Download or read book Laughter At The Foot Of The Cross written by M.a. Screech and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-04-09 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Christian laughter is a maze: you could easily get snarled up within it." So says Michael A. Screech in his note to readers preceding this collection of fifty-three elegant and pithy essays. As Screech reveals, the question of whether laughter is acceptable to the god of the Old and New Testaments is a dangerous one. But we are fortunate in our gu

Download or read book Laughter at the Foot of the Cross written by Michael A. Screech and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-04-15 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: M. A. Screech, best known for his translations of Montaigne and Rabelais, has collected a series of brilliant essays on the question of when laughter was acceptable to the Western Church. During a time of reform and concerns about heresy, laugher becomes a subtle measure of when and how one can risk rule-breaking. While it could be cruel to mock those who fell into error, it wasas Screech points out so much better than burning them. Professor Screech explores what inspired laughter in the Renaissance, and whether it could be innocent."

Download or read book Mrs Oswald Chambers written by Michelle Ule and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2017-10-17 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Among Christian devotional works, My Utmost for His Highest stands head and shoulders above the rest, with more than 13 million copies sold. But most readers have no idea that Oswald Chambers's most famous work was not published until ten years after his death. The remarkable person behind its compilation and publication was his wife, Biddy. And her story of living her utmost for God's highest is one without parallel. Bestselling novelist Michelle Ule brings Biddy's story to life as she traces her upbringing in Victorian England to her experiences in a WWI YMCA camp in Egypt. Readers will marvel at this young woman's strength as she returns to post-war Britain a destitute widow with a toddler in tow. Refusing personal payment, Biddy proceeds to publish not just My Utmost for His Highest, but also 29 other books with her husband's name on the covers. All the while she raises a child alone, provides hospitality to a never-ending stream of visitors and missionaries, and nearly loses everything in the London Blitz during WWII. The inspiring story of a devoted woman ahead of her times will quickly become a favorite of those who love true stories of overcoming incredible odds, making a life out of nothing, and serving God's kingdom.

Download or read book The Laughter of God written by Walter C. Lanyon and published by . This book was released on 2016-02-12 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "And then one day I heard the Laughter of God in the midst of me and within the world, and all was suddenly changed. Old patterns and ideas were shattered and passed away-a new loveliness of life was exposed to view ... "How does one hear the Laughter of God? Walter Lanyon has a powerful message to share with the world, a message based firmly on the teachings of the Master, Christ Jesus, and the joy and promise it brings is evident throughout the book. In his unique style of speaking directly to the reader, the author reveals what is needed in order to hear this Laughter: "One thing alone is necessary, and that one all-important point is your willingness to take your attention away from the limited human concept of yourself." The realization that God is not some mysterious power but is the very presence of Life within us and our universe brings instant freedom from the discords of human belief."One moment's recognition that you are the Son of the living God, and you have attuned your ear for the Laughter of God." When we awaken to this truth, we can no longer be limited, any more than the chick can be limited to its shell once it has outgrown it. There comes a New Day; the prisons of thought are opened, and we are set free."And one day you will laugh the Laughter of God, too."

Download or read book The Art and Craft of Biblical Preaching written by Zondervan, and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2009-05-26 with total page 737 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Comprehensive Resource for Today’s Christian Communicators. This extensive encyclopedia is the most complete and practical work ever published on the art and craft of biblical preaching. Its 11 major sections contain nearly 200 articles, comprehensively covering topics on preaching and methodology, including: Sermon structure and “the big idea.” The art of introductions, transitions, and conclusions. Methods for sermon prep, from outlining to exercising. Approaches to different types of preaching: topical, expository, evangelistic, and more. Best practices for sermon delivery, speaking with authority, and using humor. Leveraging effective illustrations and stories. Understanding audience. and much more. Entries are characterized by intensely practical and vivid writing designed to help preachers deepen their understanding and sharpen their communication skills. The contributors include a virtual Who’s Who of preaching from a cross section of denominations and traditions, such as Dallas Willard, John Ortberg, Rick Warren, Warren Wiersbe, Alice Mathews, John Piper, Andy Stanley, and many others. Haddon Robinson and Craig Brian Larson—two of today’s most respected voices in preaching—provide editorial oversight. Includes audio CD with preaching technique examples from the book.

