Ukraine is not only the breadbasket of Europe; it is also a mineral superpower, with some of the largest reserves of 117 of the 120 most widely used minerals in the world.

Of the 50 strategic minerals identified by the United States as critical to its economy and national security, many of which are quite rare yet key to certain high-value applications, Ukraine supplies 22.

Ukraine possesses the largest reserves of uranium in Europe; the second-largest reserves of iron ore, titanium and manganese; and the third-largest reserves of shale gas — as well as large deposits of lithium, graphite and rare earth metals, according to a 2022 report by the Canadian geopolitical risk-analysis firm SecDev. These minerals are essential to the production of vital goods ranging from airplanes, cellphones and electric vehicles to steel and nuclear power.

The question for the president-elect is: Does he want Russia and China to get that treasure trove of natural resources? Or does he want to develop them with Ukraine to the benefit of the American people? One of the main reasons Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine (aside from his delusional historical fantasies about how Ukrainians and Russians are “one people”) was to seize these natural resources, which are valued at an estimated $26 trillion, according to SecDev.

Read it all.

Does Trump want Putin to get Ukraine’s $26 trillion in gas and minerals? Kyiv controls vast gas and mineral deposits. Does Trump want those flowing west, or to Russia and China?

Gift link: https://t.co/3feef88yEZ pic.twitter.com/QVIbrZFNyc

— Marc Thiessen 🇺🇸❤️🇺🇦🇹🇼🇮🇱 (@marcthiessen) December 19, 2024

Werra Maulu Botey could not bear to close his daughter’s coffin. Waiting to bury her, he slid the rough wooden lid back, again and again, to adjust her small head and smooth the cloth that cradled it away from her cheeks.

Olive died of measles, at the age of 5, the evening before. She was the first child to die that weekend in an emergency measles treatment center in the town of Bikoro, in the northwest Democratic Republic of Congo. The second was her cousin, a 1-year-old girl.

Measles is sweeping through the children of Bikoro, as it does every couple of years, creeping, then flaring, across this vast country.

It is on the rise in other parts of the world, too — including in some communities in the United States — though the measles vaccine has been in use since 1963 and is believed to have saved more lives than any other childhood immunization.

"Werra Maulu Botey could not bear to close his daughter’s coffin. Waiting to bury her, he slid the rough wooden lid back, again and again, to adjust her small head and smooth the cloth that cradled it away from her cheeks."

Powerful report by @snolen on threat of measles in #DRC pic.twitter.com/QHGY5wbR8F

— Joe English (@JoeEEnglish) December 18, 2024

Read it all.

As Mark Moran was facing another 90-hour week as an investment-banking intern at Credit Suisse in New York, he knew he needed help to survive the rest of the summer. His colleagues gave him a tip: Visit a Wall Street health clinic and tell the staff he had trouble focusing.

Ahead of his first appointment, he filled out a five-minute questionnaire. One of the questions asked if he had trouble staying organized, another, if he procrastinated. He then met with a clinician who said his answers suggested he had attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. He left with a prescription for Adderall.

No matter that a family member, a psychologist, didn’t think Moran had ADHD. He found that when he took Adderall, he could keep working for hours, and was able to actually be interested in some of the mundane tasks required of a young investment banker, such as aligning corporate logos on a PowerPoint or formatting cells in Microsoft Excel. 

He also wanted to show his bosses he was a hard worker and eventually secure a lucrative full-time job offer after finishing graduate school.

Read it all.

Many Wall Street bankers use Adderall and Vyvanse as tools to plow through long hours of tedious work amid high-pressure competition. https://t.co/YxyBTdBKzf via @WSJ

— WSJ Health (@WSJhealth) December 16, 2024

God, whose everlasting arms support the universe: We offer thanks for moving the heart of Lillian Trasher to heroic hospitality on behalf of orphaned children in great need, and we pray that we also may find our hearts awakened and our compassion stirred to care for thy little ones, through the example of our Savior Jesus Christ and by the energy of thy Holy Spirit, who broodest over the world as a mother over her children; for they live and reign with thee, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

"Beginning her career as a single, simple, servant-hearted Pentecostal girl, Lillian Trasher eventually gained the colloquial title of the “Nile Mother,” a name given to her by the thousands of orphans she raised in Assiout, Egypt." https://t.co/EKQqbqsKz6 pic.twitter.com/1qTIh2cW45

