Thursday, April 24, 2014

Thu Apr 24th Todays News

Thutmose III became co ruler with his stepmother Hatsheput on this day 1479 BC. His rule was to see Egypt become the largest she would ever be. He fought 17 campaigns over 54 years. The co rulership with his step mother might be puzzling to modern sensibilities. He had been leader of the armies for all 22 yeas of co rulership. But he had ascended the throne when he was two years old. Some three hundred years later, 1184 BC, a collection of Greek armies are said to have captured Illium, or Troy. It is said that survivors of the event, when asked about it, were a little hoarse. Even today people with sore throats may be told to beware of Greeks bearing gifts. 

On this day in 1558, Mary, Queen of Scots, married the Dauphin of France at Notre Dame de Paris. Better it was for love, because it failed to help her politically. On this day in 1885, Annie Oakley answered President Carter's call to gender equality when the sharp shooter joined Buffallo Bill's Wild West about ninety years before he was elected President for the first and last time. On this day in 1915, Turkey arrested 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders as a prelude to the genocide which would cripple their war effort. A year later, Irish separatists rose in rebellion on Easter. Two years after that, in 1918, German tanks faced off against British ones for the first time. British ones won the engagement. It is also hard to imagine that only in 1922 was wireless telegraphy first available between Oxfordshire and Cairo. Skype would have been useless as Egyptians don't speak English. As it was, it was a failure, Thutmose was already dead and Troy was lost. 1933, and Nazis began persecuting Jehova's Witnesses, shutting down the watchtower offices in Magdeburg. Twenty years later and QE2 knighted Winston Churchill. 

The Soviet Union had made large strides in cosmonautics, but sadly on this day in '67 Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov died when his parachute failed to open. Jimmy Carter made his stamp on this day with the tragic deaths of eight US servicemen who had attempted to save Iranian hostages. Snuppy, the first cloned puppy, an Afghan, was whelped on this day in 2005. Don't tell the Greens about the dog, they'd kill him.

For twenty two years I have been responsibly addressing an issue, and I cannot carry on. I am petitioning the Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott to remedy my distress. I leave it up to him if he chooses to address the issue. Regardless of your opinion of conservative government, the issue is pressing. Please sign my petition at https://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/tony-abbott-remedy-the-persecution-of-dd-ball
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Hatches
Happy birthday and many happy returns Tony Huynh. On this evening, in 1915, two of my grandfathers were sailing to shore at Gallipolli. For different armies. One lost an eye. The other did his job.
Matches
Despatches
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VAN vs VAN

Tim Blair – Thursday, April 24, 2014 (2:07pm)

Q & A viewers are in for such a treat next Monday. As a preview, please enjoy upcoming guest Van Badham’s manic performance on Sky last year. Highlights include her claim that Tony Abbott “hates women. I think that’s very obvious to everybody … I think that it’s very clear that his hatred of women is palpable” and this exchange with bewildered host Peter van Onselen: 
PVO: Do you give any credit to John Howard for …
Van: No, I don’t.
PVO: Hang on, let me finish. I haven’t even asked the question yet! 
She’s perfect for the ABC. Van appears at the 10:40 mark:

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ANGELA’S ONLY LISTENER

Tim Blair – Thursday, April 24, 2014 (11:48am)

SMH clothtop Peter FitzSimons’s radio ratings predictions from last month: 
Kyle and Jackie O will be well down on KiisFM from the heights they knew on 2DayFM. 
Result: “The Kyle & Jackie O Show has moved to the uncontested top FM show in Sydney with an audience share of 10.9 per cent, according to new radio ratings published today.” Fitzy also predicted big things for 2UE morning host (and Fairfax colleague) Angela Catterns: 
There has long been criticism that commercial talkback lacks strong female voices, but she is all that and more and will break the mould. 2UE will rise this year, with her at the prow. You heard it here, first! 
Catterns is now second last with an audience share of just 2.7 per cent.
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Would Ormerod have defended Christ’s right to preach?

