text:
Staff, Elders, & Deacons
Care Care, Recovery, and Counseling support
Connections Welcoming and connecting you into the life of the church
Family Young Adults, Senior Adults, Marriage, and Parenting
Home Groups Growing in community with God and one another
Institute Core Classes, Bible Studies, and the Training Program
Kids Preschool (birth–K) and Elementary (1st–5th grade)
Leadership Discovering, developing, and deploying Christian leaders
Sending Local Missions, Global Missions, and Church Planting
Students Middle School (6th–8th grade) and High School (9th–12th grade)
The Resurrection of Jesus
The Resurrection Of Jesus Matt Chandler | Apr 1, 2018
Matt Chandler | Apr 1, 2018
Female: The kingdom of God is as multifaceted and mysterious as our Creator, a kingdom we only see now through a glass darkly. Though we can't picture it fully, God's kingdom is the story told in Scripture, from the garden to the city, and in the middle of the story God chose to reveal his kingdom in a new way.
The gospel is not only Jesus coming and dying to save us from our sins; it's also the story of God establishing his dwelling, dominion, and dynasty in the world. We live as both citizens and strangers, prisoners of hope in this shadow kingdom, all while knowing it's not our true home, that something better is coming, that God's perfect kingdom is coming.
[End of video]
Good morning! If you have your Bibles, go ahead and grab those. We're going to be in Luke, chapter 24. If you don't have a Bible, there should be a hardback black one somewhere around you. Like I like to say every week, I want you to see I'm not making any of this up. So if you will grab that, I want to talk this morning (surprise!) about the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
You might think in church you don't really need to do that because we're folk who understand and know that, but my experience now 20 years pastoring in the Bible Belt is you can't really take anything for granted. I had a man one time tell me he was a Christian because he was born in San Antonio.
I know other people who think they're Christians because they're conservative Republicans. Others believe they're Christians because their parents were Christians. Others still have this strange, "I'm a Christian simply because internally I diagnose myself as being moral and upright" without any really legitimate evidence to support that other than the person's own gut feeling.
On the other side of that, I have met plenty of people who believe they can't be loved by God and wouldn't be welcome in a place like this because of this in their background, this struggle they're enduring, or this issue in their lives. What it shows is a real misunderstanding on what Christianity is, what the Bible teaches, and what we should hear and take away from the Word of God.
I want to talk about the resurrection in a way that I hope can help us reorient around the God of the Bible and the good news of the gospel. That video you just watched, if you think that's weird, let me explain it. This is week five in a 12-week series we've been doing on the kingdom of God. We have been talking over the last four weeks leading up to this week about dwelling, dominion, and dynasty.
I want to kind of unpack those three concepts for you when we're thinking about the kingdom of God, and then we'll dive into our text. When we talk about dwelling, here's what we're talking about. When we talk about the kingdom of God, the grand scope of God's rule and reign, we're saying you and I as created beings have been created by a God for that God. Therefore, our hearts are only ultimately at home when we are in the presence of God.
In fact, we've argued for weeks now that the whole Bible could be boiled down to three words: God with us. It's the story of the Bible. If you look in Genesis, you have the garden of Eden and…what? God with his people. Unfettered, unblocked, enjoyed by his people. He created them for him, and he himself is their peace.
Then from there, his people rebelled against him. What is God's response to that? He comes back after them and establishes the tabernacle in the book of Exodus where now you have God among his people again. Then they rebel again, and then Christ comes (God in the flesh, second person of the Trinity). What do you have? God with us.
Then the Holy Spirit at the ascension of Christ is sent to indwell the hearts of the followers of Jesus. Here we go again: God with us. What we'll have in the book of Revelation when Christ returns making all things new, you have…what? God with us. This is the story of the Bible. It's for what you were created. It's for what I was created. When we talk about the kingdom of God, this is what we're talking about: dwelling in the presence of God.
But it's not just dwelling; it's also dominion. There is a purpose and a plan behind your life that is greater than the thinness of our day. I'll unpack that a little bit more here in a bit. The things we're putting hope in, the things we're pursuing, there's a thinness to them that we can kind of feel if we're honest, a hollowness to it all.
What we believe from the Word of God is this dwelling with God leads then into what we would call dominion or that God has a purpose for our life, a plan for our life that is not outside of our life but actually embedded inside of our life. Some of us are going to go to the ends of the earth heralding the good news of the gospel to people who don't know it, and others of us are going to be good lawyers, teachers, businessmen, welders, and trash men for the glory of Jesus Christ. This is dominion.
Lastly, when we're talking about the kingdom of God, we're talking about a dynasty and belonging to a dynasty, that God has saved us to himself. Our future is not playing a harp in a cloud but rather ruling and reigning alongside King Jesus forever in ever-increasing joy. When we've been talking about the kingdom, that's what we've been talking about.
When it comes to the resurrection, there are so many different ways to kind of approach the resurrection. We could just talk about what the resurrection has done on a purely, kind of, "You can see it" level, which is 2,000 years, 2.4 billion Christians, a third of the world's population claims Christ as king. Those are stunning numbers for a homeless man in Galilee.
I mean, we could just say that's a pretty stunning marketing plan from a peasant who was killed via capital punishment by the Roman Empire, but I actually want to go underneath that. I want us to look at the resurrection and show how it kind of completes and establishes confidence in the Christian life in view of dwelling, dominion, and dynasty.
With that said, let me highlight this before we read Luke 24. Christians believe this regardless of the weather. Do you hear me? Christians believe this regardless of the weather. The week here at The Village Church has been a busy one: funerals, memorial services, up to the hospital to visit people who just got the call they hoped never to get.
Here's what I can tell you. Through it all (through the highs and the lows), regardless of life stage and experience, I have just seen men and women full of the Holy Spirit cling to God with us in a way that's not rooted in or tied to their circumstances. It's a really powerful thing. We believe this stuff. We're, in fact, peculiarly confident in it.
We're just going to stand on the hopes of God with us, whether we have a lot of money or we have no money, whether we're healthy or whether we're sick, whether our relationships are good or whether our relationships are rocky. We cling to God with us, the hope of glory. So from where does that confidence come? Where is it birthed? Let's look at this. Luke 24, starting in verse 1.
"But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel.
And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, 'Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.' And they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb they told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest.
Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles, but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter rose and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; and he went home marveling at what had happened."
Now one of the things as a Christian that kind of comes in view to me every year about the resurrection of Jesus Christ is people who do not want to believe Jesus is Lord of Lords and King of Kings have to develop these really kind of wonky theories about what happens here, not because there are so many Christians in the world but because there is so much historicity around the resurrection, tangible evidences of a literal resurrection that secular people have to come up with counter theories.
I have found the theories to be not compelling. I'll just throw out a couple of quick ones to you. One (and I'm not making this up) is they just forgot which tomb they put him in. One of my favorites is called the "swoon theory." He didn't actually die. I mean, somehow in that tortured, blown-up, brutalized physical state, he figured out how to move the stone, overcome Roman guards, and then crawl his battered, busted body back toward his disciples and somehow embolden them toward martyrdom.
It's called the "swoon theory," and there have been papers written on it. It's a legitimate theory legitimate historians have come up with to go, "We cannot worship this man as King of Kings and Lord of Lords, so something other than a resurrection has to happen here." It's desperation.
If that's the kind of stuff you love, let me just commend to you N.T. Wright's work, The Resurrection of the Son of God. It's 850 pages of deliciousness, gets into the historicity of the resurrection, and helps you understand why by AD 351, 51 percent of the Roman Empire claimed Christ as King, and that's before Constantine. What I want to address, though, is something underneath all of that, which is the spiritual dimension of these things and how it ties into dwelling, dominion, and dynasty. Here's my first point of three.
Because Jesus was resurrected from the grave, then our dwelling with Christ is secure. Now this out of everything else I'm going to say today is the best news imaginable. Here's why. You're going to be able to relate to this regardless of your background. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says God has placed eternity into the hearts of man. Now what that means is you and I for our whole lives have had a longing for something not present that will satisfy us. It's not something that's 50 years down the road. It's something that's right there.
