partsofspeaking

I wish we would get off this “weren’t the disciples stupid?” kick.   Jesus was blowing their paradigms as much as he is blowing ours. They are just different paradigms.   When their paradigms were blown, it meant ostracism from the Jewish community and death at hands of Rome.   What does our paradigm getting blown up mean?   I think too much of this tendency is designed to make ourselves feel better.  

This is a hard question, made all the more difficult because I can’t do anything about it other than admit it to my son and profess it on this blog so maybe someone else won’t do the same. 1.      I worried far too much what other people would think of my parenting skills and my child.   That’s my biggest. 2.      I didn’t serve with him enough in ministry; we served separately. 3.      I sometimes put work ahead of him. 4.      I let him watch too much TV. 5.      Lost my temper at him too much. 6.      I didn’t emphasize relationships with missionaries enough. But good? 1.      We all went to church and didn’t talk bad about people. 2.      We went to historical places for trips and only once to DisneyPlace. 3.      Made sure he knew his larger family. 4. ...

Lent begins Wednesday.  As a lifelong "low-church" Protestant, Lent really has not had a place in my life, but in the last ten years I have started to take it seriously as a time of spiritual preparation. In fact, I was reading some rants against Lent.  A professor at an evangelical seminary who has become an Anglican (not my cup of tea--bad pun--but I have lots of friends who have done that, I think because of the Englishness and C.S. Lewisness and N.T. Wrightness of it) posted that he was looking forward to Lent.  Some of his "friends" went off on him, about how evil Lent was. Evil?  Maybe Carnival/Mardi  Gras is, but not Lent.  Lent can be spiritually healthy, as long as it is not a way to build up our pride and flesh. Lent is not about giving something up.  It is about looking forward to something. My choice is to fast, as much as possible, from media (TV, movies, and Facebook) and sugary sweets.  The sugary sweets are bad for me, but ...

Last week I came home from a conference and was unpacking; I turned on the TV and watched, off and on, this French movie.  I admit to not watching every single minute of it. I had a feeling of what was going to happen in the film, but cringed in shock when it did.  Spoiler alert, although spoiler alert assumes you are recommending a movie, which I am not. An elderly couple are living out their lives in a tony Parisian apartment after lives as musicians.  The wife has a bad stroke and is miserable, in pain and bedridden.  The man cares for her.  She isn't getting better.  He feels the stress.  No one is helping, not really, especially the children, but he won't send her to a facility because she always said she didn't want that.  So one day he smothers her with a pillow and kills her.  To cover up the smell he closes up the room with tape.  Then he dies, or kills himself; that part is not clear, but he wakes up and they go for a walk....

The other day, Friday, was balmy and breezy.  We've had unseasonably warm weather in North Georgia and I for one am tired of it and would like some snow.  But my husband was replacing the cover on our boat (which is more like an anchor because it's out of commission). The old cover had become torn due to weather and age.  It turned out to be a bigger deal than we had expected, because a cat had taken up residence in the boat.  For how long, I don't know, but it was in the hull and not interested in coming out.  Because the old cover was torn, the cat probably had crawled up in there in a storm.  I have to stop here and say (and I deal with this in another post today) that we have recently become a haven for cats.  I have counted at least eight in my yard when I drive in at times.  Black, tabby, and mostly greyish ones.  They are not feral; they belong to someone who feeds them (most of the time) but they love our yard, which makes no sens...

These verses seem simple on the surface but really are a mystery.   Our former pastor, who has moved to a larger church and got a lot of notoriety from a sermon he preached on a sensitive issue, used to explain that the rabbis taught that the Messiah (according to Edersheim, I think) would heal the blind and raise the dead.   So Jesus does, which leads to verse 23, the multitudes believing in him.   “Multitudes” is a tricky word. Thousands, in the book of Acts, believed in the early church, and they were Jews in Jerusalem, so the Jews per se were not against Jesus.   But multitudes also were calling for his crucifixion.   These multitudes did not have to deal with social and mass media, which give a faulty view of reality. On cue, the Pharisees claim he can cast out demons because he is controlled by Satan, that is, a sorcerer. Jesus claims to do it by the Spirit of God (the Holy Spirit), and they have called that Spirit Satanic, therefore...

I do seem to be stuck here, but there is reason to be. There are several indisputable claims to uniqueness here that, as Lewis says, you can dismiss as the ravings of a nut or take very seriously: “I’m greater than the Sabbath.”   “I decide who is guiltless.”   “I interpret Old Testament Scripture.”     One also gets the sense that Jesus is being followed around by the Pharisees. He doesn’t stop there, but heals a man after asked.   Their type of adherence to tradition, culture, and law had put moral blinders on them. If our version of God’s law hinders us from doing good, from showing compassion, we have misunderstood it.   I have been so guilty of this, so focused in decorum versus freedom to serve.   The two are not enemies in God’s universe, just in our own application.   My son told me an interesting story last night. He was late for a meeting at work and found himself rationalizing why he had not helped a homeless man on t...