Download or read book It s a Funny Thing Humour written by Antony J. Chapman and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2013-10-22 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's a Funny Thing, Humour contains the papers presented at the International Conference on Humor and Laughter, held in Cardiff in July 1976. The symposium provides a platform from which authors from different professional and personal background can talk about their own definition and analysis of humor. The book is structured into 10 main sections that reflect the structure of the conference and presents various studies and research on the nature of humor and laughter. Contributions range from theoretical discussions to practical and experimental expositions. Topics on the psychoanalytical theory of humor and laughter; the nature and analysis of jokes; cross-cultural research of humor; mirth measurement; and humor as a tool of learning are some of the topics covered in the symposium. Psychologists, sociologists, teachers, communication experts, psychiatrists, and people who are curious to know more about humor and laughter will find the book very interesting and highly amusing.

Download or read book The Beauty of the Cross written by Richard Viladesau and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2005-12-01 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the earliest period of its existence, Christianity has been recognized as the "religion of the cross." Some of the great monuments of Western art are representations of the brutal torture and execution of Christ. Despite the horror of crucifixion, we often find such images beautiful. The beauty of the cross expresses the central paradox of Christian faith: the cross of Christ's execution is the symbol of God's victory over death and sin. The cross as an aesthetic object and as a means of devotion corresponds to the mystery of God's wisdom and power manifest in suffering and apparent failure. In this volume, Richard Viladesau seeks to understand the beauty of the cross as it developed in both theology and art from their beginnings until the eve of the renaissance. He argues that art and symbolism functioned as an alternative strand of theological expression -- sometimes parallel to, sometimes interwoven with, and sometimes in tension with formal theological reflection on the meaning of the Crucifixion and its role insalvation history. Using specific works of art to epitomize particular artistic and theological paradigms, Viladesau then explores the contours of each paradigm through the works of representative theologians as well as liturgical, poetic, artistic, and musical sources. The beauty of the cross is examined from Patristic theology and the earliest representations of the Logos on the cross, to the monastic theology of victory and the Romanesque crucified "majesty," to the Anselmian "revolution" that centered theological and artistic attention on the suffering humanity of Jesus, and finally to the breakdown of the high scholastic theology of the redemption in empirically concentrated nominalism and the beginnings of naturalism in art. By examining the relationship between aesthetic and conceptual theology, Viladesau deepens our understanding of the foremost symbol of Christianity. This volume makes an important contribution to an emerging field, breaking new ground in theological aesthetics. The Beauty of the Cross is a valuable resource for scholars, students, and anyone interested in the passion of Christ and its representation.

Download or read book I Love Jesus But I Want to Die written by Sarah J. Robinson and published by WaterBrook. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compassionate, shame-free guide for your darkest days “A one-of-a-kind book . . . to read for yourself or give to a struggling friend or loved one without the fear that depression and suicidal thoughts will be minimized, medicalized or over-spiritualized.”—Kay Warren, cofounder of Saddleback Church What happens when loving Jesus doesn’t cure you of depression, anxiety, or suicidal thoughts? You might be crushed by shame over your mental illness, only to be told by well-meaning Christians to “choose joy” and “pray more.” So you beg God to take away the pain, but nothing eases the ache inside. As darkness lingers and color drains from your world, you’re left wondering if God has abandoned you. You just want a way out. But there’s hope. In I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die, Sarah J. Robinson offers a healthy, practical, and shame-free guide for Christians struggling with mental illness. With unflinching honesty, Sarah shares her story of battling depression and fighting to stay alive despite toxic theology that made her afraid to seek help outside the church. Pairing her own story with scriptural insights, mental health research, and simple practices, Sarah helps you reconnect with the God who is present in our deepest anguish and discover that you are worth everything it takes to get better. Beautifully written and full of hard-won wisdom, I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die offers a path toward a rich, hope-filled life in Christ, even when healing doesn’t look like what you expect.

