WHY SEVEN IN TEN AMERICANS CHOOSE TO BE CHRISTIANS

Why seven in ten Americans choose to be Christians

By Ada Brownell

Despite antagonistic secularism in our schools, government, and diminishing freedom of religion, 70 percent of Americans say they are Christians, according to Pew Research Center.

Why?

Probably for the reasons I am a committed follower of Jesus Christ.

Foremost, Jesus loves me and I love Him. God declares his love throughout the Bible, even in Old Testament books where his laws are written.

 In a time of discouragement I complained to the Lord, “Heaven is so silent!”

An answer flowed through my being. “I demonstrated my love for you on the cross and that message still resonates around the world.”

My sins were forgiven when I accepted Jesus as Savior, but redemption goes beyond freedom from slavery to sin. It changed who I am.

I gave up my selfishness and greed. My name has been published many places, but I’ve never wanted to be famous. I grew up in extreme poverty, but never desired riches. My family, born-again one by one shortly after I, the eighth child, was born, demonstrated when you have the Lord, you have joy, love, and everything you need.

What happiness I experienced when I understood because of Jesus, I could live forever! That truth became even more precious when our Carolyn died of cancer. I rejoiced because we’ll see her again.

Being a Christian gives me a purpose in life: a desire to be part of something greater than myself. I’ve done this by telling others about Jesus, by helping and loving those in need, and by giving to solid Christian organizations that bless others.

Ada Brownell a few years ago

America would be in sad shape without its Judeo- Christian heritage. Charities housed and fed the homeless and hungry around the world for centuries. Many colleges and universities including Harvard and Yale were started by Christians, as well as some early public schools. Hospitals were established by religious people and organizations, In Pueblo, Parkview is Episcopal and St. Mary-Corwin is Catholic.

Pastors and lay people visit those in jail, minister to the sick, comfort the dying and grieving. They teach from the Bible how to live, have a good marriage, be a good parent, and how to get to Heaven. The ministry of the church probably has a lot to do with my marriage of 62 years and children that serve the Lord.

The power of prayer greatly affects me, too.

  “Jesus!” I cried when our car with almost slick tires wandered head-on toward a semi-truck on an icy mountain pass. Our vehicle moved into the correct lane as if a hand had shoved it over.

 We prayed when our Gary and his family traveled through a blizzard toward Denver. He could see cars crashing into each other ahead. To avoid an accident, he drove off the interstate into deep snow outside Colorado Springs.

 A friend from Denver was there within minutes with his four-wheel drive vehicle.  “Gary! Fancy seeing you here.”

 Gary, his wife and small children were soon safe in a warm motel.

We’ve had so many answers to prayer over the years I can’t name them all. Gwen was thought to have multiple sclerosis. Tests showed Gary had only 40 percent kidney function. Jaron Craig had symptoms of leukemia. Later tests showed our children did not have the expected disease. Jeanette, Jaron and grandchildren had serious episodes with asthma. Yet all are O.K.

Prayer isn’t always answered the way we hope. We lost Carolyn to cancer, but experienced the peace and comfort we‘re told about in God’s Word.

My confidence for the future is tied to my faith. The world’s problems never outweigh God’s mercy and grace for those who follow him.

This article is reprinted from The Pueblo Chieftain in Pueblo, Colo., on July 25, 2015.

Ada Brownell is a retired reporter for The Chieftain.

Wait!

Wait!

By Sandy Nadeau

Waiting. Are you any good at it? I’m not, so why I became a writer I’ll never know. We seem to have to live by that word.

We wait to be inspired with ideas, we wait for scenes to form in our brain-we call it thinking or plotting, we wait for acceptance by the right agent.

Then the much hoped for day arrives and we finally get word of a contract, then we wait some more. Then we get our edits and wait. Then we get our galleys…and we wait. Then we wait for the book to be printed. Then the book comes out and we wait for more sales. Am I helping yet? Just wait.

What do we learn by all this? Patience. That dreaded P word. If you want to learn how to be a patient person, then becoming a writer is the job for you! You will have endless lessons to learn it.

