Natalie’s maiden name was Smith. My last name is Jones. So, of course, Natalie Smith became Natalie Jones.

I remember when we were doing our wedding registry at Bed Bath & Beyond (ten years ago now!). The clerk at the counter tried to pull up our profile on the computer.

“What’s the Bride’s last name?” she asked.

“Smith.”

“Hmm. There’s a lot of pages of Smith here to scroll through. What’s the Groom’s last name?”

“Jones,” We replied with a smile. Great. Like that would be a lot of help.

Sometimes at our last church (Placerita Baptist), the people would get confused and call me Stephen Smith. They knew a Smith married a Jones, but they just couldn’t remember which was which.

My father-in-law likes to tease me that God created Adam with the last name Smith, and that the Smiths are thus superior. But I’m quite content just being a Jones.

We’ve had a lot of fun and gotten many chuckles over the years about how a Smith married a Jones. But our names don’t hold a candle to some of these. Natalie and I got a real kick out of this article…

What’s in a Name? Unique Names Raise Eyebrows, Spur Conversation

I came across this announcement earlier this week…

**Summer Employment Opportunities for 2010**

LifeWay Christian Resources offers several opportunities for employment during the summer months for college students. Apply now for 2010 summer employment, these summer jobs are in great demand and go quickly.

Internship Program

The internship program provides an opportunity for interns to understand the mission, strategy, specific functional work and positions within LifeWay. The experience includes an understanding of our business/ministry environment, job roles, and our work. Our internships provide a means to bridge the gap between the academic and the corporate world.

This summer we will have the following internships:

• Women’s Events – work with the event coordinators and specialists on planning for late 2010 and 2011 events. The intern will also provide administrative assistance with all 2010 summer enrichment and training events.

• Multimedia Production – exciting work is currently being done in this field. Participate in the production of video/audio projects. Assist the producer to schedule production, equipment, crew, etc. Participate in post production – editing, audio mixing, and DVD/CD programming.

• Editorial – this is a great opportunity to experience all aspects of publishing work. The intern is exposed to magazine publishing, copy editing, layout, video pre-production tasks and other publishing related tasks.

• Graphic Design – assist with basic graphic design tasks, including production work in the Children’s Ministry Publishing area.

• Architectural Drafter – work alongside LifeWay Architects with various types of drawings and presentations for Master Planning, Architectural Design, or Interior Design projects.

• Music Intern – this intern will help with various music publishing tasks.

The 2010 Summer Internship Program is open to college juniors, seniors and graduate students. If you, or someone you know, are interested in an internship this summer click here.

Summer Camp Workers

We have exciting summer camp opportunities located at various sites across the United States and at LifeWay Ridgecrest and LifeWay Glorieta Conference Centers.

• Centrifuge, M-Fuge, X-Fuge, Fuge Combo, Centrikid and Crosspoint. To learn more about and to apply for one of these camps click here.

• We have two beautiful conference centers. One located in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of Northern New Mexico located in Glorieta, New Mexico and the other in the Blue Ridge Mountain near Asheville, North Carolina located in Ridgecrest, North Carolina. Our summer staff and camp opportunities are an awesome way for you to spend your summer working with children and youth. To learn more about either of these camps and their summer staff opportunities click here.

Don’t miss this opportunity! Summer job availability is limited, so get your application in early.

Recruiting & Staffing Team
LifeWay Christian Resources
Human Resources

Click here for more information.

To kick off our Week of Prayer and December Southern Baptist Missions Offering, here’s an encouraging story from the International Mission Board…

“You could be killed for talking about Jesus around here.”

That’s what a Muslim named Bershi* told missionary Luke Jenkins* after Jenkins shared the Gospel with him.

Bershi was an illegal immigrant looking for work when he came to the Central Asian nation where Jenkins serves as a church planter. But his warning didn’t stop Jenkins. He continued to discuss Jesus with Bershi, and as the young man’s interest grew, they began studying the Bible together. Eventually Bershi gave his life to Christ and was baptized.

