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So here’s a paradigm shift I’m hoping you make in our study of the book of Galatians. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is NOT just for people to be saved with. The Gospel of Jesus Christ saves us and sustains us. We don’t move on from The Gospel.

We preach The Gospel to ourselves minute by minute some days, hour by hour, week by week, month by month, year by year, from the moment He wakes our heart to it to the moment He calls us home completely we make our stand in The Gospel.

Motivations (Fear or Love) - Matt Chandler

I’ve heard this truth multiple times from multiple sources within the last week. If only my heart would 100% believe this. Some days it’s easy, some days it’s just tough to really feel it. I need The Gospel. I’ve grown up in the church, with Christian parents, and I definitely need The Gospel just as much, if not more, than the worst of criminals in this world. God remind me. 

One of the few good things about living in the middle of nowhere is the view of the night sky, unpolluted by man’s light. After a midnight run I walk and look up at the great expanse that is only a fraction of the universe. In these quiet moments I understand why the people of old worshipped the moon and the stars. The moon, a pale half circle, looks like a celestial being peeking out from behind a magic veil that hides it from our sight. Eerily it seems to know exactly what I was doing the moment I stepped out of my house each night. The stars wink and shine, teasing me as I try to track their whereabouts; here tonight but gone tomorrow, a glimpse into the past. I walk to the sound of my own breathing and the wind follows me as it snakes through the trees. My ipod forgotten, college forgotten, friends and family forgotten, in these moments I am alone with the great God of the universe. 

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?

Psalm 8:3-4

I love it when God or an aspect of God is described using some sort of reference to water. Whether it’s the ocean, the sea, a spring, a river, rain, and etc. There is something life-giving, vast (when dealing w/ bodies of water), and awe-inspiring about describing Him that way.

Difficulty in finding [information on what clinical trials were available in the D.C. area] was the inspiration for the informal dinner and gathering of doctors. Formed a year ago, the group of cancer specialists meets quarterly to share information about the latest available therapies.

What’s unusual about them is that the doctors hail from a diverse group of hospital systems, many of them competitors: Johns Hopkins, MedStar Georgetown University, George Washington University, Howard University, the University of Maryland, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, the National Institutes of Health and Inova Alexandria. The group also includes some in private practice.

Such collaboration is rare, according to doctors and other experts. Hospitals compete for patients. They do so by developing the broadest array of services, regardless of whether other services are offered in the same market.

…

So doctors are often reluctant to share patients.

But the doctors meeting in Chevy Chase are putting competition aside. As specialists in genitourinary cancers — kidney, bladder, prostate and testicular cancers — they face different problems than doctors who treat, for example, breast or lung cancer. There are fewer specialists in this field, and they see fewer patients. And within the field, surgeons and oncologists have tended to collaborate less often than their breast or lung cancer counterparts , according to George Philips, a medical oncologist who specializes in prostate cancer at the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center.

With several new treatments approved for prostate cancer in the past three years, the network is especially useful in keeping abreast of developments, said Jeanny Aragon-Ching, a medical oncologist at George Washington University Medical Center.

“We’re here in one setting, where we can make connections, and then through e-mail we can let [colleagues] know what we’re doing,” said Sarah Horton, a medical oncologist at the Howard University Cancer Center. “It’s allowed us to touch so many more people.”

This is awesome. I hope more doctors follow their example. (Source link to article)

(Source: Washington Post)

My answer about sources - about what ingredients are and where to get them - is pretty simple: Google it. What’s a dried scallop? Google it. Where can I buy Kewpie mayonnaise? Google it. We Google for information all the time at the restaurants. And while you can’t trust everything you read on the Internet,you can find a lot of helpful information there.

Momofuku - David Chang & Peter Meehan

We have 2 24-hour a day food networks talking about look how much fun it is to prepare food, look how much fun it is to eat food, look at a dozen different ways to prepare the same thing. We have 2 networks, 24-hours, 7 days a week. Now you also have Cake Wars, and Cupcake wars,… on and on and on.  And this is all well and good except for the fact that in the world there are a hundred million people starving. So how do we justify the commerce that is generated off GLUTTONY with the fact that a hundred million people in the world are starving?

David Lettermen w/ Anthony Bourdain on the Late Show

I can imagine the looks on the disciples’ faces when the next words came out of Jesus’ mouth: “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves.” Sheep are among the most helpless of all domesticated animals. They are also some of the most senseless. Harmless noises can send them into a frenzy, and when they  face danger, they have no defense mechanism. All they can do is run, and unfortunately they are slow. As a result, the dumbest thing a sheep can do is to wander into a pack of wolves. So why in the world was Jesus, the good shepherd (John 10:11), the great Shepherd Jesus (Hebrews 13:20), telling his sheep to hang out with wolves?

Jesus was saying to his disciples then - and, by implication, to you and me now - “I am sending you to dangerous places, where you will find yourself in the middle of evil, vicious people. And you will be there by my design.” Jesus told them, “Go to great danger, and let it be said of you what people would say of sheep wandering into the middle of wolves. ‘They’re crazy! They’re clueless! They have no idea what kind of danger they are getting into!’ This is what it means to be my disciple.”

We don’t think like this. We say things such as, “The safest place to be is in the center of God’s will.” We think, If it’s dangerous, God must not be in  it. If it’s risky, if it’s unsafe, if it’s costly, it must not be God’s will. But what if these factors are actually the criteria by which we determine something is God’s will? What if we began to look at the design of God as the most dangerous option before us? What if the center of God’s will is in reality the most unsafe place for us to be?

Radical, By David Platt

When things just don’t go your way.

1.)  Fell off my bike in the rain and ended up taking 1/3 of my skin off my right hand’s (writing hand) palm. 

2.)  4 finals 3 days

3.) Finds out bike is having issues

4.) Spends 30 minutes trying to fix bike.  Ends up making it worse and breaking the bike even more at 2 in the morning before 9am and 2pm finals.

5.) Unready for either final and haven’t started studying for the last final.

6.) Hands and arms covered in dirt and grime w/ damaged hand throbbing from trying to force parts of the bike to work.

Jesus help me. I seriously need You. Not to fix everything wrong w/ the list, but to fix my heart.