A few things that might help are to remember what the Bible says about waiting. Within the pages, there are over 129 references to waiting, depending on which version you’re reading.

Psalm 27:14 says: “Wait for the Lord, be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.”

Noah did a lot of waiting. To get a job done in time, then wait for those waters to recede.

Moses. He waited a lot to hear from the Lord before guiding the people.

I know. That doesn’t make it easier, right? 

But my favorite: Isaiah 40:31 “But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

Whew. I can do this!

We get frustrated waiting for the next step in our writing. But God knows what that is. He has a plan. And He knows the plan He has for you and your writing.

I want to encourage you to wait on God’s perfect timing. He knows far more than we do. He knows when your words need to be out there and who they need to reach. Trust Him and trust His timing. When you feel impatient and anxious for word about your manuscript, wonder if your royalty check will have anything in it, stop, take a deep breath, and remember God’s got this! Build on your faith trusting that He will work out all those things.

I love this quote from Flannery O’Conner: “When a book leaves your hands, it belongs to God. He may use it to save a few souls or to try a few others, but I think that for the writer to worry is to take over God’s business.”

Just wait. God is working out the details.

Sandy Nadeau loves to go on adventures, photograph them and equally loves to write about them. She and her husband have done a lot of four-wheeling in the back country of Colorado and share those experiences with others by taking them up in the mountains. Sandy wrote a column about her community for a local newspaper for twelve years, she also has had several magazine articles published. She loves to write novels about adventure, mystery, romance, but most importantly sharing God’s love. Her first novel, Red Gold, released in March of 2014. She is now waiting for the release of her second, Rescue Me, due out early 2016. She is currently a member of the American Christian Fiction Writers and of the ACFW South Denver Chapter. Married for 38 years, she and her husband are loving life as grandparents to their two grandchildren and planning yet another adventure of moving to Texas to be closer to them. Travel is their favorite thing to do and they don’t get to do it as often as they’d like. Adventure awaits around every corner, over every hill and mountain.

Mandy Phillips loves life with her husband running an adventure ranch in the Colorado mountains, but when Mr. Shonee, their crotchety old neighbor, tries to stop them from building a kid-size old west town their dreams of expansion are crushed.

Is Shonee just being a difficult neighbor, or is something more sinister going on? A discovery on the property of Colorado's state mineral leads to more mysteries for the ranch, and then a teenage guest finds herself thrust head first into danger.

Mandy will have to rescue her, but who will rescue Mandy? Her faith in God is her only source to keep the guests safe, solve the mysteries surrounding her ranch, save her neighbor from himself, and discover the secrets of the Red Gold.

Want to write a book? Here's how Johnnie Alexander did it.

Johnnie's book to be released in January 2016

By

Johnnie Alexander

I read a gazillion books on different aspects of World War II before and while writing my debut novel Where Treasure Hides.

Often a book suggested a path for my character, such as Colditz: The Untold Story of World War II’s Great Escapes or The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Theives, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History.

My hero, who is captured at Dunkirk, is imprisoned at the infamous Colditz Castle for a time. Later he joins the Monuments Men.

Keeping a record of all the interesting information I found as I delved into the history of this tragic war was a challenge. My solution was to write pertinent information into tablets and blank books.

It’s not the most organized method because I often read more than one book at a time. So the notes from different books are interspersed throughout the pages. But there’s something about that little bit of chaos that nurtures creativity. When I reviewed my notes, I didn’t know as I turned a page if I’d still be reading about an infamous Vermeer forgery or details about the Battle of Dunkirk.

Johnnie's debut novel 

The journal served a different purpose.

At the top of the third page, I wrote: My name is Alison Schuyler, a fitting name for me and my forebears. It’s Dutch, like my ancestors, and has the connotation of hiding and shelter.

The entry continues, revealing tidbits about Alison and her family that I didn’t know.

A few pages in the journal almost resemble math homework as I reconciled years of birth and ages with historical events. Major characters have a page to themselves with descriptive notes taken straight from the manuscript.

