Sons and Lovers

Today, August 30th, I went to a baby shoppe. I only spent fifty dollars on diapers and baby food. Just some last minute baby things to be prepared. After all we are expecting to get him in a week or two. One month ago we welcomed my baby boy to the world. Currently we are going to Dr. David M. McCoy for a one month check-up. Doctor McCoy said Laurence Jr. is perfectly healthy. My job is very stressful because I am working with three to five hours a night. He never really stops crying. Today…

Throughout the novel A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving writes a story about two boys growing up and learning the works of the world. The protagonist, John Wheelwright, is narrating the book about his life as an adult and sharing details about his childhood. In his childhood, he writes about his closest companion, Owen Meany. Owen leads John to become an anti-American, pessimistic, all girls private school teacher in Canada. As John is going through college and Owen is serving the Vietnam war…

God’s Instrument After years of typing away on his antique typewriter for hours on end, the Oscar winning storyteller John Irving triumphantly finished his seventh novel A Prayer For Owen Meany in 1989. The emotional tugging that the novel forces upon its audience made it one of the most read novels of the 20th century (McCarthy 2). This humorous yet heart wrenching tale tells of an unlikely friendship between two boys just before the Vietnam era. As a time full of war, death, and lost hope;…

What is culture and what does it have to do with Christianity? Was Jesus “culturally engaged”? Did Jesus even care about culture at all? Cultural engagement is the acknowledgment of culture outside of our own and actively participating in applying its uniqueness to our lives, or using it as a tool for ministry. As Christians, we must first look at our Leader to understand if we should culturally engage or not, and, in this case, we will see that it is important. In many parables, Jesus used the…

Was it? He was born by God’s power, lived like a monk, preached great sermons and all the people followed him. He was very popular and kings were scared of him. He baptized the Son of God! He could be forgiven if he thought it was his story. Perhaps the greatness of John was not what he is, or what he did, but because he played his part in the story in the best way possible. He recognized that it is not his story. Read John 3…

The Sons of Liberty stressed the symbolic significance of the tax, and that they are being controlled by the British. The common folk were not really affected by the tax, but they were being influenced by the ideals behind the tax. The upper class called for…

The doctrine of depravity says that man is as bad off as he can be. There is a vast difference between being as bad as he can be, and being as bad off as he can be. The doctrine of depravity has to do, not with man’s estimation of man, but rather with God’s estimation of man. (Pentecost 9-10) The doctrine of depravity has to do not so much with man’s conduct as with man’s state. It has to do not so much with man’s behavior as with his condition before God. In Galatians 3:22 we read, “…the…

On December 16th of 1773, the Boston Tea Party, a political protest organized and executed by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, Massachusetts would impact not only the relations of the colonists and the British in the 18th century, but also how America would become how it is today: a global power of its own. After the end of salutary neglect and the implementation of taxes designed to relieve war debts, the citizens of the colonies felt cheated due to the lack of representation in Parliament from…

history lesson would jump to images of Revere riding through Lexington on horseback, shouting warnings about the imminent arrival of the British troops. However, there is more to this historical figure than what is commonly perceived. A member of the Sons of Liberty, Paul Revere delivered countless messages that kept the revolution alive. He created propaganda for the war, such as his much praised Boston Massacre engraving. What was Paul Revere’s most influential feat? Many argue that it was…

The whole book starts out in the view of the sentry on guard of the customs house. The soldiers have just come in to Boston from out of another city, and the tensions are very very high between the soldiers and the natives of Boston. With all of these tensions a guard describes his experience of him guarding the customs house late at night during winter when a mob quickly appears and advances on him and the other guards that have shown up as the mob has. Then someone yells fire as bells are…