It's like we have these baby T. rex arms, and we just can't seem to grab it. It's just right there. It's not 30 years into the future. It's just, "Man, if I could just get this promotion, if I could just get this house, if I could just fix this, if I could just grab this, if I could just have a little bit more of this…" It's just right there, and we can't ever seem to get it.
We just can't grasp it, can't get it in such a way that it quiets that. Even if we do grab what we thought we wanted, it only gives way to the next thing we think we want. You cannot throw wealth, you cannot throw sex, you cannot throw comfort, you cannot throw people into the chasm of eternity and expect it to fill that void. It's too big.
Augustine, who is my ancient friend, was the bishop of Hippo. That's northern Africa. I think so many of us have a Eurocentric view of Christianity, and yet the Ethiopian church, Constantinople, and Northern Africa were a powerful force in the early church. Augustine (one of those) said, "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you."
The greatest barrier you and I have to being what we were designed to be and experiencing then the peace, love, and joy that comes from being where we're supposed to be is sin and rebellion against God. Now we want to chalk it up to other things, right? We want to wish Mom and Dad had done this, wish we had more money. Or our problems are other people; our problems are outside of ourselves.
Yet the Bible is clear and I would argue your experience with yourself if you're not a self-consumed narcissist has been you lie to you more than anybody else does. You let yourself down more than anybody else lets you down. You are your own worst enemy, and yet in the face of that reality, we will still look outside of ourselves for what's broken inside of ourselves. The Bible is going to say that brokenness is sin and your rebellion against Christ as King.
The resurrection has revealed to you and me that barrier is gone. That thing that keeps us out of what we were most designed for and what our heart is most desperate to possess has been removed in the resurrection of Jesus. It's not in the cross of Jesus; it's the resurrection of Jesus. The cross of Jesus shows you the price of sin; the resurrection shows you your bill has been paid in full.
If Christ is still in the ground, then sin and death reign. But because he is not in the ground but he is resurrected, then the invitation to commune, abide, dwell with God is available. Now listen to me, because I just so want us to get this in ways I don't think we get this. As sons and daughters of the Enlightenment, I am not talking about knowing facts about Jesus. That is not what the resurrection has secured. Abiding, communing, knowing Jesus.
Gosh! If there were ever a generation that should know the difference between knowing about and knowing, it's ours. We have the Internet. The Internet can produce for us… By the way, I'm not anti-tech. My notes are on an iPad. "Oh, this is one of those guys." I'm not one of those guys, or I would have gotten a Netflix app.
In this, the Internet can make us feel like we're connected in ways we are not connected. We can know enough facts about people (tell me I'm lying here) to actually begin to feel like we know that person, having never met them, having never spent any time with them. We just feel like we know them.
I mean, gosh! The kind of knowledge you can possess now in a Wikipedia search used to be illegal to acquire. They're like following a guy around, seeing what his wife likes. "What does he like to eat at dinner? He keeps posting those pictures, so I know how he likes his steak. Is he a whiskey guy or a scotch guy? What is he?" You know, you just learn all these facts about a person, and you absorb those facts. Then you can kind of get this feeling you know the person.
Now listen to me. That is not what the resurrection of Christ has guaranteed you and me. What we have been guaranteed, what's possible for us, is to commune with God. It's not connect with him but commune with him. It not a quick phone call and then off to do your work. Wherever you go, there he is.
To abide in his presence is what you're hungry for. If church hasn't worked for you, my guess is you have missed out on what you have been born to have, which is his presence. There is an experiential side of our faith that should not be neglected. Look at me. There is an experiential side of our faith that should not be neglected. I'm a man of the Book, and the Book tells us that. You have been created to abide, commune, dwell in the presence of God.
I know you're looking at me, and you're like, "Speaking of the Internet, I looked you up. You don't have any seminary degree," I'm glad you brought that up. Well, let's let Jesus teach us then. I'm not sure he went to seminary either, but whatever. Here we go. John 15, starting in verse 4: "Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide…" That word is remain.
"…in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing." Now what's great about this is you look at that little phrase, "…bears much fruit…" You start searching the Scripture. Here's what he is talking about. The apostle Paul writing to the churches at Galatia said, "…love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law."
Who in this room would look at that list and go, "Yeah, no thank you. Love? I'd like a little bit more cynicism rather than love. Peace? I'd like to be so anxious out of my mind they have to up my meds again. I don't want peace, rest of soul. No, thank you. Patience"? Listen, I have three kids. I need patience, or I might go to jail.
These things our heart is so desperate for, the Bible is saying, "You want those things? You need to abide in the presence of Jesus Christ, not know some facts about him, not be able to talk about his life." To know him, commune with him, dwell with him…this is what the resurrection has guaranteed for us.
Our hearts are restless until we get in this space. God, help us. I think the church by and large does a lousy job at teaching us how to do this, but this is what your heart is most hungry for, not facts. I am not anti-facts, and I think those facts actually help me abide all the more. I'm not trying to pit experience versus theology. I think anyone who does that is making a mockery of both ideas. I think good theology ushers us into a greater abiding in the presence of Jesus that helps us understand more fully who he is, what he has done, and his desire to dwell with us.
Now because it's Easter, let's chat for a second. I think when I talk like this, what happens is many of you are quick to turn me off because I don't know you. Here's just how insidious rebellion against God is. Here I am saying, "You've been invited in. The resurrection has guaranteed the temple veil torn in two, presence of God, abiding with Christ, being transformed, greater love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control. Against these things there is no law."
You're like, "You don't know me, man. You don't know where I've been, what I've done. That invitation isn't extended to me. It's extended to people who are more like you, have their stuff together." I would just say back, "You don't know me." We'll play the game for a second. Here's how insidious pride is. Some people will so exalt their sinfulness as to make it more powerful than the God who has conquered sin and death.
Let's just do this. Here you are. You're like, "Oh, I don't think I can abide in the presence of God. I don't think I could commune with him. In fact, I'm nervous about even being here. I'm here like Christmas and Easter. I grew up in this stuff. In college, I turned my back. I just think none of this works. In fact, I think you're doing this for the money."
Then what I want to do is just go, "Oh, okay. So you have some things in your life. You feel like you're not welcome in the presence of God. So let's just look at the Bible honestly." We have Moses. Can we just all agree the Lord kind of hung out pretty closely with Moses, spoke to him out of a burning bush, let him do all kinds of unbelievable miracles?
Did you know Moses killed a man with his hands? He murdered a man with his hands. I don't know if you've ever killed anyone, but that's like close-up on it. He murdered a man with his hands. Let's take you and how awful you are that God couldn't welcome you, love you, forgive you, and embrace you. Let's just kind of put it on the scales. You have Moses murdering a guy with his hands. We have you doing whatever dumb thing you're doing. Oh gosh! Yeah! Maybe! I mean, maybe God has changed since he loved Moses back in the Old Testament.
How about David, a man after God's own heart? Here you are. Gosh, man! You have a foul mouth. You party a little bit here and there. God knows what you've done over here and over there. Then you have David who is an adulterer. I'll just kind of put that on the scales here because God is still calling David "a man after my own heart."
Then you have Peter, who is an avid denier of Christ. "I do not know the man. I do not know the man. Blankety-blank blank. I don't know the man!" He also was a racist. Then here we have you. You guys are on the scale. One has shown unbelievable mercy and grace, and one is saying God doesn't do such things.
Do you see how you lie to yourself? By the way, those are three of everyone but five guys in the Bible I could use. God's great delight is pulling from that outer rim of darkness rebellious men and women and bringing them into the light. Your pride is telling you that you have outrun God, and I get to be the herald of good news telling you that you aren't that fast.
The invitation to dwell, to commune, to be with is for you, wayward son or daughter. It's for you! "I don't want anything to do with this." It's for you! "I'd rather be my own god." It's for you! One of the better ways to think about this dwelling… By the way, I'm just going to quote C.S. Lewis here because I like him. "If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world."
