Photo of Katie Davis – see her story here – The story of Katie Davis: The high school senior who went to Uganda to teach kindergarten for 10 months and stayed to be mom to 13 orphans and to serve the people of Uganda

The Center for the Study of Global Christianity (CSGC) at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary calculates that Christians sent out approximately 400,000 international missionaries in 2010. And nearly half of the world’s top missionary-sending countries are now located in the global South.

The CSGC reports that “of the ten countries sending the most missionaries in 2010, three were in the global South: Brazil, South Korea, and India.” Other notable missionary senders included South Africa, the Philippines, Mexico, China, Colombia, and Nigeria.

However, the United States still tops the chart by far in terms of total missionaries, sending 127,000 in 2010 compared to the 34,000 sent by No. 2-ranked Brazil.

This past Thursday, I was reminded of the truth that life is fragile and brief. The husband of an acquaintance of mine was killed in a car accident while returning from vacation. My acquaintance, who was driving in a bad rainstorm, remains hospitalized in critical condition, not even knowing that her spouse is dead, killed on impact when their SUV left the road and hit a tree. Their children, other family,  friends, church members,  all are stunned and grieved.

If you’re a praying person, would you please pray for them, for the Lord’s comfort and mercy?

How easy it is to forget, when things are going well, that our circumstances can change in an instance:  A heart attack, a drunk driver, a lightning strike, a head injury–life-ending for someone, and life-changing for everyone else. 

Saints are those who best understand the lesson of the better part. St Phillip Neri understood the lesson well.

“I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.” — John 15:5

• Christ reminded us at the Last Supper, when he told his Apostles that he was the vine and they were the branches, that we should always stay united to him.
• His encounter with Mary and Martha in this Sunday’s Gospel teaches us the same lesson, a lesson that Martha really needed to learn.

Martha needed to learn that what we do for Christ has to flow out of what we are for him: true and devoted friends.

A great feature on the Gospel Coalition blogs is their regular column titles “9 things you should know”. In their latest post, Joe Carter writes about “9 Things You Should Know about the Bible. Here’s just 3, numbers 1, 6, and 9:

1. The English word Bible is derived from the Koine Greek τὰ βιβλία (ta biblia – “the books”). While Christian use of the term can be traced to around A.D. 223, the late biblical scholar F.F. Bruce noted that Chrysostom in his Homilies on Matthew (between A.D. 386 and 388) appears to be the first writer to use the Greek phrase ta biblia to describe both the Old and New Testaments together.

6. The Bible is not only the best-selling book of all-time, it is consistently the best-selling book of the the year, every year. (Even in 1907, the New York Times noted that the…