punishment, which we certainly deserve, we are seated at His table and served more than we can ever take in.

For some, it’s too unreal. So we desperately plead our case, only to have Him speak kindly to us—promising us peace in our own language. We then try to fend off His anger by bargaining with Him, thinking our hard work and sincere efforts will pay Him back for all those evil past deeds we’re guilty of. But to our astonishment, He never even considered our attempts important enough to mention. What we had in mind was earning just enough to silence our guilt, but what He had in mind was overwhelming us with such an abundance we’d realize we can never, ever repay.

What a beautiful picture of Christ at the cross, bearing the sins we committed, forgiving us in the process. Isn’t such grace amazing? The One who was rejected is the same One who goes the limit to get us reunited with Him.

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Heaven is for real

From DSC:
I “happened to see” this book at Barnes & Nobles the other day, and I started to read it. Immediately, it got my attention and I ended up buying it. It has brought tears to my eyes on several occasions and for different reasons. I highly recommend that you check this book out. Nothing in it surprised me — but rather, it confirmed/affirmed many of my beliefs.

 

You need to check this book out! Heaven is for real. By Todd Burpo.

Description from http://heavenisforreal.com/:
Heaven Is for Real is the true story of the four-year old son of a small town Nebraska pastor who during emergency surgery slips from consciousness and enters heaven. He survives and begins talking about being able to look down and see the doctor operating and his dad praying in the waiting room. The family didn’t know what to believe but soon the evidence was clear.

Colton said he met his miscarried sister, whom no one had told him about, and his great grandfather who died 30 years before Colton was born, then shared impossible-to-know details about each. He describes the horse that only Jesus could ride, about how “reaaally big” God and his chair are, and how the Holy Spirit “shoots down power” from heaven to help us.

Told by the father, but often in Colton’s own words, the disarmingly simple message is heaven is a real place, Jesus really loves children, and be ready, there is a coming last battle.

 

 

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Helping your child develop a growing relationship with Christ — from FamilyLife.com by Dennis and Barbara Rainey
These six spiritual disciplines helped our children on their spiritual journeys.

From DSC:
In the world of K-12 education, it seems that we end up putting a lot of responsibility for “success,” growth, and performance on the teachers and on the school districts themselves. But what about the parents? What about the families (or lack thereof) that do or do not value education? Aren’t they part of the answer/equation?

Along these lines, I appreciate the work of those organizations who are trying to support and build families up around the world; to keep marriages and families from declining even further (esp. true in the U.S.).  One of these organizations is Family Life, where I appreciate the work of Dennis and Barbara Rainey as well as the work of Bob Lepine. Though I don’t always agree with everything they say, I love their intent, what they are trying to do, and the tools that they create and/or provide for families.

I do not post this to point fingers at people or to be “holier-than-thou”. I post it in the hopes that someone out there will benefit from the wisdom that comes from the Word. That families, marriages and childrens’ futures will be built up, not further destroyed. I appreciate the work of these types of organizations.

Also see:

 

 

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More church websites invite posting of prayers — from USAToday.com by Cathy Lynn Grossman

Need prayer power? Try the World Wide Web. More than four in 10 Protestant churches with websites now invite people to post pleas to the Lord on the main church site so volunteers and staff can chime in on the soulful call, according to a new survey.

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Year in review: 2010 at Bible Gateway

Year in review: 2010 at Bible Gateway — from Bible Gateway by Rachel Barach

Excerpt:

The New Year is well underway now, and all of us at Bible Gateway hope it’s off to a great start for you and yours! Looking back, we are happy to say that 2010 was a good year for us at Bible Gateway. We are blessed to be part of an extraordinary community of people—people who visit Bible Gateway to undergo the life-changing experience of reading God’s Word.

You might be interested to know that, in 2010:

  • More than 70 million people visited Bible Gateway.
  • We spent more than 23 million hours (over 1.4 billion minutes!) reading Scripture on Bible Gateway.
  • More than 18 million people visited Bible Gateway from outside the United States.
  • We had visitors from more than 236 countries or territories.
  • Three of our top ten most popular Bible translations were Spanish language versions.
  • People visiting Bible Gateway on mobile devices increased by 83% over last year, and by 51% for mobile device visits from outside the United States.

It is clear that Bible Gateway continues to be a favorite online destination for people who want to read God’s Word, and more people than ever are finding Bible Gateway on their mobile devices or from countries around the globe, some of which offer only restricted access to the Bible, if any at all. Praise the Lord!

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Beautiful Churches from around the world -- from Noupe.com

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From DSC:
I’m interested in trying to take pulse checks on a variety of constantly moving bulls-eyes out there — one of which is new business models within the world of teaching and learning (in higher education, K-12, and the corporate world).
I have no idea whether the courses that this site/service offers are truly great or not. To me, it doesn’t matter right now. What matters is whether this model — or this type of business model — takes off. The costs of obtaining an education could be positively impacted here, as competition continues to heat up and the landscapes continue to morph.

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The Great Courses -- online lectures from across the lands

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The YouVersion Bible: 2 years, 10 million downloads, 0 advertising. — from thenextweb.com by Brad McCarty

YouVersion -- take the Bible with you wherever you go

It isn’t often that we’ll talk about religion, politics or things that can otherwise start arguments that don’t count as fanboyism. However, when a service gains 10 million downloads without ever advertising, that’s a pretty strong social media story in our book.

