Bible Correspondence Lessons Report I thought you might like to know that since April, 2007, we have mailed out about 200 Bibles, each with the first lesson of our Bible Correspondence course, to inmates who have asked for it. Sixty-three inmates have responded with at least one completed lesson. We have mailed about 450 additional lessons to these 63 inmates. That averages out to about 7 lessons each. 34 of these 63 are still actively taking the courses as of this month. We have also mailed 13 Bible Dictionaries as a reward for taking at least ten lessons and 28 inspirational Christian books as a token of appreciation for attending ten or more worship services.
However, lest I mislead you only about half of the lessons and Bibles have been to the local jail where we have worship services. Many of the guys have moved to other locations in the system, either state or county, have continued to take the courses, and in some cases recruited others to enroll in them.
We would like to make an entry into the female prisoner population. Three times inmates have sent in enrollment forms for girl friends or female relatives who are in jail. We sent them Bibles and the first lesson but so far none of them have responded. Please pray that we will be successful in including women as recipients of this ministry.
This evening I completed eight responses to lessons in about two and a half hours. That is about fifteen or twenty minutes a response. I am able to do this quickly, because my wife does a large part of the work. When the lessons and enrollments come in, I organize them, and I attach a check list to them of what needs to be done. My wife prepares envelopes for the courses and shipping labels for the Bibles and books. She writes an individual, Scripture quoting, prayer for each man based on his prayer requests, and the leading of the Holy Spirit. She prints the next lesson in whatever course they are taking. If they have completed a course she prints a certificate. I then grade and comment on the previous lesson, write a few personal remarks based on how well I know them, combine everything we have done, and put it in the envelope she has prepared.
I keep a file of categories of personal remarks that I can just cut and paste into the letters. Many of these end up on this blog and vice versa. You may have noticed that no one's names appears in my entries here, except my wife and I. We minister to pedophiles, rapists, burglars, murderers etc. While I hope for the best for them, I would rather they know as little as possible about me and my family, until they have proved themselves reliable. I feel the same way about the public in general.
I write the textual content of the lessons and my wife illustrates them. At first, we never thought of letting anyone else use the lessons besides us, so when she got the illustrations from the internet it was just for personal use. I am now planning to enlist the aid of other churches in this ministry. We purchased a very good CD of Bible art, subscribed to a web site of Bible art, identified a couple dozen more sites whose licenses allow us to publish their art on paper free of royalty. My wife is going back through the lessons and illustrating them again. Please pray for the involvement of other churches in our ministry.
Flattering E-mail I received a very nice e-mail tonight. One of my old clients wants me to do some programming work for him. He told me that I was the best contractor they ever had. I told him no, but very nicely. If you are wondering why I turned him down, read the entry right above this one.
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Jail Worship Service We had 25 in attendance last night. During testimony time we had two great reports on answers to prayer. One of the guys had asked a couple of weeks ago for reconciliation with his estranged Mother and another had asked for prayer for reconciliation with his estranged step-son. Both of them reported that the reconciliations had taken place.
Rolly sang a Christmas song. I did not recognize it. My wife played Down from His Glory and O Come, O Come Emmanuel. The sermon was on Matthew 25:14-30, the Parable of the Talents. The title of the sermon was, 'Use it, or Lose it.' One of the illustrations I used was from this quote from C.S. Lewis out of his book The Four Loves: "It may be a hard thing for an egg to become a bird; it is a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while it is still an egg. We are like eggs, today, and we either must be hatched, or go bad!
"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully around with hobbies and little luxuries, avoid all entanglements, lock it up safe in the casket or the coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket-safe, dark, motionless, airless-it will change. It will not be broken, it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is hell.'"
Three responded to invitation. Table Topics was about, "Do you have a talent you can use for God's Kingdom" Several turned in lessons. We had only one sign up for the Bible correspondence courses last night, which is a little less than usual. We sent out five with new enrollments on Monday. New enrollees get a Bible with their first lesson.
The Perils of Math Ignorance This conversation occurred in the break room. He had gone in to buy a drink. She was filling the snack machine, which sells snacks at prices of 50 to 75 cents.
He: Oh, goodie! Free samples?
She: I'm sorry, I can't do that.
He: How about 2 for the price of 1, plus a dollar. (Echoing an old Family Booterie shoe store advertisement.)
She: No. I would still lose money.
He: Are you sure? That would be $1.75 for two 75 cent snacks. You would make an extra quarter.
She: No, thanks, I have to make a profit.
And no, it wasn't me; it was one of my co-workers, who, believe it or not, has a more sarcastic mouth than I have.