— CBE International (@CBEInt) September 9, 2020

O Lord Jesus Christ,
who at your first coming sent your messenger
to prepare your way before you:
grant that the ministers and stewards of your mysteries
may likewise so prepare and make ready your way
by turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just,
that at your second coming to judge the world
we may be found an acceptable people in your sight;
for you are alive and reign with the Father
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

6 days to Christmas in my mini advent calendar, on a narrow lane in the #peakdistrict, through the fields and trees, over the streams and hills. It was shining and perfect after a fresh fall of snow, the little cottages cosy in the valley. pic.twitter.com/Zzio1MehjO

— peaklass (@peaklass1) December 19, 2024

In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” Now John wore a garment of camel’s hair, and a leather girdle around his waist; and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then went out to him Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region about the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sad’ducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit that befits repentance, and do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. “I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

–Matthew 3:1-12

Morning ☀️ pic.twitter.com/f5fF0uLV7l

— Alison O’Neill ~ Shepherdess (@woolismybread) December 19, 2024

Lord Evans of Weardale, a former director-general of MI5 and a cross-bencher in the House of Lords, is to chair the Crown Nominations Commission (CNC) that will choose the next Archbishop of Canterbury, it was announced on Monday.

He is an “active and communicant member of his local parish church”, Downing Street says.

The vacancy-in-see committee for Canterbury met for the first time last week. It will consider what type of person is needed for the position, and elect three diocesan representatives to the CNC.

In parallel, a public consultation, overseen by Church House and Downing Street, will gauge general opinion about the offce of Archbishop and the qualities required. This is expected to begin in the new year.

Read it all.

Lord Evans to chair Crown Nominations Commission that will choose next Archbishop of Canterbury https://t.co/c5i9luPULL

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) December 17, 2024

Other churches across South Carolina were left feeling stuck after the decision. One Midlands church was also in the midst of the “discernment” process, and even had a majority committed to leaving, when the decision came down and “pulled the rug out from underneath us,” according to one church member who asked to remain anonymous because she didn’t want to be identified as speaking out against the conference.

She said the church had almost slept through the 2023 exodus, which didn’t affect their church community, but became more aware once the 2024 general conference approved the ordination of openly gay clergy and allowed the celebration of same-sex marriage.

“There are basically a lot of people in churches who don’t understand what goes on in their denomination, and we got caught with our head in the sand,” she said. “We didn’t realize what was going on, and trusted leadership to make us aware of the friction had been growing for years. … We were kind of sheltered.” While the conference marriage vote was the catalyst, she said her fellow worshipers had become become weary of and disillusioned with the United Methodist hierarchy.

Read it all.

SC Methodist churches thought they had time to decide to stay or go. The door slammed shut https://t.co/ckTJSDMQHE

— The State Newspaper (@thestate) December 18, 2024

Slowing China’s progress in artificial intelligence (AI) has been a top priority for Washington for the last three years. To achieve that goal, the Biden administration has escalated controls on the sale of advanced chips and chipmaking equipment to China, including a fresh salvo of restrictions earlier this week.

Policymakers may be flummoxed to learn, then, that Chinese companies aren’t just keeping up in the AI race: some believe they could overtake American industry leaders as soon as next year.

The latest breakthroughs came late last month, when two Chinese AI companies released new models that perform as well, if not better than their American peers. Developed by tech giant Alibaba and High Flyer Capital Management, a Chinese quantitative hedge fund, the technologies compete directly with OpenAI’s latest o1 model, which can “reason” through problems — a process some researchers have described as a new paradigm.

These achievements by Chinese firms underscore how formidable a competitor the country remains in the global AI race. Buoyed by a wealth of engineering talent and intense domestic competition — plus ample chip supply for now — Chinese AI firms are unlikely to fall back in that race as easily as some in Washington may hope.

Influential figures in the AI community are taking note. On Monday, Clement Delangue, chief executive of HuggingFace, a popular platform that offers tools and data to AI developers, predicted on LinkedIn that China would “start to lead the AI race in 2025.”

Read it all.

Treasury 10-year yields may climb to 6% for the first time in more than two decades as US fiscal woes worsen and Donald Trump’s policies help keep inflation elevated, according to T. Rowe Price.

