Celebrating our Women: Saadia Doyle

Howard forward Saadia Doyle was named the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) Player of the Week on February 21st. That week, Doyle (Forward, 5-11, Sophomore) averaged 28.0 points, 1.5 rebounds and 2.5 steals to aid the Lady Bison to two winsagainst Norfolk State and Florida A&M. In the 66-49 win over Norfolk State, Doyle posted a career-high 38 points, 10 rebounds, and stole three passes. She followed that performance with a double-double of 18 points, 13 rebounds and two steals in against Florida A&M. For the week, Doyle shot 48.0 percent from the floor and 80.0 percent from the charity stripe. On February 26th, she was named the HSRN Player of the week.

And just recently, she was named the MEAC PLAYER OF THE YEAR!!! Doyle, the 2010 MEAC Rookie of the Year, averaged 18.2 points and 8.9 rebounds to aid the Lady Bison to a 9-6-conference record and a 13-16 overall mark. The Atlanta, GA native reached the 1,000 point mark against Maryland Eastern Shore on February 26 to become the second player in Howard history to score 1,000 points in only two years of competition. The sophomore currently leads the conference in scoring and ranks among the top five in free-throw percentage (76.0) and minutes played (34.9). She is also ranked 22nd in the nation with 13 double-double performances.

MARCH

It's a new month with brand new mercies!

March is Women's Month, and so the theme for this month is “Virtuous Women.” We will be exploring what it means to be a woman, and what it means to be virtuous. Send in articles about women who impacted your life, different experiences you’ve had, or stories about women who’ve overcome. If you would like to send in an entry, please email it to  nulife.blog@gmail.com. If you have any other questions/comments, please send it there as well.

Virtuous Woman Campaign – REVAMPED

Every spring semester, we have our Virtuous Woman Campaign. This semester,  we decided to attack the campaign from an alternate method. Instead of having a Virtuous Woman Week, we are launching a PR campaign to recognize and celebrate virtuous women as well as challenge people’s understanding of what it means to be virtuous. We won’t be having events. Instead, we will be doing the following:

· Handing out carnations to the women students during prayer at the flagpole

· Posting blogs and facebook messages/statuses examining the meaning of virtuousity, stories about real life virtuous women, tributes in song, verse, and visual art, etc.

· Posting tweets encouraging women to examine their own meaning of virtuous and remain virtuous

· Chalking the campus as well (see previous)

· Flyers, etc. at the prayer booth giving tribute to virtuous women

· Youtube videos

We will also be having the White Room at the end of March. Part of its mission is to shed light/give testimony to the individual different ways we walk out the process to becoming virtuous. The theme for the White Room is “Letting Go of My Ex,” moving on from different “ex-es” to become more and more whole, to become more and more virtuous.

Have a great month, and we hope the blogs will help you deeper your understanding of all things!

deeper love

I occasionally receive email devotionals from Josh Harris (look him up, he's great), and I received this one the other day about a controversial topic: HELL. This one man is apparently writing a book on it, and in a promo video raised a few questions. Another man made it a point to try to answer them. I felt it was an accurate and clear portrayal of things, and also showed incredible love amidst anger (for that is what God has). Check it out:

Bell: Will only a few select people make it to heaven? And will billions and billions of people burn forever in hell? And if that's the case, how do you become one of the few? Is it what you believe? Or what you say? Or what you do? Or who you know? Or something that happens in your heart? Or do you need to be initiated or baptized or take a class or be converted or be born again? How does one become one of these few?

Answer: Yes, that is true. Jesus taught that a select number of people would make it to eternal life. Most people will choose the broad way that leads to destruction, but a few will choose the narrow way to life (Matthew 7:13-14; Luke 13:23-28). Nevertheless, the Bible also teaches that there will be a great multitude which no one will be able to count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb (Revelation 7:9).

I don't know if anyone knows what the exact number will be, but the Bible teaches that at the end of the age there will only be two groups of people: those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life and those whose are not. All those whose names are not written in the book will be thrown into the lake of fire. This will no doubt be a countless throng of people (Revelation 20:10-15).

There is nothing that any person can do to be counted among the saved. Salvation from the penalty of sin is all of grace. God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son so that whoever believes in Him might not perish but have everlasting life (John 3:16). God offers us His Son, and the only way to receive Him is by faith. Jesus said it this way, "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent" (John 6:29). If you want to become one of the few, then you have to trust in Jesus alone for your salvation.