Since that time Bershi has begun to actively share his faith, and even baptized three others he led to Christ earlier this year. He’s also returned to his own country, a place with severely limited access to the Gospel and very few believers.

Bershi’s baptism is among the more than 506,000 recorded by the IMB (International Mission Board) in 2008 — about one baptism per minute. Southern Baptist missionaries and their partners also reported starting more than 24,650 new churches last year, as well as engaging 93 new people groups with the Gospel for the first time. The total number of overseas churches broke records again, topping 204,000, continuing a steady climb from 111,000 just five years ago.

The numbers are evidence of the powerful way God is using Southern Baptists to complete the Great Commission task.

Praise the Lord! Our church’s goal this December is to raise $1500 for global missions. Together with thousands of other SBC churches, we hope to raise a total of $175 million for International Missions. Will you join us in giving for the spread of the gospel and God’s glory among the nations?

*Names have been changed for security reasons

I recently wrote this article which appeared in today’s edition of our local paper, the Hi Desert Star…

The new movie “2012” is full of courage, sacrifice, and some great special effects, but could it be more than Hollywood entertainment? Could it be an actual preview of what is to come?

According to some experts, the Mayan calendar predicts that the world will end on December 21, 2012. Pretty serious stuff. Could it be true?

Whenever we hear of doomsday theories like this, it’s good to ask, “What does the Bible say?” Now maybe you’re wondering what makes the Bible any more reliable than the Mayan calendar. After all, isn’t the Bible just another book of ancient mythology? Great question. And I have two answers.

First, the Bible is trustworthy because it is God’s own Word. The divine author himself urges us to read and accept it. As it says in Revelation 22:6, “These words are faithful and true.”

Second, the Bible is trustworthy because it has already made hundreds of predictions that have come true. It has never once been wrong. Never.

So again we ask, what does the Bible say about the end of the world? The Bible says that before the world will end, one very important event must occur: the second coming of Jesus Christ. We don’t know if this will happen in 2012 or not. It might happen sooner, or it might happen later. It could literally happen at any time. No one, including the ancient Mayan civilization, knows when Jesus will return. All we know is that his return is certain, and that it will come suddenly, without any warning.

Jesus says, “Be on the alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming…Be ready; for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not think He will” (Matthew 24:42, 44).

Jesus is coming to judge the living and the dead. How can we be ready? By admitting we’re sinners and trusting that Jesus died and rose again to pay for our sin. As long as we truly know Him as Savior and Lord, we have nothing to fear. “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1).

A movie like “2012” is purely fictional, but it does offer a good reminder. Life is short, and all of us need to prepare for what really is certain – the second coming of Jesus Christ.

On day five of creation, God made all the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky. It says in Genesis 1:21 that the “waters swarmed after their kind.” Now, some of those “swarming” sea creatures are being discovered for the very first time. According to the Associated Press,

A report released Sunday recorded 17,650 species living below 656 feet, the point where sunlight ceases. The findings were the latest update on a 10-year census of marine life.

“Parts of the deep sea that we assumed were homogenous are actually quite complex,” said Robert S. Carney, an oceanographer at Louisiana State University and a lead researcher on the deep seas.

Thousands of marine species eke out an existence in the ocean’s pitch-black depths by feeding on the snowlike decaying matter that cascades down — even sunken whale bones. Oil and methane also are an energy source for the bottom-dwellers, the report said.

The researchers have found about 5,600 new species on top of the 230,000 known.

Some of the newly discovered marine life includes tentacled transparent sea cucumbers and primitive organisms that flap with “Dumbo-like” fins. Man’s exploration of the deep sea is revealing some fascinating and funny surprises.

“The deep sea was considered a desert until not so long ago; it’s quite amazing to have documented close to 20,000 forms of life in a zone that was thought to be barren,” said Jesse Ausubel with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

For more information on this deep sea census, visit the Census of Marine Life website.

Praise God for His magnificent and diverse creation! I believe He takes genuine pleasure in projects like this, where humans seek to subdue and understand the earth where He has placed us.

Related posts:

• New NASA photos
• Our young earth