Even The Girl in the Garden, a fictional painting of Alison’s mother, has its own page.

There’s a page titled “Questions!” and the following one begins, “What’s next.” Near the end of the book, “Revisions” tops a page which is followed by a long list of items to double-check or reconsider.

Here’s one of my favorites, totally forgotten until I flipped through the journal to write this post:

May 13^th – Got the call!

Treasure is a Genesis finalist!

A few months later, Where Treasure Hides won the American Christian Fiction Writers 2011 Genesis contest in the Historical category.

Now that I’m writing a contemporary romance series, I use small artist sketchbooks. I can’t draw, but a page without lines allows freedom to make connections, to scribble, to play with colored markers.

The tablets, journals, and sketchbooks I prefer measure approximately 6 inches by 8 inches—just the right size to balance on my lap with another book and not too cumbersome to carry around. As I work on my manuscript, the sketchbook is next to my laptop so I can jot notes or refer to something I’ve already figured out in its pages.

The tablets full of research notes still come in handy when I want to write a WWII guest post. Those three notebooks hold a treasure of material that’s easily accessible even if a bit disjointed. I cherish the Treasure journal and Where She Belongs sketchbook because they reveal the nitty-gritty process beneath their finished stories.

Back Cover

Artist Alison Schuyler spends her time working in her family’s renowned art gallery, determined to avoid the curse that has followed the Schuyler clan from the Netherlands to America and back again. She’s certain that true love will only lead to tragedy—that is, until a chance meeting at Waterloo station brings Ian Devlin into her life.

Drawn to the bold and compassionate British Army captain, Alison begins to question her fear of love as World War II breaks out, separating the two and drawing each into their own battles. While Ian fights for freedom on the battlefield, Alison works with the Dutch Underground to find a safe haven for Jewish children and priceless pieces of art alike. But safety is a luxury war does not allow.

As time, war, and human will struggle to keep them apart, will Alison and Ian have the faith to fight for their love, or is it their fate to be separated forever?

Meet the Author:

Johnnie Alexander writes inspiring stories that linger in the heart. Where Treasure Hides, her debut novel, won the ACFW Genesis Contest (2011) and Golden Leaf Award (2014). The first of her three contemporary romances, Where She Belongs (Misty Willow Series), releases from Revell in January 2016. Her first novella, “The Healing Promise” will appear in Barbour’s Courageous Bride Collection (July 2016).

She also has won Best Novel and Best Writer awards (Florida Christian Writers Conferences), and Bronze Medalist (My Book Therapy Frasier Contest).

A graduate of Rollins College (Orlando) with a Master of Liberal Studies degree, Johnnie treasures family memories, classic movies, road trips, and stacks of books. She lives in the Memphis area where experiences farm life with a small herd of alpacas and Rugby, the princely papillon known for treeing raccoons.

Buy Links: Hyperlinks List

Amazon:

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HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH DEPRESSION AND WEIGHT?

By Janet K. Brown

The devil delights in causing depression for saints. He whispers lies in our ears. We repeat them over and over until our spirits are so defeated only a miracle can redeem us.

Depression isn’t new. Look at the prophet, Elijah’s words. 

“I’ve had enough,” he told the Lord. “Take away my life. I’ve got to die sometime, and it might as well be now.”

                             1 Kings 19:4 Life Recovery Bible

  

Jeremiah poured out his depression on the page:  

He has filled me with bitterness and given me a cup of deepest sorrows to drink.

                 Lamentations 3:15 Life Recovery Bible

 In that same chapter of Lamentations in verses twenty-one through twenty-three, Jeremiah tells us the answer to depression. “Yet there is one ray of hope: his compassion never ends. It is only the Lord’s mercies that have kept us from complete destruction. Great is his faithfulness, his loving-kindness begins afresh each day.”  

Our only hope. 

God is strong enough to lift our burdens and loving enough to mend our broken heart.

                      Life Recovery Bible, note on page 843

 All forms of depression bring a wedge between us and God.

