More than 1,500 burger buffs, who paid $150 each for the privilege of tasting and judging eighteen chef-created versions of America’s favorite sandwich, have voted: The winner of the Amstel Light Burger Bash, held during the 2008 Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival in Miami Beach (Feb. 21-Feb. 24), was Radius, one of Boston’s most acclaimed fine-dining restaurants. Chicago’s own Art Smith of Table 52 restaurant (Oprah’s personal chef) was one of the participants.

The burger was made with USDA Prime aged beef from Allen Brothers, from right here in Chicago, the leading supplier of America’s finest beef, USDA Prime, to the nation’s top steakhouses and restaurants. I love their meats and you can drive down to their store or get it delievered direct to your door. Click here to order your own burger deliveries! http://www.allenbrothers.com/

The star-studded, event-packed annual festival, arguably America’s premier culinary happening, was hosted by Rachael Ray and is and attended by celebrity chefs, wine and spirits producers, culinary personalities, food lovers and the major media. It attracted 30,000 visitors this, its seventh year.

Eighteen of the nation’s most talented restaurant chefs fired up their grills and unleashed their culinary creativity in a heated competition that Allen Brothers president Todd Hatoff described as “the World Series of the burger world.” . After each chef’s mini-burgers were sampled by the burger lovers and the votes tabulated, the coveted Burger Bash People’s Choice Award went to Radius chef and co-owner Michael Schlow for his “Schlow Burger.”Mr. Schlow selected his prime ingredient, Prime beef, from Allen Brothers. His prize-winning burger’s toppings were cheddar cheese, crispy onions and black pepper horseradish sauce.

On Sunday, Jackson Crum of Park Community Church spoke passionately about the forgiveness that is available through Jesus Christ.  In setting up the message from Romans 3, he showed an extremely powerful clip from the TV show, “ER”.

In this intense clip, the naked reality of a guilty heart and the intense yearning for forgiveness is amazingly and powerfully exposed in this clip from the NBC hit show, ER (so unusual for a network show – way to go NBC). The story unfolds as a dying man seeks forgiveness due to the weight of his sin — murder. He knows he will be judged after his death. As he lay in his hospital bed, this man seeks the truth from a squishy, new age hospital chaplain that cannot give him the truth because she does not know the truth herself.

The man asked her how he can find forgiveness, and told her that her new age religion was not helping. She kept saying that she just wanted to comfort him, to which his response was that he didn’t want comfort, he wanted the truth. He wanted to real chaplain who believed in forgiveness and hell…because he needed to know and hear it. He needed answers and wanted someone to look him in the eye and tell him how to  find forgiveness.

After playing the clip, Jackson quizzed the congregation – “What would we as Christians tell this man?”

I wonder if we are afraid to offend people? This man was hurting. He wanted to hear the truth…the truth that he was a sinner and that because of his sin, he deserved hell. He also needed to hear about Christ’s atoning death on the cross and the forgiveness that is available to all who seek it. He got a squishy message that God is good and loving (which of course He is) and each of us need to interpret what that means for ourselves, when he really wanted to hear is that God is just and righteous. And what he needed to hear was that only God can take away the weight of your sin. I would hope that if we are ever in a similar situation, we would tell the truth of God’s just anger at our sinfulness and the freedom from that sin that is found only in Christ Jesus.

Poweful, powerful stuff and a reminder that God can forgive anything.

I made it.

It is long (although a month shorter now) but I got through the long winter of central standard time and now we are set to get back top Daylight Saving Time, which brightens my spirit immeasurably! So now it is time to put the clocks forward one hour so that we have a longer evening sun.

Did you know that it was already time to move the clocks? Were you surprised to learn that Daylight Saving Time begins again this weekend? Here are some facts and figures about the time change:

1. On August 8, 2005, President George W. Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005. This Act changed the time change dates for Daylight Saving Time in the U.S. Because of the Act, beginning in 2007, most of the [Read more...]

Soon to reach its 1,000th translation, the “JESUS” film remains the most translated and widely distributed film in cinema history. With more than 6 billion exposures globally, “JESUS” tops Oscar greats such as “Gone With the Wind,” “The Sound of Music” and “The Wizard of Oz.” We used this movie each time our church, Park Community Church, visited an orphanage and the nearby migrant worker camps in the Baja of Mexico and each time I saw it, I saw the Gospel come alive on the screen.

Shortly following the film’s United States premiere in October 1979, requests poured in from around the world for additional translations, as people yearned to hear Jesus speak their heart language. Using stopwatch technology, Campus Crusade for Christ staff produced the first 30 translations of “JESUS” in 1980. This began the film team strategy, a major evangelism thrust for Campus Crusade, which continues to the present time.

In 1986, the completion of the Tok Pisin version for Papua New Guinea marked the “JESUS” film’s 100th translation. At this time, merely seven years after the film’s release, more than 315 million viewers worldwide had watched “JESUS.” When South Africa’s Tsonga “JESUS” film premiered in October 1991 as the 200th translation, a local dignitary introduced the film by saying, “We are proud as a people that the film is now in our language, so that it will go to the heart of our people, [to] teach them the real condition of life.” India’s Kashmiri speakers received “JESUS” in their heart language in 1994, marking the film’s 300th language translation.

Circling the globe to West Africa’s Ivory Coast, the “JESUS” film’s 400th translation into the Cebaara Senoufo language enabled the 862,000 primary speakers to hear the gospel in their own language. By April 1997, [Read more...]