Donna and i had a great time at the CRCC Marriage Matters retreat this past weekend. They had asked us to speak about listening and speaking as components of a healthy marriage. The Chinese character to the right means 'to listen', and it nicely lines up with most of the elements of real listening:

• Hearing (ears)
• Attending (a line indicating undivided attention)
• Understanding (eyes representing "I see!")
• Responding (the heart)
• Remembering

(a larger version is linked to this picture if you want a closer look)

Though we've both taught or preached individually in other settings, this was our first experience in doing so as a couple. It was hard! We have very different preparation and presentation styles. But lots of people commented on how valuable it was to have both halves of a couple, and for us to be able to share our experiences as concrete illustrations of the teaching points.

 It was a small enough group that we were able to have real closeness together, which was helped by some great exercises (again, mostly Donna's good ideas) for active listening with feedback, using emotional word pictures to describe your spouse, and praying the Scriptures for each other. Here's another great graphic Donna found that illustrates how we're connected to each other as spouses. We used this as the background for the presentations.

I was impressed by how much honesty and openness the other couples attending were willing to give: so often our marriages are lived out mostly in private. I think many couples left deeply touched, and with new tools for building healthy marriages.

The My Bible Facts webpage has some interesting, and a lot of not-so-interesting, statistics and other facts about the Bible (unfortunately only KJV).

His count of verses in the NT is 7957: but my count from the Interlinear Greek New Testament (IGNT) is 7956. I wonder where the disagreement is?