I love Lewis' way of answering the ache. If nothing can solve this ache, maybe what solves this ache is something that's not of this world. Now I want us to watch how this flows. If we're talking about dwelling, dominion, and dynasty, I want you to watch how it flows. The real key to the Christian life is abiding in the presence of Jesus. Look at me. The real key to the Christian…
If you've never done that and you're teetering on that edge… "I don't know if this works. I don't know if this is real." I'm just asking you a question. Have you ever abided in the presence of Jesus? Have you communed with him? Do you know what it's like to be with Jesus, or are you recycling facts in your head?
If I could give you an image of how dwelling leads to dominion, if you could imagine just a cup. Someone begins to pour water into that cup until the cup is full, and then the water keeps pouring. Then the water starts to pour down the outside of the cup, and now it's on your favorite table, and now it's on your best floors. Then the water just keeps… There's no way to shut off that water. Then the water kind of spreads, and then heads out your front door. It follows you to work.
Wherever you go, your feet squish under the presence of God with us, the hope of glory. That's dominion. It's the understanding that wherever we go, Christ goes with us. It's the belief that we have not just been saved from, but we have been saved for. Are you tracking with me? You have not just been saved from. You've been saved for. I'm growing more and more convinced that if our dwelling crisis doesn't kill us, our understanding that wherever we go, we go with him, not getting that is also killing us. It's killing the power in which God has asked us to walk.
You have been uniquely wired and uniquely placed by God. This is just the truth of it. I have three kids who have grown up in the same environment. All three of them have unique, intuitive gifts. They're drawn to things that some things come easy to them that are really difficult for their brother or sister.
Now my guess is you've noticed that about yourself. You have some intuitive gifts. Maybe math is really easy for you. Maybe you're creative. Maybe you can see things that aren't there. Maybe you're a high entrepreneur. Everywhere you look, you just see opportunity. Maybe as far back as you can think, you wanted to start a business, you wanted to be a mama, or you wanted to write. We could be all over the map on this.
I'm just telling you, out of Psalm 139, God is doing something spiritual in that longing that has everything to do with the kingdom of God. You've been uniquely wired and uniquely placed for the glory of God and your joy in the living out on mission birthed from dwelling and communing with Jesus Christ.
You can't do this outside of dwelling and communing with Christ. It feels forced and fake. People become projects unless the love of Christ is flowing out of you. Then there's no such thing as projects. They're just people to love as image bearers and those who Christ himself loves.
I wonder if we can have an honest conversation. Okay, it won't be much of a conversation. I think these two are so important for you, because I think if you don't get them, you're going to build your life on things that ultimately don't matter. I'll use this one. I'm looking around. We're in varying life stages right now, but I want to be really honest with you. At 43 and pastoring a church this size, I've got to see it quite a bit.
You're going to retire one day (look right at me), and not a lot of people are going to care. Oh, did you want me to follow that up with something? Okay. They're going to hire someone younger than you for less than they pay you, and they're going to let him make the same mistakes you made at this age now. Then he will retire, and no one will even remember who you are or that you were ever there.
If you're like, "My name is on the building," well, Amazon will have bought it by then, and no one will know who you are. This is the reality. This is what the writer of Ecclesiastes means when he says there's no remembrance of former things. In fact, unless you're an ancestry.com nerd, you probably have no idea who your great-great-grandparents were and how their lives have impacted who you are now.
You might even know their name, but a concept of their life and how their life has produced your life… I mean, your bents, your longings, what you're about, what your family values are, you know that didn't just combust with you at 32, right? That came from somewhere. From where did it come? You don't know! Why? Because the kingdom we've been called to, the dominion we've been given, the dwelling we've been called to, they're really the only thing (and this is what leads us to that third D) that ensures our future hope is secured.
Dwelling leads to dominion, and in that dominion while we dwell… By the way, this is the story of the Bible (this dominion concept, taking light with us, bringing order to chaos). If you look at Adam and Eve in the garden, what does God give them? The cultural mandate. He says to them, "Fill the earth, and subdue it. Bring order to chaos. Bring light into darkness."
Then he establishes the tabernacle. Remember we went through this once. He establishes the tabernacle. What does he give them right after the tabernacle? The law. We hate the law in 2018. Any kind of, "Do this. Don't do that" feels foreign to us. "Get off me! I need to decide for me what's right for me." Tell me that isn't the mantra of our age. I'd just like to kind of ask how that's working for us.
David in the Bible talks about the law in different ways. In fact, in Psalm 16, one of my favorite sentences around the law of God is, "The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places." For David, God is saying, "Thou shalt," and, "Thou shalt not." He looked at it as, "These boundaries are beautiful." In another text, he said they were like honey on his lips, and he couldn't help but think about them when he laid in bed at night.
When was the last time you did that (just laid in bed and were like, "Those Ten Commandments are like legit! I can't even sleep those Ten Commandments are so good! I see what the Lord is doing with that. I get what he is trying to do in that Leviticus, chapter 18")? The picture of David and the saints of God were, "Oh, thank God he has made known to us the path of life."
For what was the law given? Now if you remember Exodus, if you were here when we did this study, the Promised Land was situated right between all the ancient Near East superpowers. Here's God being God, established a Promised Land for them, gives them the law to live as a counterculture among the wildness of the world's cultures. For what reason? For the sake of the world.
Not to shame the world but to invite the world into the order God has established from the beginning. Then Jesus comes, and he preaches the Sermon on the Mount. By the way, we start that next week for six weeks. That's how citizens of the kingdom live and all the more makes us peculiar and strangers in the times in which we live.
Then when Christ sends the Holy Spirit… Before he sends the Holy Spirit and he is ascending, what does he say? "Go into all the nations and…" Do what? "Preach the good news of the gospel. Make disciples, followers of mine." Then the last sentence, which everybody likes to leave off. "…teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you." More on that next week.
Here is the message of the Bible. Dwelling is breathing in; dominion is breathing out. "And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age." Even in breathing out that breath we took in goes with, which then leads to that last piece, that dynasty of which you and I are a part.
Maybe this will help. When I first became a Christian, I lacked some concepts that after living for quite a while studying and preaching, you begin to learn Jesus is this inexhaustible wealth. He is completely different than anything else in the universe. Everything else can get exhausted or exhausting.
Even the best comforts of this world, someone somewhere is bored with them. It is no big deal anymore, but Jesus is other than. He is holy. He is infinite in his capacity to increase our joy. I say all that because when I first became a Christian, we would sing the fourth verse in "Amazing Grace." The stanza was…
When we've been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We've no less days to sing God's praise
Than when we first begun.
As a 20-year-old, I had this internal panic attack. I was like, "Ten thousand years, and there's no time off the clock? What am I going to do if 10,000 years in, there are no less days? What do I do with that?" That was before I understood that what eternal life is is ever-increasing joy that can only be experienced as greater-increasing joy forever and there never be any deficit in the Godhead.
With that as the dynasty I've been invited into, with that as my future, what does the world have to offer me today? What sorrow could befall me today that on that day isn't (as the book of Revelation says) the former things are remembered no more? Here's what's great about this dwelling, dominion, dynasty. If you are in Christ, eternal life has already begun. This ever-increasing joy has already started. It doesn't start upon physical death but is even now, Christian, growing in you.
Again, this goes back to we believe this. We believe this in suffering. We believe this in rejoicing. We believe this when everything is going our way, and we believe this when nothing is going our way. We believe this when there's money in the bank, and we believe this when there's not. We believe this when marriage is awesome, and we believe this when marriage is hard. We believe this when the kids seem to be lining up well, and we believe this when they start to wild out a bit.
We believe this at work, and we believe this at home. We believe this when we're doing our hobbies, and we believe this when we're just trying to rest. This defines us. Let me start to wrap up our time just with a couple of things. Look right at me. We're almost there. You have been designed in the deepest part of who you are for the presence of God. The creator God of the universe built you to run on his presence. You can run on other things; you're just going to break down.
What you've been designed for and what your soul is most hungry for is communion. It's not connectioncommunion with our Savior. It's not a one-off on Sunday or 10 minutes at your kitchen island to start the day but a perpetual abiding in Jesus. We need to teach on that more. I think we do a bad job. I'm going to try to do better just teaching how we go about doing that because that's a very different thing than, "Have a quiet time in the morning." Isn't it?