Andrew Bolt April 24 2014 (8:52am)

Free speech

Reader TBear writes to the Australian Catholic University’s Professor Neil Ormerod wondering if he really is as hostile to free speech as he seems.
The disturbing answer is yes. Ormerod writes::
I do in fact support free speech. However, like many political rights free speech is a relative right, relative to the common good to which it contributes. People may have a right to their opinions, but not necessarily a right to express those (sic) opinion in a way which does damage to the common good. If in fact climate change is real (and all the scientific evidence supports this) then those who muddy the waters with uninformed opinion with the intention of delaying action which would limit or reverse its affects, are damaging the common good.
As TBear correctly notes, Ormerod’s arguments have been used by totalitarians throughout history:
So, we find that Professor Ormerod is only in favour of free speech which “supports the common good”. This is, of course, the basis for censorship in all authoritarian and totalitarian regimes and (according to Ormerod) is consistent with “Catholic social teaching”. 
I note Ormerod is particularly keen to restrict the right to speak of those who oppose the carbon tax and defy the so-called consensus of authorities.
But I remember another body that shared Ormerod’s “common good” qualification of the right to free speech and have a question for this Catholic Professor of Theology.
Does Ormerod agree with the decision of the Sanhedrin to permanently silence someone else they also accused of speaking against the public good? Someone they damned for opposing another tax and for saying he knew better than the consensus of authorities?
And they began to accuse Him, saying, ”We found this man misleading our nation and forbidding to pay taxes to Caesar, and saying that He Himself is Christ, a King.”
Where would Ormerod have stood on that fateful day? On the side of the censors or of the right to preach freely? 
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Refugees just need safety. So why not Cambodia?

Andrew Bolt April 24 2014 (8:45am)

If they are safe in Cambodia, isn’t that mission accomplished? If they want something more then we’re not talking about refugees:
A deal with Cambodia to resettle asylum seekers is moving closer with Scott Morrison declaring that a country’s economic capacity is irrelevant to his expansion of a “club” of nations to take refugees…
“It’s not about whether they are poor, it’s about whether they can be safe,” Mr Morrison said. “That’s the issue. The [refugee] convention was not designed as an economic advancement program...I would have thought the point for the UNHCR and the region is to expand the club of countries that are available...”
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
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On punching and mooning Tim Wilson in the name of tolerance

Andrew Bolt April 24 2014 (8:18am)

Free speech

Melbourne University multiculturalism academic Shakira Hussein claims to be worried about “hate speech” that makes people feel unsafe and so “hampered its targets’ ability to access public space”:
... speech that offends, insults, and humiliates (never mind intimidates) creates an atmosphere in which violence against the targets of hate-speech is seen as an acceptable course of action, even when the hate-speech itself did not directly call for it. And even when no physical violence takes place, the environment created by such speech constrains the lives of its targets in real and concrete forms.
This line occurs in an article in which Hussein demonstrates the very evil she claims to condemn, indulging in abusive and violent hate-speech against Human Rights Commissioner Tim Wilson:
So this brown-skinned Muslim disabled single mother goes to a lecture by a libertarian socially conservative human rights commissioner… It sounds like a joke told by an Andrew Bolt fan after a long night at the pub.
“What’s my punch-line?” I wrote on my facebook page as I waited for Tim Wilson to appear for his in-conversation with Sally Warhaft at the Wheeler Centre in Melbourne.
“Left hook,” a friend responded, before correcting herself. “Oh. You said punch-line. I just saw Tim Wilson and punch. My bad."…
I put this to Wilson during the discussion period, prefacing my remark by noting that as a brown-skinned etc I had been torn between asking a question and expressing my right to freedom of expression by flashing my arse at him…
Wilson waved his hand in a “go ahead” gesture, so (arse safely glued to chair) I told him that the hostile atmosphere fostered by racist speech hampered its targets’ ability to access public space and to participate in education and the workforce.
Like I said, Hussein is an academic.
UPDATE
Do you have to be a Leftist to be an arts academic, or is it just sheer coincidence? And do you have to be aggressive with it?
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No slippery slope?