The benchmark yield may first reach 5% in the first quarter of 2025 before potentially climbing further, Arif Husain, chief investment officer of fixed-income, wrote in a report. Husain is doubling down on calls for higher yields, citing persistent US budget deficits as Trump cuts taxes during his second presidency, as well as potential tariffs and immigration policies that would sustain price pressures.

“Is a 6% 10‑year Treasury yield possible? Why not? But we can consider that when we move through 5%,” wrote Husain, who helps the money manager oversee $187 billion. “The transition period in US politics is an opportunity to position for increasing longer‑term Treasury yields and a steeper yield curve.”

Read it all (registration or subscription).

10-Year Treasury Yield may soar to 6%, warns T. Rowe Price. The last time this happened? 2000.

Probably Fine pic.twitter.com/NF2XJj27uS

— Barchart (@Barchart) December 17, 2024

Americans’ confidence in their nation’s judicial system and courts dropped to a record-low 35% in 2024.

The result further sets the U.S. apart from other wealthy nations, where a majority, on average, still expresses trust in an institution that relies largely on the public’s confidence to protect its authority and independence.

Between 2006 and 2020, Americans’ perceptions of their courts were most often in line with the median for OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries, with a majority in each typically expressing confidence.

Since 2020, confidence in the courts across the other OECD countries has been stable, while the U.S. has seen a sharp decline — 24 percentage points — in the past four years. The resulting 20-point gap in confidence between the U.S. and the median of OECD nations in 2024 is the largest in the Gallup trend, which dates to 2006.

Read it all.

Americans' confidence in the nation's courts and judicial systems has plummeted 24 percentage points in the past four years, sagging to a record low, per a new Gallup poll.

https://t.co/qAklPE19Su

— Mike Walker (@New_Narrative) December 17, 2024

O Lord our God, in whose hands is the issue of all things, and who requirest from thy stewards not success but faithfulness: Give us such faith in thee and in thy sure purposes, that we measure not our lives by what we have done or failed to do, but by our obedience to thy holy will; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

—Daily Prayer, Eric Milner-White and G. W. Briggs, eds. (London: Penguin Books 1959 edition of the 1941 original)

Guten Morgen mit einer kleinen Winterimpression aus Danzig.#Polen pic.twitter.com/bmlrEn8Ewv

— Thomas Stiegler (@StieglerThomas) December 18, 2024

The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

As it is written in Isaiah the prophet,

“Behold, I send my messenger before thy face,
who shall prepare thy way;
the voice of one crying in the wilderness:
Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight”
John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And there went out to him all the country of Judea, and all the people of Jerusalem; and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, and had a leather girdle around his waist, and ate locusts and wild honey. And he preached, saying, “After me comes he who is mightier than I, the thong of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

–Mark 1:1-8

✨It rarely gets the centre of attention because of the lantern tower but the 12th Romanesque nave at Ely Cathedral is jaw-dropping – so I put my tilt-shift lens to use..📸 pic.twitter.com/5HGKtAKhFp

— Andy Marshall 📸 (@fotofacade) December 18, 2024

‘There seems to be a kind of conspiracy, especially among middle-aged writers of vaguely liberal tendency, to forget, or to conceal, where the doctrine of Hell comes from. One finds frequent references to the “cruel and abominable mediaeval doctrine of hell,” or “the childish and grotesque medieval imagery of physical fire and worms.”…But the case is quite otherwise; let us face the facts. The doctrine of hell is not ” medieval”: it is Christ’s. It is not a device of “mediaeval priestcraft” for frightening people into giving money to the church: it is Christ’s deliberate judgment on sin. The imagery of the undying worm and the unquenchable fire derives, not from “mediaeval superstition,” but originally from the Prophet Isaiah, and it was Christ who emphatically used it. . . . It confronts us in the oldest and least “edited” of the gospels: it is explicit in many of the most familiar parables and implicit in many more: it bulks far larger in the teaching than one realizes, until one reads the Evangelists [gospels] through instead of picking out the most comfortable texts: one cannot get rid of it without tearing the New Testament to tatters. We cannot repudiate Hell without altogether repudiating Christ.‘ 

–Dorothy Leigh Sayers, Introductory Papers on Dante (Harper: London, 1954), pp. 44-45

For the evening crowd: I wrote something about Dorothy Sayers and motherhood, today at the Arena blog @Current_Pub1 https://t.co/EpUZbl32vf pic.twitter.com/PcKbCTcsQ7

