Religion & Faith

Marina Keegan graduated from Yale University on May 23.  She died three days later in a car accident.  An accomplished journalist and playwright, she was 22 years old.

The Yale Daily News asked Marina to write an essay to be distributed at her commencement.  That essay is going viral today.  She noted that most in her class are “somewhat lost in this sea of liberal arts.  Not quite sure what road we’re on and whether we should have taken it.”  But their lack of clarity is not a problem: “We’re so young.  We’re so young.  We’re twenty-two years old.  We have so much time.”

A group of 50 of us are heading to Honduras in a little over a month.  We’ll be feeding the hungry, building homes, doing medical clinics, visiting the sick, etc.  I just thought I’d ask this morning …. would you, your church, your work, social club, etc, be willing to help gather things up for our trip to Honduras?  We need some help with some little things to take with us.  The following are a few things we need and if you can help, please email me and I’ll send you an address where you can ship them. These would greatly bless our work there…

• STICKERS: Small stickers for children. The size of a 50 cent-piece or smaller. The children LOVE stickers.
• BRACELETS: Yarn bracelets (See picture below). You can stick a bunch in your pocket and the children beg for a bracelet.
• SPANISH COLORING BOOKS: The children love crayons and coloring. Sometimes when there are long lines for food, clothes, or to see the doctor at the medical clinic, we’ll pass out colors and Spanish coloring books and just sit and color. (more…)

In breaking news, the pope’s butler has agreed to cooperate with investigators.  Observers are now speculating that other church leaders will soon be implicated in the widening scandal.  Meanwhile, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook has passed on $75 million in dividend payments due to him over the next 9 years.  His decision is a welcome departure from the inflated CEO salaries that regularly lead the news.

What do these stories have in common with Josh Hamilton?  The Texas Rangers’ outfielder is widely considered the best player in baseball today.  His home run in the 13th inning last Saturday won the game.  But the homer was less significant to Hamilton than what preceded it.  He has been battling an upper respiratory infection for a week; he needed oxygen to get through Sunday’s game and was out of the starting lineup last night.

A friend whose sons are serving in our military sent this reminder to me last night: “It is the veteran, not the preacher, who has given us freedom of religion.  It is the veteran, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press.  It is the veteran, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech.  It is the veteran, not the campus organizer, who has given us freedom to assemble.  It is the veteran, not the lawyer, who has given us the right to a fair trial.  It is the veteran, not the politician, who has given us the right to vote.”

How will you observe Memorial Day this Monday?  I’d like to make three suggestions.  The first is for Texans and all who have elections next week: vote.  The presidential and Senate primaries have come to our state, as well as a host of other offices.  Important propositions are on the ballot as well.  Fallen veterans paid the ultimate price to defend our nation.  The least we can do to follow their example is to serve in the way all citizens of a democracy should.

Yesterday I looked through some of the referrals on my blog. Those are the little stats that tell me what people were looking for in Google that brought them to my blog.  Here were a few I saw within seconds…

• “How to tell my wife she spends too much time on Facebook”
• “Husband is hiding stuff on Facebook”
• “Is being friends on Facebook with an old girlfriend wrong?”

Then yesterday, Smart Money puts out a article called, “Does Facebook Wreck Marriages?” that has some shocking starts. What shocked me the most was the statistic that last year OVER 1/3 of the divorce filings included the word “Facebook.”  Here’s a little of what they said …

“Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg changed his status to “married” Saturday and received over one million “likes” from his followers. But the site he founded isn’t always so marriage-friendly.  In fact, lawyers say the social network contributes to an increasing number of marriage breakups.

More than a third of divorce filings last year contained the word Facebook, according to a U.K. survey by Divorce Online, a  legal services firm. And over 80% of U.S. divorce attorneys say they’ve seen a rise in the number of cases using social networking, according to the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. “I see Facebook issues breaking up marriages all the time,” says Gary Traystman, a divorce attorney in New London, Conn. Of the 15 cases he handles per year where computer history, texts and emails are admitted as evidence, 60% exclusively involve Facebook.” (more…)

I hope you opened today’s essay after eating breakfast.  “Necrotizing fasciitis” is a disease few of us would have recognized before Georgia college student Aimee Copeland began making headlines.  On May 1, she was kayaking with friends when a homemade zip line snapped, cutting her left calf.  Three days later, she was diagnosed with the rare flesh-eating bacteria.  Her leg and hands have been amputated, but she is breathing on her own today and doing better.

Meanwhile, a Georgia landscaper is battling the same disease in the same hospital after cutting his leg while trimming weeds.  Six surgeries later, he is recovering.  A third victim developed necrotizing fasciitis after giving birth to twins and is in critical condition.  Physicians don’t know why or how she contracted the disease.

Marvin Winans is best known for delivering the eulogy at Whitney Houston’s funeral last February.  He won a Grammy in 1985, has sung for years with his family, and founded a church in Detroit that he pastors today.  Never, however, has he spoken in a service like the one he led yesterday.  Four days earlier, Rev. Winans was beaten, robbed and carjacked outside a Detroit gas station.  His assailants are now scheduled to be arraigned; two are 20 years old, while the third is 18.

When Rev. Winans stepped to the pulpit Sunday morning, he was met with cheers and applause.  He sees his experience as a reflection of the culture: “I’m just sad . . . to think we have raised young men to prey–p-r-e-y–on people that they think are weaker.”  He told reporters after the service that he will reach out to his assailants.  He added: “I’m not bitter.  I’m not upset.  I’m saddened by what has taken place.  But I’m also inspired.  We have to make a change in this city.”

Does it seem to you that politics get more negative every election?

A $10 million public relations campaign that would connect Barack Obama with Jeremiah Wright has been in the news recently.  This morning, former presidential candidate Herman Cain is calling such a strategy “fair game.” However, Mitt Romney has rejected it, as did John McCain four years ago.  After Mr. Romney’s decision, the group abandoned their plan.  But will others on both sides of the campaign take its place?

With the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision to allow unlimited funding of political action committees, we will likely see more money spent on attack ads than ever before in history.  Not to mention the impact that social media campaigns may have.  Facebook shares begin trading today, a sale that is predicted to value the company at $100 billion; Twitter is expected to double in the U.S. by 2014.  How will such platforms be used for negative campaigning?

I’m starting a class this Sunday called “Soulmate or Roommate?.” Marriage was never intended to turn in to simply cohabitation with someone of the opposite sex, yet often it does.  Sometimes we become roommates with our soul mates because of laziness and selfishness that creep into our marriages without us doing something about them.

So has your soulmate turned into your roommate? If it has … that’s not good. Here are a few problems that cause this…

1. Life begins to get in the way of marriage. Things like paying bills, work, children all start taking priority over marriage.
2. You start taking your spouse for granted. You get comfortable and quit trying in marriage.
3. You blame. Everyone is at fault for your marriage struggles … your spouse, your in-laws, your parents … everyone but you. (more…)