By the way, "quiet time" always sounded like punishment. I don't know if you grew up on that. "You sit there and think about Jesus. Read your Bible a little bit." It always sounded like you had done something wrong. That's why I like abiding, communion. That's what the Lord is after. You've been designed for this.
On top of that, the thinness of work and having a job just to pay your bills… No, no, no. You can toss that away because really what you've been called to is to bring order to chaos, light to darkness in the domain in which God has placed you as you came out of the womb with an intuitive bent toward whatever domain you're in.
Have you ever noticed that people who stink at math never wanted to be CPAs? You never met a guy who was like, "My dream was crushed."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I mean, growing up my whole life, I just wanted to be a controller. I wanted to be a CFO. I wanted to be…"
"Well, man, what happened?"
"Gosh! I can't add. I stink at math."
You never met that guy. Why? Because the person who intuitively sees math like Neil saw the Matrix is drawn to environments where that skill set is applauded and taken advantage of. If you're like, "Gosh! I'm not getting my purpose from work," great! Because you're not supposed to. That's great news. You actually are bringing your purpose to work. Does that make sense? You're not deriving it fromto.
It doesn't matter if you're a janitor, a trash man, or the CEO. All work is sacred work because you work for the Lord and not for man. You just rejoice as you sweep, as you sit in a board meeting, as you weld a pipe, as you teach kids with helicopter parents. I mean, "Amen!" or, "Ouch!" I live here too!
The cup overflows right into work. This is the dynasty in which we find our lives caught up. Here's my invitation. If you've been hanging out with us for a while, you've been at the church, you've heard the gospel. Maybe you were like me. When I started getting not dragged to church but brought to church by a friend of mine, I had a list of about 30 questions the Lord was going to need to answer if I was going to believe in him. I think about that now and chuckle at myself because I just think the Lord was like, "This guy…wow!"
Maybe that's you. Maybe you're just like, "Uh, you know, I hear what you're saying. I kind of want that to be true, but I don't know what to do about this. I don't know what to do about this. I don't know what to do about this." Here's the way I want to encourage you. I don't want to encourage you not to have doubt and not to ask questions. In fact, I want to commend you for being a thinker and invite you into asking those questions all the more.
What I want to ask you to consider, though, if the Spirit of God is doing something in your heart is to lay your yes down, and then let's ask those questions, having submitted ourselves to Christ as King. If your questions are about, "Is he a trustworthy, kind King?" I point you only toward the cross and then his resurrection for your sake. He is a benevolent, kind King because he died for your sins.
Would you lay your yes down? Then let's talk about your questions. If not, questions can somehow be like a posture of rebellion. Again, if you know the Bible, the Pharisees would ask Jesus a question. He would nail them, and then they would just think of another question really quickly because they didn't want to submit to him as Lord. It's the swoon theory all over again. "I don't want to submit to Jesus. Let me make something up so I don't have to."
I'm just saying no, no. Say yes. Say yes to Jesus as King. Then let's ask the question of what to do with this difficult Old Testament text or, "How does this make sense?" or, "Why is the Christian sexual ethic what it is?" or, "Is this hate? What is this right here?" Let's ask those questions under the banner of Christ's kingly benevolent reign.
If you're here and you're just like, "Man, I don't know if that's where I am," well, as Christians, we are all recipients of the hospitality of God. Here's what I want to do. I want to extend our hospitality (the hospitality we have received) to you. When you walked in, you were given this little purple sheet. It just says, "A place to belong…community at The Village."
There are two invitations on here I'm making to you, whether you believe or don't believe. The first is what we call Home Groups. What Home Groups are here at The Village are not big Bible studies. They're places we gather to "one another" one another. If that doesn't make sense to you, these are environments that are meant to encourage, build up, hold accountable, pray for, and to talk through where we are in life and try to (by the grace of God) bring those things into alignment with the Word.
If you want Bible studies, we have classes galore. This is one of those places you can connect with other Christians. Here's what I'll tell you about Home Groups. Home Groups will at least have the possibility of having all the dysfunctions of home. I'm not trying to oversell this. When you go to a Home Group, let me tell you what you're going to find there: people. Wherever they are (people), things are messy because people are there.
I want to encourage you that should embolden you to be a part. I'm not candy coating anything up here, am I? Gosh! We're broken people clinging to Jesus Christ. That's what we are. You'll find us with good days and bad ,days as human as you can imagine. The only perfection here is the perfection of Christ. Maybe that will help you make sense if your hypocritical friend who brought you…
Your friend, by the grace of God, is doing the best they can with where they are, and Christ is sanctifying them over an extended period of time. That should make you feel more welcome, not less. That should help you understand the invitation of Jesus more than be repelled by the invitation. Because if he takes your hypocritical friend, he might just take you too (back to those… Moses or you).
If you're like, "Where I am in life right now, I don't think you want me around normal people," first, I think you're assuming the people in our Home Groups are normal. Second, let me lay before you the second invitation. Every Wednesday night from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. up here in this very room in Flower Mound (other campuses, they'll be talking about where these things land at their campuses), we do something called Recovery.
Recovery is that place where, if you are broken… If something is short-circuiting… You have an addiction issue. You have bad relational issues. This is a place for you to come and just be honest about that. I'm just going to plead with you. If you're a guest with us, we are not interested in being pretty. What I mean by that is not that we don't work out and eat vegetables. What I'm saying is we don't pretend we have everything together. We want to be really honest that we're all clinging to Jesus.
Recovery is that place that if you think your story couldn't be received well by what in your imagination you're deeming "normal folks," I would just invite you right into the heart and mess of The Village Church on Recovery, Wednesday nights from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.
Again, if you're not a Christian, the reason we were losing our minds earlier, shouting, clapping, and singing, if that was weird to you, it's because we're celebrating this. What we were created for, we get to be in. In being in, dwelling with, communing with Jesus, we're seeing our love grow, our peace grow, our patience grow, our joy grow. It's not as fast as we want, but they're growing, and they're growing a lot faster than if we were just trying to will it.
I mean, God help you. Have you ever tried to increase your own patience? This is what we're celebrating here. It's not us. I'm not seeing anybody in this place walk with any kind of swagger. Gosh! We're just trying to point you to this really beautiful thing that's happened to us and invite you in. Let's pray.
Father, thank you for our time together. I thank you that you have made a way for us. The great barrier of sin and rebellion against you has kept us from the thing for which our souls are most hungry. I do thank you for those who in this season are enduring a difficulty that is enabling them to see maybe for the first time in their life that they're trying to fill the void in their heart with things that won't work.
God, I pray you would just expose this where it lies, where we expect our spouse to be something our spouse was never meant to be, where we expect work to be what it's not meant to be, children to be what they're not meant to be, sex to be what it wasn't meant to be, vacation to be what it wasn't meant to be. You would bring into our mind's eye, our heart's eye an awareness that only in the abiding presence of Jesus will our soul find its rest.
I thank you for the invitation that you say all who are weary and heavy-laden are welcomed. What God extends that kind of invitation? "You're broken, fragile, weary, addicted, foolish, dumb. You're my people." It's a stunning thing to consider, and we bless your name for it. It's for your beautiful name I pray, amen.
Scripture Luke 24:1-12
Witnesses to the Nations
Matt Chandler | Jan 22, 2023
Citizens of the Kingdom
Light and Likeness
Matt Chandler | Jan 8, 2023
The Village Church
Jobs & Residencies
Join us in person
Subscribe to The Village News
2101 Justin Rd
Copyright © 2022 The Village Church. All rights reserved.


text:
King Kaufman's Sports Daily
NCAA Tournament Day 2: Underdogs hang around, hang around and, finally, a couple of them break through.
Salon Staff
1:50 p.m. EST: Seth Davis, the Sports Illustrated writer moonlighting on CBS's NCAA Tournament studio show, has bolted to the lead after one day in this column's annual NCAA Tournament Pool o' Experts by picking 15 of 16 games correctly, missing only on the Alabama-Birmingham upset of LSU.
