







But one day, as I was sitting on the bus, I looked over this person a few seats down and thought “God knows everything about them - all of their faults, strengths, personality quirks, deepest thoughts - and loves them so much.”
3 Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

How does the battered wife convince herself that her husband is, at heart, a decent guy? How does the tone-deaf talent-show contestant convince himself that he is the next Elvis?
These are puzzling questions and there are no definitive answers yet.
But Neil Van Leeuwen, a philosopher of Johannesburg, has an interesting theory which he illustrates using the metaphor of “the teaspoon and the mountain”.
On one hand, you have a mountain of evidence that your husband is an abuser or that your singing is bad.
On the other hand, you have a teaspoon of evidence that your husband is a good guy or that you have musical talent.
“What happens in self-deception is that because of the desires within you, you focus all your attention on the teaspoon of evidence and you ignore the mountain,” says Leeuwen.
You have all the evidence that a rational person could need in order to make a correct judgement.
Indeed, if you were using the same evidence to evaluate someone else’s partner or singing, you would come to a sensible conclusion.
But you refuse to attend to evidence that conflicts with your desires.
If Leeuwen’s theory is right, then the severe self-deceiver employs essentially the same strategy as the mild self-deceiver: selective scrunity of the evidence.
An important difference, though, is that at some level, sever self-deceivers know precisely what they are doing.
There is a tension within them because they are uncomfortably aware of the evidence they work so hard to suppress.
- Gary Hayden
In the Hebrew Scriptures there is no word for "spiritual." And Jesus never used the phrase "spiritual life." Because for Jesus and his tradition, all of life is spiritual. So what does that mean?Read it at https://robbell.com/everything-is-spiritual-2006-tour-film/ yea EVERYTHING is spiritual..why do people feel empty? Because there's a vacuum in all our hearts that only God can fill :D God is..everything. He's everywhere, in every moment..at the start of time, at the end of time..in the past, at the present, in the future..He transcends time and space..my God is so cool :D:D:D:D God bless, take care and byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! =D
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When I got home that night as my wife served dinner, I held her hand and said, I’ve got something to tell you. She sat down and ate quietly. Again I observed the hurt in her eyes.
Suddenly I didn’t know how to open my mouth. But I had to let her know what I was thinking. I want a divorce.. I raised the topic calmly.
She didn’t seem to be annoyed by my words, instead she asked me softly, why?
I avoided her question. This made her angry. She threw away the chopsticks and shouted at me, you are not a man! That night, we didn’t talk to each other. She was weeping. I knew she wanted to find out what had happened to our marriage. But I could hardly give her a satisfactory answer; she had lost my heart to Dew. I didn’t love her anymore. I just pitied her!
With a deep sense of guilt, I drafted a divorce agreement which stated that she could own our house, our car, and 30% stake of my company.
She glanced at it and then tore it into pieces. The woman who had spent ten years of her life with me had become a stranger. I felt sorry for her wasted time, resources and energy but I could not take back what I had said for I loved Dew so dearly. Finally she cried loudly in front of me, which was what I had expected to see. To me her cry was actually a kind of release. The idea of divorce which had obsessed me for several weeks seemed to be firmer and clearer now.
The next day, I came back home very late and found her writing something at the table. I didn’t have supper but went straight to sleep and fell asleep very fast because I was tired after an eventful day with Dew.
When I woke up, she was still there at the table writing. I just did not care so I turned over and was asleep again.
In the morning she presented her divorce conditions: she didn’t want anything from me, but needed a month’s notice before the divorce.
She requested that in that one month we both struggle to live as normal a life as possible. Her reasons were simple: our son had his exams in a month’s time and she didn’t want to disrupt him with our broken marriage.
This was agreeable to me. But she had something more, she asked me to recall how I had carried her into our bridal room on our wedding day.
She requested that everyday for the month’s duration I carry her out of our bedroom to the front door every morning.. I thought she was going crazy. Just to make our last days together bearable I accepted her odd request.
I told Dew about my wife’s divorce conditions.. . She laughed loudly and thought it was absurd. No matter what tricks she applies, she has to face the divorce, she said scornfully..
My wife and I hadn’t had any body contact since my divorce intention was explicitly expressed. So when I carried her out on the first day, we both appeared clumsy. Our son clapped behind us, daddy is holding mummy in his arms. His words brought me a sense of pain. From the bedroom to the sitting room, then to the door, I walked over ten meters with her in my arms. She closed her eyes and said softly; don’t tell our son about the divorce. I nodded, feeling somewhat upset. I put her down outside the door. She went to wait for the bus to work. I drove alone to the office.
