Unmarried couples who live together are staying together longer than in the past ”” and more of them are having children, according to the first federal data out Thursday that details just how cohabitation is transforming families across the USA.

For almost half of women ages 15-44, their “first union” was cohabitation rather than marriage, says the report from the National Center for Health Statistics. For less than one-quarter, the first union was marriage. The report was based on in-person interviews conducted between 2006 and 2010 with 12,279 women ages 15-44.

“Instead of marriage, people are moving into cohabitation as a first union,” says demographer Casey Copen, the report’s lead author. “It’s kind of a ubiquitous phenomenon now.”

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Moist, with one drop of thy blood, my dry soule
Shall (though she now be in extreme degree
Too stony hard, and yet too fleshly) be
Freed by that drop, from being starved, hard, or foul,
And life, by this death abled, shall control
Death, whom thy death slew; nor shall to me
Fear of first or last death, bring misery,
If in thy little book my name thou enroll,
Flesh in that long sleep is not putrified,
But made that there, of which, and for which ’twas;
Nor can by other means be glorified.
May then sins sleep, and deaths soon from me pass,
That waked from both, I again risen may
Salute the last, and everlasting day.

”“John Donne (1572-1631)

Some people have already tried to force themselves to believe in what the Bible reports of the resurrection of Jesus. But it was not so simple. Always doubt interfered; and then one thought that doubt-for example, scientific doubt in the possibility of such a miracle-was the basis of his inability to believe. That goes without saying. Some of the greatest scientists of all times have believed in the resurrection, just as an apostle of early Christianity. Perhaps you also belong to those who would like to believe, who would also like to have this hope of eternal life. But you say you cannot. I wish to tell you precisely why you cannot believe, and I also wish to tell you how you can believe. You cannot believe it because you are not reconciled to God, and you are not reconciled to God because you do not really wish to repent for your godlessness. All unbelief without any exception comes from this unwillingness to obey, from the unwillingness of sin that separates us from God. In the moment when you do that and sincerely acknowledge your sins, then you can also believe in the reconciliation; no, in this moment you are reconciled to God through Jesus Christ and the truth of the Easter message is clear to you. Then you believe in the resurrection, not because it is reported by the apostles but because the resurrected One himself encounters you in a living way as he who unites you with God, as the living Mediator. Now you yourself know it: he lives he, the Reconciler and Redeemer.

And now the stories of Easter become alive to you, worthy of belief, for you now recognize in them him who encounters you yourself. Now you believe not only in Easter; now the Easter certainly is for you a living experience. Now you can say with the apostle: Blessed be the God who has begotten me anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Were Jesus not resurrected, how could he redeem and reconcile you? When he reconciles you to God, you have encountered him, the resurrected One, not bodily, as did the apostle, but not really any less so, through his Word and his Spirit. Now you already stand at the beginning of the new, eternal life. Now you know what the Lord means when he says: “He who believes in me has eternal life.” Upon that, everything therefore depends: being reconciled to God, forgiveness of sins, removal of the separation between you and God, joyful access to God, and peace with God through Jesus Christ who gives you on the cross the Father’s love and with it eternal life.

–Emil Brunner (1889-1966)

[KIM] LAWTON: At Maundy Thursday services, music helps set the mood as Christians begin their annual time of mourning the arrest, prosecution and crucifixion of Jesus.

Thomas Tyler is in charge of worship and music at Shiloh Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. He says it’s spiritually important to sing the songs of grief before celebrating Christ’s resurrection.

Mr. TYLER: We want to skip over the sorrow. We want to skip over the abandonment and go get our praise on. But, if you don’t remember what he went through, then I feel your appreciation for the significance of that resurrection is marginalized.

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O God, who for our sakes didst give up thy well-beloved Son to endure the shameful death of the cross, that we might be delivered from the power of the devil and be cleansed from all unrighteousness: Grant unto thy servants, we beseech thee, that through his passion the body of sin may be destroyed in us, and through the power of his resurrection we may henceforth walk in newness of life; for the merits of the same Jesus Christ our Lord.

