Just Come In (Part I)

1989. Life was good. Making a boat load of money, had a beautiful fiance who I loved more than anything, and my boss had hand-picked me to take-over his position. The benefit package would likely set me up for life, seeing that I would be given the opportunity of accrued ownership of my own Wendy's restaurant in Nashville, TN. My family was doing great, had a awesome apartment, took postcard vacations, my health was excellent, and I had every reason to believe that life would only get better from here.  

And yet, I'll bet you can figure out what's about to happen . . . 

Because under the surface, even to the point that I was unaware, there was a huge portion of my life that wasn't doing great, my relationship with God. Or lack of to be more accurate. I had been giving Him lip service throughout my twenties, while steadily moving further and further away from His influence and presence. I didn't pray on a regular basis, couldn't find my bible if you paid me a thousand dollars, and had not even considered attending a church service since I was seventeen years old. When you have everything (or so you believe) that you need, God can easily become an afterthought. 

The Power of Sharing Information

I love the Greek word "akoe". The word akoe, translated into English, means "the act of hearing" or "the thing heard". In the Bible this word is found in the books of Galatians and Romans where it was used to describe the hearing of the gospel of Jesus Christ, which in my opinion is the greatest story humans have ever heard. 

But even the greatest story known to man still required at least two people to experience its transformation. Telling a story without an audience is like shouting into the wind. So how do we prepare ourselves to choose and then ingest positive stories that bring value into our lives?

I think, like most things in life, that sometimes we tend to make things more complicated than they have to be. For instance, have you ever observed a skilled storyteller captivating a room of young children with his or her words? I loved to watch the face of my daughter as she was being transported to another place, perhaps even another time, through the power of story. Of course there is skill involved, even for the young children listening in the example above. But mostly the choice to immerse oneself into an experience is a natural response, a bent that we all possess. We gravitate toward social interaction, (well, most of us) the sharing of information, and since the beginning of time have been fascinated by the dynamics that such interaction brings into our lives. 

The History of the World

 

9 Billion-Year-Old Radio Signal

"I barely understand half of this article but, wow . . ."

Scientists have discovered a crucial radio signal known as the 21-centimeter line, which is the key to unlocking many cosmic mysteries, in the most distant galaxy yet, reports a new study. 

Previously, this type of signal had only been spotted in galaxies within a few billion light years of Earth, but the new detection hailed from a galaxy that existed nearly nine billion years ago, when the universe was about a third of its current age. Scientists were only able to spot the signal because a natural telescope created by another celestial body, called a gravitational lens, magnified it 30 times over, providing an unprecedented glimpse of processes in the early universe.