Volume XIV, Issue XIV
Josiah
By Bob Kirchman
Copyright © 2018, The Kirchman Studio, all rights reserved
Chapter 14: Unto All Nations
The next few weeks were a whirlwind of activity as Big Diomede readied for the celebration! The little chapel on the island always seemed happiest when it rejoiced with the bride and bridegroom and Mrs. Greene spared nothing in decorating it. But all the while they wondered – who was third on their crew? Both were well trained in the work of spaceflight and balanced simulator time with getting fitted for wedding clothes. Abiyah Ben-Gurion was suspected, but he was getting older and didn’t visit the simulator rooms much anymore. He was, many people noted, taking lots of long walks with Adam now.
Adam had followed in the footsteps of his capable parents and was a great pilot in his own right. He was a loner like his dad had been and everyone assumed he must like it that way. He did seem to have a lot to discuss with dad these days. Was his dad in fact going back to Mars? He still passed the physical – with a few ‘look the other ways’ by the flight surgeons.
We’ll never know for sure, but if the truth be known, I doubt it was clear who would go; Abiyah or Adam, as they talked it out but clearly the father felt some responsibility for the colony and the son loved his father. He had rebelled some as a youth but he now saw how wonderful his upbringing had been. The virtue of gratitude – the only virtue Abiyah would lay claim to, had been passed from father to son!
Though the older Ben-Gurion was methodical in his attempts to discourage his son, he was also quite proud of him. In the end, it was Adam who begged his father for the chance to complete the work that he had begun. Sarah and Abiyah, of all people, were uniquely able to understand the drive of their son. Since they knew Josiah, Adila and Adam quite closely, seeing them work together at school, they saw a team that was every bit as capable as the team of Cohen – Ben-Gurion decades before them. Now they congregated frequently at the Ben-Gurion home for meals and conversation.
After the wedding, the three began training for the mission in dead earnest. All three of them expressed some disappointment that meeting the best launch window meant missing the World’s Fair in Fairgate, but that was a small concern. The Martians were waiting. Josiah and Adila also sought out the company of the Greenes and over macaroni and cheese, they discussed such things as the journeys of Paul in the First Century. Surely they were following in his footsteps. “What constitutes a nation in the eyes of the Divine?” Dr. Greene asked his pupil and his pupil’s wife as they supped together.
The dictionary says, ‘a large aggregate of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular country or territory.’” Responded Josiah.
THE END
(Epilogue) [Click to Read]
The Day Boy and the Night Girl
by George MacDonald
[click to read]
Read by Laurie Anne Walden.
A boy named Photogen, who has never seen the moon, meets a girl named Nycteris, who has never seen the sun. The two of them must escape from the witch Watho. As usual with George MacDonald, this fairy tale has layers of meaning that go deeper than the story on the surface. (summary by L.A. Walden) (read more)
The Meaning of the Miraculous
[click to read]
For many Centuries man has acknowledged the miraculous. In the weeks to come the Jewish community celebrates their deliverance from Egypt and the beginning of their journey to the Promised Land. A dialogue set in a meals has all generations together consider the preservation of their people that could only be seen as a work of G-d. Previous generations always saw G-d, or some miraculous force as Creator. The Patriarchs saw Him as Provider and Deliverer! The relatively recent concept of Evolution (Charles Darwin in the Nineteenth Century) has created a philosophy of Naturalism that either outright rejects or quietly diminishes the Theistic explanation. (read more)
Dr. King and the Holy Spirit
Why Today’s Activists Need the Power of Pentecost
[click to read]
By Eugene F. Rivers III
I will pour out my Spirit on all people and your sons and daughters will prophesy, and your old men will dream dreams and your young men will see visions.” —Joel 2:28
The night before his death, Martin Luther King Jr. preached his last sermon in Mason Temple. A monumental brick-and-stone edifice in downtown Memphis, Mason Temple is the mother church of the second-largest black denomination in the United States, known as the Church of God in Christ. Near where King was standing was the marble tomb of the church’s founder, Bishop Charles Harrison Mason, who had been born a slave and had gone on to become black America’s foremost Pentecostal leader. (read more)
These young men used part of their Spring break to construct a smooth sidewalk from their church to the neighboring apartment complex, making it more accessible.
Around the World in 80 Days
