There is an ancient proverb that says, “Every year, the flowers look the same, but people don’t.” Everyone’s childhood is unique, as was mine. It was filled with crying and laughing, sadness and joy. When I look back on those days, there are many memorable things that impressed me a

When I was a child, I lived in an old apartment building that offered little privacy for the tenants. Because the apartments were so close together, people could see and hear things that were intended to be kept private. We would often hear people shouting at each other and sometimes

How time flies! Although I am now 22 years old, there is one event in my past that I will never forget. It happened on my way to my grandparents’ home during the Spring Festival in 2000. This is China’s biggest festival of the year, and it’s a time when

NEWSLETTER    Peggy and I often talk about our “busy” lives as being a “good-busy.” Here are some highlights of 2017: Jim Continues his ministry of recruiting teachers for ERRChina, helping to train them, and then travels with Peggy twice a year to visit them in China, and once each

Life Marks: WHAT KIND OF LOVE IS THIS? As you are probably aware, the New Testament was written in the Greek language, and this means that the Bibles we hold in our hands have been translated into English from the original Greek. In English, we talk about “loving our spouse”

Life Marks: A TIME TO GIVE THANKS I’d like to begin by asking a question: “When is the best time to give thanks?” Our natural inclination is to “give thanks” when things are going well. When we love our job, and job security appears to be intact; when we are able

Life Marks: LOVE – A GIFT FROM GOD During a conversation with some of the religious leaders, Jesus was asked to give his opinion about which of the commandments (and there were hundreds of them) was the greatest of all. As we saw last week, His answer was simple and

Life Marks: BEYOND THE TRASH The New Testament spends a great deal of time talking about developing our character so that our lives will reflect the character of Jesus. When the Holy Spirit enters a person’s life, there are plenty of changes that need to take place as we move from

Life Marks: NO NEED TO PERISH If you remember from last week, we spent some time trying to understand the SADD world in which we live, a world complete with “Sin,” “Accidents,” “Disease,” and “Disasters.” We focused upon the story of Job, who felt that God was targeting him for maximum

Life Marks: LIVING IN A SADD WORLD I’ve often used the acronym SADD to describe the world in which we live. The “S” stands for Sin – People sin against us either in word or in deed. That’s always painful, and we have all taken the brunt of another person’s