“God loved us while we were yet monsters.”
In reply to an entry a year ago about “God sending a deluding influence” on people, I understand there to be a possible better translation: “And because [they refused to love the truth], God will abandon them to the strong influence of delusion, leading them to believe the lie, so that they…will be judged or condemned” (2 Thessalonians 2:11-12; see this hermeneutics Stack Exchange comment). This is God playing the, “OK, children, I give you over to what you already seem given to. It’s not going to turn out well for you.”
“Sexual puritanism is an attempt to safeguard possessions more valuable than pleasure. The good that it does outweighs the evil, the English knew this. They were seriously repressed, largely because repression prevented them from carelessly throwing away those things—chastity, marriage and the family—which slip so easily from the grasp of people whose natural tendency is to keep each other at a distance.”
— Roger Scruton, “English Character” in England: an Elegy
“Being incarnate was an embarrassment, a design-fault that God may have intended in the Italians but surely not in the English.”
— Roger Scruton, on the supposedly English “quiet suspicion of sensuality”
“I often think our broken church/social structures reflect our homes. Families teach us that even when are different and disagree, we are one.”
From church last week in greatly abbreviated form: Jesus’ lesson of the fig tree is not embarrassing in the slightest if we hear Him to be saying, “Guys, don’t marvel at this. This is God we’re talking about. If you know God has set to do something, to intervene in some way in the created order, then know that He is God and that therefore all you’ll have to do is say the word, and He’ll do it. Fig trees? Mountains? No problem. He is God.” Jesus’ words aren’t carte blanche. They are carte divine, and while we get to sign it, God is the one who does the deed.
Rules Governing Scheduling Engagements
In a given week, I will schedule:
- zero social appointments during a workday,
- no more than one pre-workday social appointment,
- minimal workday appointments for household business,
- no more than four midevening engagements, including no more than one that pulls me away from the children,
- no more than one late-evening appointment (e.g., movie night, phone conversation) if I have more than one project going, but up to three such appointments when I am keeping to my one-project-at-a-time limit,
- anything I care to Saturday & Sunday before dinner, and
- anything appealing that I care to schedule that presents itself same day.
In a given month, I will schedule no more than two travel weekends, whose evenings count toward the midevening engagement constraint.
Additionally, I will not forget the Sabbath.
Finally, to stick to all the above, I will become well-rehearsed in saying, “Let me get back to you.”
For us who are heterosexual, the task as it regards the sexual behavior of our brethren who are homosexual or bisexual is to support their clean conscience. If I am open and affirming of chaste homosexual expression but my gay friend is not, I will not try to persuade my gay friend toward my point of view. I will support him in his efforts to keep to the ethic he thinks is right. See Romans 14.
It’s time to build house, home, and family. It’s time to say no to other stuff. It’s time to bang out a deer or two, bang out a website for the Houserville Community Garden, then one for Mike, then one for church. It’s not time to travel. It’s not time to sing out. It’s time to prepare to be foster parents again.
Sullivan: Mom, come look at my parfait!
Carla: Oh, cute! It’s like a happy face.
Sullivan: Well, I was trying to make it look like a icosahedron.
“Gunplay”
Éa, shooting the cereal boxes with her finger, “Patchoo! Patchoo!” Carla remarks that her own gun sound when she was a little girl was equally un-gun sounding while the boys always seemed to have advanced sound machines in their repertoire. Éa responds that her gun shoots sneezes, not bullets. “Patchoo! Patchoo! That’s how it started the Cold War.”
The bulk of the New Testament is not about how to get to heaven.
Scripture is not a room filled with clairvoyant theologians who have the same ideas and agree on every point. It is better understood as a room of wise elders, each an invited guest because of his unique voice and relation to God. Every elder has insight, but no elder has all of the answers, nor are any of them wholly liberated from humanity’s broken, sinful condition. Every voice is of value, but each will perhaps push too far in one direction and not enough in another, and each will push, in some way or another, in the wrong direction. When we read Scripture well, we listen in on the conversations of these elders, and, in conversations with other readers, seek as best we can to understand God’s voice. It is through this communal reading experience that God points us to his one and only solution for our broken condition: Jesus Christ.
—Kent Sparks, “Genesis 1-11 as Ancient Historiography,” from Genesis: History, Fiction, or Neither?, via Pete Enns
In our house, blankets have names and genders.
Regarding the temptation to read everything there is to know about the state of our government and then make public comment—and anything really: Do nothing out of mimetic desire. Do it only if it is truly self-donation for the benefit of another or others. Not merely virtue signaling and group belonging. Not merely imitation. I’m glad Jason is writing what he is writing and that it’s helping folks. But I don’t need to.
I am worried that I am playing the part of a quietist. But I strongly believe in the importance of building our kingdom-establishing institutions (e.g., blood donations, churches, relationships) in stable ways. I do not need to comment on current events unless love compels me.
Once you understand Paul is talking about observing Jewish traditions and the Mosaic law, the problems between him and James all but vanish.
I’m through with performing music for only the bourgeoisie. It’s time to visit prisoners and sick folks and sing for them.
Reading Twitter will ruin my life.
“May we” is a way to say prayer, blessing, and exhortation all rolled into one.
Pop, where innovation is primarily sonic. Classical, where innovation is primarily musical. Jazz, where innovation is…innovative.
“Your faith has saved you” (Luke 7:50). I realized the other night that there is a sensical way of summarizing faith’s role in healings and miracles: It’s not always necessary (cf. Acts 12:12-16), and it’s not always sufficient (cf. life), but sometimes, it’s definitely the clincher.
He who hurries his footsteps errs, indeed. Spurty much? This reminds me a me. It is such a joy to exercise my spurty strength, but it is often a mess afterwards. I should not act like this, as funny as it is.
Ps 148 gives us a picture of how we might ‘rule’ and ‘serve’ simultaneously. In that Psalm, the psalmist summons all creation to give God praise—all angels, sun, moon, stars, sea monsters, fire, hail, mountains, wild animals, flying birds, kings, young and old. What if our rule in creation means that we ensure that creation can voice its praise to God? And how does hail praise God? By doing what hail does—crash down upon the earth. And how does the cheetah praise God? By chasing a Thompson’s Gazelle at 60+ mpg around a tight curve, keeping its tail steady, stretching out over 22 feet per stride. William Brown follows the environmental logic of this psalm:
Is there any doubt that God delights in watching the fastest land animal? That creation’s goodness is bound up with their plight?
I know that we all have our causes, and not all people are called to protect the cheetah. But some are, and it matters to God.
—Matt Lynch, “Genesis and Endangered Species”
Date: January 18, 2017 at 3:12:43 PM EST
colleague: FYI no issue with Gus Mady, he just wasn’t tilting his cab panel back enough to get the hinges on. =) he called a apologized a hundred times. He’s super nice.
me: Good. I’m glad you asked again.
colleague: me too. and thanks for you help too
me: You’re welcome. Glad he and I spoke. I probably wouldn’t have the chance to meet him at NTEA if I didn’t field his call.
colleague: divine appointment!
me: That makes me think: I’d like to treat all encounters as divine appointments—to treasure each human interaction as an opportunity to communicate with someone of unsurpassable worth, a bearer of the image of God
colleague: PREACH!
I decided the above exchange was worth spending some work time on. I haven’t known what to say when people assert that a lucky encounter is a divine one. But now I do.
It isn’t necessarily that we’ve said yes to too many things, although sometimes that’s true. It’s that no matter how I slice it, there are always things I’m not doing, rest I’m not taking, and people I’m not relating to.