The hand of the LORD was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the LORD, and set me down in the midst of the valley; it was full of bones. And he led me round among them; and behold, there were very many upon the valley; and lo, they were very dry. And he said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord GOD, thou knowest.” Again he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD. Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the LORD.” So I prophesied as I was commanded; and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold, a rattling; and the bones came together, bone to its bone. And as I looked, there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, Thus says the Lord GOD: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood upon their feet, an exceedingly great host. Then he said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are clean cut off.’ Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I will open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you home into the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land; then you shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken, and I have done it, says the LORD.”

–Ezekiel 37:1-14

And they were telling me, now it doesn’t matter now. It really doesn’t matter what happens now. I left Atlanta this morning, and as we got started on the plane, there were six of us, the pilot said over the public address system, “We are sorry for the delay, but we have Dr. Martin Luther King on the plane. And to be sure that all of the bags were checked, and to be sure that nothing would be wrong with the plane, we had to check out everything carefully. And we’ve had the plane protected and guarded all night.”

And then I got to Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?

Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

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Listen to it all (about 29 1/4 minutes).

The vast majority of U.S. businesses expanded at a slower pace, and private-sector firms hired less, adding to earlier warnings the economy is losing momentum.

The Institute for Supply Management said Wednesday its nonmanufacturing index fell to a seven-month low of 54.4 in March from 56 in February, indicating activity cooled off. Analysts expected it to remain steady. The report saw sharp decelerations in jobs, orders and exports.

ISM’s factory gauge out Monday also showed slowing growth .

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The proprietor of this page, Paul Solman, posed a few specific questions to me. The first: How does the quality of online discourse compare to in-class discussion at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Duke, where I’ve taught?

My answer is that so far (and as I note, the class has just begun, so it may be too soon to say), the only way to answer this question is to start by differentiating between the average discussion quality and the discussion quality of the outliers, because you get a very different picture when you examine them separately.

In terms of average quality, we have to consider the environment of a typical four-year university student, which leads to a very different approach to academics. These students often live on campus, show up to class and have their meals on campus…[as] a result, they have more resources, time, and attention to devote to their studies, as well as friend groups who share the same collective experience. Taking this unique kind of atmosphere into account, the average quality is higher in regular classes.

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Thanks largely to the U.S. Federal Reserve, Jeffrey Nelson was able to put up a shotgun as down payment on a car.

Money was tight last year for the school-bus driver and neighborhood constable in Jasper, Alabama, a beaten-down town of 14,000 people. One car had already been repossessed. Medical bills were piling up.

And still, though Nelson’s credit history was an unhappy one, local car dealer Maloy Chrysler Dodge Jeep had no problem arranging a $10,294 loan from Wall Street-backed subprime lender Exeter Finance Corp so Nelson and his wife could buy a charcoal gray 2007 Suzuki Grand Vitara.

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Today we follow Jesus on a journey. We walk with him what has been called the Via Dolorosa, the way of grief. In doing so, we join with pilgrims from all over the world who go to Jerusalem, to take that ancient walk through the Old City following in his steps.

It’s still called the Via Dolorosa, the way of grief. But paradoxically Jesus always claimed that the Cross would not only be his moment of grief. It would also be his moment of glory. To the eyes of faith it would be that moment when people would see once and for all that God does not stand aloof from human pain. God accepts the pain ”“ even the pain of our sin — and turns the moment of grief into a moment of glory.

My grandparents had a painting of Christ on their bedroom wall that always fascinated me. It depicted the gray, dead body of Jesus hanging on the cross. But when you looked closely, you could see ”“ emerging from behind that gray corpse ”“ a glorious Christ, radiant and triumphant. The artist understood that the Cross was both Jesus’ moment of defeat, and also his moment of triumph.

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When Leonard Williams attends the Easter service today at Shepherd’s Heart Fellowship, an Anglican church for the homeless in Uptown, like Christians everywhere he will be celebrating the resurrection of Christ from the tomb.

But Mr. Williams, 53, and others who attend Shepherd’s Heart also will be celebrating the new life that has been breathed into their church after a recent significant agreement between Pittsburgh’s Episcopal and Anglican dioceses. A long-running conflict in the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh resulted in a 2008 split, with many of the churches leaving and creating the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh, linked to the theologically conservative Anglican Church in North America.

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Less than a month after sponsoring an event for Virginia Episcopal clergy featuring a speaker who denies both the afterlife and unique divinity of Christ, Bishop Shannon Johnston of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia has presided over a service featuring a similarly controversial figure.

