WASHINGTON — Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee highlighted Tuesday the costs and human toll of President-elect Donald Trump’s stated plans to deport all undocumented immigrants, while Republicans sought to limit some of those concerns. Chair Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., said in his opening remarks the estimated 13 million undocumented immigrants in the United States fill every sector of American society. “It was an undocumented worker who was watching your grandchild this morning at the daycare center, an undocumented worker who walked carefully with your mother back to her room after breakfast, so she didn’t fall down,” Durbin said. “It was an undocumented worker with that leaf blower in your front yard over the weekend.” Democrats held the hearing as a kind of last stand for their views on immigration in the waning days of their majority in the Senate. They invited among their witnesses one of the undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers, who were brought to the U.S. as children and raised and educated here, yet face uncertain futures. Foday Turay, an assistant district attorney at the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, said during his opening statement the mass deportations currently planned would be devastating if they include immigrants like him. “Mass deportation hurts all of us, our family, our community and our society,” Turay said. “We owe it to ourselves and to our country to reject mass deportation and look for a solution for Dreamers whose lives have become deeply rooted in the country and strengthen our borders.” Durbin referenced a recent interview Trump gave on “Meet the Press,” when he said he’d be open to a legislative solution for the Dreamers, as among the “positive things” coming from the president-elect. “He really challenged us on the Democratic side to work with him when he came to the Dreamers,” Durbin said. “I accept the challenge. Name the time and place, Mr. President. I’ll be there.” Republicans on the committee, for their part, signaled an openness to working with Democrats on the solution for the Dreamers, although it appears it would have to be a component of a larger immigration scheme. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., suggested he’d be open to solution that would include them: “As to the Dreamers, hopefully we can find a solution to that problem.” “I think President Trump is pretty clear about DACA, but what do we tell the kids who’ve been brought here in the last year who are 7 years old?” Graham added. “Do you ever break this chain? So I’m hoping, Mr. Chairman, that once we regain control of our border and try to shut down the poisoning of America, we can have a logical, fractional discussion about Dreamers and others.” “But until we control that border, until we get control of the crime coming into this country, into the poison of America, that discussion cannot happen,” Graham said. Graham said Republicans are preparing a “transformative” border security funding bill, which by some reported estimates may total as much as $85 billion. Republicans at the hearing seemed to downplay the scope of the deportation effort, making the case that immigrants convicted of crimes should be a priority for removal, as well as undocumented immigrants who had received their final deportation orders after having their cases adjudicated in immigration court. The senators heard one estimate that the cost of Trump’s deportation plan could be as high as an annual cost of $88 billion, for the hiring and infrastructure needed to deport 1 million people a year, and a mass deportation campaign would lead to a loss in total GDP of 4.2 to 6.8 percent at minimum, as much as the Great Recession. Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, delivered those numbers to the committee as part of his testimony urging Congress to advance legislation creating pathways to citizenship instead of mass deportation. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said he is “part of a group of people here who ... believes there should be a path for Dreamers,” but that advocates such as Reichlin-Melnick were personally responsible for the failure of Congress to enact protections. “You cause people to go into their corners and get nothing done,” Tillis said. “That is why Chair Durbin has not been able to fulfill the promise on Dreamers every single year he’s tried for the last 20 because people like you make it impossible to have a — let me finish, and then I’ll let you speak, as long as the chair wants to — have a rational discussion about it, because if we don’t secure the border, I can’t get a path to citizenship for the DACA population.” Tillis’ time expired and he exited the committee hearing before Reichlin-Melnick had a chance to respond. After the hearing, Reichlin-Melnick said among the things he would like to say in response to Tillis was the importance of finding a solution that enables a “rising tide to lift all boats.” “If the choice is rupture the social fabric by deporting 13 million people or work to build greater prosperity, that’s what we should be doing,” Reichlin-Melnick said. Some Democrats on the committee made comments seeking common ground, asserting the 2013 immigration reform measure or the bipartisan border bill currently pending before Congress would be good starting points. Neither have any serious prospects with Republicans in control of the White House and Congress. The bipartisan border bill has been declared dead even by its supporters. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., brought up the bipartisan legislation, which was supported by Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., as a legislative solution for immigration that should be revisited. “Hopefully that can be at least a starting point for discussing it, even though it didn’t go anywhere last year,” Klobuchar said. Klobuchar pointed to proposals on “path to citizenship for Dreamers, on doing something for the temporary status people, on looking at people who have not committed crimes and what we can do to make sure our workforce is strong, I think there is a path here and I’m just continuing to focus on where we can go.” ©2024 CQ-Roll Call, Inc., All Rights Reserved. Visit cqrollcall.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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St. Charles’ Lindenwood University to acquire technical schoolEmail notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Turkey Day may be over, but rejoice in the leftovers, because you’ve got much to be thankful for, Baylor fans. What a difference a year makes? Nah, squash that. What a difference eight weeks make. Three thoughts from Baylor’s 45-17 win over Kansas Saturday afternoon at McLane Stadium. Look, when Lazarus came back from the dead, I’m sure it was rather mind-blowing that day, but it didn’t stop being impressive two months later. If ol’ Lazzy had been out there turning cartwheels and performing high-kicks 60 days after wearing embalming fluid as a cologne, you’d probably find yourself slack-jawed a lot of the time as an observer. That’s where we are with these plucky Bears. Dave Aranda’s team completed its resurrection from 2-4 to 8-4 with a thorough 45-17 dismantling of previously percolating Kansas in the regular-season capper on Saturday at McLane Stadium. It was as awe-inspiring on the last day of November as it was on the third Saturday in October, when the rehabilitation launched. These Bears should be the national spokesmen for resilience. They’ve had the most underrated turnaround in college football, transforming themselves from left-for-dead to alive-and- kicking-the-tails-of-everyone-in-their-way. Look, I was one of the guys kicking dirt onto their graves. I’ll own that turd in the punch bowl. Following Baylor’s home loss to BYU on Sept. 28 that dropped the Bears to 2-3 (with a loss the next week to Iowa State still to come), I wrote that the Aranda Era was “going nowhere” and that while there were still seven games remaining in the season, “that’s shaping up to be a death march now.” Yeah, I was wrong. Big-time. Death March? More like a Resurrection Strut. “Everybody knew we had a good team. I know we can point to the 2-4 (start), it’s easy to do,” Aranda said. “But I think everybody felt like we’re being buried, but we’re still alive. It’s hard to breathe when they’re putting dirt on you, you know what I mean? And, so, to get some oxygen and to breathe a little bit, I think you look at (defensive back) Devyn Bobby as a great example of that. Devyn has an opportunity to make picks and he drops them, and now all of the sudden he’s grabbing picks out of the air, all over the place. That’s just the power of belief and the power of being positive. It’s cool to see.” Bobby is certainly one of the poster boys for Baylor’s resurgence, though far from the only one. The secondary as a unit has been eviscerated at times, and absorbed probably the cruelest twist of the knife when they surrendered a Hail Mary touchdown to Colorado at the end of regulation of that overtime loss in Boulder. But now these dudes are making game-changing plays when it matters most. Bobby snared two interceptions on the day, highlighted by an absolute beauty in the end zone to snuff out a potential KU scoring drive. Those takeaways give the Baylor defense 13 picks on the season, including six in the last three games. That’s a marked improvement over last year, when the Bears made seven total interceptions and none over their final three games. “I think it’s just a will,” Baylor linebacker Kyler Jordan said. “It’s our end zone, and they’re not getting in. We made a few mistakes to let them get down there, and it’s like, are we going to finish it like we finished the season or are we just going to let them score? So, yeah, just a will.” Baylor Football: Highlights vs. Kansas | November 