Andrew Bolt April 24 2014 (8:03am)

Those who claim there is no slippery slope have ignored plenty even before this latest news:

The world’s only ‘married’ lesbian threesome are expecting their first child.
Doll, Kitten and Brynn, from Massachusetts, were joined together in a marriage-style ceremony last August and are expecting a daughter in July.
Kitten, 27, is pregnant after undergoing IVF treatment using an anonymous sperm donor, and the trio eventually plan to have three children - one for each of them.
(Thanks to readers Lin and txjohn.) 
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Shorten’s real plan is to survive the royal commission

Andrew Bolt April 24 2014 (7:51am)

Politics - federal

IT SEEMS a mystery. Why does Opposition Leader Bill Shorten think last year’s defeat proves Labor’s rules must change?
That’s crazy. Who voted against Labor because only union members could join?
Shorten’s speech this week, claiming “we need to change our party” by loosening membership rules and union control of preselections, seemed even crazier from the questions afterwards from the audience.
These were the party faithful, the people Shorten says should get more say in Labor, and here is what they asked: What would he do to get up a republic? What would he do for boat people? How could he stop the media criticising Labor?

Lesson: give Labor members more say and its Leftists and closet totalitarians will run amok, making the party even less electable.
So why is Shorten pretending union connections are Labor’s real problem? Because Shorten, a former Australian Workers Union head, is not trying to recover from last year’s election but to survive this year’s royal commission into union corruption.
(Read full article here. Shorten’s 2GB interview with 2GB’s Ben Fordham this week here.)
UPDATE
Union-linked pollster Peter Lewis and Chris Kenny on Shorten’s reforms:
image
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
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NSW has a premier not quite so odd

Andrew Bolt April 24 2014 (7:33am)

Niki Savva isn’t crying for Barry O’Farrell, and says replacement Mike Baird promises to be a change for the better:
All the staff knew and liked Mike [Baird], so when O’Farrell finally made it [as Premier], they, like many others, were puzzled by the treatment the new premier meted out to the son of his former boss [MP Bruce Baird]. Fair enough, O’Farrell wanted Gladys Berejiklian to succeed him, but ranking the young treasurer at No 11 in his ministry while stripping him of many of his powers was a calculated emasculation…
O’Farrell was strange in other ways. He isolated himself. He would not tell staff when or where he was going. He would give his security detail the slip by telling them the wrong times to turn up, or dispense with them altogether. He stopped using advancers, the nuts-and-bolts logistical people who make sure events go smoothly and do much to prevent the boss looking like a dill on the telly.
He made obvious his disdain for Abbott — again, origins unknown — while pointedly cuddling up to Julia Gillard by backing her policies on education and disability.
According to those who have worked closely with Baird, he operates very differently. He is hands-on and works well with those around him…
Few Liberals will say it publicly, but privately there was a deep well of frustration with O’Farrell’s slow pace and eccentric behaviour, so the switch was seen as a potential blessing in ­disguise. 
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Conservatives were wicked for saying then what Hawke and Keating say now

Andrew Bolt April 24 2014 (7:14am)

A conservative is someone who said at the time that the Rudd and Gillard Governments were dysfunctional and divisive.
A Leftist is someone who admits it only after Labor loses office:
BOB Hawke and Paul Keating have given a blistering assessment of Labor in power under Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard and warned that retrograde policies, ineffective communication, divisive class warfare and a lack of conviction will keep the party out of office if not urgently addressed. 

The two former Labor prime ministers have urged the party to undertake radical reform to ­reduce the power of unions and factions, steer policy back to the centre ground and heed the ­lessons of the often chaotic and dys­functional Rudd-Gillard gov­­ern­ments. ..

For the first time, the two Labor elders say the party must slash the 50 per cent weighting given to unions at state confer­ences — a reform Bill Shorten this week ignored…
Mr Keating said the last Labor government struggled to define its purpose… “Kevin’s government was doing reasonably badly reasonably quickly,” Mr Keating said…
Mr Hawke is critical of Labor for promulgating class warfare for political gain and criticised the development of the mining tax. “That sort of class-warfare rhetoric never resonates with me,” he said…
Mr Hawke said it was inevitable Mr Rudd would be toppled by Ms Gillard in 2010 “because he just wanted to run so much of things single-handedly” and a reaction against that was inevitable. 
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G’day,
How excellent is it to hear that there is actually a medium to long term, fully financed plan to bring our Air Defence Systems up to scratch. I am pleased that the ALP is onboard but really what choice do they have.
It is also very refreshing and comforting to listen to Joe Hockey’s words of wisdom tonight at the Spectator Australia Magazine dinner, regrading the “end of entitlement”. I won’t bore you with the details, they are many and easy to find but I will remind you that we as a nation definitely do have the government that we voted for and we certainly do have adults running the country now. The cuts and the reforms to be announced soon (assuming the Upper House will do the right thing) will be remembered in generations to come as the time this country finally grew up!
Godspeed
Zeg
Freelance Editorial Cartoonist
0414293765
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=== Posts from last year ===