In a Good Friday service at historic St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, retired Bishop John Shelby Spong decried the Nicene Creed as “a radical distortion of the Gospel of John,” asserted that several of the apostles were “mythological” and declared that Jesus Christ did not die to redeem humanity from its sins.

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Of all of the creepy and crawly things that you can think of, tarantulas probably are near the top of the list when it comes to scariness. Well, get ready to add another terrifying arachnid to your list, because a new type of tarantula has been discovered in northern Sri Lanka.

Ranil Nanayakkara, a local researcher, and his team found the tiger spider and named it Poecilotheria rajaei, after a local police investigator, Michael Rajakumar Purajah. Purajah helped the team of scientists navigate the remote area where the spider was found.

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Watch it all–good things do indeed sometimes come from small towns; KSH.

On Wednesday, the Metropolitan Planning Commission will consider the general development plan for Christ Church Anglican’s proposed new sanctuary and parish house with meeting and education facilities at the northeast corner of Drayton and 37th streets.

It’s a proposal that raises many interesting questions about the role of large-scale institutional development in a mixed-use area where narrower lots are common.

Of course, the Thomas Square neighborhood is already home to a significant number of large churches and institutions, as Christ Church Anglican’s proposal details. Similarly sized structures nearby include the Bull Street Library, New Covenant Church, the Christian Revival Center, Sisters Court Apartments and SCAD’s Wallin and Arnold halls.

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Listen to it all from the parish in which I serve, Christ Saint Paul’s Yonges Island, South Carolina, this past Sunday.

The Obama administration is engaged in a broad push to make more home loans available to people with weaker credit, an effort that officials say will help power the economic recovery but that skeptics say could open the door to the risky lending that caused the housing crash in the first place.

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Since the fall of humankind, there had been a distance between man and God that could not be removed. The sacrificial death of Jesus has removed that barrier (of sin) so that we can again relate to God with a closeness that existed at the beginning. The resurrection to life of Jesus Christ means that we now have the opportunity for eternal life. The meaning behind all this is God’s love for each one of us, and for the whole of creation. What had been spoiled at the fall can now be made new, as it was in the beginning, when everything was good.

We may look at our world and be in danger of losing hope. However, through the events of Good Friday and Easter day we have the promise that all will be well. We are a resurrection people, and know that there is always hope. We believe in the resurrection; but we also know the reality of Good Friday. There could not be the new life, light and hope of the Resurrection without there first being the death, darkness and despair of Good Friday.

As a people of the Resurrection, we are called to live in the light of the resurrection. We are called to bring hope and light into the darkness. This may sound so daunting that it could be impossible to know where to begin. This need not be so. We do not need to feel that we have to take such action that the world will be changed in an instant. However, we do need the faith to take the first step, in the sincere belief that God, will be with us every step of the way. If we act according to the will of God, we can be assured that God will bless our efforts, and much fruit can be borne.

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O God, the living God, who hast given unto us a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead: Grant that we, being risen with him, may seek the things which are above, and be made partakers of the life eternal; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.

Now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour. And a man lame from birth was being carried, whom they laid daily at that gate of the temple which is called Beautiful to ask alms of those who entered the temple. Seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple, he asked for alms. And Peter directed his gaze at him, with John, and said, “Look at us.” And he fixed his attention upon them, expecting to receive something from them. But Peter said, “I have no silver and gold, but I give you what I have; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.” And he took him by the right hand and raised him up; and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong. And leaping up he stood and walked and entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God. And all the people saw him walking and praising God, and recognized him as the one who sat for alms at the Beautiful Gate of the temple; and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.

–Acts 3:1-10

Check it out–lol.

[Elementary School Teacher] Ms. Parks admitted to {Georgia state investigator] Mr. Hyde that she was one of seven teachers ”” nicknamed “the chosen” ”” who sat in a locked windowless room every afternoon during the week of state testing, raising students’ scores by erasing wrong answers and making them right. She then agreed to wear a hidden electronic wire to school, and for weeks she secretly recorded the conversations of her fellow teachers for Mr. Hyde.

In the two and a half years since, the state’s investigation reached from Ms. Parks’s third-grade classroom all the way to the district superintendent at the time, Beverly L. Hall, who was one of 35 Atlanta educators indicted Friday by a Fulton County grand jury.

