partsofspeaking

Matthew 13 ends with three parables and a rejection notice.   There may be a deeper meaning to the parables of the field and pearl, but they seem straightforward.   The kingdom of heaven is worth more than any human or natural object and people should and will give all for it.   The dragnet is somewhat like the wheat and tares; the kingdom of heaven is not just the church, so the idea of there being bad “ones” in it is enigmatic.   Perhaps some will claim to be part of the kingdom but really aren’t.   They are false claimants. The people of Nazareth may have suffered from corporate low self-esteem and didn’t want one of their own to get above his raising, but in this case their social blinders, like the Pharisees’ religious pride blinders, kept them from belief.   What are our blinders, the filters, that keep us from seeing Jesus and the kingdom? Thought on prayer for the morning.   We pray for God to change people’s hearts wh...

 George Matheson wrote this after he began to go blind and his fiance left him.  O Love that will not let me go, I rest my weary soul in thee; I give thee back the life I owe, That in thine ocean depths its flow May richer, fuller be. O Light that foll’west all my way, I yield my flick’ring torch to thee; My heart restores its borrowed ray, That in thy sunshine’s blaze its day May brighter, fairer be. O Joy that seekest me through pain, I cannot close my heart to thee; I trace the rainbow through the rain, And feel the promise is not vain, That morn shall tearless be. O Cross that liftest up my head, I dare not ask to fly from thee; I lay in dust life’s glory dead, And from the ground there blossoms red Life that shall endless be.

Somewhere along the line I started getting Imprimis from Hillsdale College.  (Maybe because I took one of their online courses, which was mostly a series of lectures.) There is an excellent article in it this time around on media bias by Michael Goodwin.  https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/2016-election-demise-journalistic-standards/

I love this store, but even more now.  I went to buy a shower gift and I was able to wrap it there.  What a great perq for customers.  Saved me time and money and a trip to get paper, etc.  Shout out to them for great customer service. Speaking of customer service, I know why Google is ruling the world.  I used another search engine to try to find how to change kilometers into miles.  What a mess.  Google?  the calculator is right there.  This is why I keep going back, despite my fears they have nefarious schemes for us lemmings. 

Summer colors in Northwest Georgia in June.  Blackberries and daylillies are out.  The mimosa blooms remind me of parrots or monkeys sitting on the tree limbs.  I don't know the names of the other flowers, but they startle and amaze. 

William Temple, the widely regarded and brilliant Archbishop of Canterbury from 1942-44 wrote: “Worship is the submission of all of our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness, Nourishment of mind by His truth, Purifying of imagination by His beauty, Opening of the heart to His love, And submission of will to his purpose. And all this gathered up in adoration is the greatest of human expressions of which we are capable.” I heard part  of this quotation on a Ravi Zacharias program, and looked it up based on the wonderful opening line. I compare this to what passes for worship: a performance by a band (however well intentioned), dry ice (to approximate incense?), colored lights, three or four songs that perhaps the congregation will know, volume, and some swaying movement.  All these elements do not prevent worship nor do they guarantee it. How can we create the conditions for the description above?

Outline of my Life Group Lesson this week.   Jesus uses a parable that might not actually be a “made up” story.   It might be that a servant or steward of a rich man tried to pull something like this, that is, he obtained forgiveness from his boss and then tried to imprison someone who owed him money, and that others in the community knew about it.   Although the amounts of money are not realistic, the scenario is.   We have all known people who obtained grace and mercy but couldn’t pass it on.   We have all known people who could not see their own sin but saw and judged less sin in others. The question is, do we see ourselves in the parable? I.   Read it, 18:15-ff.   A.   Why does Jesus tell this story?   Peter’s question, arising from Jesus words about how to deal with a sinning brother:   deal with him personally, then bring a friend, then take it to the congregation.   If it’s big enough to t...

