{"id":89328,"date":"2019-12-07T00:39:24","date_gmt":"2019-12-07T06:39:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/?p=89328"},"modified":"2019-12-06T20:33:47","modified_gmt":"2019-12-07T02:33:47","slug":"weekly-meanderings-7-december-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2019\/12\/07\/weekly-meanderings-7-december-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekly Meanderings, 7 December 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>Entering into Advent awakens us to the dawn of full of redemption.<\/p>\n

His entire class at his adoption hearing<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n
\n
By\u00a0Samantha Kubota<\/div>\n<\/section>\n
\n

A little boy in Michigan invited his entire kindergarten class to his\u00a0adoption<\/a>\u00a0hearing on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Andrea Melvin and Dave Eaton became Michael Clark Jr.\u2019s foster parents about a year ago, local\u00a0WOOD TV reported,<\/a>\u00a0and on Thursday they became his forever parents.<\/p>\n

Michael had dozens of his classmates from Wealthy Elementary in East Grand Rapids supporting him in the courtroom.<\/p>\n

\u201cI understand we are joined by Michael\u2019s kindergarten classroom and teacher,\u201d 17th Circuit Court Family Division Judge Patricia Gardner said at the beginning of the hearing during the Kent County court\u2019s annual Adoption Day.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The answer is Yes to the question, Has Franklin Graham Gone Off the Rails? By Roger Olson<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n

At a recent symposium celebrating Billy Graham\u2019s centennial birthday a scholar who wrote a biography of Ruth Graham, Billy\u2019s long-suffering wife, commented during a Q & A session that Franklin seems more like Ruth\u2019s son than Billy\u2019s son. That is, according to her, Ruth was a woman of very strong opinions who did not hold her tongue as cautiously as Billy did\u2014at least in private. And, apparently, she inherited that trait from her father.<\/p>\n

But it seems to me that now, with this comment, Franklin has gone off the rails of civility in discourse. It will be remembered as a mark against him and those in his circle of evangelicals (or fundamentalists) who continue to support Trump uncritically. In other words, it is not only uncivil but unhelpful\u2014to him. It will undermine his cause.<\/p>\n

But even more importantly, it contributes to the deep division that exists in America today. Many observers say that America is more divided today than since the Civil War. They may be right. Families and friendships are being shattered by arguments over Trump. Franklin has just poured fuel on that fire (to mix metaphors).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Birds are shrinking<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n

WASHINGTON (Reuters) \u2013 Since 1978, researchers have scooped up and measured tens of thousands of birds that died after crashing into buildings in Chicago during spring and fall migrations. Their work has documented what might be called the incredible shrinking bird.<\/p>\n

A study published on Wednesday involving 70,716 birds killed from 1978 through 2016 in such collisions in the third-largest U.S. city found that their average body sizes steadily declined over that time, though their wingspans increased.<\/p>\n

The results suggest that a warming climate is driving down the size of certain bird species in North America and perhaps around the world, the researchers said. They cited a phenomenon\u00a0called Bergmann\u2019s rule, in which individuals within a species\u00a0tend to be smaller in warmer regions and larger in colder\u00a0regions, as reason to believe that species may become smaller over time as temperatures rise.<\/p>\n

The study focused on 52 species \u2013 mostly songbirds dominated by various sparrows, warblers and thrushes \u2013 that breed in cold regions of North America and spend their winters in locations south of Chicago. The researchers measured and weighed a parade of birds that crashed into building windows and went splat onto the ground.<\/p>\n

Over the four decades, body size decreased in all 52 species. The average body mass fell by 2.6%. Leg bone length dropped by 2.4%. The wingspans increased by 1.3%, possibly to enable the species to continue to make long migrations even with smaller bodies.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn other words, climate change seems to be changing both the size and shape of these species,\u201d said biologist Brian Weeks of the University of Michigan\u2019s School for Environment and Sustainability, lead author of the study published in the journal Ecology Letters.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

David Swartz<\/strong> <\/a>reviews David King\u2019s new book on World Vision:<\/p>\n

The evolution of an NGO\u2019s bureaucratic structures as it positions itself theologically and organizationally in the worlds of religion and development does not seem like a recipe for a sexy narrative. But God\u2019s Internationalists: World Vision and the Age of Evangelical Humanitarianism<\/strong><\/em><\/a> pulls it off. Here\u2019s why this book works:<\/p>\n

First, author\u00a0David King<\/a>, the Director of the Lake Institute on Faith & Giving at IUPUI, has good material to work with. The book\u2019s main character, Bob Pierce, is quite a character. In building World Vision, he is impulsive, restless, oriented to action, and ambitious. He becomes a globe-trotting adventurer who neglects his family. Even when his wife, who has suffered a mental breakdown and is confined to a bed and pleads for him not to leave, he does anyway. She is persuaded by the evangelist Torrey Johnson to \u201crelease\u201d her husband to the Lord\u2019s call in China.<\/p>\n

The passionate Pierce turns everything into an emergency, which says something important about Bob Pierce himself, the organization, and perhaps even something about evangelicalism generally. Consider this quote from Pierce as published in the\u00a0Los Angeles\u00a0<\/em>Times:<\/p>\n

\u201cWorld Vision has a new complex computer system which diagnoses the failures of Christianity and prints them on a data sheet. . . . I can\u2019t stand it. I love the early days when I was walking with widows and holding babies. When I began flying over them and being met by committees at the airport it almost killed me.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If history is fundamentally about story, King succeeds here. Against all odds, he manages to make the history of this bureaucratic behemoth a rollicking tale of one man\u2019s strength and weakness\u2014and an organization\u2019s fascinating response to the chastening of decolonization, Vietnam, and famine in Ethiopia.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Most popular names for boys and girls<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n
\n

Most popular names for boys<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
1) Liam<\/div>\n
2) Jackson<\/div>\n
3) Noah<\/div>\n
4) Aiden<\/div>\n
5) Grayson<\/div>\n
6) Caden<\/div>\n
7) Lucas<\/div>\n
8) Elijah<\/div>\n
9) Oliver<\/div>\n
10) Muhammad<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n
\n
\n

Most popular names for girls<\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n
\n
1) Sophia<\/div>\n
2) Olivia<\/div>\n
3) Emma<\/div>\n
4) Ava<\/div>\n
5) Aria<\/div>\n
6) Isabella<\/div>\n
7) Amelia<\/div>\n
8) Mia<\/div>\n
9) Riley<\/div>\n
10) Aaliyah<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n

\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Entering into Advent awakens us to the dawn of full of redemption. His entire class at his adoption hearing: By\u00a0Samantha Kubota A little boy in Michigan invited his entire kindergarten class to his\u00a0adoption\u00a0hearing on Thursday. Andrea Melvin and Dave Eaton became Michael Clark Jr.\u2019s foster parents about a year ago, local\u00a0WOOD TV reported,\u00a0and on Thursday […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nWeekly Meanderings, 7 December 2019<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Entering into Advent awakens us to the dawn of full of redemption. 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