“Just when we think we have outgrown fairy tales - and the influence they wield over our imaginations - a beloved character or startling image from a childhood story our parents read to us reminds us of a time when we truly cared about something innocent, magical, and true. Being grown up doesn’t mean that we’ve satisfied the longing for these things but only that we’ve lost our pathway back to them. Perhaps we didn’t read fairy tales in our youth but discovered their allure later in life, astounded by the freshness and power of their vision. That vision is inherent not only in this or that story but also in the nature of FAËRIE itself, with its power to instill in us the desire for a strange, new, wonder-filled world, an enchanted cosmos or Neverland of our own. This world is not so much a place of retreat or escape as of renewal and rebirth. Can there really be such a place?”

- Bruce L. Edwards
NOT A TAME LION
(page 3)

“When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I’m fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”

- C. S. Lewis

“As a husband and father, you are the leader in your home. What you do directly affects those in your care. Knowing how much to do yourself, versus how much to wait for God to do, is a challenging issue spiritual leaders often face.

My best advice is to do as much as you can to make things happen WHILE you trust God to provide what your family needs. Faith is not a feeling. Faith involves your feet. Faith is ACTING like God is telling the truth. It doesn’t mean sitting still and doing nothing. Yet, you should never go outside of what God allows in order to make something happen, even of you believe it is for the benefit of your home. If you have to cross a boundary God has set up, or if there is nothing you can do to solve or address the issue, wait for God to intervene.”

- Dr. Tony Evans
Guest Article, Focus on the Family
THRIVING FAMILY ISSUE Summer 2012

If God breaks your leg, He will teach you how to limp.

-

It is not unusual for people to suffer misfortunes in terms of sickness, accidents, or other mishaps. We will all suffer many difficulties in our lives. A farmer may work hard all during the rainy season on his rice farm. The rains may also be plentiful. The rice germinates and produces abundantly. Then a few days before he is to harvest the rice, someone burns some brush in a nearby farm; the fire gets out of control and burns most of his rice field. The farmer does not despair. He harvests the remaining rice and knows that God will still provide for him. So if God allows troubles or sufferings, He will also show us how to manage quite well in spite of them.

- Africa: A Land of Hope

People don’t need enormous cars, they need respect. They don’t need closets full of clothes, they need to feel attractive and they need excitement and variety and beauty. People don’t need electronic equipment; they need something worthwhile to do with their lives. People need identity, community, challenge, acknowledgment, love, and joy. To try to fill these needs with material things is to set up an unquenchable appetite for false solutions to real and never-satisfied problems. The resulting psychological emptiness is one of the major forces behind the desire for material growth.

- Beyond the Limits.
Donella and Dennis Meadows

It has the potential to be used for greatness, but can also be used in hurtful ways. Money is powerful. Solomon says in Ecclesiastes, ” Wisdom is a shelter as money is a shelter, but the advantage of knowledge is this: that wisdom preserves the life of its possessor.”

- page 7 Africa: A Land of Hope

IT TAKES A WHOLE VILLAGE TO RAISE ONE CHILD.

Children of an African village are valued and cared for by all. If a child comes along while someone is milking a cow, that person will stop and give the child a drink before continuing. If a child loses a father, the other fathers and brothers will be like a father to that child. It takes more than a father and mother to educate a child, and impart the values they wish the child to have. A child always feels he/she is loved and accepted, because the whole village cares for, and raises the child.

- opening page, Africa: A Land of Hope

allymcq:

I learned this week that since the 19th Century the number of Christian missionaries in the world has increased from 50,000 to 500,000.

I learned this week that there are still displaced communities in war torn countries since that time. 

I learned this week that 2 million children are still dying from water borne diseases every year, half of which live in India.

I learned this week that world poverty rates are probably the highest yet.

I learned this week that the world still needs Jesus. 

Amazing stuff.