On the second day, both of us acted much more easily. She leaned on my chest. I could smell the fragrance of her blouse. I realized that I hadn’t looked at this woman carefully for a long time.. I realized she was not young any more. There were fine wrinkles on her face, her hair was graying! Our marriage had taken its toll on her. For a minute I wondered what I had done to her.
On the fourth day, when I lifted her up, I felt a sense of intimacy returning. This was the woman who had given ten years of her life to me.
On the fifth and sixth day, I realized that our sense of intimacy was growing again. I didn’t tell Dew about this. It became easier to carry her as the month slipped by. Perhaps the everyday workout made me stronger.
She was choosing what to wear one morning. She tried on quite a few dresses but could not find a suitable one. Then she sighed, all my dresses have grown bigger. I suddenly realized that she had grown so thin, that was the reason why I could carry her more easily.
Suddenly it hit me… she had buried so much pain and bitterness in her heart. Subconsciously I reached out and touched her head.
Our son came in at the moment and said, Dad, it’s time to carry mum out. To him, seeing his father carrying his mother out had become an essential part of his life. My wife gestured to our son to come closer and hugged him tightly. I turned my face away because I was afraid I might change my mind at this last minute. I then held her in my arms, walking from the bedroom, through the sitting room, to the hallway. Her hand surrounded my neck softly and naturally. I held her body tightly;
it was just like our wedding day.
But her much lighter weight made me sad. On the last day, when I held her in my arms I could hardly move a step. Our son had gone to school. I held her tightly and said, I hadn’t noticed that our life lacked intimacy.
I drove to office, jumped out of the car swiftly without locking the door. I was afraid any delay would make me change my mind…I walked upstairs. Dew opened the door and I said to her, Sorry, Dew, I do not want the divorce anymore.
She looked at me, astonished, and then touched my forehead.. Do you have a fever? She said. I moved her hand off my head. Sorry, Dew, I said, I won’t divorce. My marriage life was boring probably because she and I didn’t value the details of our lives, not because we didn’t love each other any more. Now I realize that since I carried her into my home on our wedding day I am supposed to hold her until death do us apart.
Dew seemed to suddenly wake up. She gave me a loud slap and then slammed the door and burst into tears. I walked downstairs and drove away.
At the floral shop on the way, I ordered a bouquet of flowers for my wife. The salesgirl asked me what to write on the card. I smiled and wrote, I’ll carry you out every morning until death do us apart.
That evening I arrived home, flowers in my hands, a smile on my face, I run up stairs, only to find my wife in the bed - dead.
The small details of your lives are what really matter in a relationship. It is not the mansion, the car, property, the money in the bank. These create an environment conducive for happiness but cannot give happiness in themselves. So find time to be your spouse’s friend and do those little things for each other that build intimacy. Do have a real happy marriage!
While some historians had always regarded the [conflict] thesis as oversimplifying and distorting a complex relationship, in the late twentieth century it underwent a more systematic reevaluation. The result is the growing recognition among historians of science that the relationship of religion and science has been much more positive than is sometimes thought. Although popular images of controversy continue to exemplify the supposed hostility of Christianity to new scientific theories, studies have shown that Christianity has often nurtured and encouraged scientific endeavour, while at other times the two have co-existed without either tension or attempts at harmonization. If Galileo and the Scopes trial come to mind as examples of conflict, they were the exceptions rather than the rule.
- "Science & Religion", Gary B. Ferngren
The theory of evolution is shot full of inconsistencies. Evolutionists have seized on many theories, within the overall theory of evolution, in an attempt to explain the origins of plants, animals, the heavens and the earth.Over and over, these “theorists” try to explain how life evolved from inanimate material into more complex life forms until it reached the pinnacle—human beings.Yet, as one geologist wrote, “It must be significant that nearly all the evolutionary stories I learned as student…have been debunked” (Dr. Derek V. Ager, Dept. of Geology, Imperial College, London, The Nature of the Fossil Record, Proceedings of the Geological Assoc., Vol. 87, 1976, pp. 1132-1133).Perhaps the biggest reason that so many theories within the overall theory of evolution collapse is because they contain terrible logic requiring great leaps in faith to believe. Here is one example of a “debunked” theory: “Many evolutionists have tried to argue that humans are 99% similar chemically to apes and blood precipitation tests do indicate that the chimpanzee is people’s closest relative. Yet regarding this we must observe the following: ‘Milk chemistry indicates that the donkey is man’s closest relative.’ ‘Cholesterol level tests indicate that the garter snake is man’s closest relative.’ ‘Tear enzyme chemistry indicates that the chicken is man’s closest relative.’ ‘On the basis of another type of blood chemistry test, the butter bean is man’s closest relative’” (Morris, Henry M., The Twilight of Evolution, Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1967).
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