— Nadya Williams (@NadyaWilliams81) July 1, 2023

I believe in man,
maker of himself
and inventor of all science.
And in myself, his manifestation,
and captain of my psyche;
and that I should not suffer anything painful or unpleasant.
And in a vague, evolving deity,
the future-begotten child of man;
conceived by the spirit of progress,
born of emergent variants;
who shall kick down the ladder by which he rose
and tell history to go to hell.
Who shall some day take off from earth
and be jet-propelled into the heavens;
and sit exalted above all worlds,
man the master almighty.
And I believe in the spirit of progress,
who spake by Shaw and the Fabians;
and in a modern, administrative, ethical, and social organization;
in the isolation of saints,
the treatment of complexes,
joy through health,
and destruction of the body by cremation
(with music while it burns),
and then I’ve had it.

–Dorothy Sayers, Christian Letters to a Post-Christian World: A Selection of Essays (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, Trade Paperback edition 1969)

My reading during convalescence: the Lord Peter Wimsey novels of Dorothy L Sayers.

Because detection, like healing, restores order to human lives that have been hit by trauma and fallen for a while into chaos. pic.twitter.com/9nTWv7XvKt

— Michael Sadgrove 🇪🇺 (@MichaelSadgrove) September 19, 2024

I have already, on a previous occasion, spoken at some length on the subject of Work and Vocation. What I urged then was a thoroughgoing revolution in our whole attitude to work. I asked that it should be looked upon, not as a necessary drudgery to be undergone for the purpose of making money, but as a way of life in which the nature of man should find its proper exercise and delight and so fulfill itself to the glory of God. That it should, in fact, be thought of as a creative activity undertaken for the love of the work itself; and that man, made in God’s image, should make things, as God makes them, for the sake of doing well a thing that is well worth doing.

It may well seem to you – as it does to some of my acquaintances – that I have a sort of obsession about this business of the right attitude to work. But I do insist upon it, because it seems to me that what becomes of civilization after this war is going to depend enormously on our being able to effect this revolution in our ideas about work. Unless we do change our whole way of thought about work, I do not think we shall ever escape from the appalling squirrel cage of economic confusion in which we have been madly turning for the last three centuries or so, the cage in which we landed ourselves by acquiescing in a social system based upon Envy and Avarice.

A society in which consumption has to be artificially stimulated in order to keep production going is a society founded on trash and waste, and such a society is a house built upon sand….

Read it all.

All that was left of the garage was a heap of charred & smouldering beams. In the driving seat of the burnt-out car were the remains of a body. Listen to our vintage collection of crime and detection stories featuring Lord Peter Wimsey by Dorothy L. Sayers, who died #OTD 1957. pic.twitter.com/JYRS8NdIQJ

— Friends of WHLibrary (@FoWHLNW6) December 17, 2024

“[Jesus of Nazareth] was not a kind of demon pretending to be human; he was in every respect a genuine living man. He was not merely a man so good as to be ‘like God’—he was God.

“Now, this is not just a pious commonplace: it is not a commonplace at all. For what it means is this, among other things: that for whatever reason God chose to make man as he is—limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death—he [God] had the honesty and courage to take his own medicine. Whatever game he is playing with his creation, he has kept his own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that he has not exacted from himself. He has himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. When he was a man, he played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile.”

—Creed or Chaos? (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1949), page 4 (with special thanks to blog reader and friend WW)

Fluent in German and French. Knowledge of Latin and Greek. Taught herself Italian. What a model! I'm listening to Dorothy L. Sayers by Colin Duriez, narrated by Simon Vance on my Audible app. Try Audible and get it here: https://t.co/hNCxK86Ry4 pic.twitter.com/hP5cuzHZKG

— Jessica Hooten Wilson (@HootenWilson) December 24, 2021

Incarnate God, who didst grant the grace of eloquence unto thy servant Dorothy to defend thy truth unto a distressed church, and to proclaim the importance of Christian principles for the world; grant unto us thy same grace that, aided by her prayers and example, we too may have the passionate conviction to teach right doctrine and to teach doctrine rightly; We ask this in thy name, who livest and reignest with the Father, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, one God, for ever and ever.

