How many remember crossing the Rockies before the Roger's Pass highway? It was an adventure of swithbacks and steep drops if you missed a corner. Valerie and I drove a short portion of the famed Route 66 this spring. For the most part, it has been supplanted by Intersate 40, but in north and west Arizona a portion exists. The portion that heads west into the mountains between Arizona and California is also an adventure. It is narrow, twisty with many switchbacks and portions are subject to falling stones and in season, flash floods. Anyone wanting to make time safely through the desert and mountains takes the interstate.
I imagine that the Judean wilderness north and east into Iraq is similar geographically to the Mojave. Not only did travellers have to contend with natural hazards, out of the way roads were notorious haunts for brigands and bandits.
Dr. Harold McNabb
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Luke 3:7-16
Just after 4:00 am, April 29, 1903, a mountain fell upon an unsuspecting town in the Alberta Rockies.1 The town of Frank Alberta was buried under about 100 million tons of limestone that day. There were a few survivors and around seventy dead. Growing up not far from Frank, I have often driven the highway through the middle of the slide. Decades later in the 1960's it still looked like a moonscape. A piece 2100 feet by 3,000 feet by 500 feet thick had broken off Turtle mountain and tumbled into the valley below. The town was there because Turtle Mountain had rich seams of coal and was being actively mined at the time of the slide. The Blackfeet nation did not like to . . .
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A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him? the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of power, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD? and he will delight in the fear of the LORD. He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears; but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth Isaiah 11:1-4
There is a corner of my basement where there are a number of broken or no-longer-useful items which I just haven't thrown out yet. Usually they are not easily disposed of. I have a scanner that just quit but haven't thrown out.. I have no idea what quit on it. Maybe its just a broken wire, or maybe its a failed chip. Who knows?, but there it sits and will until I figure out how to dispose of it. I just discovered an old printer too. It just quit and I found an inexpensive replacement so it just sits gathering dust. Electronic equipment is especially vulnerable to that kind of obsolescence. Computer chips become dated or too expensive to replace.
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How many of you remember the movie "The Homecoming"? It was a made for TV movie that was the prototype for the series, The Waltons, though with a largely different cast. The story is about a depression era rural family. The father has gone away to find work but he has promised his family he will be home Christmas eve. The day comes when the family are expecting him home. It is snowy and the family wait expectantly to see if he will make it safely. He is late in arriving and the family fear the worst. But he makes it, and in spite of their poverty, they celebrate Christmas as a united family.
Advent is in some ways about a homecoming. It's not Jesus' homecoming, though we wait in anticipation for the arrival of . . .
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Isaiah 2:1-5
They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.
Come, O house of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the LORD.
I came across this quote from Time magazine. It's dated 2002 and is entitled "Today is a Great Day to buy a Used AK-47"
It seems some people in