All posts filed under: z69

Nambia desert Credit: John Adams/Flickr/Creative Commons

Sanar nuestro rechazo

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English Version: Healing our rejection Usando una resonancia magnética, los investigadores universitarios descubrieron que el dolor emocional asociado con el rechazo es tan real como el dolor físico. En 2011, el grupo liderado por el profesor asociado de la Universidad de Michigan, Ethan Kross, estudió a 40 personas que recientemente habían pasado por una ruptura romántica en los seis meses anteriores. Todos los participantes elegidos mencionaron haber sentido sentimientos intensos de rechazo debido al final de la relación. Las 40 personas fueron sometidas a dos pruebas relacionadas con el dolor emocional que sentían por el rechazo y el otro dolor físico real. En la primera prueba, los sujetos del estudio vieron una imagen de su ex y se les pidió que pensaran en la ruptura. En la segunda etapa, los dispositivos térmicos se unieron a sus brazos que crearon calor el equivalente de café caliente. Cuando las 40 personas pasaron por estas y otras pruebas comparativas, los investigadores monitorearon su actividad cerebral usando MRIs. Los investigadores descubrieron que los sentimientos de rechazo provocaban actividad neuronal …

Tolerating Muslims

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Last Sunday, as I drove to church, I noticed police cars on the road ahead, with flashing lights. It looked like a big accident or a crime scene, but when I got to the site I saw people coming out of the Islamic Center. Muslims celebrate Eid, at the end of the fasting time of Ramadan, and the police were managing traffic and providing security. With crowds of people and busy parking lots at an Islamic center, the police were being careful. So, are we supposed to tolerate those people? They were mostly new immigrants and most wore ethnic costumes from the old country. And they certainly have values that are different from mine. So, should we tolerate them? No, certainly not. I am a Christian and I follow the example of someone who loved us so much He died for us. Barely tolerating my neighbor is wrong for me. What I give out must be in the higher levels of kindness, at least; God’s love is the language of Christians. This is not even …

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Where did the Egyptians come from: Does the Bible get it right again?

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It has always been a bit of a mystery as to the origin of the Egyptians. But based on history and DNA sampling of modern Egyptians most concluded that they came from Northern Africa. However, this contradicts the Bible that declared that Egyptians descended from Mizraim, one of the son’s of Ham. The term Mizraim is actually translated Egypt by some translations (Genesis 10:6): 6 The sons of Ham were Cush and Mizraim and Put and Canaan. (Genesis 10:6 NASV) 6 The sons of Ham: Cush, Egypt, Put, and Canaan. (Genesis 10:6 ESV) It was Ham’s eldest Cush and his descendants who went on to settle what today is modern Africa.  We see a possible reference to their darker skin in the Prophet Jeremiah’s rhetorical question: “Can the Ethiopian change his skin?” (Jeremiah 13:23).  The Hebrew word translated Ethiopian is “kusi,” a Cushite. But with the modern Egyptian DNA suggesting an African origin, it left the impression that the Bible was wrong. However, that recently changed when geneticists from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of …

Credit: Vincent Van den Storme/Flickr/Creative Commons

Turning up the heat

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The recent heat waves being experienced in the America Southwest and England may have an odd connection to a passage in the book of Revelation: 8 The fourth angel poured out his bowl upon the sun, and it was given to it to scorch men with fire. 9 Men were scorched with fierce heat; and they blasphemed the name of God who has the power over these plagues, and they did not repent so as to give Him glory. (Revelation 16:8-9 NASV) This past week Arizona experienced some very hot weather, but it did not break the 122 degree heat record set in that US state on June 26, 1990. Nevertheless for three consecutive days (June 19-21), Phoenix, Arizona broke or equaled heat records for their city with temperatures of 118F, 119F and 116F respectively. The high temperatures that reached into areas of California resulted in the National Weather Service issuing a warning about “heat-related illnesses.” In the United Kingdom, they are experiencing some of the hottest weather in 40 years. Heathrow reached 34.5C (94F) this past …

