If you can’t be a pine on the top of the hill,
Be a scrub in the valley — but be
The best little scrub by the side of the rill;
Be a bush if you can’t be a tree.

If you can’t be a bush be a bit of the grass,
And some highway happier make;
If you can’t be a muskie then just be a bass —

More than 60 years after Independence, untouchability is alive and thriving in India’s hinterlands. Pockets of social change have been but mere drops in an ocean of casteism and prejudice. This was borne out in a survey by National Law School, Bangalore, which was reported recently. Following this, TOI correspondents did a reality check in eight states across India.

I just came back from the first night of The Filling Station conference for this year. The theme is Grace. I know....what an amazing thing that is. The speakers this year are amazing. Tonight's message was from Simon Gau, a youth pastor right here from Whalley!

I've heard so many messages on grace but it never fails to humble me every single time I hear it.

The Right to Lead, by John Maxwell

Men and women who lead on the highest level are quite extraordinary. They are people of action who have their priorities in line. I’ve found that there are some common threads in these uncommon leaders.

They are:

Futurists: Their dreams are bigger than their memories.

On Sunday, in church, we were singing a worship song with the line, “Everywhere I look, I see Your face,” when all of a sudden a thought occurred to me.  Wouldn’t it be awesome if everywhere we looked we actually saw His face?

If we saw God everywhere, our lives would completely change.  When we were sad, we we would look up and see Jesus smiling at us. 

I began the New year, ministering to over 1200 young people at the National Youth Festival in Vizag. When I gave the invitation to commit to serve Christ whatever the cost and wherever the Spirit leads, over 200 youth came forward to dedicate themselves. The next week, I conducted Operation Mobilization (OM) leaders’ training in which 40 women and men prayed a threefold prayer I have been praying daily the last 15 years: “Lord, keep me clean today;

A tailor was at work. He took a piece of cloth and with a pair of shining scissors cut the cloth into various bits.

He then put the pair of scissors at his feet. Then he took a small needle and thread and started to sew the bits of cloth, into a fine shirt. After sewing, he kept the needle in a box and kept the box on a shelf.

Prepping for preaching on masculinity this Sunday and came across this quote:

"A husband must embrace self-sacrifice for the sake of his wife’s well-being . . . the main threat against which a man must protect his wife is his own sin. A friend once expressed his awakening to this truth in these words: ‘I used to think that if a man came into my house to attack my wife, I would certainly stand up to him.

Our lives are the only Bible some people will ever read.

Watch your thoughts; they become words.

Watch your words; they become actions.

Watch your actions; they become habits.

Watch your habits; they become character.

Watch your character; it becomes your destiny

*Are we good examples for others to follow;

Last Thursday, we gathered for Doubt Night in the upstairs room of St. Mark’s to begin our first round of dialogue. The topic: Exclusivity. 13 showed up. That’s a record! After presenting an overview on the topic for a few minutes, we opened up the floor for discussion. We ended up staying there for two hours and I found it hard to end the night…in a good way.

May we question a theology that works in an environment of peace and stability but falls apart in a place of war, conflict or chaos.

May we question a philosophy of life that ignores the poor and the unloved and continues to fatten the established order of things.

May we question a Christianity that wants, gets, and wastes and has joined along with others in the raping of our planet

True followers of Jesus experientially know: ‘God rarely does anything apart from answer to prayer’. Of all the things His disciples could have asked of Him, they pleaded with Him for one thing: ‘Lord, teach us to pray!’ This was because they watched His habits, understood His heart and had discovered where His power, and theirs, was located – in prayer!

The following is a post by Siby Varghese. Siby will be hosting Doubt Night this Thursday at 7pm at Seven Mile Road.

Could there really only just be one true religion? Is it arrogant to think so?

This Thursday we’ll talk through the issue of exclusivity. We’ll be covering the topic posed in chapter one of Reason for God by Tim Keller. We’ll present for a few minutes on the issues at hand and then open up for dialogue.

The world is changing, mov ing forward, unaccustomed to the fancies and whims of minds and hearts disaffected. The moments and sea­sons of yester-year fraught with pain and sorrows, somehow forgot­ten and pushed away. There was and is nothing that could not have and would not have happened that did not happen.

A couple of days ago I was running (I use that term very loosely) on my treadmill, watching a DVD sermon by Louie Giglio... And I was BLOWN AWAY! I want to share what I learned....

He (Louie) was talking about how inconceivably BIG our God is... How He spoke the universe into being... How He breathes stars out of His mouth that are huge raging balls of fire..

Yesterday, I saw a cartoon. "God has a set number of things that he wants us to do. But I am so far behind, that at this rate, I will never die."

The cartoonist was playing a joke with words and concepts. He felt he was unable to do all the things that God wanted him to do because there were a set number of things that he felt he had to do in this life.

EIGHT REASONS MEN REJECT SPIRITUAL FATHERS

We are all aware there is a dearth of fathers in our land that is cursing our American civilization.
The millions of men in prison confirm this. An overwhelming majority of them have never had a normal relationship with their biological fathers.

Well, should the ships have been sailing towards Gaza in the first place?

If people think they can test Israeli resolve to protect itself, by simply having civilians on board ship in the manner usual to Islamist terrorist organisations, the people concerned are simply idiots and do not know what they are dealing with.

Potential census question exposes sensitive divide in Indian society.

NEW DELHI — Bollywood’s biggest star has an answer ready if census workers ask about his caste: “Indian.”

“My father never believed in caste, and neither do any of us,” Amitabh Bachchan wrote in his obsessively followed blog.

Yes, that is right. Latest official stat from Canada is out and people from the Indian subcontinent constitues the largest visible minority group in Canada. See reports in NDTV or Vancouver Sun.1,262,900 individuals identified themselves as South Asian, a growth…