 Like Jeremiah, the only remedy is soaking in the Word of God, allowing it to soothe and encourage, and reminding ourselves of His faithfulness in the past.

 At the top of my Writing with God’s hope blog,  http://www.janetkbrown.com  I give an inspirational quote of the day. Here’s two I love that help depression.

  

“If God never sleeps, why should both of us stay awake?”

                       The Freedom of Letting Go

                        by Donna Clark Goodrich

                

"Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t – you’re right."
                                                      ~ Henry Ford

 Janet K. Brown lives in Wichita Falls, Texas with her husband, Charles. Writing became her second career after retiring from medical coding.

     Worth Her Weight is the author’s first inspirational women’s fiction, but it makes a perfect companion to her previously released, Divine Dining: 365 Devotions to Guide You to Healthier Weight and Abundant Wellness. Both books encompass her passion for diet, fitness, and God’s Word.

Worth Her Weight marks Brown’s third book. Who knew she had a penchant for teens and ghosts? She released her debut novel, an inspirational young adult, Victoria and the Ghost, in July, 2012.

     Janet and her husband love to travel with their RV, work in their church, and visit their three daughters, two sons-in-law and three perfect grandchildren.

     Janet teaches workshops on writing, weight loss, and the historical settings of her teen books.

Find her at http:/ /www.janetkbrown.com

on Twitter at https://twitter.com/janetkbrowntx

on Facebook   http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Janet-K-Brown-Author/143915285641707

E-mail:  Janet.hope@att.net

BACK COVER OF WORTH HER WEIGHT 

How can a woman who gives to everyone but herself accept God’s love and healing when she believes she’s fat, unworthy, and unfixable? Can she be Worth Her Weight?

     LACEY CHANDLER helps her mother, her sister, her friend, and then she binges on food and wonders is there really a God?

     BETTY CHANDLER hates being handicapped and useless, so she lashes out at the daughter that helps, and the God who doesn’t seem to care.

     TOBY WHEELER loves being police chief in Wharton Rock, but when the devil invades the small town, he can’t release control.

Book Trailer:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTotxQGtGn0

 This inspirational women’s fiction is available now at http://www.pen-l.com/WorthHerWeight.html

And on Amazon:

http://tinyurl.com/kkw94b6

Barnes & Nobel

http://tinyurl.com/lk7cn4f

FAITH IN TIMES OF GRIEF

Excerpt from Swallowed by Life: Mysteries of the Eternal

By Ada Brownell

I don’t know if there is any pain that equals the loss of a child. I do know I met mothers who lost children decades before and their eyes still filled with tears when they talked about it. I still cry sometimes myself.

Wave after wave of grief hit me in the hours, days, weeks, months, and years after Carolyn left us. At first, the impact almost knocked me off my feet, like the waves I loved to ride at Santa Cruz beach when we visited Michael and Carolyn. When I’d walk toward shore, often I’d forget to watch

Carolyn on her wedding day holding her first niece, Melissa

the waves and a big one would catch me with my back turned, nearly causing me to lose my footing. Grief had the same impact.

The first day back at work after I arrived home following the funeral, I interviewed some ladies I knew. They asked how the family was and didn’t know Carolyn was gone. I regained my composure while I told them about her death and how the other children were doing. Yet, as I walked to my car, my breath came in short gasps, the pain of loss almost consuming me.

On the other hand, I found that the Lord’s grace overwhelmed me periodically in a similar way. I’d be going about my business when suddenly the Lord would remind me of a scripture, or someone would minister to me, giving renewed strength and peace.

I began reading the book of Hebrews and it strengthened my faith so much I kept reading.

Oh, how sweet the Word is! To this day I’m still awed by Hebrews 2:9, “But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor, that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man.”

Jesus tasted death for my Carolyn! Jesus tasted death for me! Because of Jesus, death is no longer bitter because He took the sting (the bitterness, the unpleasantness) from death (1 Corinthians 15:55). When He walked out of the tomb alive, death’s sting was left behind like the grave clothes cast aside.