Anyone who is a fan of the 'Lost Tools of Learning', did you know Dorothy Sayers looked like this? pic.twitter.com/omfjZ4MJhf

— JR (@jrser31) December 13, 2024

O God, who didst send thy messengers and prophets to prepare the way of thy Son before him: Grant that our Lord when he cometh may find in us a dwelling prepared for himself; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who came to take our nature upon him that he might bring many sons unto glory, and now with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, ever one God, world without end.

–A New Prayer Book (London: Oxford University Press 1923)

Sunrise over Norwich market this morning… @WeatherAisling @ChrisPage90 @StormHour @metoffice #loveukweather @VisitNorwich pic.twitter.com/EY3VauKHCc

— WalkingTractor (@TractorWalking) December 17, 2024

But there will be no gloom for her that was in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he will make glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations.

The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,
on them has light shined.
Thou hast multiplied the nation,
thou hast increased its joy;
they rejoice before thee
as with joy at the harvest,
as men rejoice when they divide the spoil.
For the yoke of his burden,
and the staff for his shoulder,
the rod of his oppressor,
thou hast broken as on the day of Mid”²ian.
For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult
and every garment rolled in blood
will be burned as fuel for the fire.
For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given;
and the government will be upon his shoulder,
and his name will be called
“Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”
Of the increase of his government and of peace
there will be no end,
upon the throne of David, and over his kingdom,
to establish it, and to uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
from this time forth and for evermore.
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

–Isaiah 9:1-7

English country garden pic.twitter.com/UDR3Rr5PgC

— Veritatis Cupitor (@English1Maiden) December 17, 2024

Katherine Lee Bates’ poem, “America The Beautiful,” is best known for being set to music and popularly performed at public sporting events in the United States. In it, she celebrates the grandeur of American geography and resources: “And crownthy good with brotherhood / From sea to shining sea.”

Two church parishes in the Anglican Church in North America, located in port cities on opposite coasts, richly blessed with the bounty of natural resources like salmon and lobster, have received unexpected blessings this past year in the form of church buildings and property.

Anglican churches in Portland, Oregon and Portland, Maine, 3200 miles apart on each coast of the United States, have both received, in the same year, church buildings and property of significant value! Of course, the physical properties God has blessed these two parishes with are the fruits of God at work
in unexpected ways in their respective communities.

Read it all (page 10 ff.).

Rise Church in Portland, Maine is an Anglican church drawn from three congregations: what was formerly the Church of the Holy Spirit, a Sudanese church, and the newer, Rise Church. Watch a short video here: https://t.co/9k86nfr7bW Read more about it here: https://t.co/luttGJvO7L

— ACNA (@The_ACNA) December 12, 2024

A sombre mood engulfed a village in Kenya’s Rift Valley last week as dozens of medical interns joined other mourners at the burial of their colleague who had taken his own life.

Speaker after speaker lamented the loss of Francis Njuki, a 29-year-old trainee pharmacist, whose family told the BBC about his feelings of exhaustion and frustration over the non-payment of his salary by the government since he started working as an intern in August.

He is the fifth medic to kill themselves in Kenya in the last two months because of “work-stress hardships and lack of responsive insurance cover”, according to Dr Davji Atellah, the secretary of the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Union (KMPDU) – adding it was not something the union had ever recorded before.

There had also been five attempted suicides by KMPDU members this year, the medical body said.

Read it all.

'Thankless job' – why trainee Kenyan doctors are taking their own lives https://t.co/vc8gLRQQpg

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) December 16, 2024

The Newspaper round in Velyka Pysarivka can be sketchy. Barely 3km from the Russian border, the village is stalked by death. Oleskiy and Natalia Pasyuga, the husband-and-wife duo behind the Vorskla (the weekly takes its name from the local river) have a survival algorithm. Oleksiy, 56, drives. Natalia, 53, listens out of the passenger window for the drones that grow stealthier with every day. They say they are careful, though they know they are kidding themselves. Delivering the paper to the last remaining residents of the village is not a rational exercise, but a love affair. The tears of subscribers make it worth it, Ms Pasyuga says: “They grab the paper and hold it to their nose to smell the fresh newsprint.”

For its 2,500 readers, the Vorskla is more than a news source; it is a connection to the outside world. Most of Ukraine’s border villages now have no electricity or mobile connection. When televisions work, they pick up Russian channels. The Pasyugas say they feel obliged to stay to debunk the propaganda, though they evacuated their offices from Velyka Pysarivka in March after a glide bomb smashed their car and half the building. Six months later the Russians destroyed the other half, during attacks that coincided with Ukraine’s advance into Russia’s Kursk province just to the north. Now the Vorskla is put together in a library in the nearby town of Okhtyrka. It is printed and hand delivered to front-line villages in a car the couple borrow from their son.

