A post from the past…
Links to articles that I’ve found compelling, convicting, or convivial, favorite quotes, a little food, a little music, a beautiful painting; here are just a few rabbit trails to follow…

First –  Every December the reading public is treated to weeks of “the year in review” type posts.  In one such article, Biggest Pinocchios of 2015, published by the liberal DC paper Washington Post, the writers and editors failed to notice the Post’s own excruciatingly long nose earned by publishing lies and obfuscation regarding the events called Ferguson over the course of the year. Colin Flaherty reveals the hypocrisy in his post Biggest Liar of 2015: The Washington Post and its Pinocchios writing at the conservative blog American Thinker.

The Post, of course, was an early and gleeful adopter of the narrative of the unarmed black person shot for no reason whatsoever by racist police in Ferguson who apparently did that kind of thing all the time.

This Lie infected more than just miles and miles of newsprint in the hard news sections. It was also reported and spread in the sports, lifestyle, opinion, entertainment, and virtually every other nook and cranny of the Post — even after the attorney general grudgingly admitted the entire thing was a hoax in March of this year.

Second –  A German grocery store chain, Edeka, produced a famous ad in 2015 that reveals our 21st century culture of busy-ness and the distance of families from one another, and perhaps unintentionally, the grace of forgiveness and the joy of restoration.

A British department store, John Lewis, the same produced an ad along similar themes, The Man in the Moon, addressing the epidemic of loneliness in our more-connected-than-ever culture.

Third –  The most beautiful Advent hymn ever is the ethereal Veni Veni Emmanuel. Glenn Sunshine (great name isn’t it?) at the Colson Center wrote a brief guide Advent Through the Ages: The O Antiphons  which explains the how the hymn was used, and includes the Scripture Readings, the original text in Latin, as well as the translation. I urge you to click over and print it out. We will be working that into our family prayer time here at The Garner’s. And, have a listen to this gorgeous recording that includes all of the verses.

“God does nothing except in response to believing prayer.” John Wesley

Fourth –  I ran into this problem first in my former church (UMC)  – the idea that praying is not doing something. To think that, is to ignore or forget the great I AM to whom we pray, to say nothing of ignoring the teaching of a key founder. It’s one of several reasons we left the church, and the denomination. So when I see lefty churches promoting the idea that prayer is ineffective, it’s just a matter of time before synonymous lefty atheists promulgate it through their belligerent social media posts. John Grondelski writing at Crisis Magazine breaks down the politics of dissing prayer (and therefore, God) in his article, Growing Opposition to Prayer in Public Life.  He also makes the following point: