Bob Taylor, our Adult Ministries Elder, called me the other day and asked if I would include a reminder about the Harvey Cedars Couples’ Conference coming up this November 2-4 on Long Beach Island at the Jersey shore. Normally such reminders go out in the email version of the e-Pistle which is designed primarily for the LPC family rather than those others who read just the web version.

Okay, email readers, you’ve seen the reminder. Continue reading →

We are going to be inconvenienced this Sunday, but we’ll get over it. The main parking lot is closed for repaving and we’ll have to park on the street or in the chapel lot. We don’t like to be inconvenienced, but we’ll get over it.

So we are repaving the parking lots – both of them.  A week or so from now they are going to look great – clean, re-striped and well drained. None of us is going to miss the slushy ice rink in the winter or the weeds between the cracks in the summer. It will be worth the inconvenience. Continue reading →

I love it. And I love her. Once again America has fallen in love with one of our Olympic athletes, and for the 2012 Games it is Gabby Douglas, the 16-year old gymnast who has won our hearts and won her gold. Who doesn’t know her story? And who doesn’t know that she is a committed Christian willing to share her faith, a faith that includes thanking God when she does well? Gabby also beseeches God for his protection and mercy on her father serving in Afghanistan and seeks God’s solace as she watches her parents’ marriage crack under the stress of repeated deployments.

But as most of us simply enjoyed getting to know Gabby, we knew that the cynic’s voice and snarky comments would be heard soon enough. And they were. There were others, but probably the most widely heard was from a salon.com blogger who approvingly quotes a friend who said, “I would like her more if she were not so, so, so into Jesus.” Continue reading →

Somehow there is something refreshingly absurd about The Olympic Badminton Scandal. If you haven’t been too busy standing in line a Chic-Fil-A, you know the story.  Eight Olympic athletes, four from South Korea and two each from China and Indonesia, are accused of intentionally underperforming in first round matches causing their teams to lose and thereby gaining easier opponents for second round play. They took a dive; made Pete Rose proud. All for a shot at the gold. Continue reading →

The New York Times ran a long page one article a couple of Sundays ago under the headline Two Classes Divided By “I do.”

The story is an anecdotal account of a troubling reality. Too many studies are reporting the same thing. Children raised by single parents simply do not do as well in life as those who are nurtured in homes where their parents are together and married.  It’s a matter of economics and time at the very least. Single parents, usually single moms, can’t provide the same family income as married couples provide and the responsibility of caring for a home and being a part of children’s activities fall on one pair of shoulders instead of two. As the story shows, dads are not incidental to a child’s sense of self and his or her development as a person. Continue reading →