This was the scene my whole run yesterday!  It was the most pleasant run ever - no one yelling at me, the streets were oddly quiet.  Where were all the "obibini?"  They were watching Ghana play Nigeria in the African Cup of Nations!  While I was running, I passed several places like this, where 50 or more people were crowded around one small TV.  This one is right across from our school, many of our teachers and students were inside.  I promise there really was a TV in there...

Can you see it?

And when Ghana won...

So funny.  All the cars are honking their horns - people dancing in the street!  If you want to keep up with the matches here's the link for the African Cup .

On a totally different note, something really stuck out to me in my reading this week - from 2 Timothy 3:

"But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty.  For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of Godliness, but denying its power."

I think this really speaks to my, our generation.  So many of these things are characteristic of who we have become.  I felt the Holy Spirit convicting me, especially in the last lines here - "having the appearance of Godliness, but denying its power."  If you had given me the first part of that and asked me to fill in the last word, I would have thought it would say "denying its truth," or "denying its holiness," or "denying its goodness," or even "denying God himself."  But it didn't, it says denying its POWER.  I think our generation is taught to be logical, to base thought on proof, on things we can see.  Can we see God's power? Sometimes God's power hits us in the face, but more often its something we have to listen for, to look for.  

In Jerusalem, rulers and elders, high priests and scribes questioned Peter,"By what power or by what name did you do this? Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, 'Rulers of the people and elders, if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead - by Him this man is standing before you well." - Acts 4:8-10

"For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes..." - Romans 1:16

God is the creator of all things, He is the author and perfecter of our faith, He knows our hearts and minds, He even knows what we are going to say before we say it.  So, let's all be challenged not to just "have the appearance of godliness," but to take time to see God move in each of our lives, to see His power change us.  To see His power allow us to do things we could not before; to love and forgive others, like we cannot not on our own.

"Great is our Lord, and abundant in power;

His understanding is beyond measure."

Psalm 147:5