Heiner Affair inquiry getting down to business

Piers Akerman – Wednesday, April 24, 2013 (12:06am)

It would seem that Prime Minister Julia Gillard is not the only Labor figure to reach for the “naïve” defence when the hard questions are asked.
Yesterday, Dean Wells, a former Labor Attorney General in the Goss government, told the Queensland Child Protection Inquiry which is looking into the Heiner Affair that the Cabinet decided to shred internal documents because they were inexperienced and wanted to protect employees from defamation.
He said the 1990 order to destroy documents from an investigation into a youth-detention centre was the Cabinet’s baptism of fire as the first “damned if we do, damned if we don’t” decision.
He is the third Cabinet minister to be summonsed to the inquiry - the first under newly expanded terms of reference - that is investigating the long-running Heiner Affair disgrace.
“We had been out of office for 32 years,” Wells said.
“We did not know what was normal and within the area of the Cabinet’s concern.
“What we did know that a minister had a problem that an inquiry that had been established by her predecessor had been pulled up.”
The Heiner Affair centres on the destruction of documents from retired magistrate Noel Heiner’s investigation into allegations of mismanagement at the John Oxley Youth Centre.
It later emerged a girl, 14, was raped at the centre in 1988 and claims grew of a coverup of sexual abuse allegations.
The girl, now a woman, at the heart of this matter, still wants justice.
She was awarded approximately $140,000 in a hush-hush ex gratia payment or possibly compensation in June, 2010, by the Bligh Labor government.
Commissioner Tim Carmody asked why the government would offer to indemnify a man, then destroy the documents which might be produced in a court in a case against that same man.
“That suggests no one thought about those two colliding facts,’’ he said.
Wells said the government believed it wrong to keep documents which he believed contained untested allegations of misconduct which did not involve criminal behavior.
But Carmody said the Cabinet knew it was dong something quite “risky” which required serious thought.
“It was such a serious decision it was deferred twice,’’ he said.
Yet the Cabinet did not appear to apply careful consideration before green-lighting the shredding.
“It (the consideration given) seems to have been less than might have been expected,’’ Carmody said.
“The questions that seems to have been obvious don’t seem to have been asked.’’
Carmody suggested the documents contained not so much allegations of child sexual abuse but accusations related to industrial strife inside the John Oxley centre.
But he also suggested there were two competing sides in the equation - one side wanted to keep the material and one side wanted it destroyed.
He suggested the Labor Cabinet had taken one side, and allowed the destruction of the documents.
The inquiry continues and the commissioner is due to decide on the criminality of the shredding of the documents on May 6.
In as much as a number of the most senior judges from across the nation have in the past decided that the shredding of documents foreshadowed to be needed as evidence was prima facie a crime, Carmody’s decision will be eagerly waited.
The Heiner Affair has never been properly investigated despite 11 reviews and it has cast a shadow over the Goss Cabinet and a number of senior public servants including the former prime minister Kevin Rudd, who was Premier Wayne Goss’s chief of staff and later director-general of his Cabinet office.
It may be that the Newman government will finally see justice done in this long-running scandal. 
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4 her, so she can see how I see her





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The TARDIS has crashed, Clara is lost inside, and the Doctor has 30 minutes before his ship explodes... Don't miss the action in 'Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS' this weekend!
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Beautiful handmade 6 claw Round Brilliant Cut Diamond Engagement Ring with channel set band
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Photography by Rania Abbott
Copyright © 2012 Thoradox Creations & Team 9Lives
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We wish everyone a safe ANZAC Day tomorrow. Please respect the occasion in remembering the brave men and women who fought for Australia – don't get involved in alcohol-fuelled violence or antisocial behaviour.
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A judge has awarded the family of convicted drug smuggler Schapelle Corby more than $50,000 in damages for family photos published without consent in a 2011 book titled Sins of the Father by journalist Eamonn Duff.