Bachelor Mother One of mine and my wife's favorite Christmas movies is Bachelor Mother. (1939 B&W with Ginger Rogers and David Niven) We watched it again the other day. Its humor stands the test of time. However, it does take a little "cultural" awareness to appreciate it all. We have a VHS tape recording of it we made off TV years ago. We want a DVD, but they are not publishing them anymore. All the used ones we can find are believed to be collector's items by their current owners, and well beyond a reasonable price. Most people miss a lot of the symbols in the movie. To them, it just looks like an old comedy that just happens to occur around Christmas time. The story centers around a baby, born in humble circumstances, and around his adopted mother, who is a virgin. After some initial trepidation over her circumstances, like Joseph had about Mary, the mother is unconditionally loved by her future husband. Indeed, the baby brings out the best in all who become involved with him.
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Ooh! Mommy! is spelled umami My friend found the story we were
talking about yesterday. He was wrong. It is a strong taste in MSG. Also, in
soy sauce. It is basically the taste of meat. You can see the story at:
www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15819485&sc=emaf
Umami means 'delicious' or 'tasty.'
Math Question The question of the day where I work is how many 20 minute aerobic exercise sessions are required to work off one Thanksgiving dinner. I think they are fooling themselves. Surely my household is not the only one where Thanksgiving leftovers linger on through many meals yet to come. I know there is some turkey in our freezer waiting for the day it will become umami turkey squares.
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Ooh! Mommy! A friend of mine at work told me about a news magazine story, he heard on the radio. It seems, that they have proved, that there is a fifth kind of taste receptor on the tongue. There is sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and now glutamate. The first chemist to isolate this taste was Japanese, so he named it something in Japanese, that sounds like, 'Ooh! Mommy!' which is spelled God knows how. English speaking chemists call it glutamate, but my friend tells me that it is not the same thing as the taste of MSG (monosodium glutamate).
This was all associated with a book called 'Proust Was a Neuroscientist' by Jonah Lehrer which documents a number of times in history, where artists discovered things long before scientists. It seems this fifth taste was actually discovered by a famous French chef a hundred years ago. I asked my friend, which foods we need to eat to isolate this taste, but he could not tell me. I believe he has taken it on as a research assignment, so stay tuned.
Visiting the Prison Apparently we filled out the wrong form to get Mark approved for visiting the prison and other local jails besides the one in which we minister. We want him to be able to visit the people taking the Bible correspondence courses from other locations. I have talked to the prison chaplain and the jail chaplain and learned the correct procedure. I am hopeful that Mark will be approved before Christmas.
Creation Science Museum My niece's family and one of the guys I ride with both went to this museum (See www.creationmuseum.org) over the week end. (Not together) Based on all accounts it is some place I want to visit. Apparently they have one place that has a series of questions that when you answer them it reveals how much evolutionary propaganda you have begun to believe. Apparently my car pooling friend's wife had a moment of real self-discovery in that particular room.
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Ministry all day Attendance was low at the hospital. There were four patients, one staff, and one visitor downstairs and five patients up stairs. My wife played Wayfaring Stranger on her psaltery and I preached a sermon entitled Maintain an Attitude of Gratitude based on Philippians 4:4-9. It seemed to be well received.
The afternoon was spent getting caught up on Bible Correspondence course work. We had gotten a little behind over the holiday. Our guys do not get a holiday from being in jail. Christmas falls on a Tuesday this year, so we are planning to be at the jail for our worship service. Please pray for it to go well.
My wife and I were alone for the evening service. It was a chilly, rainy, night. I plan on preaching on Matthew 25:14-30 on Tuesday. I do not have a title for it yet, but it is the parable of the talents.
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More Company My older daughter had to go to the hospital this morning to have her infection checked, so we just ended up keeping her children over night. Turns out what they did at the hospital yesterday worked, and she is on the mend. We got a nice long visit from the grandchildren. Children are always a delight. They fill the place with laughter, giggles, and other pleasant noises of fun.
You never know what they might say. The youngest had a question about something to do with physics, so his grandmother sent him to me with a comment something like, "Go ask. Pappy. He knows more about that than I do." "But G'ma," protested the little boy, "You told me you were smarter than everyone!"
My wife went to take my daughter to the hospital, so I ended up having the kids for lunch. The left over Thanksgiving desserts were running out. There was one large piece of chocolate cake, one large piece of apple pie, and one small piece of pumpkin pie. I did not want to have to adjudicate who would get which, so I cut the large pieces into fourths and the small piece into thirds. I got a sliver of chocolate cake and a sliver of apple pie. Each of the kids got a sliver of all three. Then the negotiations began for swaps. It is fun watching their young minds work.
