Our first Sharing Christ volunteer opportunity in 2012 is coming up on Saturday, March 31. We are looking for volunteers to make bag lunches, do food prep, serve dinner, and clean up. We will make chicken casserole, marinated coleslaw, green beans, and dessert for 135 to 150 people. We will begin at 4:30 p.m. and work until we've finished cleaning up, around 7:00 p.m.

This year, FPC takes on the responsibility of providing enough sandwich bread and snack cakes for at least 70 bag lunches on each of our service dates. We will also provide the bread or rolls for that Saturday's evening meal. If you would like to donate bread products or volunteer your time, please email Tammy Connolly at lconn4691@btes.tv or call her at 968-3831 (home) or 276-628-7213 (work).

FPC's next two Sharing Christ service dates are September 15 and November 24 (Thanksgiving weekend). The Sharing Christ Mission is located at Sixth and State Streets, Bristol, TN. Local organizations participating in the mission take turns providing a hot, nutritious, free meal each Saturday evening to any in need, as well as the opportunity to worship on Sunday morning.

There is still time to register for our annual Women's Retreat, to be held again this year at Blowing Rock Conference Center in the mountains of North Carolina. Join the women of FPC March 16-18 for a weekend of Bible-based sharing and exploring led by your faithful sisters in Christ. The planning committee has devised a schedule that allows group discussions as well as quiet time, contemplation as well as outings. There will be time for fellowship and for shopping, hiking, or napping.

Flyers and registration forms can be found throughout the church, and scholarship assistance is available. We hope you will join us!

Our participation in the Fairmount Elementary School snack program continues to make a difference in the lives of children whose parents cannot afford to buy them an afternoon snack. Members of our congregation are now being asked to help the Neighborhood Initiatives Steering Committee stock up on vanilla wafers for these students.

Please bring your donated boxes of vanilla wafers in the Little Red House in the Fellowship Hallway. The committee will take them to the school, and the teachers will divide them into snack portions as needed.

Your loving contribution gives a boost in both energy and dignity to children from low-income families by allowing them to enjoy snacks with their classmates. Say a prayer of blessing as you send them on their way!

Virtually every Sunday School teacher of small children has known an experience similar to the following. The class is learning about Jesus and his apostles as they travel through Galilee preaching and healing. A small boy in the back of the room, conscientiously mindful of his mom's admonitions about personal hygiene, blurts out a concern. "Did Jesus and his friends find rest stops along the road? How did they go to the bathroom? Where did they wash their hands?" After a good deal of clearing of the throat, punctuated by several "ers" and "uhs," the teacher replies that it is a very good question and they must look into it sometime.

That teacher needed a copy of the book we are reviewing today, Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit: Jewish Daily Life in the Time of Jesus, by Jodi Magness. Let's face it, most of us have become accustomed to such sanitized portrayals of the activities of Jesus and other biblical figures that we hardly have any real understanding of daily living conditions in the Near East 2,000 years ago. Let me challenge you. How often did Jesus and his apostles bathe? Daily? Once a week? Monthly? Never? What's your answer? That's the purpose of this book-to use archaeological evidence and a variety of written sources to fill in the biblical story and amplify what life was really like in biblical Palestine. Jodi Magness, Kenan Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence in Early Judaism at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, has done a fantastic job of getting at the sources and providing a realistic portrayal. Her bibliography alone runs more than 30 closely packed pages.

Topics include dining customs and communal meals, Sabbath observance and fasting, the making and wearing of clothing, household accommodations and life, the use of coins and issues of taxation, purifying the body and hands, attitudes toward "creeping and swarming creatures" and animals such as dogs, chickens, and pigs. You can read this book straight through (186 pages) or use it as an excellent reference for specific questions, such as those the little boy asked above. Magness has also illustrated it with a large number of photographs.

Frankly I often have difficulty conceptualizing Jesus as a human being like the rest of us, engaging in the activities of daily life, such as communal bathing with his disciples, perhaps even bantering or joking with them. All too often, Jesus is Mr. Sobersides, far too serious and otherworldly to be truly like me. But that becomes my denial of the words of the articles of our faith which profess that Jesus was fully God and fully human. This book is a corrective that reminds me that we must think of Jesus as living completely and fully as a human in first century Palestine. Look for this helpful volume on display in our church library.