Aside from the NCAA Selection Committee, which got 13 outcomes right, no one else in this year's expanded field got more than 12 of 16.
This year's field has expanded from 12 to 16. Returnees are: Davis; the committee; your humble servant; 2003 champion Tony Mejia of CBS.SportsLine.com; 2004 champ Tim Brando of CBS and the Sporting News, plus his Sporting News colleague Mike DeCourcy; Stewart Mandel, Grant Wahl and Alexander Wolff of Sports Illustrated; the editors of Sports Illustrated, who inspired this contest three years ago; John Salley of Fox Sports; and my son Buster, the coin-flippinest 2-year-old in America.
The four new entries are: CBS.SportsLine's users, whose bracket will serve as the wisdom of the crowd; Kyle Veltrop of the Sporting News, who was in the 2003 pool but not in last year's for some reason; Luke Winn, who writes about college basketball for SI.com; and Yoni Cohen, who has parlayed his college basketball blog into a gig writing columns for Foxsports.com, and who was the first person to volunteer for inclusion in this pool, a request that was granted because he was once my student.
Anybody who's had to listen to me talk about writing deserves a break or two.
I was going to include Marques Johnson of Fox Sports, but his promised bracket has not materialized on the Web site.
Here are the standings after the first half of the first round, with 10 points awarded for each correct pick in the first round, then 20, 40, 80, 120 and 160 in the subsequent rounds. The number in parentheses after a score indicates the number of Sweet 16 picks already eliminated.
1. Seth Davis, Sports Illustrated/CBS: 150 (1)
2. NCAA Selection Committee: 130
3. CBS.SportsLine.com users: 120
3. Yoni Cohen, Yocohoops/Foxsports.com: 120
3. Mike DeCourcy, Sporting News: 120
6. Stewart Mandel, Sports Illustrated: 120 (1)
6. Grant Wahl, Sports Illustrated: 120 (1)
8. King Kaufman, Salon: 120 (2)
9. Tony Mejia, CBS.SportsLine.com: 110
9. Sports Illustrated: 110
9. John Salley, Fox Sports: 110
12. Luke Winn, Sports Illustrated: 110 (2)
12. Alexander Wolff, Sports Illustrated: 110 (2)
14. Kyle Veltrop, Sporting News: 100 (1)
15. Tim Brando, Sporting News/CBS: 100 (3)
16. Buster, Coin Flip the Magazine: 80 (5)
Friday's early games, all in or just starting the second half at this writing, have been competitive if not always see-saw affairs. Charlotte, 7-seed in the Syracuse Region, looked like it was going to run No. 10 North Carolina State out of the gym early, but the Wolfpack steadied and it's 52-45 with about 13 minutes left, roughly the margin that's held for a while now.
My apparently Big 12-mad part of the country has been watching the entertaining Oklahoma State-Southeast Louisiana tilt, in which the Cowboys have led all the way but the Lions have hung around thanks to their athleticism and defense, especially by Ricky Woods. It's 35-26 as the second half starts.
Iowa State leads Minnesota by 10 at the second-half tip in a less-than-stellar 9-8 matchup in the Syracuse, and in the same bracket No. 4 Florida seems to be handling but not losing No. 13 Ohio. It's 38-28.
It looks like we're going to have three weardowns, plus a close one between the Carolina teams, though Iowa State and Minnesota might tighten up.
3:10 p.m. EST: So there I am, happily watching the Oklahoma State-Southeastern Louisiana game. It's highly entertaining, though it doesn't look like the 15-seed Lions are going to catch the No. 2 Cowboys and pull the biggest upset since Hampton in 2001.
Oklahoma State being a Big 12 team, I know the St. Louis CBS affiliate isn't going to switch to one of the other games without a fight, but that's OK because those games aren't close. North Carolina State has erased an early double-digit deficit and beaten Charlotte in a mild 10-over-7-seed upset in the Syracuse region, while Iowa State, in the same bracket, is cruising along over Minnesota, leading by 10 or so on the way to a 9-over-8 win.
That just leaves Florida, the 4-seed in the Syracuse, beating up on No. 13 Ohio. Let's see, last time I looked it was a 20-point lead, and now it's -- whoa! It's 60-60! What happened?
Florida has been a poster team for Tournament underachievement these last few years, but this year the Gators have looked different, tougher, more defense-minded. This year, they were looking like a Final Four contender, certainly a reasonable Elite 8 pick.
And they let the Ohio Bobcats come back from 20 points down to tie the game in the dying minutes. It's looking like a choke job when David Lee puts up a 17-foot jumper from beyond the free-throw line and it comes up three feet short. But Anthony Roberson is there to haul it in like a pass, score and get fouled. He makes the free throw, and when the Bobcats turn it over -- unforced -- on their next possession, the threat's over. Florida survives, 67-62, but how's that "Fla" scribbled on your bracket's Elite 8 line looking?
Best non-game shot of the Tournament so far: Before the second set of games, one of which will be Central Florida vs. UConn, the CBS cameras catch the Central Florida mascot, a Golden Knight, in sparkly armor, climbing up on a pair of folding chairs to lead a cheer, but stepping wrong and tumbling to the ground.
4:05 p.m. EST: Five of the eight 1 and 2 seeds have played, and we haven't had any of those lopsided blowouts in those games. The lower seeds haven't really come close to winning, but they've at least been competitive.
Until now. Syracuse top-seed North Carolina is leading Oakland, the play-in winner, 59-33 at the half, meaning the Tar Heels are on pace win by seven and a half touchdowns.
No. 2 Connecticut, from the same region, is leading the 15-seed Central Florida Tumbling Knights 47-31 at halftime thanks to Charlie Villanueva's buzzer 3-pointer. Several low seeds have fallen behind by that much and then rallied to make a game of it in the second half, but I doubt UConn's sweating much in the locker room.
Remember when I said a 12 wouldn't beat a 5 this year? Of course you do. You always remember when I say ridiculous things that turn out to be wrong. Well, if I hadn't backed myself into that corner, I'd have picked New Mexico to upset Villanova in the Syracuse region.
And you know what? Instead of writing me e-mails or posting on your blog about how dumb I was for that 5-12 prediction, you'd be writing about how I'd lost my mind by picking New Mexico. 'Nova's leading that game 34-10 in the last two minutes of the half.
In the game I'm watching, one I'd been looking forward to, Southern Illinois is leading St. Mary's 35-26 at the break. This is not just a game between two good medium-conference teams roughly from the last two areas I've called home, it's an intriguing matchup, but the Gaels haven't been able to put anything together. Southern Illinois is the seventh seed in the Chicago Region, St. Mary's the No. 10.
So it looks like the seeds are holding up big-time in this set of games, which goes against my theory that seeds don't mean much, that they're a result of the prejudices and biases of the NCAA Selection Committee, and your own prejudices and biases would serve equally well.
Also going against my theory, according to reader Kevin Kraft: reality in general.
"I have found that, looking at game outcomes averaged over the long long term, the seedings are surprisingly accurate and meaningful," Kraft writes. "I came across this while working on a side-project attempting to define a metric gauging the level of upsets for a given NCAA Tournament (i.e. a number that would indicate whether a given year was a big year for upsets, and how it compared to other years).
"Since defining an 'upset' depends on the relative seedings, I went back and examined the historical data, plotting both seed and seed differential (winning seed minus losing seed) vs. winning percentage," he continues. "The results were beautiful straight lines, indicating a very high correlation between higher seeds, larger seed differentials, and higher winning percentages. So, taken over the long term, the seeding process has proven to be surprisingly accurate."
Shut up, he explained.
5:35 p.m. EST: I don't know what to tell you about the second set of games Friday. I don't mean I'm at a loss to explain what happened. There were no surprises. North Carolina and Connecticut crushed their low-seed opponents, though it looks like Central Florida made it look respectable in garbage time, losing only 77-71.
I saw not a second of that game because I've been watching the Southern Illinois-St. Mary's game, and here in St. Louis the Salukis are a semi-local team, so no look-ins to other games.
