A Blessing for Easter

Mortgage Loans for the Encouragers, friends & family

1st Texas residential Mortgage and I want your loan business. Mortgage Loans of all kinds are available.

I am also looking for referrals to help your friends and relatives....anywhere in Texas

 

First, I'd like you to be aware that we are a major player in Texas, and we have our act together. We have ABA agreements with many builders as well as being the preferred lender for some of the largest builders

 

Some of the benefits to you, when working with me are:

 

• all parties involved...borrower, realtor, etc.fication by email as the file is being completed and requirements are filled.
• The closing Docs are delivered to the Title company 3 days before closing, giving  time to review the HUD 1 .
• As a result, you'll be confident that the loan will close on time and you will never again have to wonder about the status of a loan.
• We deal with over 50 lenders and have the ability to shop the loan that best fits your  needs.
• In addition to being a Loan Officer, I have over 25 years experience in the real estate business, including:

                        Having been a realtor,

A sales counselor for Builders

A Financial Planner

• I also have credentials in the financial arena:

Was a Floor Member of the N.Y. Mercantile Exchange

Chairman of many committees on the Exchange

Formerly Listed in Who's Who

Author of many financial strategy articles & columns

   in various financial publications.

Started up & ran the No. 1 profitable division worldwide

   For E.F. Hutton & Co.

 

 

24 HOUR SERVICE FOR PREAPPROVALS (usually same day)

 

STEVE GREENE

832-457-0223 direct

First Texas Residential Mortgage

www.firsttexasresidential.com

Email: quickloans@earthlink.net

 

 

STEVE GREENE
1stTexas Residential Mortgage
832-457-0223 direct
www.firsttexasresidential.com
Email: quickloans@earthlink.net

Leprochaun Party this Sunday at 5PM!!!

Why They Pray (Wall Street Journal)

HOUSES OF WORSHIP

Why They Pray
The trials of war strengthen many soldiers' faith.

BY ANDREW CARROLL
Friday, March 9, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST

"How can there be fairness in one man being maimed for life, suffering agonies, another killed instantaneously, while I get out of it safe?" Pvt. Walter Bromwich wrote to his pastor back in Pennsylvania during World War I. "Does God really love us individually or does He love his purpose more?" he continued. "Sounds rather calculating, doesn't it, and not a bit like the love of a Father."

Bromwich's sentiments are hardly unique. "If God's chief work has been the creation of this earth and man on it, to date He and His work have been a glorious failure," Lt. Russ Merrell concluded in a July 1944 letter to his wife after seeing the aftermath of the horrific Normandy invasion.

Whoever coined the now well-worn phrase that there are no atheists in foxholes--Ernie Pyle is believed to have been the first--was demonstrably wrong. They exist (there is even a statue, albeit small, erected in their honor in Alabama), and they have long argued that wartime faith cannot possibly be sincere or authentic but is merely a grasping and short-term reliance on divine intervention that desperate troops cling to in the maelstrom of battle.

Faith undoubtedly offers comfort and strength to those in need, especially troops confronting their own mortality. But this does not explain why so many soldiers go to extraordinary and potentially fatal lengths to worship a higher power. On May 25, 1952, Capt. Molt Shuler described to his wife, Helen, a church service he attended in the mountains of Korea. Despite the fact that gathering together made them vulnerable to mortar attacks, the soldiers were determined to have the ceremony and give thanks to God. With loaded rifles by their sides, they created an altar with ammo boxes and lined up their helmets on the ground as pews. (Makeshift services like these are common on the front lines of every conflict.) "Only a couple times in my life before this evening," Shuler wrote, "have I felt God's presence in such a way."

This presence becomes even more visible in the life-and-death context of war, where all that is frivolous and superficial is shorn away to reveal what is truly meaningful and lasting. Lt. Ray Stubbe, a young Navy chaplain serving in Vietnam in 1967-68, often reflected on this theme in his correspondence with friends in Wisconsin. "People benefit spiritually," he wrote in one letter, when they "face the loss of all the trivia of modern day society." After describing a litany of nightmarish hardships that his Marines had to endure, he noted: "You would be amazed at the faith expressed here. There are evidences of genuine and deep prayer life, of reading and knowing the Bible backwards and forwards, of sacrificial concern for others."

