Sponging The Stone

I DON'T REMEMBER reading the book until my adult years, yet Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol seems always to have been with me. The Carol entered my life when I lay on the living room floor with a belly full of Christmas turkey avoiding adult conversation at my grandmother's dinner. My first recollection of the story is in the form of the 1951 American film version Scrooge. Alastair Sim, the most robust interpreter of Scrooge, fascinated me by his depiction of a man who starts off as "solitary as an oyster" and winds up a "second father" to

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Desert Words to Live By

THE DESERT CAN be an empty place where the lost are driven insane by inner demons, or it can be a place of refuge and real where pilgrims escape the insanity of a chaotic world. Our desert experience is determined by how we cope with being alone. Solitude can bring strange illusions and despair or it can strip us of faulty dependence, filling us with a desire for our Creator.

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Jesus' Ethics of Compassion in Luke

Luke 7, and its stories of Jesus' healing of the Centurion's servant and raising the widow's son, illustrate the ethic of compassion taught by Jesus in the previous chapter. Luke shows that Jesus doesn't buy into religious sensibilities; he lives by a different ethic, crossing barriers and pushing limits because he's listening to the voice of God. The Centurion's Story — Jesus Went with Them The Centurion's story illustrates how far Jesus will go in doing good. Appointed by Rome to oversee 80 to 100 soldiers, the Centurion was also a friend of the Jews as a benefactor of the

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