We walked the three kilometers back to Bethany and were surprised to find we were not eating at Martha and Mary’s. They need a day off for sure! Rather, we had been invited to the home of a certain Simon, one of the many lepers whom Yeshua had touched and healed – I still marvel at such power. As you can imagine, as a man who lost everything with his leprosy, Simon is not a wealthy man. Yet, he loves Yeshua so much that he will not take no for an answer. Yeshua refuses to dishonor him, and so we went to eat with him and his family. The meal was simple, but generous and good. He gets the idea of generosity, like the widow. In fact, it is nearly always people like the healed leper who do. Read More...

As long as I can remember I have read the NZ Herald. When I was young it was delivered each day, and when I left my parent’s home I continued the tradition. It is nice turning the pages of the Herald each day over breakfast. This is about to change, however. Late last year I got a good deal on an iPad, and while on holiday over Christmas and New Year I started reading the Herald iPad App. Since I returned I have kept it up. And there are no advertisements and no racing pages! Just news. I think there is a problem though. It seems to me (at this early stage in my Herald iPad experience) that some news items that appear on the iPad don’t make it to the print edition while some of my favourite columns (e.g. Jim Hopkins on Friday and Paul Holmes on Saturday) don’t make it to the iPad. Neither do the cartoons, although I am not sure that any of the current cartoons are up with those of Sir Gordon Minhinnick (died 1992). I guess it is “market driven,” and they do need to keep selling paper copies. The other problem is that the iPad App doesn’t give the date when a news item appeared in print. Those of us who want to comment on an item can’t give the issue date unless they find it on paper. Read More...