Debbie Haliday with Fellowship of Christian Athletes runs a basketball camp each year at our church. They use different sports throughout the year to reach children and then teach them the things of God. My daughter, Kayla, is helping lead the camp for the smaller division, and Coach Debbie is seen in the picture above teaching the Bible to the campers in a morning session. Please keep all these young people in your prayers, and pray for all the huddle leaders and helpers as they teach the game of basketball, but MORE IMPORTANTLY, as they teach about the way of God.

You might notice ONE camper with a strange green top on… that just might be Kerri… 🙂

in love

Dudley

Max Lucado wrote these thoughts….

You are in your car driving home. Thoughts wander to the game you want to see or meal you want to eat, when suddenly a sound unlike any you’ve ever heard fills the air. The sound is high above you. A trumpet? A choir? A choir of trumpets?

You don’t know, but you want to know. So you pull over, get out of your car, and look up. As You do, you see you aren’t the only curious one. The roadside has become a parking lot. Car doors are open, and people are staring at the sky. Shoppers are racing out of the grocery store.The Little League baseball game across the street has come to a halt. Players and parents are searching the clouds.

And, what they see, and what you see, has never before been seen.As if the sky were a curtain, the drapes of the atmosphere part. A brilliant light spills onto the earth. There are no shadows. None.

From whence came the light begins to tumble a river of color spiking crystals of every hue ever seen and a million more never seen. Riding on the flow is an endless fleet of angels. They pass through the curtains one myriad at a time, until they occupy every square inch of the sky.

North. South. East. West.

Thousands of silvery wings rise and fall in unison, and over the sound of the trumpets, you can hear the cherubim and seraphim chanting, Holy, holy, holy. The final flank of angels is followed by twenty-four silver-bearded elders and a multitude of souls who join the angels in worship.

Presently the movement stops and the trumpets are silent, leaving only the triumphant triplet: Holy, Holy, Holy. Between each word is a pause. With each word, a profound reverence. You hear your voice joinin the chorus. You don’t know why you say the words, but you know you must.

Suddenly, the heavens are quiet. All is quiet.The angels turn, you turn, the entire world turns and there He is.*JESUS*

Through waves of light you see the silhouetted figure of Christ the King.He is atop a great stallion, and the stallion is atop a billowing cloud.He opens his mouth, and you are surrounded by His declaration:I am the Alpha and the Omega.

The angels bow their heads.

The elders remove their crowns.

And before you is a figure so consuming that you know, instantly you know:

Nothing else matters.Forget stock markets and school reports, sales meetings and football games. Nothing is newsworthy… for all that mattered, matters no more … For Christ has come .

I hope you will indeed remember MARANATHA!!!!

The Lord is returning soon……

Dudley

I have a VERY good friend named Dean Bradshaw, who was formerly the head basketball coach at Simi Valley. Several years ago, he became a Christian and from time to time, he forwards emails to me that just touch the heart.

The following email was one such email. I thought it was fitting because of the sermon series we’ve been in and because of our theme for the year. This article spoke to my heart, and I hope it speaks to yours, too…

As you read this, think about what you would do!

A few years ago, a group of salesmen went to a regional sales convention in Chicago. They had assured their wives that they would be home in plenty of time for Friday night’s dinner.

In their rush through the terminal, with tickets and briefcases, one of these salesmen inadvertently kicked over a table which held a display of apples. Apples flew everywhere. Without stopping or looking back, they all managed to reach the plane in time for their nearly missed boarding.

ALL BUT ONE !!! He paused, took a deep breath, got in touch with his feelings, and experienced a twinge of compassion for the girl whose apple stand had been overturned. He told his buddies to go on without him, waved good-bye, told one of them to call his wife when they arrived at their home destination and explain that he would be taking a later flight.

Then he returned to the terminal where the apples were all over the terminal floor. He was glad he did. The 16 year old girl was totally blind! She was softly crying, tears running down her cheeks in frustration, and at the same time, helplessly groping for her spilled produce as the crowd swirled about her, no one stopping and no one to care for her plight.

The salesman knelt on the floor with her, gathered up the apples, put them back on the table, and helped organize her display. As he did this, he noticed that many of them had become battered and bruised; these he set aside in another basket. When he had finished, he pulled out his wallet and said to the girl, “Here, please take this $40 for the damage we did”.

“Are you okay?” She nodded through her tears. He continued on with, “I hope we didn’t spoil your day too badly.” As the salesman started to walk away, the bewildered blind girl called out to him, “Mister….” He paused and turned to look back into those blind eyes. She continued, “Are you Jesus?” He stopped in mid-stride, and he wondered. Then slowly he made his way to catch the later flight with that question burning and bouncing about in his soul: “Are you Jesus?”

Do people mistake you for Jesus? That’s our destiny, is it not? To be so much like Jesus that people cannot tell the difference as we live and interact with a world that is blind to His love, life, and grace. If we claim to know Him, we should live, walk, and act as He would.

Knowing Him is more than simply quoting Scripture and going to church. It’s actually living the Word as life unfolds day to day. You are the apple of His eye even though we, too, have been bruised by a fall. He stopped what He was doing and picked you and me up on a hill called Calvary and paid in full for our damaged fruit.

Please share this post. Sometimes we just take things for granted, when we really need to be sharing the things that we know…

Thanks and God Bless.

Archaeologists continue to discover things that give proof to the authenticity of the Bible. Hopefully, in the spring of ’08, I hope to make another trip to the Holy Land to see some of these discoveries…

Here is another example found in an article that I read this morning about the possibility that King Herod’s tomb may have been found. It comes from STEVE WEIZMAN, Associated Press Writer, Tuesday, May 8, 8:38 AM ET:

An Israeli archaeologist on Tuesday said he has found remnants of the tomb of King Herod, the legendary builder of ancient Jerusalem, on a flattened hilltop in the Judean Desert where the biblical monarch built a palace.
Hebrew University archaeologist Ehud Netzer said the tomb was found at Herodium, a site where he has been exploring since the 1970s.
Netzer said a team of researchers found pieces of a limestone sarcophagus believed to belong to the ancient king. Although there were no bones in the container, he said the sarcophagus’ location and ornate appearance indicated it is Herod’s.
“It’s a sarcophagus we don’t just see anywhere,” Netzer said at a news conference. “It is something very special.”
Netzer led the team, although he said he was not on the site when the sarcophagus was found.
Stephen Pfann, an expert in the Second Temple period at the University of the Holy Land, called the find a “major discovery by all means,” but cautioned further research is needed.
He said all signs indicate the tomb belongs to Herod, but said ruins with an inscription on it were needed for full verification.
“We’re moving in the right direction. It will be clinched once we have an inscription that bears his name,” said Pfann, a textual scholar who did not participate in Netzer’s dig.
The fragments of carved limestone found at the sandy site are decorated with floral motives, but do not include any inscriptions.
Herod became the ruler of the Holy Land under the Romans around 40 B.C. The wall he built around the Old City of Jerusalem during the time of the Jewish Second Temple is the one that can be seen today. He also undertook massive construction projects in Caesaria, Jericho, the hilltop fortress of Massada and other locations.
It has long been assumed that Herod was buried at Herodium, but decades of excavations failed to turn up the site until now. The first century historian Josephus Flavius described the tomb and Herod’s funeral procession.
Herodium was one of the last strong points held by Jewish rebels fighting against the Romans, and it was conquered and destroyed by Roman forces in A.D. 71, a year after they destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem.
Hebrew University had hoped to keep the find a secret until Netzer’s news conference on Tuesday. But the university announced the find in a brief statement late Monday after the Haaretz daily found out about the discovery and published an article on its Web site.