Hunger is satisfied but evil never has its fill.

I'm not sure I want to drink that cup of tea but it's a clever way to fill it.

Yao Ming is a great ball player but he should give up on the mustache. It looks like a smudge.

Al is still confused about the purpose of the carpet in the living room. This can't continue.
I'm impressed with Arizona Adopt A Greyhound. Everybody we've dealt with has been sharp and they are all clearly qualified. They have a system that is thorough but not oppressive.

We got a scheduled follow-up call today to see how things were going and I told her everything was great except for this one issue. She suggested we block off the living room to stop the pattern of behavior. And if we still can't break Al of this problem they have a fail-safe technique. I don't remember what she called it but basically it's a diaper that they wear whenever they're inside the house. You take it off when you take them outside, but if the dog is inside he's wearing this thing that straps on their rear end. If they take a dump it fills this diaper...and they hate that feeling. She said, "They'll do that once and never again."
I'd rather not use that method, and this evening he went while we were out on our walk. With the living room blocked off using our dining room chairs I'm hoping we'll have eliminated this issue in a day or two.

Tomorrow I'll go up the hill and rent a carpet shampooer from Home Depot. We have important company coming tomorrow evening and I don't want Tess Vigeland and her sound engineer wondering about the soiled spots on the carpet.

We had 14 people missing from Pathway this morning because of illness. Either they were sick or they were home taking care of sick children. In a church our size that many missing people is ... shall we say, noticeable. But we are all sad and concerned about a little child who is very sick. The doctors aren't sure what's going on. We're praying for that little girl!

Tomorrow the first third of our 5,000-piece mailing will be delivered to the Post Office. The rest will go out over the next two Mondays. So about 1,650 homes will get a really sharp piece in the mail as early as Tuesday and certainly by Thursday. You know we're praying about that, too!

Pope Benedict XVI named five new saints today. I wonder if most people, including Roman Catholics, understand what that means.
It's not like some kind of Hall of Fame for Catholics. Much more significant than that. And egregious.
According to the R.C. Church a believer who dies goes to Purgatory until they have paid for sins they committed while on this earth. At that point they are released to go to heaven. Saints are individuals who not only don't have sins they need to pay for in Purgatory, they have more than enough good works to go straight to heaven. The R.C. Church says that technically they don't designate someone a saint, they simply recognize what is already the case - that this person is in heaven with more good works than necessary. Their status as excessively righteous is demonstrated by the criteria the Church uses to identify them, incl. verifiable miracles.
This excess of good works done by the person identifed as a saint is called the "supererogation of the saint."
This surplus is available to those in Purgatory through the prayers of believers here on earth. Thus, a family member can tap into the extra good works of the saints through prayers and through special masses, thereby shortening the time their loved one will have to spend in Purgatory. A saint can also intercede on behalf of the one offering prayers because of their advantageous position before God.

Nowhere is there any reference in Scripture to Purgatory or anything like it. The Apostle Paul said that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord (2 Cor. 5:6-8). The Bible calls me a saint not because I have any righteousness of my own, but because I have the righteousenss of Christ given to my by God's grace (2 Cor. 1:1; 5:21). And I have one mediator, the Lord Jesus Christ (1 Tim. 2:5).

So while USAToday covers the Pope's action as though it were just a straightforward news story it illustrates one of the reasons Christians need to know what the Bible teaches.