North Carolina beat Oakland 96-68, the first score of that type in this Tournament. Too bad for Golden Grizzlies. I tried to help them out by wearing my "Oakland" hooded sweatjacket. It's really an Oakland, Calif., jacket but I thought it couldn't hurt. It didn't, but there's nothing mysterious when North Carolina beats Oakland by 28, except maybe "Why didn't they win by 38?"
New Mexico, a popular upset pick over Villanova because that's a 5-12 matchup, has spent much of the game down by about 20. Ha. Who would think a 12 could beat a 5? What's not to understand there? The Lobos have crawled back to 52-45 with 1:07 to go, though.
And Southern Illinois, the No. 7 in the Chicago Region, has just rapped up a 65-56 win over No. 10 St. Mary's.
What I mean when I say I don't mean to tell you is that I've hit some doldrums. I'm unable to process basketball for a while. The first two days of the NCAA Tournament are eight sets of games, four at a time, and we're coming to the end of Day 2, Set 2, which is to say Set 6.
And suddenly, I'm doubting that my existence serves a purpose. This is something of a crisis because usually I'm sure my existence serves no purpose.
Villanova's up by five in the last minute, and the Wildcats have missed five straight double-bonus free throws, all of them by good free-throw shooters. And I just don't have anything to say about it.
I think I need Chinese food. Actually, I thought I needed Chinese food about three hours ago, so I had some delivered. And then I ate it and immediately started doubting that my existence serves a purpose, which should not be taken as a comment on the quality of the food. I'm just trying to say there are no answers in those white cartons.
OK, Villanova has closed out New Mexico. All four games in this time slot were favorites winning. There have now been 24 games, with the higher seed winning 19. And of the five lower-seed winners, two were 9-seeds, which is a toss-up with an 8. The other three upset winners have been a 10, an 11 and a 12. No Cinderellas.
That's really my problem here. In 24 games, there has yet to be a memorable upset. Nor has there been a buzzer beater. There's only been one attempted buzzer beater, Creighton's against West Virginia. There hasn't been an overtime.
So this is a curable malaise. March Madness, an advertising coinage I rarely use, hasn't been lacking good basketball. It's just been lacking madness. And you need a little madness here and there, otherwise sitting in one spot and watching 32 basketball games in two days is madness.
Dinner. Then more games, and everything will be fine.
9:55 p.m. EST: The longer an underdog hangs around with a high seed, the more confident it gets, and the more dangerous it becomes.
Every single time an underdog hangs around with a higher seed, this point gets made in the CBS studio, usually by Clark Kellogg. I just knew that if Kellogg kept saying it, it was going to be true at least once, and how about those Vermont Catamounts! The 13 seed in the Austin Region has knocked off No. 4 Syracuse in overtime, an honest-to-goodness Cinderella-story upset.
Finally, a team in road uniforms going shocked-the-world crazy, celebrating a game they had no business winning but for the magic of the Tournament. Vermont's win extends not only the college careers of Taylor Coppenrath and T.J. Sorrentine, the highest scoring duo in Division I, it extends the career of coach Tom Brennan, a beloved character who'll retire whenever Vermont loses.
That was just the pick-me-up this Tournament needed.
I wish I could tell you more about it, but CBS was keeping my part of the country glued to a mostly pointless Northern Iowa-Wisconsin game, an 11 vs 6 in the Syracuse Region, two teams going nowhere in the Tournament.
CBS has been very good in this Tournament, committing almost none of the sins I complain about -- crazy camera angles, that sort of thing -- but it had a giant brain fart of a moment at the end of those two games. The Vermont game was down to 13 seconds left in overtime, Syracuse down by three, about to inbound in the backcourt. CBS, which had been looking in, switched back to Northern Iowa-Wisconsin for the final 3.2 seconds.
Northern Iowa was also about to inbound in the backcourt, but the Panthers were down by five. Why are we watching this? They have no chance. Let's get back to Vermont-Syracuse!
Wait a minute. The officials are having one of those little meetings at the scorer's table. So CBS hangs around to watch ... nothing. Nothing's happening. Meanwhile, in the score bug for the Vermont-Syracuse game, the clock is ticking down: 13, 12, 11, 10 -- a long shot of the court, Northern Iowa and Wisconsin players standing around -- 9, 8, 7, 6, 5 ... all the way to nothing. Not a zero, just nothing. Then a "1" appears. The refs are still talking.
Finally, CBS switches to the last 0.4 seconds, a throw-in by Vermont, then about two seconds of celebration, before switching back to the already-iced Wisconsin victory. I don't know how much of the country was affected by this. Probably not much, but it was just lousy work, CBS.
Nobody I've ever met watches sports this way. Everybody I've ever met wants to see 1) the home team and then 2) the best game going. Teams vaguely in your region of the country? Really, no thanks. Why would anyone not actually in Wisconsin or Northern Iowa want to be watching that game rather than a hard-fought, possible huge upset game between Vermont and Syracuse? Not to mention Louisiana-Lafayette's almost-upset of Louisville.
So anyway, finally. Not just finally an underdog winning one, but finally that thing about underdogs becoming more dangerous as they hang around because their confidence builds? Finally came true for once.
North Carolina over Oakland had been the only real overdog blitz, so one would-be Cinderella after another had been hanging around for at least part of the game. From Eastern Kentucky to Winthrop to Utah State to Central Florida. Penn, Chattanooga, Montana, Niagara.
"The longer they hang around ..."
They all lost, every last underdoggy one of 'em. Maybe there's just nothing to that hanging around thing.
Maybe it's just that when big underdogs win, of course they do it by staying close for most of the game and winning at the end. Favorites have many ways to win, like taking a 30-point lead, for example, and either maintaining it or losing some of it but still winning. A Delaware State might beat a Duke, but it's not going to do it by getting a 30-point lead and hanging on. It has to play like crazy just to stay close.
But that doesn't mean that hanging around is important because it builds the confidence that leads to victory. Hanging around is important because that's the only way to win.
You don't want to let an underdog hang around for the same reason you don't want to let an equal or a favorite hang around. It's because you want to beat them, and it's easier to beat a team you're leading by 15 than one you're leading by three, or trailing by three.
Two more underdogs hung around in the early evening games: No. 13 Louisiana-Lafayette against No. 4 Louisville in the Albuquerque Region and No. 16 Delaware State against No. 1 Duke in the Austin. Duke pulled away in the second half. Louisiana-Lafayette hung in against Louisville to the bitter end.
And lost.
12:50 a.m. EST: "Oh no! Christian Laettner!"
I actually said those words out loud as Wayne Simien caught a 75-foot pass at the free-throw line, pivoted and launched a 15-footer that would have given Kansas the win if it had gone in.
The Jayhawks, the 3 seed in the Syracuse Region, trailed No. 14 Bucknell 64-63 with 2.4 seconds left. Bucknell was trying to become the first Patriot League team ever to win a Tournament game. Kansas, having rallied from five down to take a one-point lead with half a minute to go, had given up a go-ahead basket on an unlikely looking jump hook by Chris McNaughton -- over the brilliant Simien -- with 10 seconds remaining.
Keith Langford took the inbounds pass, raced upcourt, pulled up as he reached the left baseline, and launched a 10-foot air ball. In the scrum for the ball Kansas committed a foul, and backup Bucknell point guard John Griffin went to the other free-throw line with 3.5 seconds left to try to extend the lead to three.
He missed the front end of the 1-and-1, setting up the inbounds play after a timeout. Pretty much the only thing Bucknell didn't want to happen was for Simien, Kansas' star big man, to catch the ball in shooting range. The official handed the ball to Langford, who, without a moment's hesitation, reared back and threw a bomb downcourt that Simien caught at the right corner of the key. He pivoted clockwise to the middle, rose up and let fly, an open shot.
It looked exactly like the most famous shot in college basketball history, Laettner's game-winner for Duke against Kentucky in an Elite 8 game in Philadelphia 13 years ago. I don't think I've ever been as sure of anything as I was that Simien's shot was going down, just as Laettner's had.