This is from a review of the Netflix series The Keepers from Christianity Today.   I was struck by this quotation. We must get away from the nice Jesus image.  Jesus is many things, but he's not "nice" to everybody for eternity, nor can he be or would be really want that.  There is too much evil.  He conquers it, one way or another  Begin quoted material  In the concluding chapter of his magnificent book, Exclusion and Embrace , Miroslav Volf examines the tension between the “crucified Messiah” and the fierce “Rider” upon the white horse who comes to “strike down the hopelessly wicked.” Is this really the same God? It’s an old question that hasn’t gone away. Volf contends, “The cross is not forgiveness pure and simple, but God’s setting aright the world of injustice and deception. ” God’s righteousness is contingent upon his punishment of those who unrepentantly impugn his goodness and mercy. That includes those who callously exploit the innoc...

I submitted my novel, for the fee of $50.00 (money wasted) to an "organization" that reviews books and gives them a stamp of approval.  I will not name it, for fear of retaliation.  They rejected it; I share the two reviews that were the basis of the rejection. The comments were largely about punctuation, the title, the cover, and indenting paragraphs.  I teach punctuation for a living, so I find that people are usually wrong when they comment on punctuation.  But I do need to see if these proofreading errors are right.  I had several people read it, one with a doctorate and others with master's, in English, but I know errors get through.    I understand why writers get frustrated with pink slips and rejections.  There are countless tales of how great writers with classic books were rejected multiple times.  You can't expect everyone to like your work, and in today's social media environment, everyone is a critic.  On the other...

Our president has a Twitter problem.  Even his staunchest supporters are decrying his penchant for mouthing off over Twitter.  He may think it is giving him a direct line to his base, but it's just causing trouble. I am coming to the conclusion that Twitter is a wonderful way for expressing unfiltered nonsense.  The link below is an article about a professor who got herself in trouble with sarcasm that was taken as sincere (not a problem for our president, who seems to not have an ironic bone in his body). This is a cautionary tale for those who just can't put their phones down.    https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2017/06/07/professor-clarifies-comment-about-indian-american-spelling-bee-winner?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=fe49e5a8ce-DNU20170607&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-fe49e5a8ce-198482621&mc_cid=fe49e5a8ce&mc_eid=ab27a3f05f

This title refers to an Emily Dickinson poem, "A narrow fellow in the grass."  He had come out of the grass and wetlands to die on the gutter where I walk the dog.  The head was chewed off (I feel no compassion about that).  Nala's reaction was quite funny--"sniff, sniff, closer--back off!" The husband says it's some kind of kingsnake.  It was not two feet long. I feel the natural antipathy toward all reptiles and especially snakes (I like turtles, though.  Our college has a turtle colony we are all quite proud of!  See Turtles at Dalton State.)

Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 Never Forget

Institutions have memories.  As long as the same people work somewhere, they will tell the stories of the past. One we tell is the time a past college president got up in faculty meeting and told us our insurance premiums would go down if we weren't so fat.  He didn't actually say that, of course, but he handed out a flyer that showed how obesity made insurance premiums go up, and then compounded it with a few comments that should have gone unsaid.  Some faculty haven't forgiven him of that yet--fat ones and thin ones.  The thin ones were being told they were paying for the fatties, and the not-so-thin ones resented being called fat. I found it funny that he would say such an artless and tactless thing.  It made him few friends.  I have been overweight most of my life, so as I told a colleague, "Fat people know they are fat, they don't have to be told they are."  Now, however, I am not so sure that is true.  If we fat people know it, we tradit...

The Quotation on my Franklin Covey Planner this morning was "Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it."  Attributed to Buddha. This struck me as strange; it's a nice quote (sort of), but did not sound like something Siddhartha Gautama would have said.  As it happens, he didn't. There is a meme on Facebook floating around that has a Chinese painting of what is supposed to be Confucius saying "I didn't say any of the s*** they quote me as saying."  I'm sure Mark Twain, the Buddha, and several others could say the same.  I put it into the Google search engine and found a cite called "Fake Buddha quotes" that explained that it was written by a Buddhist, but not the original one.  Here is the site, which is quite entertaining (I would say enlightening, too, but that's a bad pun.)   http://fakebuddhaquotes.com/your-work-is-to-discover-your-world-and-then-with-all-your-heart-give-yourself...