Bell: Well, and then there is the question behind the questions. The real question: What is God like? Because millions and millions of people were taught that the primary message, the center of the gospel of Jesus, is that God is going to send you to hell unless you believe in Jesus. So what gets subtly sort of caught and taught is that Jesus rescues you from God. But what kind of God is that that we would need to be rescued from this God? How could that God ever be good? How could that God ever be trusted? And how could that ever be good news?

Answer: What is God like? This is the ultimate question and how one answers this question will determine how all the others get answered. God is holy. He loves righteousness, and He hates sin. He is the most valuable, precious being in the universe. He is worthy of all our worship, devotion, and obedience. All people fall short of their obligation to love and worship God, and this falling short is called sin (Romans 3:23). Through our sin, we all have earned God's just sentence of death (Romans 6:23). In fact, God says that He is angry with those who do not repent of their sin. The Bible says that God is storing up His anger for impenitent sinners (Romans 2:5) and that it will be a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of an angry God at the judgment (Hebrews 10:27, 31). The Bible teaches that God is both the treasure of heaven and the terror of hell. God will punish His enemies.

You are asking how can God be good if He sentences sinners to eternal damnation, but I think you have the question backwards. The real question is how can God be good if He doesn't send sinners to judgment. [I personally love this statement! I NEVER thought about it in that way before. If we all agree that murderers need to be punished, that people who do wrong need to be punished, then why do we think that God is mean and not just when He judges us for sinning?!? It is the ultimate act of LOVE that He would pardon our wrongs and look past them. It is in His very nature to hate sin and to judge/punish, but He goes against this nature because of Hi love for us. AMAZING.] In other words, how can God be good while forgiving sinners? This is the question Paul wrestled with in Romans 3, and he concluded that God set forth His son Jesus as a propitiation for sin. That means that all of the wrath and anguish that would have taken us an eternity in hell to endure, God poured out on His Son in the moment of the cross. God is good because He settles our sin debt in the cross of Jesus Christ, our substitute. This is good news because God clears away guilt through the cross and offers eternal life through the resurrection of Jesus. Anyone who believes in Jesus in this way can have forgiveness and eternal life. This is more than good news; it's the best of news.

Bell: Why do lots of people want nothing to do with the Christian faith? Because of these questions. They see it has an endless list of absurdities and inconsistencies, and they say, "Why would I ever want to be a part of that?"

Answer: Sin will always appears as a trifle to those whose view of God is small. If you were to discover a little boy pulling the legs off of a grasshopper, you would think it strange and perhaps a little bizarre. If the same little boy were pulling the legs off of a frog, that would be a bit more disturbing. If it were a bird, you would probably scold him and inform his parents. If it were a puppy, that would be too shocking to tolerate. You would intervene. If it were a little baby, it would be so reprehensible and tragic that you would risk you own life to protect the baby. What's the difference in each of these scenarios? The sin is the same (pulling the limbs off). The only difference is the one sinned against (from a grasshopper to a baby). The more noble and valuable the creature, the more heinous and reprehensible the sin. And so it is with God.
If God were a grasshopper, then to sin against Him wouldn't be such a big deal and eternal punishment wouldn't be necessary. But God isn't a grasshopper, He's the most precious, valuable, beautiful being in the universe. His glory and worth are infinite and eternal. Thus to sin against an infinitely glorious being is an infinitely heinous offense that is worthy of an infinitely heinous punishment.

We don't take sin seriously because we don't take God seriously. We have so imbibed of the banality of our God-belittling spirit of the age that our sins hardly trouble us at all. Our sin seems small because we regard God as small. And thus the penalty of hell--eternal conscious suffering under the wrath of God--always seems like an overreaction on God's part. If we knew God better, we wouldn't think like that.

peace, hope, love. . . beauty

Romans 5: 1-5 “ Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.  And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.  Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.  

Any situation, trial, or struggle in our lives should not hinder us from receiving peace and having hope in God.  His love for us is so amazing, so powerful, and abundant that the hardships in life can be beautiful.  Each and everyday, we wake up with new mercy, new compassion, and new grace.  With every “hard thing” in our life, God wants to build us up.  He wants us to keep persevering so that in the end we won’t be lacking anything.  Like this picture, our lives can be peaceful.  Our lives can have serenity.  Our lives can be beautiful; we just have to completely submit to God.  Be naked.  Beauty is obtainable.