Monday, June 03, 2013

Links to Psalm resources online! Lots of links!

David Murray has made it a practice to find what he references at "the top" websites on issues like  leadership resources, sermon resources, online counseling sources.

I don't have time to glean all the content he has linked - and can not validate that he has indeed found "the top" sites - but clicking through his easily accessible links is sure a lot faster than doing searches and there is much good here!

Top 70 Online Resources on the Psalms - by David Murray.

Sunday, June 02, 2013

Mentoring in Biblical Studies

I get the privilege to research and study at Oxford University again this summer, with three students I have intentionally mentored.

While I've had each of these three students in numerous classes, I enjoyed weekly engagement with them every week of this past year in Biblical Hebrew.  Should be fun for us!

Students & Faculty Awarded Scholarship to Oxford University

Posted on Mon, May 27, 2013

BETHANY, OK (May 27, 2013) - Three students from Southern Nazarene University’s School of Theology and Ministry have been chosen from an international pool of applicants to be Student Scholars at Oxford University in England. Scholarships for travel, study, lodging and stipend exceeds $30,000.00 as graduate students, Herschel Hepler & Dale Weaver, along with undergraduate student, Lynn Vogel, participate in the multi-week Scholars Session during the summer, 2013. This unique opportunity is only available to qualified students at Universities around the world where select faculty have an established working relationship with the Green Scholars Initiative. These students engage a unique mentored relationship with Professor Marty Alan Michelson at SNU’s Bethany Campus. Dr. Michelson, a 14 year veteran in SNU’s School of Theology and former Visiting Scholar at Oxford (2010), will accompany the students in their travel, research and study at Oxford with his fees and stipend awarded for the mentorship he provides.

More from the Southern Nazarene University Website here.

Saturday, June 01, 2013

Yard Care and Life's Relationships



I’ve learned lessons on the care of relationships from our yard.

We moved into our most recent house a year ago – May 2012.

The house we rent, owned by the University where I work, had not been taken care of in years.  Over the first weeks of our move-in, I cleared trash-can-after-trash-can of overgrown limbs & leaves.  (I stopped counting full-size trash cans of leaves and limbs at 100.)

The horrible care of the yard was particularly sad due to the fact that the house had been well manicured by owners several years before the last couple of tenants lived here.  I know this because I’ve worked in the neighborhood for 15 years and the evidence of concrete & stone walkways and edging, plus the quantity and varieties of shrubs, bear the evidence of someone who had invested in their yard.

Because of the overgrowth, I had to cut the shrubs too much to get them to be manageable.  As a result, they looked barren since only a frame of the shrub remained.  This, in turn, left large 4 and 5 foot borders around the grass yard as bare dirt.  The shrubs had been so overgrown as to completely choke out the grass itself.  And, by the time I might have been able to plant grass in June (waiting week after week, filling 4 and 8 cans per trash day!), the weather was too hot to allow for grass to germinate properly. 

As a result, all last Summer, through the Fall, Winter and up to this Spring, the yard looked “hacked” and in too many spots “barren.”

Finally, a few weeks ago I was able to get into the yard with Spring weather.  I seeded the barren spots with two kinds of grass seed – and over-seeded the entire yard.  I fertilized the shrubs and soil according to the best principles of care.  I trimmed the newly emerging sprigs so that the shrubs look appropriate to their size, trimmed as though they are cared for.

I walked barefoot through the yard a few minutes ago as I picked up a few limbs to put in the trash can.

It’s amazing how long it takes to restore something that has been left desolate.

For months  I would look out in the yard and wish I could hurry Spring along more quickly, so I could seed the yard and restore the barren areas, but of course I could not do this.

It’s also amazing how it takes just a little bit of care, routinely provided, to prevent damage.

I think this is true of all our relationships – with others and with God.

Minor care, small acts of consistent work, proper investment and “fertilizing” at the right times, will allow for beauty and growth year round.

Dyslexia, Disabilities, Insults and Being a Success

In this great Opinion Piece posted in the New York Times, resident physician Blake Charlton describes the insults he received as a child for being dyslexic, and the successes he has had in life in spite of the labels and insults.

If you don't want to read the full article - here are a few excerpts:

Last month, at the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation Conference on Dyslexia and Talent, I watched several neurobiologists present evidence that the dyslexic brain, which processes information in a unique way, may impart particular strengths. Studies using cognitive testing and functional M.R.I.’s have demonstrated exceptional three-dimensional and spatial reasoning among dyslexic individuals, which may account for the many successful dyslexic engineers. Similar studies have shown increased creativity and big-picture thinking (or “gist-detection”) in dyslexics, which correlates with the surprising number of dyslexic entrepreneurs, novelists and filmmakers. 

The conference’s organizers made a strong case that the successes of the attending dyslexic luminaries — who ranged from a Pulitzer-winning poet to a MacArthur grant-winning paleontologist to an entrepreneur who pays a dozen times my student loans in taxes every year — had been achieved “not despite, but because of dyslexia.”

The article ends wit these great words:

I believe that scientific evidence and social observation will continue to show that defining dyslexia based solely on its weaknesses is inaccurate and unjust, and places too grim a burden on young people receiving the diagnosis. A more precise definition of dyslexia would clearly identify the disabilities that go along with it, while recognizing the associated abilities as well. If the dyslexic community could popularize such a definition, then newly diagnosed dyslexics would realize that they, like everyone else, will face their futures with a range of strengths and weaknesses.