I read Hebrews and continued my intense search. I was amazed to see how much of the Bible is devoted to death and eternal life.

Right in the middle of the “faith chapter” in Hebrews 11, the writer stops telling about the miraculous exploits of men and women of faith and says:

These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them from afar off, and were persuaded of them and embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.

For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country [of their own]. And truly, if they had been mindful of what country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city (Hebrews 11:13–16).

Even the book of Acts, written as a history of the church, has eternal life as its theme because the apostles’ message was Jesus Christ risen from the dead. Peter’s first sermon talked about what Jesus did to the process of death as he said, “Jesus of Nazareth…whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death” (Acts 2:22–24).

I followed the paper trail left in the Bible, the writings of godly men and even the songs from generations before us, and saw God did something about death and gives peace to those who face it.

Sure, death means sorrow. Oh, such sorrow! Yes, we miss our loved ones, and at times we feel our heart is cut out.

Carolyn when in high school

Those who’ve never stared death in the face are terrorized by it. I’m sure nearly everyone who knows he is dying feels fear. But one thing I’ve discovered in interviewing many people who have come close to death, especially if they know God, is the paralyzing fear disappears when they get close to crossing over.

I remember Janelle, who received a liver transplant. Before the liver donor was found, she came close to dying more than once.

I met Janelle right after the transplant. The new liver worked marvelously, providing strength and life for her formerly dying body. She’d just been discharged from the hospital. She looked so energized and talked about how much she loved hearing snow squeak under her feet and feeling the wind blow in her face.

But she found time to add how the fear of death vanished in those times of sweet communion with God as she lay on the verge of dying.

If we believe what Jesus said to Martha, “Whosoever lives and believes in me shall never die,” (John 11:26) everything about death changes.

Suddenly, some of the old songs have new meaning. I have new zest for singing: “When we all get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will be. When we all see Jesus, we’ll sing and shout the victory!”[1]

          My faith was returning. I now believed the exit from earth is only the entrance of our souls into our grand abode for eternity. But I wanted to know what happens between death and resurrection. I wanted to know what happens to the body. And I still wanted to look for scientific evidence that we are more than flesh. There were more things to investigate.

Interested in more? Chapter 4 is titled, "What do you See in A Raw Egg?"

Purchase Swallowed by life: Mysteries of Death, Resurrection and the Eternal HERE

Only $2.99.

---

[1]Eliza E. Hewitt, 1851-1920., Mrs. John G. Wilson, 1865-1942, Worship and Service Hymnal, Hope Publishing Co., 5707 W. Lake St., Chicago,, 1966

LIFE AFTER DEATH?

The following is an excerpt from Ada Brownell's book, Swallowed by Life: Mysteries of Death Resurrection and the Eternal

The end of Chapter three will be published tomorrow, July 25, 2015

Purchase the book Here

3. Carolyn

The music was the part that worried me.

When our daughter, Carolyn, suddenly became ill, she kept telling her husband, Michael, about the music.

As a toddler, Carolyn created songs on one of those little toy grand pianos like Schroeder plays in the comic strip Peanuts. She picked out “Jesus Loves Me” when she was three or four years old.

By the time she was five, she was playing her older brother’s piano lessons by ear. When he slid off one end of the bench after practicing the thirty minutes I required, she slid on the other and played all the songs by ear.

Her older brother, Gary, became an excellent musician, too, but he gave up trying to compete with Carolyn on the piano.

She was eager to have piano lessons herself. By the time she was eight or nine she was accompanying Gary when he played his trumpet.

Carolyn played difficult Bach and other great composers’ music when she was in the early elementary school grades. Her only restriction was her tiny hands, which couldn’t reach the span for some of the more advanced music. She not only could read the music, if she heard it, she could copy it.

It was when she was nine years old we learned she had perfect pitch. Not only was she able to identify any note played on a musical instrument or sung, she could tell you the pitch of the vacuum sweeper’s hum or the note that rings from a fine glass.

One time before we knew she had perfect pitch, she embarrassed us considerably when she approached the organist after a church service and informed her she was playing an E-natural where an E-flat should be. It was true!

