Lost Pages

Dear Friends, It has been a very interesting first calendar year on Lost Pages! Every blogger needs a break! So, I will be taking 1 month off to recharge the batteries. Wishing you all a wonderful Christmas and fantastic 2013!! See you on 7 January 2013, the Lord willing! Chola Mukanga

I have been blessed enough to read over 40 books this year, covering many areas from memoirs to economics. Most of them released in 2011 and 2012. It has been most difficult to pick my top reads, but choose I must – so here we go. 5 . Forbidden by Ted Dekker and Tosca Lee (Fiction) - a gripping thriller set in a desolate future where the only emotion is fear. It is the first of three books in the 'Book of Mortals' series. What really captured me as I read this book is the profound questions the book raised about the nature of man and his place in the universe. The book forces you to engage your imagination and live within a world so different from our own. The writing styles of Dekker and Lee are beautifully blended to keep the reader immersed on every page and yet eager to know what happens! 4. Meaning at the Movies by Grant Horner (General) - how should Christians approach cinema? This is an excellent take on cinema as a world view. It is both a theological and pract...

1. What is the other end of this rope tied to? 2. Where is this rope supposed to be taking me? 3. Is it tied to the right things, the right values?

That's why the announcement went first to the shepherds. They didn't ask God if he was sure he knew what he was doing. Had the angel gone to the theologians, they would have first consulted their commentaries. Had he gone to the elite, they would have looked around to see if anyone was watching. Had he gone to the successful, they would have first looked at their calendars. So he went to the shepherds. Men who didn't have a reputation to protect or an axe to grind or a ladder to climb. Men who didn't know enough to tell God that angels don't sing to sheep and that messiahs aren't found wrapped in rags and sleeping in a feed trough. - Max Lucado ( Source : The Applause of Heaven )

Aside from a few countries in the world, most nations are now ruled by presidents - those who are usually elected and whose reign is subject to popular mandate in one way or another. Even where kings or queens exist these are usually ceremonial. The notion of a powerful King who rules over his people as absolute Sovereign is an alien concept and one that is not easy to relate to in this century. This is a stark contrast to biblical times where the head of the nation was always an absolute monarchy. So pervasive was this form of government that when Israel left Egypt and entered the promised land, they could not resist asking God to give them their own king because they envied “all the other nations” that had human kings (1 Sam. 8: 5). One of the image of God given in the Bible as that of King whose sovereign rule and control extends to all things. God reigns supreme over all creation and history and we as human being are in every sense his subjects.During tim...