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When you buy a new packet of rubber bands they are usually dry, stretchy and you expect them to last a few weeks, even out in the weather, but after some time the rubber changes. It loses its stretch and it cracks, and eventually becomes sticky and useless. Why is this?

Natural rubber, or latex, is a gooey, sticky fluid. But when some chemicals are added it becomes tougher and stronger. It is made of polyisoprene chains, which slip past each other when they are stretched, and the great thing about rubber is its resistance to change. It can return to its original state when the tension is released.

Man's ingenuity has found that the addition of sulphur, which creates cross-links between the chains, turns a useless product into a useful one, but when rubber is exposed to sunlight, the ultraviolet reacts with oxygen and snips the polyisoprene chains into shorter and shorter segments, until it returns to a state similar to its original. Meanwhile, the molecules of short segments form new cross-links and alter the structure of the runner. It becomes brittle and harder.

Rubber may also contain fillers, dyes and . . .

What was the most sacred place that you have ever been in? The kind of place where awe and reverence for God were experienced, a place that was set apart from all other places, a holy place. You know, as I tried to answer that question myself I kept drawing blanks. There have been a lot of awe inspiring places like Notre Dame Cathedral in Montreal or the mountain ridges of the Yukon or the wonder of the light in the sky at daybreak that seems to breathe promise. But the most sacred place I could remember has been in the presence of other people as we together discovered the presence and reality of God's holiness and grace. I remember praying with a woman in my office for healing and to both of our amazements it occurred right there and then and we were filled a sense of awe and worship at God's grace and presence. I can remember a time of sitting in a friends living room and hearing of how someone had come to a place of faith in Christ and was selling his cabin, traps, fishing nets and moving back to town where the people were so that he could be a Christian there among them. I remember a time of decision in my own life where I cried out to God in the midst of uncertain circumstances and declared Him to be my God, whether I stayed or went, whether to do this or to do that?He is my God and I will seek after Him. These were the most sacred places that I could remember. Two things contributed to the sense of the sacred, my conscious awareness that I am in the presence of God in some . . .

The mass of bodies looks almost like a large boulder sitting in the midst of the white Antarctic landscape, but as the camera moves in it becomes obvious that it is a living thing ? a huddle of penguins. We watched The March of the Penguins a few nights ago and as we did we understood what all the fuss has been about. The film is a delight and an awe-inspiring record of God's amazing design in creation.

One scene in the film ? the one described above ? made me smile. The huddle of bodies are all male. They look like a large boulder because they have their heads tucked in to keep warm. They are carrying their offspring around on their feet, covered by a protective flap of skin and fur that keeps out the sub-zero temperatures. They are waiting for their mates to return with the food that will keep the tiny ones alive. They have to wait for several long months. In the meantime the males have saved a pocket of nourishment for the babies. It is enough to keep them alive until the females come.

The scene that made me smile was the one where they show the females returning. Suddenly the rounded boulder-like shape moves and all the heads pop up. Then the noise begins as fathers and babies begin to trumpet so that their mates can find them. The resulting cacophony made me . . .

In the mid 1930's an unlikely horse became a racing sensation. Its name was Sea biscuit and was the perfect hero for the depression era when so many people saw their dreams end up on the scrap pile. Sea biscuit was an undersized underachiever that no one thought could succeed. Just another casualty in a tough and cruel world.
But the horse was rescued from the reject bin and becomes a legend, and recently the subject of a movie.

One of the main characters in the movie Sea biscuit, is a broken-down, unemployed cowboy named Tom Smith. Millionaire Charles Howard, who is about to engage in a horse racing enterprise, has a campfire interview with Smith, and asks why he bothered rescuing an old, lame horse that was sentenced to death because of a broken leg.
Tom replies, "You don't throw a whole life away just ?cause it's banged up a bit." Every horse is good for something, Tom claims.
And God says that about every person: "You don't just throw away a whole life because it's banged up a bit."1

And so God calls on Jonah to go to Nineveh, a great city in which God says, the inhabitants " do not know their right hand from their left." He is saying, they are ignorant and their . . .