Sometimes Carolyn would fill bottles with varying amounts of water, then show her smaller brothers and sisters how to play a tune with them.

 In her early teens, she accompanied the Damascus Singers, a gospel singing group of which I was a member. Much our music came from recorded albums instead of a book. Carolyn listened to the keyboard accompanist on gospel recordings and exactly copied what the keyboardist played.

In college, she majored in music. The hours of practicing and the hazards of roller-skating, however, set her back when she had a tendon injury to her hand.

Unless she was away at college and until she got married, our home was filled with her music—classical, jazz, and gospel.

Interestingly, she never realized what a special gift she had until she was in her mid-twenties. She didn’t want to be different or noticed because of her great talent. Often when she played a piano solo in church or another performance, she’d bow her head so her long hair would cover most of her face. She also had a deadpan expression on occasion. Once she was playing a whole orchestra of music on a synthesizer with a choir production and everyone kept craning their necks to see who was playing those instruments. They couldn’t even tell she was playing by the look on her face.

The flute was the instrument she played for band. She also had a wonderful soprano voice that could hit a high C with no effort, right on pitch because of her talent and wonderful ear.

After she married Michael Coney, a classmate at Bethany Bible College in Santa Cruz, California, she began playing the organ and was the organist at her church until her illness.

“She’s the only white person I’ve ever known who could really play soul on the organ,” said the church’s black music minister. He had just led the youth choir in a special production and she was the accompanist.

She thought maybe the workout using her feet (yes, both feet) on the pedals might have something to do with the pain in her side. Before the tests were completed that showed she had Burkitt’s lymphoma, her body began to swell from a huge tumor in her abdomen. She was taken to the hospital and when I arrived in California from where we live in Colorado, her normal weight of one hundred ten pounds had risen to about one hundred forty.

Michael told me she had been hearing beautiful music that no one else could hear.

“It’s not like any music I’ve heard,” Carolyn told Michael.

In the many nights I spent at her bedside in the hospital, sometimes she would ask me where the music was coming from.

I was expecting a miracle. I told myself I was just having hearing problems because I couldn’t hear it.

In the end, there was music I could hear. On Sunday, January 28, 1990, after two months of chemotherapy that was marvelously effective at first but also had horrendous side effects, cancer cells became immune to the drugs. The cancer cells made an immense attack on her body, this time causing leukemia and spreading cancer to the liver and spleen. Pneumonia developed in her lungs.

We were gathering blood samples from our other four children to find a match for a bone marrow transplant. But that afternoon, Carolyn told Michael she felt something was going to happen right away, and she was scared.

The family that was there gathered around her bed to pray. As I began to pray, I started to quote from Psalm 34, “I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul shall make her boast in thee Lord: the humble shall hear thereof and be glad. O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together. I sought the Lord and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears.”

“What’s that you’re saying?” Carolyn asked. “It’s a song. Sing it.”

We began to sing, and she sang with us. She was so ill, but her high harmony blended with ours with amazing strength.

Suddenly she stopped and began encouraging us in a loud voice. She’d never done anything like this in her life. She was always shy about public speaking. She expressed her faith and gave us words of encouragement and hope, stressing the soon return of the Lord Jesus Christ. I almost expected her to get out of bed, completely healed.

Instead, in less than twenty-four hours, she was gone. The next few hours were filled with shock and disbelief.

That night we gathered in Carolyn and Michael’s living room and found what is meant when God’s Word talks about peace.

The first night, the teenagers ministered to us by reading from the Bible. Our youngest daughter, Jeanette, and Carolyn’s stepson, Robert, found appropriate scripture passages for our needs.

The next day as other relatives came in, my oldest brother, Dr. Virgil Nicholson, and his wife, Mildred, who both taught at Evangel University for years, shared a long list of Bible verses with us. We wrote them down and began reading them and other passages God revealed. We read several times a day those first few days.

After I went home, when I could feel my peace slipping away, I’d go read the Bible and pray awhile.