These two words, "sacrificial concern," represent the heart of the matter. Countless soldiers have demonstrated their faith by risking their lives for their comrades in arms. (Ray Stubbe himself often came close to dying when he flew by helicopter through hostile territory to minister at Marine bases in the remote mountains of Khe Sanh.) One of the most famous stories concerns the sinking of the USAT Dorchester, which was torpedoed on Feb. 3, 1943, by a German sub. The chaplains on board--Rabbi Alex Goode, the Rev. George Fox, the Rev. Clark Poling and Father John Washington--refused to get onto the lifeboats so that there would be more room for others. The last anyone saw of the chaplains was the four men, locked arm in arm, praying together as the ship went down.

This sacrificial concern, although it receives scant media attention, is evident in Afghanistan and Iraq as well. Staff Sgt. Brian Craig, who had lost and then regained his faith, handwrote a message to his father back in Texas, articulating how his newfound beliefs compelled him to act selflessly. "I think that the guys I work with know that I am different," he wrote on April 8, 2002. "I just pray that I make a difference in their lives. I pray that I am a good example of a man of Christ." It was his last letter home. Sgt. Craig, who had volunteered to seek out and destroy hidden ordnance that threatened both U.S. troops and innocent Afghans, was killed one week later when a bomb exploded in front of him.

"Some of my colleagues have wondered out loud how there can be a God with all of this suffering," Lt. Col. Scott Barnes wrote in an October 2005 email home from Iraq. It is a question that transcends war and relates to any catastrophe involving loss of life, and theologians and philosophers could not have provided a more impassioned answer: "Where is God?" Col. Barnes went on to write. "He is in the will of the sergeants helping organize a blood drive as only they can, He is in the hearts of the soldiers who immediately rolled up their sleeves to give what they had to save a dying brother whom they don't even know." Like those who came before and after him, Col. Barnes saw the worst of human nature in a war zone. But in the selflessness of his brothers and sisters in arms, he also witnessed the best.

Walter Bromwich would almost certainly agree. At the end of his letter to his pastor, the young World War I private finally decided: "God is in this war, not as a spectator, but backing up everything that is good in us. He won't work any miracles because that would be helping us do the work He's given us to do on our own. I don't know whether God goes forth with armies but I do know that He is in lots of our men or they would not do what they do."

And what such troops do, and the enormous sacrifices they make, are more than intimations of deep and abiding faith. They are proof of it.

Mr. Carroll is the editor of "Grace Under Fire: Letters of Faith in Times of War" (Doubleday), published this week.
Copyright © Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Amazing Grace

Lois and I just saw Amazing Grace, and it is one of the best movies we've seen in years.  Strong performances, beautiful music (of course!) and an inspirational story are unforgettable.  Everyone needs to know who William Wilberforce was and how his strong Christian beliefs changed the world. 

You can see a trailer for the movie at http://www.amazinggracemovie.com/.

 

"The Lost Tomb of Jesus"

HOUSES OF WORSHIP

Tomb of the (Still) Unknown Ancients
More Jesus hype of the "Da Vinci Code" type.

BY BEN WITHERINGTON III
Friday, March 2, 2007 12:01 a.m.

Year after year in spring, a new crop of religious dandelions pop up in our post-Christian culture. Like the real ones growing in my yard, they make a colorful splash that briefly captures our attention, until we realize that they are only shallow-rooted weeds, not beautiful flowers planted long ago in the deep rich soil of the past, such as Easter lilies.

Last year, it was the Gnostic nonsense of the "Da Vinci Code." We've had the "Gospel of Judas Iscariot," written centuries after the eyewitnesses were dead. This year it's a variation on the "Da Vinci" theme. We are not only being told that there was a Mrs. Jesus (a k a Mary Magdalene). We are also informed that her tomb and that of Jesus have been found in Jerusalem; that DNA testing has proved that they are not related and so must have been married (how exactly does it prove that?) and that an ossuary or small casket of at least one of their offspring has been found as well. News at 11! Or, in this case, on the Discovery Channel's documentary "The Lost Tomb of Jesus," scheduled for Sunday night.

In a surreal moment on "Larry King Live" earlier this week, the film's producer, James Cameron (of "Titanic" fame), told us with a straight face that we should all be thankful that we now have tangible evidence that Jesus existed. Actually, no serious historian of biblical antiquity has ever doubted that there was a historical Jesus. Yet it tells us a lot about the state of our culture that Mr. Cameron's remark, backed by pseudo-science, could be seriously made on national television and that the film's companion book has already shot up to No. 5 on Amazon's rankings. We are a Jesus-haunted culture that is so historically illiterate that anything can now pass for knowledge of Jesus.