30, 2024 // via BaylorAthletics on YouTube Another leading character in the “Baylor Comeback Story” — coming soon to a YouTube video near you — is none other than Sawyer Robertson. You know, the guy who didn’t even start out the season as the starting quarterback. Robertson’s resilience has been writ large over the season. His consistency has been the offense’s stabilizing influence. Sure, he had a ragged game last week against Houston. But he still led the Bears to the win that day. And he was brilliant in this one against Kansas, throwing on-target darts like Ted Lasso in an English pub. Robertson completed his first 10 tosses of the game on his way to a 310-yard, four-TD performance. “I don’t really know. It’s a good question,” said Robertson, when asked if he could have imagined this at the start of the season. “I think God’s bigger than the situations and circumstances we find ourselves in. The 2-4 start, whether I was the starter or the backup, he’s bigger than all of that. “I couldn’t be happier to be where I’m at now with the teammates that I’m with, with the coaches that I’m with, it’s just such a cool moment and I’m going to enjoy it, just because it’s not (promised).” And then there’s Aranda. If anyone deserves to smile and enjoy himself, it’s Deadpan Dave. Granted, he’s not going to, because, again, he’s Deadpan Dave. He smiled twice during a 14-minute postgame press conference, and as usual it came when he tickled himself with one of his own analogies. At one point, in probably his most intense oratory of the presser, he talked about being “effin’ pissed off” about some of the yardage the Bears gave up defensively to the Jayhawks, who, remember, were playing for their postseason lives, needing a win to reach bowl eligibility. (Kansas had also beaten three straight ranked opponents coming into this one.) Baylor Football: Postgame vs. Kansas (Aranda, Ma'ae, Jordan, Robertson, Washington) | Nov. 30, 2024 // via BaylorAthletics on YouTube I’m not trying to suggest Aranda isn’t proud of his team or satisfied with their effort and their grit. Far from it. He talks about that all the time. I’m not even suggesting that he’s unhappy. He’s just not one that’s going to do a lot of joke-cracking or cheesy smiles in an interview setting. That’s not his personality, and that’s perfectly OK. But Aranda turned out to be the perfect coach at the perfect time for Baylor. Heck, I’ll take it a step further and pass along this message to Mack Rhoades: If you want to give Dave another contract extension, it makes a heck of a lot of sense now. (Not that Mack needs to take any advice from me, he’s doing just fine on his own.) “The growth has been exhausting,” said Aranda, when asked about his journey as a head coach this season. “But I think it’s important, because I think the game is changing.” Baylor put up more than 600 yards of offense and beat Kansas on Saturday to finish the season on a six-game winning streak. Aranda’s peel-the-Band-Aid-back frankness is probably his most refreshing quality, as he’s always quick to point out his mistakes and shortcomings. But he doesn’t flip it around the other way and thump his chest over his successes, which is a testament to his humility. He kept this team on track when it seemed like the season was completely derailed. Want proof? Remember that BYU loss I referenced earlier? The one where I was writing Baylor’s obituary (and a lot of other media and fans were doing the same)? In the midst of all of that, Aranda stayed calm, level-headed. He could see hope where few others could. “I don’t think last year really has too much to do with this year,” Aranda said that day. “I understand the record of last year. I think this is a very different team. And I think this circumstance for this game is very different than last year’s circumstance. I think we do have to play better.” He was right. We were wrong. The nice thing is, he’s not one to gloat. “I’m proud of that team in the locker room there. Just the grit that they showed,” Aranda said, following Saturday’s win over the Jayhawks. “I told them this — to go through the season that we did and to continue to believe and to not let the outside get on the inside, all those things are just really hard. Nowadays it’s multiplied times a hundred, the force of the outside. Just way proud of them.” You should be, Dave. It’s not every day you see somebody rise from the dead. Be the first to know Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items.
