Jesus, the Alpha & the Omega
Safe Forever in God’s Hands.
All those who trust in Christ will persevere in faith to the end. The doctrine of the perseverance of true believers, therefore, is both a comfort and a challenge. But the challenge is based on the comfort. We can be certain that we shall persevere to the end only because God has promised to enable us to do so.
Anthony A. Hoekema
Bible Verse for Today
The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions. Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809 - 1892).
The Mapuches are a group of indigenous inhabitants of south-central Chile and southwestern Argentina, including parts of present-day Patagonia. The collective term refers to a wide-ranging ethnicity composed of various groups who shared a common linguistic heritage as Mapudungun speakers. Their traditional economy is based on agriculture. Today, many Mapuche communities are engaged in conflict over land and indigenous rights in both Argentina and in Chile.
CDC Travellers’ Health Notices
The human brain can produce enough electricity to light a small electric bulb. The brain consumes glucose from the body to produce this amount of energy.
Relief Web
The Elephant's Trunk in IC 1396.
Credit & Copyright: Rolf Geissinger. The 20 light-years long Elephant's Trunk Nebula winds through the emission nebula and young star cluster complex IC 1396, in the constellation of Cepheus. This composite, through narrow band filters that transmit the light from ionized hydrogen, sulfur, and oxygen atoms, highlighted the bright swept-back ridges that outline pockets of cool interstellar dust and gas, with embedded, dark, tendril-shaped clouds contain the raw material for star formation and hide protostars within the obscuring cosmic dust. Nearly 3,000 light-years distant, the IC 1396 spans over 5 degrees.
December 8: Asteroid Harmonica is at opposition, 19h UT (2 PM EST).
December 9: The Moon passes 1.1° north of Saturn, 5h UT (12 AM EST).
December 10: The Moon passes 0.7° north of Pluto, 4h UT 11 PM EST).
December 12: The Moon is at apogee (405,177 km from Earth), 12h25m UT (7:25 AM EST).
Credit: Astronomy.
NASA Mars Exploration Programme
Conservation International
The Flag of Niger was inaugurated in 1959, a year prior to its formal independence from France, consisted of the colours of orange, white and green, in equal horizontal bands, with an orange roundel in the centre. The upper orange band represents the northern regions of the Sahara Desert, the white band represents purity, and the green band represents both hope and the fertile regions of southern Niger. The orange circle is said to represent the sun or independence.
The U.S. Department of State Travel Warnings
The UK Foreign Service Travel Advice
Sunflowers (Tournesols) is the name of two series of still life paintings by the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh. The first series, executed in Paris in 1887, depicts the flowers lying on the ground, while the second set, executed a year later in Arles, shows a bouquet of sunflowers in a vase. In the artist's mind, both sets were linked by the name of his friend Paul Gauguin, who acquired two of the Paris versions. On March 30, 1987, Japanese insurance magnate, Yasuo Goto, paid the equivalent of US $39,921,750 for van Gogh's Still Life: Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers at auction at Christie's London. The painting currently resides at Seiji Togo Yasuda Memorial Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo.
Idiom of the Day
HOUSE CHURCH IN JIANGXI RAIDED. Click on the image to read more.
