Every so often I stumble across an article that really saddens me. In a story about the decline in celebrating Kwanzaa, there appeared the following quote. “My mother, she was very hard on trying to make us celebrate Kwanzaa. She felt that it was more important than Christmas,” Howard student NAME REDACTED told The Root. “Kwanzaa has more definition of life — Christmas is just presents.̶

What is it about 80s music that makes that decade so memorable? I’m no music expert, but I definitely have an opinion. The 80s marked the launch of MTV (Music Television), which in its early years actually played music videos. Because of the expansion of cable throughout the country, it was now possible to see and hear music that was unavailable to the majority of Americans. Prior to the 80s, radio was a filt

From the moment European travelers set foot on this continent, they recognized God’s grace on their endeavors and gave thanks for their success. One of the earliest legal documents, The Mayflower Compact, set out in simple language the plan and purpose for this early colony: Having undertaken, for the Glory of God, and advancements of the Christian faith and honor of our King and Country, a voyage to plant th

Thank God that filters exist to weed out all the random blog spam. What is blog spam you ask? It is the process where random comments are placed on blogs to create backlinks to another site. This is a necessary evil to get your blog to rank as high as possible in the search engines. A cottage industry exists that often outsources the work overseas whereby non-native readers post random comments with links to sites.

It seems every time there is a national tragedy or terrorist attack or seemingly any random act of violence, the question comes up, “Where is God?” Let me be perfectly clear on this point, God is love. There is no evil or darkness in Him whatsoever. Jesus makes it very clear that it is Satan that comes to steal, kill and destroy (John 10:10). Once you understand that basic truth, it gets easier to under

For today’s “Finnish Friday,” we travel back to France for an adorable video from Camélia Jordana. She is less than a month shy of 19 and I just fell in love with Moi C’est (It’s Me or This Is Me) from my very first viewing. The song seems to be about the struggle to understand each other in a relationship. Or at least that is my interpretation of the lyrics. I enjoy the music and vocals,

Jenni Vartianen’s Missä Muruseni On, is the Finnish Friday video of the day. When I first started doing this, Jenni was one of the first artists I stumbled upon. And she has been a favorite ever since. I always enjoyed Finnish music on my trips to Finland and thought it might be fun to see what the music scene was like today. There are a few of her videos including Ihmisten edessä that are wonderful. But I

This last week I was working on some content for Luke 13. This is the story of Jesus healing the woman that was bowed by Satan. If you are not familiar with the miracle, you can read the entire story here: Woman, Thou Art Loosed from Thine Infirmity! Or learn more about the subject here: Healing The Woman Bowed By Satan. The story starts with Jesus teaching in the synagogue one Sabbath day. He encounters a woman th

Today, we travel back to Finland for “Finnish Friday.” This is a beautiful song and video. From my very first music video way back in the day, I have always enjoyed videos that tell a story. Even if you don’t speak a single word of Finnish, you can appreciate the song and understand the emotions from this one. The title of the song can be translated as “Maybe Next Time” or “In A

For today’s ”Finnish Friday,” we cross the Maginot Line into France for the music of Melissa Mars. The lovely brunette has already built a pretty nice resume from film to music to musicals. American readers might remember catching a glimpse of her in the movie From Paris With Love as the prostitute picked up by John Travolta’s character Charlie Wax. In France, she is also known for her role

Norway Terror Attack The facts aren’t all in yet, but a quick search of Google shows that the worldwide media is gleefully reporting the “Conservative, Christian, Right-wing Radical” meme. At least one German paper acknowleged in the opening sentence of one of their reports that the motive is not known. That was nice. When we see attacks like this we automatically assume that they have an islamic

Wovon Sollen Wir Träumen – Frida Gold Today, we travel to Germany for “Finnish Friday” and explore the music of Frida Gold. I’m not fluent in German, but I did muddle my way through three years of it in High School. Surprisingly, I do have a somewhat of a decent vocabulary. But when you never use it, it becomes challenging to understand conversation. Clicking on a German video every so ofte

Chisu – Baden-Baden I once worked for a Finnish company which provided me the opportunity to travel there on four different occasions. The country is beautiful and I got to see it in each season. Finnish history and culture were both very interesting, and the language is quite unique as well. I also enjoyed the music. So on slow days, I search out what is popular in Finland and sometimes share it with friends

As Per The Experts Today, I received some training on how to effectively communicate with women. Naturally, this got me thinking. My readers are mostly women, so that must be why there are so few comments on my blogs – I’m not writing for my audience and you ladies just don’t understand me. With that in mind, I will apply the following suggestions I learned today to all future blogs: 1. I will no

Battle of Thermopylae I was fortunate to be one of the first to see the movie “300″ opening day in Dallas. This was one of the few films scheduled for release in 2007 that I was eager to view. Needless to say, I was very impressed. It is based on a version created by Frank Miller of “Sin City” fame and while the film is quite embellished, it does follow closely the orginal story of the Battl

Goliad Massacre – Texas Revolution For those who hate history, or specifically hate Texas history, read no further. For those who like myself see the benefit of remembering key moments in history, read on… On Palm Sunday, March 27, 1836, under direct orders from General Santa Anna, nearly 400 Texas prisoners were executed by the Mexican Army. What was the significance of this atrocity? It was one more e

Over 70 million people tuned in to watch the VP Debate Thursday night. This was the most watched VP debate in history. And of all debates, this was 2nd only to the Reagan/Carter debate in 1980 (80 million). According to Nielsen Media Research, the event drew 69,989,000 viewers, which the measurement company rounded to an official tally of 69.9. In addition, PBS estimates about 3.5 million watched its coverage. Fina

About 2,000 years ago in a lonely, dusty outpost of the Roman Empire, three men were put to death by crucifixion. Two of the men were criminals and earned their punishment. The third, named Jesus, was completely innocent of all charges against him. The Roman authorities, always concerned with the threat of insurrection, had given in to the religious authorities and had tortured this man by flogging, mocking and for

There are no eggs or Easter bunnies here. This is a post about one of the most exciting events so far on this planet, the resurrection of Jesus! What happened in Israel 2,000 years ago is the foundation of Christianity. Religions throughout the world have all sorts of rules and dogma telling you how you can earn eternal life or win the favor of their respective deity. Some require you to even murder “infidels

I recently read an article that challenged its readers with a quiz. Taking violent verses out of the Koran and Bible, the challenge was to name the source for the verse. The object of course was to prove that all religions are inherently evil – at least I think that was the point. I do agree that individual verses without context can be twisted to mean just about anything. If we are drawing a comparison stric