Joy in the Journey

 We are all familiar with the story of the good Samaritan , right? In Luke 10:25 , a lawyer asks Jesus how to get eternal life. Jesus answers him with a question about his profession (don't you love how Jesus always meets us where we are and speaks to us using our own language?) and the man answers correctly. But Jesus sees his heart and his motivation, so he tells him a story:  30  Jesus replied with a story:  “A Jewish man was traveling from Jerusalem down to Jericho, and he was attacked by bandits. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him up,   and left him half dead beside the road. 31  “By chance a priest came along. But when he saw the man lying there, he crossed to the other side of the road and passed him by.   32  A Temple assistant [ a ]  walked over and looked at him lying there, but he also passed by on the other side. 33  “Then a despised Samaritan came along, and when he saw the man, he felt compassion for him.   34...

This photo looks like many spots that you find in the mountains in the rural area that I live, but when I drove up on this old landing this morning, I burst into tears. I’ve been trying to get a chance to go up into the mountains by myself for a while. It’s deer hunting season, and I used that as an excuse, but really, I just needed some time to myself. I tried last week but it didn’t work out. With soccer six days a week, September and October have been crazy busy and I haven’t had much alone time. Apparently I have needed it. This morning I did the dishes, popped the bread into the oven, and kissed the boys goodbye. A wonderful part of having teenagers is that they are mature enough to watch their younger siblings for a few hours. I didn’t originally intend to go to the spot in the picture above, but that is where I ended up and I guess the Lord knew it was where I needed to be. October has become a hard month the past few years. Although I am blessed to get to celebrate two of my ch...

  Photo from history.com I recently read an article about a statue that went through a CT scan. They discovered in the scan that the statue is what is referred to as a "living Buddha"; the Buddha statue was formed around a mummified human being. The man whose remains are inside this statue went through a 10-year process of self-mummification. For ten years he slowly starved his body by eating only nuts, berries, tree bark, and pine needles in increasingly smaller and smaller portions. He ate herbs, cycad nuts, and sesame seeds to decrease the amount of bacteria in his body. He drank a poisonous tree sap to embalm himself and repel insects.  After a decade of this he was buried alive in an underground chamber where he sat in the lotus position and chanted, breathing through a bamboo pine. Each day he would ring a bell to signal that he was still alive. When the bell stopped ringing, the chamber was sealed for three years. After three years his body was removed and completely m...