Download or read book You Can Cross the Massacre on Foot written by Freddy Prestol Castillo and published by Duke University Press Books. This book was released on 2019-05-24 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1937 tens of thousands of Haitians living in the Dominican Republic were slaughtered by Dominican troops wielding machetes and knives. Dominican writer and lawyer Freddy Prestol Castillo worked on the Haiti-Dominican Republic border during the massacre, known as “The Cutting,” and documented the atrocities in real time in You Can Cross the Massacre on Foot. Written in 1937, published in Spanish in 1973, and appearing here in English for the first time, Prestol Castillo's novel is one of the few works that details the massacre's scale and scope. Conveying the horror of witnessing such inhumane violence firsthand, it is both an attempt to come to terms with personal and collective guilt and a search to understand how people can be driven to indiscriminately kill their neighbors.

Download or read book Pour Rire written by and published by Peter Lang Group Ag, International Academic Publishers. This book was released on 2002 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Primarily meant to host studies about the drama of the English - and European - Renaissance, as well as the culture in which it is rooted, the THETA series aims to be a forum of exchange and debate. As in the previous issues the topic of the present volume, which derives from the Eighth Round Table on Tudor Drama held at Tours in June 2000, the problematics of puzzling laughter, is addressed in various dramatic works of the Tudor period. Explicit or merely assumed, such occurrences of an intrinsically diverse and ambivalent phenomenon are hardly amenable to the stereotypes of comedy. In their different ways the nineteen essays in the volume focus on interpretations which relate laughter to the dramatic and aesthetic economy of the works considered, probe its links with medical theory, with genre or intellectual views influential at the time or again, beyond the pregnancy of zeitgeist and functional uses, suggest the relevance of recent assumptions by cognitive science. Consacrée à la publication d'études sur le théâtre de la renaissance européenne - et d'abord anglaise - ainsi que sur la culture qui le nourrit, la collection THETA se veut lieu de rencontre et de débat, accueillant sans exclusive toutes les approches. Ce sixième recueil issu de la 8e Table Ronde du Théâtre Tudor tenue à Tours en juin 2000, est consacré aux formes énigmatiques du rire dans diverses pièces de théâtre empruntées, comme pour les précédents volumes, à l'ensemble de la période Tudor. Manifestes ou présumées mais irréductibles aux stéréotypes du comique, ces occurrences d'un phénomène intrinsèquement lourd de sens multiples bénéficient dans les dix-neuf essais d'explications croisées. Celles-ci tentent d'évaluer les liens fonctionnels avec l'économie de l'oeuvre, de sonder la relation aux théories médicales ou intellectuelles du temps, ou à telle autre circonstance culturelle, et encore recourent, par delà les prégnances du zeitgeist et du fonctionnalisme, aux récentes hypothèses des sciences de la cognition.

Download or read book Laughter written by Robert R. Provine and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2001-12-01 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do men and women laugh at the same things? Is laughter contagious? Has anyone ever really died laughing? Is laughing good for your health? Drawing upon ten years of research into this most common-yet complex and often puzzling-human phenomenon, Dr. Robert Provine, the world's leading scientific expert on laughter, investigates such aspects of his subject as its evolution, its role in social relationships, its contagiousness, its neural mechanisms, and its health benefits. This is an erudite, wide-ranging, witty, and long-overdue exploration of a frequently surprising subject.

Download or read book The Fiery Cross written by Diana Gabaldon and published by Anchor Canada. This book was released on 2010-12-17 with total page 1696 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Crossing the boundaries of genre with its unrivalled storytelling, Diana Gabaldon’ s new novel is a gift both to her millions of loyal fans and to the lucky readers who have yet to discover her. In the ten years since her extraordinary debut novel, Outlander, was published, beloved author Diana Gabaldon has entertained scores of readers with her heart-stirring stories and remarkable characters. The four volumes of her bestselling saga, featuring eighteenth-century Scotsman James Fraser and his twentieth-century, time-travelling wife, Claire Randall, boasts nearly 5 million copies in the U.S. The story of Outlander begins just after the Second World War, when a British field nurse named Claire Randall walks through a cleft stone in the Scottish highlands and is transported back some two hundred years to 1743. Here, now, is The Fiery Cross, the eagerly awaited fifth volume in this remarkable, award-winning series of historical novels. The year is 1771, and war is approaching. Jamie Fraser’ s wife has told him so. Little as he wishes to, he must believe it, for hers is a gift of dreadful prophecy – a time-traveller’s certain knowledge. To break his oath to the Crown will brand him a traitor; to keep it is certain doom. Jamie Fraser stands in the shadow of the fiery cross – a standard that leads nowhere but to the bloody brink of war.

