Puzzles Parables Paradox

God invites you on an epic journey as a faithful steward of his mysteries. When seeking to understand God's larger plan, he speaks of mysteries and hidden things. He purposely speaks through puzzles, parables, riddles, and paradox. Even so, he implores you to take up the challenge and travel with him on an amazing adventure of discovery. This is not an exploration that is for the faint of heart. It is a selective process designed only for those who will seek first the kingdom and who will search for God with all their heart. It is a journey that involves understanding God's secret wisdom, his hidden knowledge, and his fantastic mysteries. "We speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began."(I Corinthians 2:7-8) Even though God's communication with mankind often appears fuzzy or cloudy, as if shrouded in secrecy, he invites you to become actively involved and understand more of the mystery of his kingdom and what he wants for your life. What does God want?He wants you to see answers everywhere you look,but only if you're looking.He wants you to hear the clues and their meanings,but only if you're listening.He wants you to understand the mystery of his kingdom, but only if you want to be part of the kingdom.He wants to point you in the right direction,but only if you choose to go on the journey with him.Why does God hide his wisdom in the form of a mystery? Why go to such great lengths to keep things secret from the moment the world begins and then go even further to make them simple and obvious to us? Why speak through puzzles, parables, and paradox? How do we understand the mysteries of God? How do we tap into the bold clues that are everywhere around us? How do we learn and grow from the process? That is the focus of this book - to understand God's plan, his purpose, and his process through these mysteries.

In this wide-ranging collection of essays first published between 2007 and 2014, Charles Wolf Jr. shares his insights on the world's economies, including those of China, the United States, Japan, Korea, India, and others. First appearing in such periodicals as in Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, and the Weekly Standard, among others, these chapters take on a range of questions about the global economy. Wolf discusses the paradoxes and puzzles within China's political economy and in its interactions with the United States. He analyzes the shortcomings of Keynesian economics as a response to the 2008 recession, as well as the weaknesses of policies and actions inferred from the theory, and compares those weaknesses with those of austerity policies intended to limit government spending and indebtedness. He also offers his views on economic inequality and where its principal sources may truly lay, China's currency and the continuing controversy about whether and when it may become a major international reserve currency, and many more insights on key economic issues affecting the global economy. Bringing these essays together for the first time in a single volume, including two essays not yet published elsewhere, this book enables the reader to absorb the author's expert perspective during the years in a collection in which the whole is truly greater than the sum of its parts. Each chapter includes a brief "postaudit" in which the author attempts to grade how well or ill the essay seems in retrospect.

Since the publication of the bestselling Sounding the Seasons, Malcolm Guite has repeatedly been asked for more sonnets. This new collection offers a sequence of 50 sonnets that focus on many passages in the Gospels: the Beatitudes, parables and miracles, teachings on the Kingdom, and the ‘hard sayings’ - Jesus’ challenging demands with which we wrestle. In addition this collection includes: •A sequence of seven sonnets on 'The Wilderness', exploring mysterious stories of divine encounter such as Jacob’s wrestling with the angel. •Poetic reflections on music, hospitality and ecology. •Seven short poems celebrating the days of creation. •A biblical index pairing the poems with scripture readings for use in worship.

Economics is full of puzzles and paradoxes that often frustrate and challenge everyone, including economists. This engaging book includes fifty puzzles and focuses on three types of paradox. First, everyday observations that appear to belie common sense (such as why some supermarket items sell for more per ounce in larger sizes). Secondly, those paradoxes which have perplexed economists in the past but have since been fairly resolved (such as the diamond–water paradox). Finally, empirical or conceptual anomalies that remain unresolved and present a challenge to today’s economists (such as the voting paradox).

This book is about the difference between parables and riddles, and between different views and definitions of wisdom and various attitudes towards the possibility of its attainment. Both parables and riddles go beyond a simple rote presentation of facts, which may become tedious and likely to be tuned out or rejected. However, there is a major difference between the two. Parables are a dominant form of transmission of information in biblical writings, while riddles dominate those of ancient Greece. Parables transmit an underlying, useful life-message in a way that will not be rejected. Riddles, in contrast, are largely unintelligible, leaving one helpless, unable to derive any life-lesson. This book will be of intellectual value to educators, writers, therapists, story-tellers, clergy, and classicists, as well as anyone interested in the implications of ancient views of wisdom for modern education.

The Gospel Behind the Gospels portrays all the major areas of current discussion and debate regarding the early source of Jesus' sayings known as Q. Sixteen gospel scholars have advanced the debate about this source's nature, history and significance. Contributors discuss Q's existence, its relationship to Mark's gospel and to the Gospel of Thomas, its genre, its redactional history with special reference to the Son of Man and to wisdom and prophetic traditions, its social history with respect to family structures and the Cynics, a feminist analysis of Q, its significance for the historical Jesus and for Jesus' parables. The volume sheds important light on Jesus and Christian origins as well as upon Q itself, and it is significant for the diversity of major North American, European and Japanese scholarship which is represented.