No doubt there are those who welcome "evidence" that undermines the foundation of Christianity. Many people, though, are simply beguiled by the "obsolescence factor" in our technologically driven society--the "newer" must be "truer" and "better." This outlook, when applied to a subject like the historical Jesus, attracts all sorts of unbridled speculation, and worse.

 - - - = = = - - -

How momentous is the latest Jesus-as-you-never-knew-him story? Not very. It is simply not true, as Mr. Cameron's claims in his preface to Simcha Jacobovici's book, "The Jesus Family Tomb," that we have had no hard evidence for Jesus' existence before now except in the Bible. That ignores mentions in ancient Roman and Jewish historians such Tacitus, Suetonius and Josephus.

The "Jesus tomb" explorers trot out statistics on ancient Hebrew names, claiming that the ones in the tomb sound too much like known Jesus family members for the similarity to be a coincidence. But since we've only excavated a minority of archaeological and tomb sites even in Jerusalem, most ancient names are still buried in the earth, making meaningful statistical analysis difficult. What we can say for certain is that most of the names found in the Talpiot tomb on the outskirts of Jerusalem have been seen in many places elsewhere--in texts, on potsherds, in inscriptions, in the Bible itself. They are not rare even by the standards of the limited evidence we do have.

Any good scientific theory must account for all the evidence--in this case, all the names we find in the Talpiot tomb and not just the ones that match the holy-family theory. For instance, we have a Matthew in the tomb, but Jesus had no brothers named Matthew. And where are brothers like Simon, or the sisters mentioned in Mark 6, and where especially is brother James? We actually know that James was buried within sight of the Temple Mount, and Talpiot is miles from there. Eusebius, the fourth-century church historian, saw the tomb and the standing inscribed slab in front of it.

You also have to ask yourself: Why would most of the holy family from Galilee be buried in a middle-class tomb several miles outside of Jerusalem in some sheep pasture? They were, in fact, poor and could not afford an ornamental tomb like this one. This family was from Nazareth, too, with connections in Bethlehem. Why wouldn't its members be buried in one of those places?

We also know that crucifixion was considered the most shameful and hideous way to die, a blow from which one's family honor did not soon recover, if ever. So shamefully did Jesus die that his first followers and even most of his family abandoned him: He was not buried by family members or by the Galilean disciples. He was put in a tomb near the old city that did not belong to any of them.

 - - - = = = - - -

Of course, the main implicit contention of the documentary and book is that the Resurrection is demonstrably a fraud--and thus, we must assume, people like Peter and James, the brother of Jesus, were prepared to be martyred in grisly ways to perpetrate a fraud. Resurrection had only one meaning for early Jews--a miracle that happens to a person's body so that they are raised from the dead.

To skeptics, no amount of counterargument will matter. Yet it wouldn't hurt for the rest of us to exercise a bit of skepticism when listening to each year's new theories about Jesus and the "true" history behind the biblical narrative. Amos Kloner, the archaeologist who supervised work at the tomb when it was first discovered in 1980, has called the documentary's claims "impossible" and "nonsense." As a New Testament scholar, I will trust serious scholars like him. Make no bones about it--they have not found Jesus' tomb.

Mr. Witherington is professor of New Testament Interpretation at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Ky., and the author of "What Have They Done With Jesus?"

Copyright © 2007 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

When I Say, 'I Am a Christian'

When I Say, 'I Am a Christian'

by Carol Wimmer

When I say, "I am a Christian," I'm not shouting, "I've been saved!"
I'm whispering, "I get lost! That's why I chose this way"

When I say, "I am a Christian," I don't speak with human pride
I'm confessing that I stumble — needing God to be my guide

When I say, "I am a Christian," I'm not trying to be strong
I'm professing that I'm weak and pray for strength to carry on

When I say, "I am a Christian," I'm not bragging of success
I'm admitting that I've failed and cannot ever pay the debt

When I say, "I am a Christian," I don't think I know it all
I submit to my confusion asking humbly to be taught

When I say, "I am a Christian," I'm not claiming to be perfect
My flaws are far too visible but God believes I'm worth it

When I say, "I am a Christian," I still feel the sting of pain
I have my share of heartache which is why I seek His name

When I say, "I am a Christian," I do not wish to judge
I have no authority — I only know I'm loved