Luke 4:31-37 (NIV)

³¹Then he went down to Capernaum, a town in Galilee, and on the Sabbath he taught the people. ³²They were amazed at his teaching, because his words had authority.

³³In the synagogue there was a man possessed by a demon, an impure spirit. He cried out at the top of his voice, ³⁴“Go away! What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!”

³⁵“Be quiet!” Jesus said sternly. “Come out of him!” Then the demon threw the man down before them all and came out without injuring him.

³⁶All the people were amazed and said to each other, “What words these are! With authority and power he gives orders to impure spirits and they come out!” ³⁷And the news about him spread throughout the surrounding area.

Reflection

Jesus public ministry doesn’t take much time to ramp up. The authority of his teaching is demonstrated in power immediately. After he teaches he goes on to confront a demon that has possessed a man. Notice that Jesus doesn’t need to appeal to any other higher authority or use an embellished formula in casting out the demon. This is not a show or a spectacle. He is direct and his authority and power is absolute. Jesus demonstrates that God’s kingdom is invading the kingdom of the world, and has come to defeat the forces of evil and set captives free.

Responding to the Transmission

We can read these words and even experience these things around us, but still just respond in amazement and remain a spectator. But do we know that this power that was at work is the same power that is at work in us today? Do we know that this authority is the same authority Jesus has today? Yes! Through and through we are meant to know that this is true. Let’s come with hearts surrendered and ask that we would know and trust in Jesus power and authority that has set us free to live the new life in Christ with surety and victory.

MarylandReporter today noted that unless the U.S. Congress acts by January 1, physicians will face a Medicare reimbursement rate cut of 30%. Expense concerns have motivated some doctors to close their practices and go to work for hospitals, says UMBC Erickson School Professor Joe Gribbin, a former associate commissioner for the Social Security Administration. He explains, “The implications [of changes to reimbursement rates] are huge not just for physicians but for the beneficiary community, and they’re not well understood.” The article was also picked up by Citybizlist Baltimore.

On Facebook, it’s 4.74 degrees of separation, not six, according to a new study by study by researchers at Facebook and the university of Milan.

“Think back to the last time you were in a crowded airport or bus terminal far from home. Did you consider that the person sitting next to you probably knew a friend of a friend of a friend of yours? In the 1960s, social psychologist Stanley Milgram’s “small world experiment” famously tested the idea that any two people in the world are separated by only a small number of intermediate connections, arguably the first experimental study to reveal the surprising structure of social networks.

With the rise of modern computing, social networks are now being mapped in digital form, giving researchers the ability to study them on a much grander, even global, scale. Continuing this tradition of social network research, Facebook, in collaboration with researchers at the Università degli Studi di Milano, is today releasing two studies of the Facebook social graph.

First, we measured how many friends people have, and found that this distribution differs significantly from previous studies of large-scale social networks. Second, we found that the degrees of separation between any two Facebook users is smaller than the commonly cited six degrees, and has been shrinking over the past three years as Facebook has grown. Finally, we observed that while the entire world is only a few degrees away, a user’s friends are most likely to be of a similar age and come from the same country.

A story in the New York Times, Separating You and Me? 4.74 Degrees points out how the scale of social network studies have grown.

“The original “six degrees” finding, published in 1967 by the psychologist Stanley Milgram, was drawn from 296 volunteers who were asked to send a message by postcard, through friends and then friends of friends, to a specific person in a Boston suburb. The new research used a slightly bigger cohort: 721 million Facebook users, more than one-tenth of the world’s population.”

…Or at least it is according to the U.S. government.

On Tuesday, Congress decided that the tomato paste on pizza qualifies it as a vegetable in school lunches, conveniently dodging new USDA guidelines that would have required more fresh fruit and vegetables be served in school cafeterias.

This may be a case in which dollars speak louder than science, as the food industry spent more than $5.6 million lobbying against the proposed regulation.

Ms. Marion nestle, nutritionist and Professor at New York University notes

“Schools are supposed to set an example of many values of society, and one of them ought to be eating well. It’s unfortunate that the food industry is putting profits before the health of children,”

The fruits (pun intended) of a poor childhood diet can be seen as early as 2020, when projections say 83 percent of men and 72 percent of women will be overweight or obese.

Healthcare costs related to cardiovascular disease, already projected to reach $1.1 trillion per year by 2030, could rise even further.

While obviously school lunches are not the only factor in America’s obesity epidemic, more fruits and non-pizza vegetables in school lunches certainly couldn’t hurt.

In comparison, the Agriculture Department has projected the proposed school lunch rules would have added about $6.8 billion over the next five years, or about 14 cents to the cost of a school lunch. Food for thought? Definitely.