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Last May we reviewed the first book in Andrew Klavan’s “Homelanders” suspense series for teens, The Last Thing I Remember.  Our main point was, if you have a teen who’s not that into reading, this might be your entree.

The second book in the series, The Long Way Home, has just been released and it doesn’t disappoint.  Charlie West is an 18-year-old fugitive with a one year gap in his memory during which time he is supposed to have murdered his ex-best friend, escaped from prison, then from a domestic terrorist organization, the Homelanders.  In this installment Charlie returns to his hometown to sleuth out what really happened.  He teams up with his old high-school buddies and the cute girl who claims they fell in love during the missing year.  Along the way he grapples with issues of right and wrong, human nature, and what is really real.

Andrew Klavan was an award-winning author of adult crime novels before converting to Christianity.  He brings to his young adult stories a high level of craft not usually seen in this genre.  That is why we are confident that your teenager will read - and enjoy - this series.

Don’t miss the New Show!

Opening reception Friday, Jan 22 from 7 to 10 pm. Click here for a preview.

Charlie Peacock may be one of the most famous people you’ve never heard of.  He’s best known to many as the guy who wrote dcTalk’s smash hit “In the Light”.  But he is much more than that.  As a writer and as a record producer he has worked with most of the top names in contemporary Christian music of the past 25 years (see partial list below).  But he is much more than that.  He is an expert on John Coltrane and a jazz musician and improvizational pianist par excellence who has recorded with luminaries of the jazz world.  But he is much more than that.  Charlie is a deep thinker about life, art, culture, and what it means to follow Jesus.  He has a seminary degree and is the author of two books.  But he is much more than that.  He is a promoter of the arts, both performing and visual, and was the founder of an institution in the Nashville area called Art House.  But he is . . . well, you get the idea.

We are honored that Charlie has taken a day out of his current tour with Sara Groves, Derek Webb, and Brandon Heath to be with us for an evening.

Come hear Charlie play, and talk with him about music, art, justice, and other things that matter.

Space is limited, so get your ticket soon.  Your $10 not only gets you in the door, but also gets you a CD. Call 785-830-8030 to reserve by phone.

Oh yeah, here are a few of the artists Charlie has worked with over the years:  Switchfoot, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Béla Fleck, Leigh Nash, Al Green, Warren Barfield, Amy Grant, Sixpence None The Richer, Sara Groves, Audio Adrenaline, David Crowder Band, Avalon, dcTalk, Margaret Becker, Twila Paris, CeCe Winans etc, etc, etc.

Caution:  this book may change your life!

There are 4 million orphans in Ethiopia today.  1.5 million of these are due to HIV/AIDS, the rest to famine, tuberculosis, hepatitis, and other maladies from which people rarely die in the west.  With only 75 million inhabitants, Ethiopia simply does not have enough adults to care for these children.  To make matters worse, out of 190+ independent countries in the world,  Ethiopia is at or near the bottom of any list of economic indicators you care to choose.

A few years ago Haregewoin Tefarra was a happily married middle class woman in Addis Ababa.  Then she lost her 54-year-old husband to a heart attack and shortly thereafter her adult daughter to AIDS.  Shunned by many friends and family members due to the severe stigma carried by AIDS in Ethiopia, Haregewoin felt as if her life had ended.  She applied to the local church to be a hermit and live in a shed in the graveyard, close to her dead daughter.  A wise priest had a better idea.  Would she take in an orphan girl?  Why not, she reasoned, her life was over.  It wouldn’t matter one way or the other.  A few days later the priest brought her a teenaged boy with the same entreaty.  I may as well let him stay, she thought, my life is over anyway.  Since then over 400 orphans have passed through her doors.  She has poured out her heart and they have given her back her life.

This is the story of one woman’s fight to save the children of her country.  Without training, without government support or funding, without help from any human source, Haregewoin has tirelessly struggled to save a handful from life on the streets, prostitution, AIDS and death that surely awaited them otherwise.  Here also are the stories of a few families who, like the author and her husband, have adopted some of these orphans into their homes in middle-class America.

Melissa Fay Greene is an award-winning journalist who has published several social-conciousness raising books and numerous articles in notable periodicals from the New York Times to Goodhouskeeping.  She is passionate about her topic and so can be forgiven for her occasional leftist rants and simplistic solutions (big drug companies = bad, Bush administration = bad).  We’ve all heard about the AIDS orphan tragedy in Africa, but its easy to think of it as “way off over there”.  This book puts a human face on the problem and brings it home.  You must read this book - but be prepared to be changed.

We were sitting around at a meeting of the Lawrence Conservatives Club the other day. The whole membership was there. All three of us. We unanimously agreed to this proclaimation: Sin makes you stupid. We came to this realization when someone observed that the liberal agenda seems to consist mainly in irradicating the consequences of choices. Especially My choices. Especially My choices regarding sex.

Case in point: there has been a lot of talk lately about mandatory vaccination of pre-pubescent girls against HPV - a sexually transmitted disease linked to cervical cancer. Our local paper carried a big article about the issue, complete with opinions and quotes from several people who think its a great idea. One doctor called it a no-brainer, like the flag and apple pie. The article mentioned that some people have moral concerns, but it didn’t explain what those concerns might be, nor did it quote anyone who held those concerns.

When one of our members pointed out in a letter to the editor that some people were not at risk for STDs, he was vehemently and personally attacked in the newspaper’s on-line forum. These anonymous attackers went so far as to find out his wife’s name and use that in their diatribe. “You call that a culture of life?” they screamed. Well, yes we do. And if you weren’t blinded by your liberal agenda, you might be able to recognize it for what it is.

Now we learn, in a recent story in the Dallas Morning News, that there are reasons why we are suddenly hearing so much about making HPV vaccination mandatory. Millions of reasons, actually. The manufacutrer of the vaccine has been financing an aggressive lobbying campaign for the purpose of boosting sales. But they are backing down now due to a backlash among parents, physicians and consumer advocates. The conservative position has some economic traction for a change.

Have you ever heard the claim that Christians are about as likely to divorce as the U.S. population at large? I think we church-goers tend to quote this statistic to shame ourselves into taking our marriage vows, and our faith, more seriously.

However, a new study indicates this common wisdom is not true, once you factor in church attendance that is.  In “What’s Love Got to Do with It? Equality, Equity, Commitment, and Women’s Marital Quality,” University of Virginia sociologists Steven L. Nock and W. Bradford Wilcox examine what makes women content in marriage.  In a recent article about this study in Christianity Today, the authors note “churchgoing evangelical Protestants, churchgoing Catholics, and churchgoing mainline Protestants are all significantly less likely to divorce . . . (than the general population) . . . between 35 and 50 percent less likely than Americans who attend church just nominally, just once or twice a year, or who don’t attend church at all. It is true that people who say they’ve had a born-again experience are about as likely to divorce as people who are completely secular.  But if you look at this through the lens of church attendance, you see a very different story.”

So, if you want to boost your chances for marital bliss, go to church. Often.

Actually they call today Black Friday. Sounds like a stock market crash or something. I never heard the term until I got into retail. It is supposed to indicate that the day after Thanksgiving is the day when retailers go into the black for the year. Because everybody knows its the biggest retail day of the year, right? Well, sorta. It’s the biggest day of the year for the biggest retailers. The big box stores and big mall stores do pretty well today. But your local independent retailers have to wait until shoppers get fed up with big crowds and indifferent service. Then they come back to stores like Signs of Life where you get reasonable prices and great service from people who care. We’re getting harder and harder to find. I wonder why that is?