Did you know that the Bible says that Christians are a peculiar people? (Titus 2:14, 1 Peter 2:9 KJV)

You might be glad to know that the word that’s translated “peculiar” in the King James Version means “set apart” in our language today. It doesn’t mean what we usually think of as someone who is peculiar. In our culture, that pretty much means weird.

As Christians, as set-apart ones, however, we should look and be different from people who are not believers. I don’t think that means being different just for the sake of being different, but being different from our culture in areas that are not pleasing to the Lord.

And there’s plenty of that in our society to avoid these days.

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Did you know that January is a hard month for teachers? I know it is for home school teachers (been there; done that), and I’ve been told that it’s the same for teachers in formal classrooms as well.

I’m not sure why that is the case, but I have some ideas. Perhaps it’s because you’ve just had a long break and you are now looking at five months of school and spring break seems like a long time off. Maybe it’s because you started out the school year with great plans and hopes, and your expectations haven’t been met and/or your students didn’t respond the way you hoped they would. Maybe it’s just because the weather stinks and your children can’t go outside and play like they can in other months.

Whatever the reason, January is a downer for many.

So, now that you know you’re not alone, what can you do to make it through January victoriously?

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Within the next week we are expecting our sixth grandchild to arrive! They are all special, but this one is especially a gift from God. About half the way through my daughter-in-law’s pregnancy, they found out that there is a genetic issue, called the KEL gene, which put the pregnancy into the high risk category. Before this all happened, I’d never even heard of it!

The doctors caught the issue during a routine blood check. The Kell antibodies that the mother’s body creates actually attack the baby’s blood and, because the baby can become anemic, the pregnancy can end in a miscarriage. The doctors monitor the baby in utero and give blood transfusions to the baby through the umbilical cord. Wow! This is the treatment that my grandbaby has been undergoing every 2-3 weeks much of the last half of the pregnancy.Continue Reading

Recently we had the opportunity to visit the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky (a suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio). I highly recommend it! It is connected to Ken Hamm and Answers in Genesis, and it is worth the time and effort!

One of the first things we did, after a tour of the grounds, was to watch “Created Cosmos” in their planetarium, which means we were leaned back, looking at the ceiling, and were immersed in the video. In their words, the video “takes  you  to  the  outer  reaches  of  the  universe,  gives  you  a  perspective  of  how  great  God  is  and  how  small  we  are,  and  yet  how  much  God’s  focus  is  on  earth  and  on  us.”

(I’ve found a blog post, Earth in True Perspective, that walks you through the same comparison of the earth and the universe ─ without the spiritual emphasis, but it tells the same story.)

After viewing the movie, someone asked my daughter, Stephanie, how she was, to which she answered, “Feeling pretty small right now!” I could identify!Continue Reading