YouVersion is a simple thing – a bible. It can be downloaded to a number of different platforms, it’s available in a myriad of translations and has a community that surrounds the application and the website. Presently, the app gets downloaded at the rate of over 1 million new users every month and has kept itself in the top 5 download apps for the Reference category of the App Store.

So how does YouVersion manage things? The power of people, it seems. The company credits its success greatly to the social sharing of the YouVersion community…

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From DSC:
Below are some notes and reflections after reading Visions 2020.2:  Student Views on Transforming Education and Training Through Advanced Technologies — by the U.S. Department of Commerce, U.S. Department of Education, and NetDay

Basic Themes

  • Digital Devices
  • Access to Computers and the Internet
  • Intelligent Tutor/Helper
  • Ways to Learn and Complete School Work Using Technology

Several recurring words jumped off the page at me, including:

  • Voice activation
  • A rugged, mobile, lightweight, all-convergent communications and entertainment device
  • Online classes
  • Interactive textbooks
  • Educational games
  • 3D virtual history enactments — take me there / time machine
  • Intelligent tutors
  • Wireless
  • 24x7x365 access
  • Easy to use
  • Digital platforms for collaborating and working with others on schoolwork/homework
  • Personalized, optimized learning for each student
  • Immersive environments
  • Augmented reality
  • Interactive
  • Multimedia
  • Virtual
  • Simulations
  • Digital diagnostics (i.e. analytics)
  • Wireless videoconferencing

Here are some quotes:

Math and reading were often cited specifically as subjects that might benefit from the use of learning technologies. (p. 5)

No concept drew greater interest from the student responders than some sort of an intelligent tutor/helper. Math was the most often mentioned subject for which tutoring help was needed. Many students desired such a tutor or helper for use in school and at home. (p. 17)

…tools, tutors, and other specialists to make it possible to continuously adjust the pace, nature and style of the learning process. (p.27)

So many automated processes have been built in for them: inquiry style, learning style, personalized activity selection, multimedia preferences, physical requirements, and favorite hardware devices. If the student is in research mode, natural dialogue inquiry and social filtering tools configure a working environment for asking questions and validating hypotheses. If students like rich multimedia and are working in astronomy, they automatically are connected to the Sky Server which accesses all the telescopic pictures of the stars, introduces an on-line expert talking about the individual constellations, and pulls up a chatting environment with other students who are looking at the same environment. (p.28)

— Randy Hinrichs | Research Manager for Learning Science and Technology | Microsoft Research Group

From DSC:
As I was thinking about the section on the intelligent tutor/helper…I thought, “You know…this isn’t just for educators. Pastors and youth group leaders out there should take note of what students were asking for here.”

  • Help, I need somebody
  • Help me with ____
  • Many students expressed interest in an “answer machine,” through which a student could pose a specific question and the machine would respond with an answer. <– I thought of online, Christian-based mentors here, available 24x7x365 to help folks along with their spiritual journeys


Isaiah 1:18

Isaiah 1:18 — from Bible Gateway’s Verse of the Day

““Come now, let us settle the matter,” says the LORD. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.”
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Christian online school now offering programs for grades K-12 — from PRWeb

Liberty University Online Academy now has the ability to provide their students and schools with Christian centered educational curriculum for grades K-12.

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Google to bring Dead Sea Scrolls online

New Web Life for the Dead Sea Scrolls — from the New York Times by  Isabel Kershner
JERUSALEM — The scribes who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls could not have imagined their texts’ one day being Googled.

Google to bring Dead Sea Scrolls online
— from yahoo.com

Google bringing Dead Sea Scrolls online — from msnbc.om
Images, translations of 2,000-year-old text to be uploaded

Google to Bring Dead Sea Scrolls Online — from cbsnews.com
Project with Israel’s Antiquities Authority Will Grant Free Access to 2,000-Year-Old Text

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We need to be constantly checking and praying about the state of our hearts.

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The State of the Heart

From DSC:
My conscience prompts me to write this…as my recent posting on developing and using web-based learner profiles was not meant to try and ultimately recreate the human brain.  I don’t think that’s possible. Rather, I was hoping that we could use such methods and breakthroughs to promote the personalization, customization, and engagement levels of the learning materials and experiences that we are able to offer each other.

But the posting got me to reflecting on a variety of technological advancements…and I couldn’t help but wonder about the motivations at play sometimes here.

That is, things can begin innocently enough and with excellent intentions.  For example, with stem-cell research, such research can offer understanding on how stem cells might be able to help treat debilitating conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, traumatic spinal injury, or be used for positively affecting other clinical and therapeutic applications. And that’s great! Excellent!

But the problem for me in many of these endeavors lies in the hearts of mankind. Because, who knows where things could go from there…

Will we one day find ourselves being able to create fellow human beings? If so, who determines what those fellow human beings are like? Will we be able to program a robot to continually learn? If so, how will such devices be used by individuals? Corporations? Governments? Nations?

I know…it sounds rather bizarre and far-fetched. But with the rate of technological advancements, I just think we need to take a pulse check on the motivations involved. I’m suspect that the motivations of many folks out there are not in mankind’s ultimate best interest…plus…sometimes these individuals and organizations just don’t have the heart.

Ezekiel 11:19 (NIV)
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I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them;
I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.

P.S. from DSC:
I need to say that my heart is in constant need of attention as well;
I don’t claim to be perfect…but I also don’t claim to want to play God.

© 2024 | Daniel Christian