It was short. Bad short. Bucknell had scored the second huge upset of the night, the biggest upset of this mostly to-form Tournament. For all the talk about how rare it is for a 15 to beat a 2, something that hasn't happened since 2001, it's been two years longer since a 14 beat a 3. Weber State was the last one to do it, beating North Carolina in 1999.
In the other late games, two 5s escaped the upset curse of their seed, beating No. 12 opponents. Georgia Tech drilled George Washington 80-68 in the Albuquerque Region, Michigan State survived Old Dominion 89-81 in the Austin. The other game was a 9-over-8 "upset" in the Austin Region, Mississippi State pounding Stanford, 93-70.
Two big upsets and a Stanford loss! What a night! Two underdog piles at center court. Two fantastic finishes. Who was it who was doubting the purpose of his existence a few short hours and two plates of Chinese food ago?
Previous column: NCAA Tournament Day 1
Bookmark http://www.salon.com/sports to get the new Kaufman column every day.
Discuss this column and the sports news of the day in Table Talk.
Send an e-mail to King Kaufman.
To receive the Sports Daily Newsletter, send an e-mail to kingnewsletter@salon.com.
MORE FROM Salon Staff
Check out this article! https://www.salon.com2005/03/18/friday_157/

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


The Association for Data-driven Marketing & Advertising (ADMA) has postponed this year's AC&E Awards after requests from agencies to extend the deadline.
ADMA revealed the decision to postpone the awards yesterday afternoon with only minutes to spare before the final deadline for entries. However, no alternate dates for entries to be submitted by or for the awards gala dinner to be held on have been provided.
Stephen Porges, CEO of the Australian Alliance for Data Leadership, said in a statement to B&T: "We're grateful for the many outstanding AC&E entries to date and acknowledge the commitment it takes to complete an award entry.
"As advised to all parties already, ADMA has decided to postpone the AC&E awards after requests from agencies to extend the deadline.
"We are absolutely committed to the development and recognition of the combination of creativity and effectiveness in campaigns and will provide updates on the new dates shortly.
The AC&E Awards replaced the ADMA Awards in 2014. All entries to the awards are judged on their creativity and the effectiveness.
ADMA's decision to postpone the awards comes a week after The Communications Council held its Effie Awards 2018, which also honours effective advertising and marketing.
The association has also been through a lot of change regarding it executive team this year.
Jodie Sangster quit her role as ADMA's chief executive after seven years to join IBM Watson in March. Ben Sharp was brought in as her replacement, only to quit two weeks later. Last month, ADMA named Andrea Martens ad its new managing director.


Thank you for submitting the proposal form below for the 2018 NCPN Conference in Louisville, KY. Please read the following before completing the form.
This form must be completed in a single session. (The form will not save your information after you have closed your browser. Your network may periodically "time-out," causing loss of information, so it's best to finish within a relatively short period of time.) You will not be able to retrieve and revise your information once it has been submitted.
You should receive a copy of your submission via email. To ensure that you have a copy for your records, please print a copy of the form prior to submission.
As the key presenter, you will be responsible for disseminating information to co-presenters.
If you have questions or problems with the form, please contact Sheila Wilson.
Registration fee: Registration fee: All presenters are required to register at the discounted presenter rate of $495 by August 30. A "registration link" will be sent to all presenters whose presentations have been accepted on May 15. Please do not register until you have been notified that your presentation has been accepted.
NOTE: To fill out the secure online forms you must be using the latest browser version or the form may not submit properly. Chrome version 33 and up, Android 5.0-5.0.2 and up, Firefox version 34 and up, IE 11 and up, Opera 17 and up, Safari 7 and up.
Do not use URLs as this will cause your submission to be rejected. This description will appear in the conference program book.
Priority will be given to presentations that are engaging / interactive and have take aways for attendees.
Do not use URLs as this will cause your submission to be rejected.
This information will not be published and is used only for evaluating presentations.
An LCD projector, Internet, screen, sound for laptop, and microphone (as needed) will be provided in each meeting room.
NCPN does NOT provide laptop computers. Please play DVDs on your laptop.
If you need a flip chart, check the box.
Co-presenters: All presenters are required to register for the conference and pay the discounted presenter registration fee of $495. A "presenters only" registration link will be sent to all presenters after presentations have been selected. (Please do not use the standard registration link.) Presenters should wait to register until they have received notification that their presentation has been selected on May 15.
What is the sum of 5 plus five?
we recommend that you also print a copy of the form before hitting the "Submit' button below.
during that time please do not hit Submit again or close your browser.
You will see a thank you page after your information has been successfully processed .


At Somerton is a new YA historical romance series. I wrote it based on an idea from Emily Meehan at Hyperion. The first book, Cinders and Sapphires, is available in the US from Hyperion and in the UK from Hot Key who have re-titled it Secrets and Sapphires. It's historical romance set in the years around the first world war. Book 2, Diamonds and Deceit, is forthcoming in Jan 2014.
There is a third book: Emeralds and Ashes, set during the First World War. Due to a publisher decision, this is only available through Barnes and Noble as an e-book .
At Somerton Book 2: Diamonds and Deceit.
I loved Cinders and Sapphires and can't wait for Diamonds and Deceit!
Thanks! 🙂 Yes, there is – I have the chapter plan open right now on my computer but I'm giving nothing away 🙂 (ok, just a bit – it's set during the First World War and it's called Emeralds and Ashes).
I have your novel won by a reading round on the website "LovelyBooks", do you know what that is? I don't know, if the Englisch word is right.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to submit a review for my book blog so all my followers can read my high opinion of your book.
So, now I've been babble enough!
I've just finished reading Cinders and Sapphires, and absolutely loved it! I cannot, absolutely cannot wait for Diamonds and Deceit to be released!!
I would just like to ask if you'd allow me to interview you on my blog? I hope you're interested, and maybe it can be a promo prior to the release of Diamonds and Deceit!
I do hope you're interested, it would be such an honour to interview you!
Hi, thanks so much for your message. I'm really glad you loved C&S! I think D&D is out in January so hopefully not too long to wait :). I'll email you about the interview. Thanks again, it is lovely to know readers are enjoying the books.
I love your Bathsheba series I think they are so cool! Please please write another one I love them, they are by far the best books you have ever written. I am waiting in anticipation for you to write another one! I hope you do soon I am your biggest fan your books are amazing!
That's great advice and gives her plenty of things to think about! Thank you very much.
Thank you so much! I can't wait 🙂 good luck writing!
I am currently a sophomore in college, I do realize I am much older than the regular audience, but I couldn't help but read your Somerton series after reading a summary over it. It is a very interesting series and much liked, it contains quite a resemblance to Downton Abbey, which is probably a qualifying factor. Narrating several characters must be difficult to keep a track of, but having the text be in third person was rather brilliant, but then again you must know that, and it was only logical of course. I am a huge fan of fictional books, even though I am a biology major. I don't pretend to know you, but you seem to be a fan of cliff hangers, considering the second book was filled with them, you could even say there was a cliff hanger at the end of every chapter. The foreshadowing was brilliantly done, leaving the audience with questions and loose ends that would be sewn to produce a picture close to the end of the book.
I have read some of the comments posted above, and I read the mention of a third book to the series, and probably the final book also. I am excited to read it! I was wondering if a date has been set for the release yet, or if it is still in the writing process? And are there any details that you could leak, about Ada? I am very curios to see what has happened with her and Ravi.
Thank you for your message. I'm delighted you enjoyed the series, it is always lovely to hear from readers. The third book is still being written – I am about one third of the way through – and I don't yet know the publication date. I expect it will be January 2015, though.
I have just finished reading D&D in less that a day (I was hooked)- it was amazing, even better than the first book and I cannot wait for your third. You are a great writer and I am longing to know what happens!
Hello! – Er– My name is Lori and I'm from Romania. You probably didn't think that someone from over here could be so interested in your At Somerton series. I learn both English and German at school and my parents gave me C&S in German, so I could improve my language. But it was more dificult to read it in German. Because I liked very much the prologue, I decided I had to read the entire book. So I ordered it from USA and the 2nd one (D&D) from UK. It took about 8 months to have them both. It may seem strange to write all this to you, but what I wanted was to show you how much I appreciate this series, even if it's more difficult for me to have them! I have just finished Diamonds and Deceit and it was absolutely perfect!