ANN/THE STRAITS TIMES – On the south side of Austin, Texas, engineers at semiconductor maker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) designed an artificial intelligence (AI) chip called MI300 that was released a year ago and is expected to generate more than USD5 billion in sales in its first year of release. Not far away in a north Austin high-rise, designers at Amazon developed a new and faster version of an AI chip called Trainium. They then tested the chip in creations including palm-size circuit boards and complex computers the size of two refrigerators. Those two efforts in the capital of Texas reflect a shift in the rapidly evolving market of AI chips, which are perhaps the hottest and most coveted technology of the moment. The industry has long been dominated by Nvidia, which has leveraged its AI chips to become a USD3 trillion behemoth. For years, others tried to match the company’s chips, which provide enormous computing power for AI tasks, but made little progress. Now the chips that AMD and Amazon have created – as well as customer reactions to their technology – are adding to signs that credible alternatives to Nvidia are finally emerging. For some crucial AI tasks, Nvidia’s rivals are proving they can deliver much faster speed, and at prices that are much lower, said analyst at Futurum Group Daniel Newman. “That’s what everybody has known is possible, and now we’re starting to see it materialise,” he said. The shift is being driven by an array of tech companies – from large competitors such as Amazon and AMD to smaller start-ups – that have started tailoring their chips for a particular phase of AI development that is becoming increasingly important. That process, called “inferencing”, happens after companies use chips to train AI models. It allows them to carry out tasks such as serving up answers with AI chatbots. ABOVE & BELOW: Nvidia has leveraged its artificial intelligence chips to become a USD3 trillion behemoth. PHOTO: THE STRAITS TIMES PHOTO: ENVATO “The real commercial value comes with inference, and inference is starting to gain scale,” said chief executive Cristiano Amon of Qualcomm, a mobile chipmaker that plans to use Amazon’s new chips for AI tasks. “We’re starting to see the beginning of the change.” Nvidia’s rivals have also started taking a leaf out of the company’s play book in another way. They have begun emulating Nvidia’s tactic of building complete computers – and not just the chips – so that customers can wring the maximum power and performance out of the chips for AI purposes. The increased competition was evident on December 3, when Amazon announced the availability of computing services based on its new Trainium 2 AI chips and testimonials from potential users including Apple. The company also unveiled computers containing either 16 or 64 of the chips, with ultrafast networking connections that particularly accelerate inferencing performance. Amazon is even building a kind of giant AI factory for the start-up Anthropic, which it has invested in, said chief executive of Amazon Web Services Matt Garman. That computing “cluster” will have hundreds of thousands of the new Trainium chips and will be five times as powerful as any that Anthropic has ever used, said founder and the chief compute officer Tom Brown of the start-up, which operates the Claude chatbot and is based in San Francisco. “This means customers will get more intelligence at a lower price and at faster speeds,” he said. In total, spending on computers without Nvidia chips by data centre operators, which provide the computing power needed for AI tasks, is expected to grow 49 per cent this year to USD126 billion, according to Omdia, a market research firm. Even so, the increased competition does not mean Nvidia is in danger of losing its lead. A spokesperson for the company pointed to comments made by Nvidia’s chief executive Jensen Huang, who has said his company has major advantages in AI software and inferencing capability. Huang has added that demand is torrid for the company’s new Blackwell AI chips, which he says perform many more calculations per watt of energy used, despite an increase in the power they need to operate. “Our total cost of ownership is so good that even when the competitor’s chips are free, it’s not cheap enough,” he said in a speech at Stanford University this year. The changing AI chip market has partly been propelled by well-funded start-ups such as SambaNova Systems, Groq and Cerebras Systems, which have lately claimed big speed advantages in inferencing, with lower prices and power consumption. Nvidia’s current chips can cost as much as USD15,000 each, and its Blackwell chips are expected to cost tens of thousands of dollars each. That has pushed some customers towards alternatives. Executive director Dan Stanzione of the Texas Advanced Computing Centre, a research centre, said the organisation planned to buy a Blackwell-based supercomputer next year but would most likely also use chips from SambaNova for inferencing tasks because of their lower power consumption and pricing. “That stuff is just too expensive,” he said of Nvidia’s chips. AMD said it expected to target Nvidia’s Blackwell chips with its own new AI chips arriving next year. In the company’s Austin labs, where it exhaustively tests AI chips, executives said inferencing performance was a major selling point. One customer is Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, which says that it has trained a new AI model, called Llama 3.1 405B, using Nvidia chips but that it uses AMD MI300s chips for providing answers to users. Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Meta are also designing their own AI chips to speed up specific computing chores and achieve lower costs, while still building big clusters of machines powered by Nvidia’s chips. In December, Google plans to begin selling services based on a sixth generation of internally developed chips, called Trillium, which is nearly five times as fast as its predecessor. Amazon, sometimes seen as a laggard in AI, seems particularly determined to catch up. The company allocated USD75 billion this year for AI chips and other computing hardware, among other capital spending. At the company’s Austin offices – run by Annapurna Labs, a start-up that it bought in 2015 – engineers previously developed networking chips and general-purpose microprocessors for Amazon Web Services. Its early AI chips, including the first version of Trainium, did not gain much market traction. Amazon is far more optimistic about the new Trainium 2 chips, which are four times as fast as previous chips. On December 3, the company also announced plans for another chip, Trainium 3, which was set to be even more powerful. Founder and the chief technology officer Eiso Kant of Poolside, an AI start-up in San Francisco, estimated that Trainium 2 would provide a 40 per cent improvement in computing performance per dollar compared with Nvidia-based hardware. Amazon also plans to offer Trainium-based services in data centres across the world, Kant added, which helps with inferencing tasks. “The reality is, in my business, I don’t care what silicon is underneath,” he said. “What I care about is that I get the best price performance and that I can get it to the end user.”
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VANCOUVER - Brayden Point scored twice and added two assists, and the Tampa Bay Lightning edged the Vancouver Canucks 3-2 on Sunday. Nikita Kucherov had a goal and two helpers for the Lightning (14-9-3), while Jake Guentzel put away the game winner on a power play late in the third period. Captain Quinn Hughes and Kiefer Sherwood found the back of the net for the Canucks (14-8-4), who fell to 4-6-3 at home. Tampa Bay’s Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped 22 of the 24 shots he faced and Kevin Lankinen made 28 saves for Vancouver. TAKEAWAYS Canucks: Hughes took a stick to the face 55 seconds into the game, missed more than 11 minutes, then returned to open the scoring 16:08 into the first period. It was the 50th goal of the defenceman’s career and extended his points streak to seven games with three goals and 10 assists across the stretch. Lightning: Kucherov, who returned to the lineup Sunday after missing two games with a lower-body injury, added another potent piece to Tampa’s red-hot power play. The Lightning were 2-for-4 with the man advantage and scored a power-play goal for the sixth straight game. KEY MOMENT Tampa took the lead 6:29 into the second when Kucherov sliced a pass to Point at the bottom of the faceoff circle and the Lightning winger blasted it in past Lankinen for his 17th of the season. Kucherov put the visitors on the board just a minute and 49 seconds earlier. KEY STAT Point scored his league-leading 10th power-play goal of the season. He’s one away from becoming the third player to score 100 power-play goals for the Lightning UP NEXT Canucks: Continue a six-game homestand Tuesday against the St. Louis Blues. Lightning: Visit the Oilers in Edmonton on Tuesday. This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 8, 2024.
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PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The mood in the Eagles' locker room was a bit more bleak than it should have been for a team riding a nine-game winning streak and celebrating a franchise rushing record. Former 1,000-yard receiver DeVonta Smith — who caught a touchdown pass and not much else — was exasperated at the offensive no-show. A.J. Brown, who holds a slew of team receiving records, had as much to offer in his sour postgame interview as he did on the field when he was held to four catches. This was the sullen attitude of a team still in the hunt for a top seed in the NFC? Here's the good news for the Philadelphia: Saquon Barkley rushed for 124 yards to break the Eagles season record , and Jalen Hurts threw two touchdown passes and ran for a score in Sunday's 22-16 win over the Carolina Panthers. Barkley's consistent brilliance aside, Hurts and the Eagles slogged through another rough offensive outing. “Everybody has a reason to want more,” Hurts said. The Eagles (11-2) maintained their position as the No. 2 team in the NFC, behind Detroit (12-1), after a mostly lethargic effort against the Panthers (3-10). Hurts’ passing numbers were a pedestrian 14 of 21 for 108 yards. Brown