News

Special to the Courier

County representative collects accolade, Abbott continues discussion

Elgin’s Parks and Recreation department continues to supply locals with their own particular brand of summer heat relief, bringing back their cardboard boat race for the third consecutive year.

It’s 1952 and we were in the second year of Official Little League Baseball in Elgin, which fielded two teams. I was 12 years old and played for the Kiwanis Blue team coached by Mr. Otto Haverland and Mr. Ray Coffman.

In Luke 18:9-14, Jesus tells us that the Pharisee went to the Temple to pray. However, the Pharisee didn’t really go up to pray, but to be seen and heard, to compare himself to others, and to boast. The Pharisee stood by himself in a very noticeable way, set apart from everyone else so that people would look at him and be impressed. Then the Pharisee prayed, if you can call it a prayer: “God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.”

Collected

SMITHVILLE – A short two weeks after the Powder Keg Pine Fire scorched 117 acres of land west of Smithville, the Amaze Fire lit and burned another 63 acres to the east of the city.

Relatives of the community leaders depicted in Main Street’s “Black Icons Mural” filled Capital Metro bus seats to ride alongside their family members once more.

The Lord’s good and gracious will is revealed above all in Jesus’ Passion, when a weak and trembling Jesus prayed to His Father and then was betrayed into the hands of sinful men to die. We find Jesus in dark Gethsemane sorrowful and troubled, even to the point of His sacred heart failing right then and there. The weight of the world’s sins pressed down mightily upon Him; He fell upon His face in weakness and trembling, begging, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.” The cup Jesus spoke of was the cup of His Father’s wrath against all the sin of the world. God’s wrath is His unmitigated anger, a furious outpouring of condemnation, the fires and torments of hell.