Download or read book Choice written by and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 614 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Future of Illusion written by Victoria Kahn and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-01-13 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, the rise of fundamentalism and a related turn to religion in the humanities have led to a powerful resurgence of interest in the problem of political theology. In a critique of this contemporary fascination with the theological underpinnings of modern politics, Victoria Kahn proposes a return to secularism—whose origins she locates in the art, literature, and political theory of the early modern period—and argues in defense of literature and art as a force for secular liberal culture. Kahn draws on theorists such as Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss, Walter Benjamin, and Hannah Arendt and their readings of Shakespeare, Hobbes, Machiavelli, and Spinoza to illustrate that the dialogue between these modern and early modern figures can help us rethink the contemporary problem of political theology. Twentieth-century critics, she shows, saw the early modern period as a break from the older form of political theology that entailed the theological legitimization of the state. Rather, the period signaled a new emphasis on a secular notion of human agency and a new preoccupation with the ways art and fiction intersected the terrain of religion.

Download or read book Dangerous Laughter written by Steven Millhauser and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2008-02-12 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Martin Dressler—hailed by The New Yorker as “a virtuoso of waking dreams”—comes a dazzling collection of darkly comic stories united by their obsession with obsession. "Remarkable ... Not just brilliant but prescient." —The New York Times Book Review In Dangerous Laughter, Steven Millhauser transports us to unknown universes that uncannily resemble our own. The collection is divided into three parts that fit seamlessly together as a whole. It opens with a bang, as “Cat ’n’ Mouse” reimagines the deadly ritual between cartoon rivals in a comedy of dynamite and anvils—a masterly prologue that sets the stage for the alluring, very grown-up twists that follow. Part one, “Vanishing Acts,” features stories of risk and escape: a lonely woman disappears without a trace; a high school boy becomes entangled with his best friend’s troubled sister; and a group of teenagers play a treacherous game that pushes them deep into “the kingdom of forbidden things.” Excess reigns in the vivid, haunting places of Part two’s “Impossible Architectures,” where domes enclose whole cities, and a king’s master miniaturist creates objects so tiny that soon his entire world is invisible. Finally, “Heretical Histories” presents startling alternatives to the remembered past. “A Precursor of the Cinema” proposes a new, enigmatic form of illusion. And in the astonishing “The Wizard of West Orange” a famous inventor sets out to simulate the sense of touch—but success brings disturbing consequences. Sensual, mysterious, Dangerous Laughter is a mesmerizing journey through brilliantly realized labyrinths of mortal pleasures that stretch the boundaries of the ordinary world to their limits—and occasionally beyond.

Download or read book The Clermont Story written by David Holt and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book To Care for Creation written by Stephen Ellingson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-08-26 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In merely two decades, a small number of resource-poor religious organizations have created a new ethic, and a new set of green religious traditions, with an infrastructure in place to educate and mobilize individuals and organizations. To Care for Creation explains how religious environmentalism has emerged despite various institutional and cultural barriers, and why the new movement organizations follow a logic and set of practices that set them apart from the secular movement. In addition to the new ethic and green religious traditions, Ellingson shows how the movement launches programs to make religious building environmentally, friendly, fight toxic waste and mountain-top removal, protect watersheds, and promote sustainable agriculture. His book research involved him in six dozen interviews with key players in the 70 or so extant religious environmental movement organizations, which are set against secular environmental organizations; the difference is between a message of hope for the religious movement vs. one of doom and gloom for the secular movement. The religious movement is sorely understudied, and it addresses a crucial issue of the dayclimate change."