had four catches for 43 yards — and threw his helmet in anger after a three-and-out — and Smith had four catches for 37 yards. What do the Eagles need to improve on? “Passing,” Brown deadpanned. How tough was it for the receivers to find a rhythm? “Incredibly tough,” he said. Hurts didn't do enough to get Smith and Brown involved, one reason why the lowly Panthers stayed in striking distance until the final possession. He took four sacks. He held the ball too long as open receivers ran with their arms up trying to get their QB's attention. “I play my role in how we execute,” Hurts said. “But ultimately it's about what position we put ourselves in. It's not my choice.” That message will surely reverberate through coach Nick Sirianni and offensive coordinator Kellen Moore's offices this week. “I think that’s fair that the questions are about our pass game right now,” Sirianni said. The Eagles at least had Barkley to bail them out. Barkley added another milestone in his MVP push when he used a 9-yard run in the fourth quarter to surpass LeSean McCoy's Eagles record of 1,607 yards, set in 2013. Barkley now has 1,623 yards with four games left. “How cool is it that we have a team rushing record in Week 13?” Sirianni said. Hurts had flashes of form, like when he hit Grant Calcaterra with a 4-yard TD pass and Barkley ran in the 2-point conversion for a 22-16 lead early in the fourth. Bryce Young gamely moved the Panthers into Eagles territory on the final drive. He completed a 13-yard pass on fourth down that moved the ball to the 38, and a second-down pass to Xavier Legette gave the Eagles a brief scare when the receiver seemed to have the ball in the end zone. He didn't. Young eluded a pass rush on fourth down but his final attempt was incomplete. He finished 19 of 34 for 191 yards. Panthers coach Dave Canales said Legette “absolutely” had to make the catch. “That’s a big play we’re counting on. He’d be the first one to tell you he’s got to make that play,” Canales said. “Bryce steps up, makes a beautiful throw in the situation. We had the coverage we wanted, all that. Those are the plays that we’ve just got to find a way to make for us to get back on the winning column.” A 12 1/2-point underdog according to BetMGM Sportsbook, the Panthers played more like a team with playoff seeding at stake. Chuba Hubbard, who rushed for 92 yards and topped 1,000 on the season, made it 16-14 on a 1-yard run in the third quarter. Eddy Pineiro, who kicked a 38-yard field goal in the first quarter, missed the extra point. Eagles safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson, who was examined earlier for a concussion, changed the game late in the second quarter when he picked off Young’s deep pass at Philadelphia’s 41. Hurts scrambled 15 yards on the next drive and finished it with a 4-yard TD pass to Smith for a 14-10 lead. Gardner-Johnson’s pick bailed out an uneven effort by the Eagles. They failed to score on their opening drive for the 13th time this season, but the offensive bursts that usually follow never came. Hurts scored on tush push early in the second quarter, his 13th rushing score of the season, for a 7-3 lead. With nothing to lose, the Panthers went for it on fourth-and-3, and Young hit Tommy Tremble for a 3-yard TD and a 10-7 advantage. The Eagles did just enough. Their challenge now is getting the receivers' production up — and getting them happy — headed into the postseason. “Let the dissatisfaction fuel you for more,” Hurts said. “I think that’s always a fair place to be. And so we know there’s more out there for us, and we’re in pursuit of trying to find it.” Panthers kickoff and punt returner Raheem Blackshear suffered a chest injury. ... RB Jonathon Brooks left with a right knee injury — the same knee in which he tore the ACL last year with Texas. The Panthers had been very cautious bringing the second-round pick along. ... CB Jaycee Horn hurt his groin. Panthers: Host Dallas next Sunday. Eagles: Host cross-state rival Pittsburgh next Sunday. AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.As Jesus begins his public ministry, He encounters some regular, ordinary guys who will do extraordinary things. Simon and his brother Andrew, fishers of fish, are the first. Jesus calls them, “Follow me.” He will make of them fishers of people—men, women and children. Jesus comes across another couple of guys, mending their nets ... working with family and some hired workers, for they too are fishermen. And again, Jesus calls, “Follow me.” These men are “saints” in the sense that they have been called by Jesus to a holy purpose. This call from Jesus is not an invitation. Like, come if you want. Or go home and think about the opportunity and let me know if you’re up to it, if you’re interested, or if you have time. Jesus commanded these four. This reminds me of the occasion when Jesus commands His disciples to feed the thousands who gathered to hear Him. The disciples wanted Jesus to send