They alleged that five photos, including shots of Corby with friends at Brisbane airport and as a child on Santa's knee, were family pictures published without permission. Read more here:http://ninem.sn/SlYSqcB
Confirmation that the book Sins of the Father is factual and has only transgressed a technicality of copyright from images? ed
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Hubble Space Telescope
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“It is written: “‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord, ‘every knee will bow before me; every tongue will acknowledge God.’”” - Romans 14:11
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

Morning

"Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us."
Romans 8:37
We go to Christ for forgiveness, and then too often look to the law for power to fight our sins. Paul thus rebukes us, "O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth? This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?" Take your sins to Christ's cross, for the old man can only be crucified there: we are crucified with him. The only weapon to fight sin with is the spear which pierced the side of Jesus. To give an illustration--you want to overcome an angry temper; how do you go to work? It is very possible you have never tried the right way of going to Jesus with it. How did I get salvation? I came to Jesus just as I was, and I trusted him to save me. I must kill my angry temper in the same way. It is the only way in which I can ever kill it. I must go to the cross with it, and say to Jesus, "Lord, I trust thee to deliver me from it." This is the only way to give it a death-blow. Are you covetous? Do you feel the world entangle you? You may struggle against this evil so long as you please, but if it be your besetting sin, you will never be delivered from it in any way but by the blood of Jesus. Take it to Christ. Tell him, "Lord, I have trusted thee, and thy name is Jesus, for thou dost save thy people from their sins: Lord, this is one of my sins; save me from it!" Ordinances are nothing without Christ as a means of mortification. Your prayers, and your repentances, and your tears--the whole of them put together--are worth nothing apart from him. "None but Jesus can do helpless sinners good;" or helpless saints either. You must be conquerors through him who hath loved you, if conquerors at all. Our laurels must grow among his olives in Gethsemane.

Evening

"Lo, in the midst of the throne ... stood a Lamb as it had been slain."
Revelation 5:6
Why should our exalted Lord appear in his wounds in glory? The wounds of Jesus are his glories, his jewels, his sacred ornaments. To the eye of the believer, Jesus is passing fair because he is "white and ruddy:" white with innocence, and ruddy with his own blood. We see him as the lily of matchless purity, and as the rose crimsoned with his own gore. Christ is lovely upon Olivet and Tabor, and by the sea, but oh! there never was such a matchless Christ as he that did hang upon the cross. There we beheld all his beauties in perfection, all his attributes developed, all his love drawn out, all his character expressed. Beloved, the wounds of Jesus are far more fair in our eyes than all the splendour and pomp of kings. The thorny crown is more than an imperial diadem. It is true that he bears not now the sceptre of reed, but there was a glory in it that never flashed from sceptre of gold. Jesus wears the appearance of a slain Lamb as his court dress in which he wooed our souls, and redeemed them by his complete atonement. Nor are these only the ornaments of Christ: they are the trophies of his love and of his victory. He has divided the spoil with the strong. He has redeemed for himself a great multitude whom no man can number, and these scars are the memorials of the fight. Ah! if Christ thus loves to retain the thought of his sufferings for his people, how precious should his wounds be to us!
"Behold how every wound of his
A precious balm distils,
Which heals the scars that sin had made,
And cures all mortal ills.
"Those wounds are mouths that preach his grace;
The ensigns of his love;
The seals of our expected bliss
In paradise above."
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Today's reading: 2 Samuel 16-18, Luke 17:20-37 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: 2 Samuel 16-18

David and Ziba
1 When David had gone a short distance beyond the summit, there was Ziba, the steward of Mephibosheth, waiting to meet him. He had a string of donkeys saddled and loaded with two hundred loaves of bread, a hundred cakes of raisins, a hundred cakes of figs and a skin of wine.
2 The king asked Ziba, "Why have you brought these?"
Ziba answered, "The donkeys are for the king's household to ride on, the bread and fruit are for the men to eat, and the wine is to refresh those who become exhausted in the wilderness."
3 The king then asked, "Where is your master's grandson?"
Ziba said to him, "He is staying in Jerusalem, because he thinks, 'Today the Israelites will restore to me my grandfather's kingdom.'"
4 Then the king said to Ziba, "All that belonged to Mephibosheth is now yours."
"I humbly bow," Ziba said. "May I find favor in your eyes, my lord the king...."

