This Week's Program

This week's featured story

Career & Family

Ken Medema is a Christian musician who, although blind, has been playing piano since the age of five and has degrees in piano, voice performance and music therapy. He also has a wife and son and now grandchildren.

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My Turn

This week's My Turn author

Media Matters

Steve Carpenter

The Tree of Life, Terrence Malick’s cinematic masterpiece, is about God and family, two recurring themes on Shaping Families. It opens with God’s response to Job’s complaint, found in Job 38, verses 4 and 7, “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations … when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” With these words the director indicates the film will wrestle with one of humanity’s deepest theological questions, “Why do good people suffer?”

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This Week's Resources

ONLINE
Ken Medema’s Website 

Personal songs. Ken composes “personal songs” for special events: birthdays, celebrations, retirement, anniversaries.

Home Again CD. Family Promise is an organization working to shelter homeless families. Ken’s CD “Home Again,” produced for Family Promise, is all about what it means to be a family.

Kid’s Play CD. This CD zeroes in on the feelings of kids, from a trip to the zoo to sitting in a rocking chair to feeling alone.

Media Reviews. Steve Carpenter is one of the regular media reviewers for Third Way Café’s “Media Matters” column which is sent weekly as an email subscription. Sign up at: http://www.thirdway.com/subscriptions/

The Tree of Life. Trailer and more details about the movie Steve reviewed, “The Tree of Life.”

More Music CDs. Many more Mennonite Hour a cappella music CDs are available from Third Way Media Store.

Related Resources

ONLINE 
CareerPlanning. Articles on keeping strong family life while involved in a busy career.
 
BOOKS
Shaping Your Family’s Future: A Resource for New and Expectant Parents This book is about how past, present and future relationships will affect raising your children. The book is part of a curriculum. More information is available here.
 
Lasting Marriage: The Owner’s Manual, by Harvey Yoder. This “manual” looks at premarital preparation, relationship maintenance, and sustaining a healthy marriage during the child-rearing years.

Burton's Blog

Is Anyone Listening?

Burton Buller

 
Ken Medema’s insights into the importance of listening are made even more poignant by his physical blindness. He’s learned to listen carefully, for listening is how he perceives the world.
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Next Week

What are your biggest concerns about your family’s use of media? What do you and your children fight over regarding media? Do you wish there was a way you could know more what is going on in the media world and how to connect with your children? Next week Shaping Families talks with Rebecca Randall, an educator from the Common Sense media website who shares helpful ideas.

Favorite Family Recipes

Pomegranate Chicken

Pomegranate ChickenA listener submitted this recipe and said: "I have created a new recipe I really like. I ran out of rice so I did it with barley instead, very tasty hot or cold."  

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Updates

Current Offer

The Shaping Families free offer from this week’s program is no longer available. Visit our online store at www.MennoMedia.org/store if you would like to purchase the item offered. Some items are not offered on the store.