them on their way to fend for themselves, but He commands them, “You feed them.” And they do. Our disciples leave behind family and the family business for the sake of a new purpose for their lives. They become the beginning community that Jesus is forming, a community that will be shaped by Jesus’ unconditional love, grace, mercy, compassion, forgiveness, and obedience. When Jesus speaks about the nearness of God’s Kingdom, in the person of Jesus, it literally touches and changes peoples’ livers – as in this call by Jesus, going from one vocation to a different one. Or in the case of people who are healed—lepers, those who couldn’t walk, those who couldn’t see, the ones who are possessed by the demons in their lives. Because of a one-on-one encounter with Jesus, people are restored in body, mind, in their relationships, and restored to community. Jesus looks inside of us ... He knows us ... but not just in the sense of as we are, but what we might become. Jesus sees the potential. He sees the potential of those He is calling and commanding to follow. He sees it in you, what you might become. Jesus will spend His time revealing what God is like — His love for the whole world, God’s desire for the healing of broken relationships, His generosity in forgiving. Jesus gives us knowledge for how to live in this world, how to be with each other—love one another, forgive one another, encourage one another, pray for one another. Jesus shows his disciples by doing, service above self, looking to needs of others, reaching out to those who are different, to the neglected, rejected, the outcast and judged. And they are to embrace these others in love. God is calling you in your baptism! And your experiences in the church—worship, Bible reading and study, praying, serving, being part of a faith community, the good that you learned and encouragement in the faith received from your parents, grandparents, Sunday School teachers and pastors through the years—all of that is equipping you for ministry. The fishing trade of those first disciples likely served as part of their preparation for what Jesus commanded of them, a movement from fishing for fish to fishing for people. Days when they had small catches and other times when they made a huge haul. Times when the waters were calm, and others when storms arose, and having to deal with fears. Times of celebration and Sign up to get our free daily email of the biggest stories! occasions of disappointment. Today, the Church can’t afford for pastors to die or retire. Why such a comment? The trends we’ve been seeing for a number of years in many of our denominations, is that fewer young people are considering a vocation as an ordained pastor or priest. Even churches needing an interim to serve for a period of time till they can call a new pastor find it more difficult with the aging and death of clergy. Churches are having to develop new ways of doing ministry, including the formation of cooperative ministries involving groups of churches working together and sharing pastoral staff. Denominations are also developing new ways of educating their seminary students, with students learning with the help of technology and at the same time, serving in church sites under supervision. Now more than ever, we must lift up “the priesthood of all believers,” understanding that each of us has been called by God to serve because of our baptism. Everyone is a minister! The baptized have been gifted with faith and the Holy Spirit. And the gifts of the Holy Spirit{span id=”docs-internal-guid-c9446139-7fff-1f59-6a84-e988e148e1f2”}{span}— {/span}{/span}preaching, teaching, healing, compassionate caring and other gifts—will serve to not only build up the body of Christ but also to reach persons who have no connection with Christ and the Church. St. Paul writes in his letter to the Ephesians, “(Christ) himself granted that some are apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry ,,,” When youth are provided training and opportunity to serve in particular ministries of the church, they do well and come to see that they are truly important persons in the Church. As youth and adults become more involved in the ministry and fellowship of the Church, the more they see themselves as an important part of the community. A parishioner named Barbara underwent training for hospital visitation. And even though she had reservations how she might be received as a lay person by those she visited, found persons genuinely appreciative of her presence, her sharing the Word, listening to them, praying with them, and at times offering the Sacrament. Another parishioner visiting a 100-year-old Alzheimer resident in a nursing home, found that sometimes just holding an old woman’s hand is a ministry of care and compassion. Jesus is calling! “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore, ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
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