You have most likely read about David van Biema’s story “Mother Teresa’s Crisis of Faith,” which appeared on the cover of this week’s TIME Magazine. Biema’s article is based on the findings disclosed in Brian Kolodiejchuk’s new book, Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, which publishes letters written my Mother Teresa (Wikipedia) never before made public.
Here is a statement that represents well the inner struggles and doubts that she experienced:
Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear. —Mother Teresa to the Rev. Michael Van Der Peet, September 1979
All 19 of the remaining South Korean hostages are now free. The Taliban released 12 hostages on Wednesday and the other 7 on Thursday. Now the discussion turns toward the issue of whether foreign missionary work should be allowed in countries like Afghanistan where the risks are great.
Protestant organizations in South Korea have said they will respect the new law banning missionary activities in Afghanistan after voicing appreciation for the government’s effort in freeing the Christian volunteers.
US evangelist Franklin Graham made history this past weekend by attracting a crowd of 185,674 people to the Festival of Hope—the largest evangelical event in Ecuador’s history.
Ted Haggard (cf. the new TedHaggard.com | Wikipedia), the former pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs, has been in the spotlight recently for writing a letter to friends and colleagues asking for financial support for the next two years while he and his wife, Gayle, work on degrees at the University of Phoenix.
Gayle is in the undergraduate program studying psychology. I am pursuing my master of science in counseling degree, which means we are both full time students.
A 17 year-old from New Jersey recently achieved fame by being the first to “unlock” the Apple device. George Hotz, who many are referring to as the new “DVD John,” rigged the $599 iPhone to operate on any network with any SIM card. For his epic hack, Hotz was given a freeNissan 350Zand three 8 GB iPhones.
In a public statement, Michael Vick (Wikipedia) asks for forgiveness and testifies to finding Jesus and giving his life to God.
First, I want to apologize, you know, for all the things that—that I’ve done and that I have allowed to happen. . . .
. . .
I totally ask for forgiveness and understanding as I move forward to bettering Michael Vick the person, not the football player.
The Taliban has finally agreed to release the remaining 19 South Korean Christian hostages on two conditions: South Korea must (1) prohibit missionary work in Afghanistan and (2) withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year. Currently some 200 soldiers are “deployed in Afghanistan for reconstruction efforts, not combat.”
Qari Yousef Ahmadi, a Taliban spokesman, said South Korean and Taliban delegates at face-to-face talks Tuesday in the central town of Ghazni had “reached an agreement” to free the captives.
Nearly 800 people clothed in white were baptized in the street in front of the United House of Prayer for All People (Wikipedia) in Washington, DC—with a fire hose. The tradition is over 80 years old.
“We used to use the Potomac River,” he said, but the church’s founder, Charles “Sweet Daddy” Grace, decided to use a fire hose instead, “because a baptism involves sprinkling,” Whitner noted.
The bigger issue, Page said, is that members of local churches have taken to using blogs to carry on bitter debates about problems within their own congregations.
“It just presents a very poor and very public airing of the dirty laundry in church business,” he said. “I’m trying to tell churches, please, let’s deal with our problems in a more civil and, yes, more private fashion.”