How God sees us. Credit: Jeremy Brooks/Creative Commons

You are who God says you are

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[by Céline Giguère] Despite the turmoil in my life, this morning I woke up happy and praising God that I was alive and able to still serve Him. I was content to be loved by my heavenly Father (daddy) while sipping my coffee and watching my favorite program on TV. I caught the tail-end of a testimony of a young lady, who did not believe that she would succeed in life. Yet, after becoming a Christian, she graduated from Harvard and is now working toward a doctorate in Theology. Like many before, her purpose in life was to declare that God did not exist. People like Frank Morrison (lawyer) and C. S. Lewis (philosopher and writer) and Voltaire (philosopher and writer) did not believe in God. Among these, only the latter did not turn to God.  But on his death-bed, Voltaire admitted that he could not disprove God’s existence. But for the woman, it was the understanding of how God saw her that broke and brought her to a place of rest and transformation in …

What else could cause global warming? Credit: CipherN/Flickr/Creative Commons

The 20-year global warming pause?

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A recent paper written by climate scientist Benjamin Santer has caused a stir among those entrenched in the man-made global warming camp and those who are not. In his paper published on Nature Geoscience, Santer, who believed in man-made global warming , stated that there has been no global warming for the past 18 years. This is nothing short of heresy among global warming activists. For several years skeptics have pointed out that satellite records reveal there has been no warming on earth for nearly two decades. If CO2 is the cause of global warming, this warming should not have stopped because the world continues to pour record amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere each year. This pause suggests other natural forces must be affecting climate temperature. Global warming activists were predictably outraged and those in skeptic camp shocked when Santer’s paper came out. One climate scientist Roger A Pielke Sr tweeted “Wow!” when he read the news. Santer, along with Carl Mears, manage the Remote Sensing satellite temperature data set. But in his paper …

A prayer walk

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A month ago a few ladies from our Church gathered at Government House Gardens here in Regina, Saskatchewan for a prayer walk. We usually gather once a month at a park, historical site or Government building to pray for our city, country and nation. This year we decided to produce a video about our walk to show you what we do. It is our first video and it is not perfect. It is dark in spots and at other points our videoing could be better, but we hope to improve as we create more videos for our YouTube channel — Bashful & Bold. It was a bright, sunny day. The flowers and bushes were just beginning to bloom. We started to walk when we noticed a fragrance in the air and were drawn to the Cherry Blossom trees with their full pink blooms at the end of the lane. We were reminded of the verse in  2 Corinthians about the aroma of Christ and prayed into this verse that the fragrance of Christ in us …

Want to stop smoking, go to church

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A Gallup survey conducted in 2012 shows a strong connection between smoking and church attendance. Gallup referred to the connection as “linear” meaning the more often a person attended church the less likely they were to smoke. Of the 353,571 people surveyed, Gallup found if they attended church at least once a week only 12% smoked. If they attended “almost every week” 14% of them smoked. Those who attended church once a month, 22% smoked.  This trend continued

It’s nice to be salty again

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In Mathew 5:13, Jesus calls His disciples “the salt of the earth.” Salt was a valuable product in early Israel. Among other things it was used as a food preservative — an important benefit in a culture lacking refrigeration. Salt was also used to increase the flavour of food. In many ways, Christians play a similar role in culture — acting as a preservative. The moral decline of a nation is often a prelude to national collapse. A few grains of salt not only has the ability to enhance the flavour of food, but even a culture. However over the past few decades, salt’s sheen was tarnished as

Painting of King David by Gerrit van Honthorst (1590 - 1656)

King David’s big, dark secret

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There was a big, dark secret in David’s life that few people are aware of. It’s not that David tried to keep it secret, but many of us simply fail to connect the dots. When we study David’s life, there are a number of Biblical passages that at first read seem quite puzzling. One such passage is 1 Samuel 16:1-13. God had just rejected Saul as king of Israel and commissioned the prophet Samuel to anoint one of the sons of Jesse of Bethlehem as the next king (v 1). Samuel approached the elders of Bethlehem and arranged the meeting. Once Jesse and his sons had gathered, Samuel quickly realized none of the boys standing before him was the one God had chosen. Puzzled, Samuel asked if there were any other sons and was told the youngest, David, was attending the flock. Samuel ordered David brought before him and anointed the young shepherd boy as the next king of Israel. I was always curious as to why David was not initially included. Traditionally, most believe David …