Christmas Tree Placement Each year there is a new problem about where to put the Christmas tree. This happens because each year we accumulate more stuff, and do not throw away enough. After some thought and discussion we figured out that, if we give away a couple of major items, and move a couple of large pieces of furniture, we should be able to put up the Christmas tree after all. So, we have that problem solved until next year. Or rather, we will have it solved, once we execute our plan, which is subject to change, right up until we are actually putting the lights on the tree.
Also, it seems we have lost a box of Christmas decorations. That seemed to me to be an excellent time to get rid of the large artificial tree, and buy a smaller one, but I was wrong. My wife is out buying more decorations at this very moment. I realize I may be coming across as a bit of a scrooge right now, but when it comes right down to it, I am really a Christmas boy, and I know I will have fun with it all.
Time I was checking blogs today, and I noticed that my niece had an entry about her preacher doing a series on "time". I was inspired to look up the word in Koine Greek. It turns out that they had many different words that are all translated "time" in English. It may be that they needed these words because their verbs were not very good at conveying time. Unlike English verb tenses, which are mostly about time, Koine Greek verbs are more about aspect.
There are ten different Greek words translated "time" in Matthew alone:
epi - epi | Matthew 1:11 "Josiah became the father of Jeconiah and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon." Here a preposition usually translated "upon" is rendered "at the time of" by the translators. "Josiah became the father of Jeconiah and his brothers, upon the deportation to Babylon." would have sounded awkward. This is a rare usage of epi. It is only translated as "time" once more in the New Testament. (Mark 2:26)
kronoV - chronos | Matthew 2:7 "Then Herod secretly called the magi and determined from them the exact time the star appeared." This is where we get our words chronic, chronology, and chronometer. It is the Greek word that comes closest in meaning to our ordinary understanding of the word "time." Although you can not tell it from Matthew, (it only appears again in Matt 2:16 and Matt 25:19), chronos is usually the Greek word underlying the English word "time" in the New Testament.
arti - arty | Matthew 3:15 "But Jesus answering said to him, 'Permit it at this time; for in this way it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.' Then he permitted Him." This word is usually translated "now." Why the translators of the New American Standard Version (NASV) chose to translate it as "at this time" instead of "now" as the KJV has it, I do not know. It seems to me "now" would work just fine.
tote - totay | Matthew 4:17 "From that time Jesus began to preach and say, 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.'" This word is usually translated "then." Seems like to me "then" would work here just as well, but both NASV and KJV translate it "time." NASV translates totay as "time" in Matthew 16:21, 24:10, 27:16, 27:38 and several other places in the rest of the New Testament.
kairoV - kiros | Matthew 8:29 "And they cried out, saying, 'What business do we have with each other, Son of God? Have You come here to torment us before the time?'" Kiros is translated time about as often as chronos mentioned above. It means more than just "time." It means something like the just the right time, the correct season, the nick of time, or the appropriate moment. It is translated "time" by the NASV in Matthew 11:25, 12:1, 13:30, 14:1, 21:34, 24:45, 26:18 and many places in the rest of the New Testament. It is usually translated "the time" or "that time," but it is often translated as season, opportunity, due time, proper time, or right time and even occasionally as age, epoch, or times.
wra - hora | Matthew 18:1 "At that time the disciples came to Jesus and said, 'Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?'" Hora is usually translated "hour," and is the source of our word "hour." Out of the hundred times or so it appears in the New Testament NASV only translates it "time" six times, one of which is Matthew 26:55.
fulakh - phulakey | Matthew 24:43 "But be sure of this, that if the head of the house had known at what time of the night the thief was coming, he would have been on the alert and would not have allowed his house to be broken into." Phulakey means "guard" or "watch." It is translated "time of the night" here in the sense it was sometimes used to mean the period of time during the night assigned to each sentry or night watchman. (It is translated "watch of the night" in Matthew 14:25.) This was the only place I could find it translated "time."
kronizw - chronizo | Matthew 24:48 "But if that evil slave says in his heart, 'My master is not coming for a long time,' " Chronizo is obviously related to chronos above. Here it is translated "not …. for a long time" by the NASV. KJV has it as "delayeth." The Greek word means to linger, delay, tarry, or take your time. It only appears 5 times in the New Testament one of which is Matthew 25:5 where the NASV translates it "was delaying."
deuteroV - deuteros | Matthew 26:42 "He went away again a second time and prayed, saying, 'My Father, if this cannot pass away unless I drink it, Your will be done.' " Deuteros means "second," as in first, second, third, etc. If you hold your head to the side you can hear the English word "duo" when you say deuteros aloud. They added "time" to it here because "He went away again a second and prayed, saying…" would sound funny in English.
tritoV - tritos | Matthew 26:44 "And He left them again, and went away and prayed a third time, saying the same thing once more." You guessed it. Tritos means third, as in first, second, third, etc. Tritos is related to the Greek word treis from which we get trio and the prefix tri - tricycle, etc.