When your correspondent calls, the Pasyugas are preparing a special Christmas issue. They already know what they want: uplifting stories to raise the morale of their weary readers. For once, there will be no obituaries of the local boys lost in battle. The Kursk offensive will be left out too, though that is less unusual. The Pasyugas say they know “too much” to accept the official celebration of the offensive as “Ukraine’s great and only triumph of 2024”. They choose silence instead.

Read it all.

What might a possible deal for peace in Ukraine look like in the coming year? Find out in The World Ahead https://t.co/zX7oLK9XU1

Photo: AP pic.twitter.com/JWpGo0QQTY

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) December 13, 2024

Gracious God, we offer thanks for the vision of Ralph Adams Cram, John LaFarge and Richard Upjohn, whose harmonious revival of the Gothic enriched our churches with a sacramental understanding of reality in the face of secular materialism; and we pray that we may honor thy gifts of the beauty of holiness given through them, for the glory of Jesus Christ; who livest and reignest with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

Richard Upjohn, born on this day in 1802, was the visionary behind St. Paul’s Cathedral in downtown Buffalo. At 275-feet, it’s also the city’s tallest religious structure.#TravelBUF pic.twitter.com/2Q7xBnDdHi

— Visit Buffalo Niagara (@BuffaloNiagara) January 23, 2019

O Lord Jesus Christ, before whose judgment-seat we must all appear and give account of the things done in the body: Grant, we beseech thee, that when the books are opened in that day, the faces of thy servants may not be ashamed; through thy merits, O blessed Saviour, who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end.

Guten Morgen am Montag und eine angenehme neue Woche mit viel Schwung und Freude.
⛄☁️❄⛄☁️❄⛄☁️❄⛄☁️❄⛄ pic.twitter.com/npcmQgmd82

— Brigitta Neurauter (@BrigittaNeurau2) December 16, 2024

Simeon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ,

To those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours in the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ:

May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.

His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, that through these you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion, and become partakers of the divine nature.

For this very reason make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these things are yours and abound, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these things is blind and shortsighted and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins. Therefore, brethren, be the more zealous to confirm your call and election, for if you do this you will never fall; so there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

–2 Peter 1:1-11

Monday morning beach walk, South Sands, Salcombe pic.twitter.com/HT3AnfbX9V

— Stephen Ball (@ostizeuropean) December 16, 2024

Lyrics: I look from afar: and lo, I see the power of God coming, and a cloud covering the whole earth. Go ye out to meet him and say: Tell us, art thou he that should come to reign over thy people Israel? High and low, rich and poor, one with another. Hear, O thou shepherd of Israel, thou that leadest Joseph like a sheep. Stir up thy strength, O Lord, and come. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.

O Lord Jesus Christ, you sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Grant that the ministers and stewards of your mysteries may likewise make ready your way, by turning the hearts of the disobedient toward the wisdom of the just, that at your second coming to judge the world, we may be found a people acceptable in your sight; for with the Father and the Holy Spirit you live and reign, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

Guten Morgen ☕️💕wünsche euch einen besinnlichen
3. Adventssonntag 🎶🌸🌟🎄
🌟 Stille und Ruhe bringen die ganze Welt ins rechte Maß zurück 🌟
Laotse pic.twitter.com/biiZhj25He

— Renate Kleine (@RenateKleine) December 15, 2024

For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers entreat that no further messages be spoken to them. For they could not endure the order that was given, “If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned.” Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, “I tremble with fear.” But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven, and to a judge who is God of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks more graciously than the blood of Abel. See that you do not refuse him who is speaking. For if they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less shall we escape if we reject him who warns from heaven. His voice then shook the earth; but now he has promised, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heaven.” This phrase, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of what is shaken, as of what has been made, in order that what cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming fire.

–Hebrews 12:18-29

Ladybird Artists Advent Calendar, window 15

Artist: CF Tunnicliffe
(What to Look for in Winter, 1959) pic.twitter.com/bInI8PVimS

— Helen Day (@LBFlyawayhome) December 15, 2024