I'm very exited about the last book. I simply cannot wait for it! And I also have a small question (Of course, only if you would like to reveal us this secret :D). Who is the most important character in the 3rd book? I mean, book 1 focuses more on Ada, and book 2 on Rose, but who is the main character in Emeralds & Ashes(if I got the title well)?
Thank you very much for this wonderful series and good luck further! I am still quite excited that I am writing to you 😀 but I'll stop here. I don't want to sound that pathetic.
Hello again. Thank you for answering my question. Now I am even more nervous about the last book 🙂 I can only hope that time will past quickly!
Thank you! 🙂 Well, I find the period very interesting – so all those changes and tensions are very inspiring. I'm writing the third book which is the last one I have a contract for, at the moment. That is set during the first world war and I've found that particularly rich and interesting to delve into. There are so many wonderful books on the period. I enjoy reading first hand accounts such as Vera Brittain's memoirs and Frank Libby's 'Horses Don't Fly' – all those are very inspiring. Thanks again for your kind words and I wish you the best with your own writing.
These books are just amazing. I am actually marking the calender until the third one comes out because I cannot wait!
I am so concerned about the future of these characters. January needs to come now.
🙂 Just sent off the copyedits!
Hi Leila! I was wondering if Emeralds and Ashes would be available as a physical copy in the United States? I just went to the barnes and nobles website to pre order it but it only seems to be available as nook book!! I would be terribly sad if this was the case because I do not have a nook and have been waiting a whole year to find out what happens next in this great series!
Oh no! I have a book but I need a copy of this book. I hope that worlds out.
do you know if there will be a UK paperback edition from the other publisher?
Good question! I don't know but will email my agent.
Aww that's dissappoiting I'm sorry:( I will be sure to order it from the UK then so I can have matching, pretty hardcovers!!! Thanks anyways!!
Hi Leila! I am so disappointed to hear about E&A not being published as a physical book (in the US). I loved the At Somerton series, and as a school librarian I have other students that have enjoyed it as well. I will personally make sure to purchase the ebook version to make a point for your publishers, but really wish I could get a phyisical book for my school library! Keep writing, please!
Honestly Emeralds and Ashes was everything I wanted and needed from a third book. Everything was wrapped up and it didn't feel rushed. That being said I would like about twenty more books in the series.
Hi Leila. I am an eight grade student and am working on a project using your book, Cinders and Sapphires. My project is about facing history through literature. My topic is England in 1910. This is why I read your book. I am looking into this period, particularly women's education and women at Oxford in 1910, using your book as a jumping off point. While doing research I have not found much about this topic and was wondering, where did you find your information for writing Cinders and Sapphires?
If I'm in the UK does that mean I can't buy emeralds and ashes?
I am almost fourteen and am aspiring to be an author of historical romance. I absolutely adore your two books (I have Emeralds and Ashes on order) and was wondering how you came to be a historical romance author? Are you interested in history? And have you ever thought of writing a sci-fi or modern-style book or have you always wanted to write history?
Is there a way to contact Hyperion to ask them to publish Emeralds & Ashes in hardcopy format?
i have read both books in the series from us when is the third book coming out?
Hi, I have read sapphires, and ordered two more books. Your books are amazing, easy to read, interesting with great characters within.
I would love to know which order I should read them. what was the 1st 2nd and third and is there any more on the way.
My daughters loved your Turlingham Academy books and have read all 5, do you have any plans to write any more in this series?
I'm from the UK and am trying to buy your Emeralds and Ashes book. I'm just wondering when the release date is? On some sites it says it has already been released and on others it say it is waiting for release.
Hi, Leila. I have the first two books of your At Somerton trilogy (I'm a huge Historical fiction nut, by the way), but I don't have Emeralds and Ashes. Is it really only available as an eBook in the U.S.? Because I've searched literally EVERYWHERE for it. Please let me know.
Hi Leila! I really enjoyed the first two books in this series! Can we expect a third?
I am sorry for the fact that it's hard to get hold of, not something I have any control over sadly.
i love it, the drama, the different plot lines, the characters, everything. i never saw any second or third when in the stores but i'm glad i looked it up and that there are mooooore! anyways i just love it.
Hello. I really like your books from the series Witch of Turlingham. Therefore, I want to ask and will continue this series ie sixth part.


text:
You are at:Home»Articles from Our Contributors»Book Notes: Works of Love are Works of Peace
Book Notes: Works of Love are Works of Peace
By Barb Szyszkiewicz, OFS on	 August 18, 2016 Articles from Our Contributors, Book Notes
While biographies are a wonderful way to get to know a person, they don't always tell the whole story. Photographer Michael Collopy proves that images can say much more than words in the newly-reissued photobook from Ignatius Press, Works of Love are Works of Peace, which documents the work of Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta and her Missionaries of Charity. Originally published in 1996, the large-format book has been updated with an appendix containing the contents of the Missionaries of Charity daily prayer book as well as a most personal and profound letter on the interior life written by Mother Teresa during Holy Week of 1993 and addressed to her entire order.
Described by the publisher as an "illustrated prayer book," Works of Love are Works of Peace is an extended photo essay that brings home the radical life of service modeled by Blessed Mother Teresa and the Sisters.
The black-and-white photos are nothing short of striking. The book's layout is spare: one large black-and-white photo on a page, with the location noted at the bottom. Some pages contain a prayer, quote from Mother Teresa or note from the photographer; on other pages, the images speak for themselves.
More compelling than the faces in the photographs are the hands. Caring hands. Whether it's the hands of Mother Teresa clasped in prayer around a rosary or the hands of the Sisters and volunteers ministering to the poorest and most vulnerable by feeding, washing, tending to wounds or simply embracing those in need, those hands stand out.
Photobook on #MotherTeresa from @IgnatiusPress emphasizes loving service. @franciscanmom reviews
This quote from Blessed Mother Teresa sums up the message of the book:
We must not drift away from the humble works, because these are the works nobody will do. It is never too small. We are so small and we look at things in a small way. But God, being Almighty, sees everything great….There are many people who can do big things. But there are very few people who will do the small things. (p. 135)
How will this book change the way you serve? The personal touch is what Mother Teresa's kind of service is all about, and Works of Love are Works of Peace underscores this fact in a powerful way.
Buy this book through our Amazon link and support CatholicMom.com with your purchase!
Be sure to check out our Book Notes archive.
Copyright 2016 Barb Szyszkiewicz, OFS
Barb Szyszkiewicz, OFS
Barb Szyszkiewicz is a wife, mom, Secular Franciscan, managing editor for Today's Catholic Teacher magazine and editor at CatholicMom.com. Her three children range in age from high school to young adult, and she enjoys writing, cooking, and reading. Barb is a music minister at her parish and an avid Notre Dame football and basketball fan. Find her blog at FranciscanMom and her family's favorite recipes with nutrition information for diabetics at Cook and Count.
Susan Andersonn on September 6, 2016 02:41
I am drawn to black and white photography. It seems that the details are more defined without the clutter of color. Mom T's greatest influence on me was through a black and white sketch of a photo of her holding a baby girl that had just one arm. You can't see that in the photo, because her little dress was long sleeved, but the caption moved me so much, that I framed the picture and hung it in my laundry room. It helped me not fall apart among the dirty laundry.
But I love color too. Her simple blue band says much about the small things done with great love. It's so glorious that we can call Mother Teresa, St. Teresa now!


We always love to hear from other deaf boxer families who adore their deaf boxers as much as we do ours. Even though Nitro is gone he will never be forgotten and we think of him fondly every single day. Lora and Marlin sent in a generous donation to Nitro's Fund to help the next deaf boxer like be sponsored into the safe harbor of rescue.
Thank you Lora and Marlin, you totally rock! Marlin reminds us so much of our sweet boy Nitro!
In memory of your beautiful boy Nitro. He won the doggy lottery in getting an amazing family and life!
My deaf boxer boy, Marlon, and I appreciate all you do to help so many of these loving velcro dogs!