I went to sleep at night repeating the name of Jesus or quoting, “And the peace of God which passeth all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7).

Although I lost my mother when I was twenty-one, and other heart-wrenching deaths snatched loved ones in my husband’s and my families, I knew in the pit of my stomach this would be the time when I discovered whether or not I believed what I thought I did all these years.

THE REMAINDER OF CHAPTER THREE WILL BE PUBLISHED TOMORROW

Purchase Swallowed by Life: Mysteries of the Eternal: HERE

Mysteries of Life: When does life begin?

 By Ada Brownell

In the morning, take a good look at your egg before you fry it. The mystery of life lies before you. If the egg was fertilized, before you broke it there was enough information there to boggle your mind.

God put DNA into the clear and golden slime of a chicken egg that blueprints the breed,  the ability to eat and digest food, the machinery to make more chickens, what color the feathers will be, how big the chicken will grow, the cluck and the crow, and beady little eyes that see—all sorts of wonderful things, just as he put amazing things in the eggs that became you and me.

Life. What a mysterious gift.

We see life everywhere, but we have difficulty grasping what it is. Scientists appear to have found ways to define death; they have more trouble with life.

The abortion rights and pro-life groups are at loggerheads over when life begins—whether it’s when the egg is fertilized with the sperm, when the egg attaches to the uterine wall, at a certain trimester, or at birth.

I interviewed the director of an agency that dispenses morning-after pills who said a woman isn’t pregnant until the fertilized egg attaches to the womb. The morning-after pill causes the woman’s uterus to shed its lining, preventing a fertilized egg from attaching and living.

 Other developments surround life. Human pregnancy was reported from artificial insemination in 1799. In 1952, frogs were cloned from tadpole cells. In 1970, mice embryos were cloned, then other cloned animals soon followed. Sheep embryos were cloned in 1979 and cattle in 1980. An adult sheep, Dolly, was cloned in 1997.

Cloning is the process of making an identical copy of something asexually with DNA fragments, cells, or organisms. In 1993, George Washington University researchers cloned human embryos, but there are no documented cases of a living human produced through cloning.

Test-tube babies, though, are somewhat common today. The first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, was born in 1978 in Britain. A frozen embryo from test-tube fertilization produced a girl named Zoe in Australia in 1984. In 1986, surrogate mother Mary Beth Whitehead, who agreed to have an embryo implanted in her uterus so that another couple could have a child, refused to relinquish the baby girl and sparked a landmark court case.

In vitro fertilization sometimes helps infertile couples have children if they can afford the expensive procedure, and often the births are multiple.

 All this work with living cells, yet humankind has not been able to adequately explain life or create it. We always have to start with something living, such as sperm and eggs, a seed, tissue, or a cell.

According to Pasteur’s law of biogenesis, if  ‘life comes from life,’ then life’s information must come from its parent’s information.

“Biologists have long sought the laws that govern life, but it is only now that we see the molecular detail that these laws have appeared. What we discover is not a naturalistic phenomenon, but intelligent design,” says Alex Williams of Creation Ministries International in his article, “How Life Works.”

            The Bible says, “The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his      nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (Genesis 2:7).

According to the Stanford School of Regenerative Medicine, the human body is estimated to have about one hundred trillion cells, a living community, with each individual cell having an assigned place to occupy and a specific role to play. Eventually something happens, even with all those living cells, that causes a person to die. Without life, every cell in the body dies and decays.

Death came because of sin (Genesis 3), but God promised a Redeemer. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him will not perish, but have everlasting life.”

That’s one big reason why I wrote the book, Swallowed by LIFE. “While we live in these earthly bodies, we groan and sigh, but it’s not that we want to die and get rid of these bodies that clothe us. Rather, we want to put on our new bodies so that these dying bodies will be swallowed up by life” (2 Corinthians 5:3–5 NLT).

Jesus said, “Whoever lives and believes in me will never die” (John 11:26).

Do you believe?

Copyright © 2011 Ada B. Brownell

All rights reserved.

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