Today's New Testament reading: Luke 17:20-37

The Coming of the Kingdom of God
20 Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, "The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, 21 nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the kingdom of God is in your midst."
22 Then he said to his disciples, "The time is coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, but you will not see it. 23People will tell you, 'There he is!' or 'Here he is!' Do not go running off after them. 24 For the Son of Man in his day will be like the lightning, which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other. 25 But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation....
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Knowing Him - An Easter Devotional

WAITING FOR GOD

Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jews. With Pilate's permission, he came and took the body away. He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds. Taking Jesus' body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen. This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs. At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid. Because it was the Jewish day of Preparation and since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there. (John 19:38-42)
A small act of mercy on the part of Joseph of Arimathea meant that Jesus’ limp and lifeless body would not be thrown into a pit of a grave, but laid carefully in a rock-hewn garden tomb. Joseph was probably a man with significant conflicts. Wealthy, a prominent member of the Jewish council, he represented the very establishment that was committed to Jesus’ demise. Yet he believed in Jesus, secretly. To believe in Jesus does put one on the spot. Being a committed disciple of Jesus always upsets the status quo.
Nicodemus, also fearful but compelled, came to the tomb too. So there two men, both of whose associations put them at odds with Jesus, both of whom really wanted to believe, are the ones who respectfully wrap the body of Jesus in cloths and seventy-five pounds of spices. Yet the only thing that can really take away the stench of death and its empty stare is resurrection.
These and the other disciples were still stuck in that no-man’s-land between life and death. All that Jesus’ followers had to hold onto were Jesus’ vague words about rising from death. Could such words be taken seriously at all? What would they do in these days? Would they be arrested next? And so they waited behind locked doors because there was nothing else to do.
Ponder This: Is there some way in which you are waiting to see what will happen next? How will you find faith in the waiting place?
WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Resources

About The Author - Mel Lawrenz serves as minister at large for Elmbrook Church and leads The Brook Network. Having been in pastoral ministry for thirty years, the last decade as senior pastor of Elmbrook, Mel seeks to help Christian leaders engage with each other. Mel is the author of eleven books, the most recent for church leaders, Whole Church: Leading from Fragmentation to Engagement.
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Today's Lent reading: 1 Corinthians 15 (NIV)

View today's Lent reading on Bible Gateway
The Resurrection of Christ
1 Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand.2 By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.
3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles,8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.
9 For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them--yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. 11Whether, then, it is I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.
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Lent=Devotions-Header
Today's Old Testament Reading: Job 14:1-14
1 "Mortals, born of woman,
are of few days and full of trouble.
2 They spring up like flowers and wither away;
like fleeting shadows, they do not endure.
3 Do you fix your eye on them?
Will you bring them before you for judgment?
4 Who can bring what is pure from the impure?
No one!
5 A person's days are determined;
you have decreed the number of his months
and have set limits he cannot exceed.
6 So look away from him and let him alone,
till he has put in his time like a hired laborer.
7 "At least there is hope for a tree:
If it is cut down, it will sprout again,
and its new shoots will not fail.
8 Its roots may grow old in the ground
and its stump die in the soil,
9 yet at the scent of water it will bud
and put forth shoots like a plant.
10 But a man dies and is laid low;
he breathes his last and is no more.
11 As the water of a lake dries up
or a riverbed becomes parched and dry,
12 so he lies down and does not rise;
till the heavens are no more, people will not awake
or be roused from their sleep.
13 "If only you would hide me in the grave
and conceal me till your anger has passed!
If only you would set me a time
and then remember me!
14 If someone dies, will they live again?
All the days of my hard service
I will wait for my renewal to come.
New Testament Reading: 1 Peter 4:1-8
Living for God
1 Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because whoever suffers in the body is done with sin. 2 As a result, they do not live the rest of their earthly lives for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God. 3 For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do--living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry. 4 They are surprised that you do not join them in their reckless, wild living, and they heap abuse on you. 5 But they will have to give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. 6For this is the reason the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead, so that they might be judged according to human standards in regard to the body, but live according to God in regard to the spirit.
7 The end of all things is near. Therefore be alert and of sober mind so that you may pray. 8 Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.

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