Dr. Hall, who retired in 2011, was charged with racketeering, theft, influencing witnesses, conspiracy and making false statements. Prosecutors recommended a $7.5 million bond for her; she could face up to 45 years in prison….

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North Korea said on Tuesday it would restart its only nuclear reactor to provide plutonium for its weapons program, an announcement that added to already-heightened tensions on the Korean peninsula and drew swift international criticism.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he was “deeply troubled” by the rising tensions. “Nuclear threats are not a game,” he said at a news conference in Andorra. “The current crisis has already gone too far.”

Later Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called the North’s recent belligerent rhetoric “unacceptable” and said the U.S. will defend itself as well as South Korea and Japan from any threat from the North, the Associated Press reported.

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A new fight is brewing over health insurance companies letting millions of Americans renew their current coverage for another year ”” and thereby avoid changes under the federal healthcare law.

That may offer a short-term benefit for certain consumers and shield some of those individual policyholders from potentially steep rate increases. But critics say this maneuver could undermine government efforts to remake the insurance market next year and keep premiums affordable overall.

At issue is a little-known loophole in President Obama’s landmark legislation that enables health insurers to extend existing policies for nearly all of 2014. This runs contrary to the widespread belief that all health insurance must immediately comply with new federal rules starting Jan. 1, when most provisions of the law take effect.

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I believe the story. With my head, looking at the evidence and thinking logically as a person who was a research physicist for twenty-five years, I believe it. And after listening to the testimony of people ”“ from beggars to kings — through all the ages who had concluded that the story is true, I believe it. And at the innermost levels of my heart, where the deepest truths reside but are not easily put into words, I believe it is true.

And that is why I know that I will see my mother again someday. It’s not just wishful thinking, some little tale I’ve fooled myself with because I can’t face the cold hard facts of life. Yes, I will see Della Mae, and I am convinced that it will be a day of great victory and joy. St. Paul says that it will be like putting on a crown, and St. John says that it will be a time when every tear will be wiped away from my eyes. That’s what will happen someday to me. But what Jesus did affects me right here today also — I know that this Jesus who overcame death and the grave has promised not to leave me here twisting in the wind. He is with me every day, through his Spirit, to guide me, comfort me, embolden me, and use me for his glory and to serve his people, right here, right now.

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“The compelling evidence for me is the unanimous testimony of all the apostles and even a former persecutor like St. Paul,” said Brant Pitre, assistant professor of theology at Our Lady of Holy Cross College in New Orleans. “There was no debate in the first century over whether Jesus was resurrected or not.”

Scholars say that the witnesses to Christ’s resurrection are compelling for a variety of reasons.
“People will seldom die even for what they know to be true. Twelve men don’t give up their lives for a lie,” said Ray, who recently returned from France, where he was filming his “Footprints of God” series at the amphitheater in Lyon, the site of a persecution in A.D. 177. “The martyrs of Lyon underwent two days of torture and all they would say is, ”˜I am a Christian.’ They knew the resurrection was true and didn’t question it.”

Barber also highlighted the diversity of sources and how they include different details as well as passages that do not paint the disciples in the best light.

“In the Road to Emmaus story, they write that they didn’t recognize him,” said Barber. “Our Biblical accounts are our best evidence.”

Several of the scholars pointed to 1 Corinthians, where Paul states that Christ appeared to 500 people.

“Some want to shy away from the Gospels because they say they were written later,” explained Barber. “If you want to believe that they were written later, then why wouldn’t the Gospels have made use of this piece of evidence from 1 Corinthians?” asked Barber.

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Look at all of them (a slideshow option is available).

….there is something missing from [Frank] Bruni’s analysis, and this is something that he has helped to cause as well. The “seismic shift” on the issue of homosexuality is a profound moral revolution as well.

And yet, what makes this moral revolution so vast in consequences and importance is this: the moral dimension has virtually disappeared from the cultural conversation. This is true, we must note, even among the defenders of heterosexual marriage.

This is not to say that those who now defend the natural and venerable definition of marriage deny the existence of a moral argument, nor to imply that they are anything less than fully in agreement with the historic and scriptural assessment of the Christian church that homosexual acts and relationships are sinful. We must, however, note that the current intellectual environment has forced them to leave the moral issue behind ”” far behind.

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