I enjoy doing studies like this. I guess that makes me a little odd, but in a good way, I hope.
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Unexpected Company My older daughter has a spider bite that got infected. She had to go to the doctor and let them torture her. Instead of a lollypop for a reward, they gave her pain medication. Her three children stayed with me while my wife took her to the doctor. They were gone over four hours. In stark contrast to my daughter's experience, we had a pleasant time here. I let them pretty much do as they pleased. (As long as it was not too noisy, since I had a lot of ministry work to do.) At lunch I let them pick out which Thanksgiving leftovers they wanted to eat and how much. It is much more fun being a grand father. My job is to protect them from harm and spoil them rotten. This I can do.
The six year old was playing children's games on the internet. My wife has some designated sites she has researched, where the kids are allowed to go. Most of them are tricking the kids into learning stuff while they play games. I watched him play one where it taught him to distinguish between different kinds of trash, by allowing him to only drag it into the appropriate recycling bin - paper, plastic, and something else. Am I the only one who finds that odd?
Cleaner office We have had so much going on lately that there was a huge stack of paper on my desk. I pretty much got through it today and got things better organized. I broke the 66 lesson Bible course down into 8 different courses. Some of the guys were getting done with some of the other shorter courses. We like to have them enrolled in at least two courses at a time. The way it works is that when they get done with a lesson they send in a quiz which we grade and return with a letter and the next lesson. If they are working on two courses they can work on the other course while we are grading one. With the 66 lesson Bible course being single threaded it was not possible to make this process work. Now we have Introduction to the Bible, Epistles of Paul, History of God's People, Law & Gospel, Major Prophets, Minor Prophets, Poetry, and General Epistles. Now when they get done with the Introduction and Fundamentals courses, we can start them on the Pauline Epistles and History courses, and still keep them busy.
It probably does not sound all that hard to make this change, and it is not. But it is time consuming. I had to go into all the documents to change the numbers and titles, re-work the file drawer, and re-program the database where we keep track of the enrollments. I have been working on this off and on for a couple of weeks and finally got done with it today. It was awkward with some of the project done and some not, so I am glad to have it out of the way
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Thanksgiving Day, November 22, 2007
Little Girl Hugs Both my daughters and their families came to our home for Thanksgiving dinner. We ate off, and on, pretty much all day. We played games and watched the movie Amazing Grace. I got hugs from my daughters and grand-children. I was reminded of a conversation I had with one of the men at the jail on Tuesday night.
Table topics was about things for which we are thankful. He said he was thankful for his children. He brought out pictures of two children and handed them to me. One of them was an infant and the other was a little girl about 2 or 3. I admired them. I smiled at the one of the infant, and diplomatically did not mention, I think all babies look like ugly old men. As I looked at the little girl, I told him I had two girls, now grown, but that I remembered mine at that age, and their little hugs, that could barely go around my neck. He smiled in acknowledgement, as I handed back the pictures. I turned to the next man and began to talk with him. I noticed out of the corner of my eye, that the man with the two children had quiet tears rolling down his cheeks. I wondered if my comment contributed to his distress. I do not know how good his prospects are of getting out, and being with his children soon, or ever. Please help me pray for him, for his little family, and that he gets out soon enough to enjoy some of those little girl hugs.
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Drawing Circles The administrative services department sent an e-mail to everyone in my building. It had a survey attached as a Microsoft Word document. The e-mail said we are to answer the survey and return it to them via e-mail. The directions in the survey said, "Circle your answers below." I responded with an e-mail explaining that the survey did not apply to me. It is a good thing. I'm not sure I know how to circle responses using Microsoft Word.
Unbelief One of our Bible Correspondence Course students asked why everyone doesn't believe in God and the Bible. I answered that in my experience unbelievers usually have one of four different reasons for their unbelief: (1) Something bad happened to them or a loved one and they blame God for it. A good God can not exist, since this terrible thing happened, they say. (2) They are enjoying the passing pleasures of sin too much to consider giving it up. If they allow themselves to entertain the idea of God's existence, it might lead to them losing their pleasure, so they just refuse to consider it. (3) They are so guilty about their behavior that they do not think they can be forgiven. It becomes easier to deny God's existence, than face being accountable. (4) They simply are not aware of, or do not understand, sound Biblical doctrine. For instance they have been taught about God as if He were Santa Clause or an indifferent old man in some distant place. Such ideas can not be defended rationally, so they do not believe them.
There may be other reasons for unbelief. Certainly I have met people who claim that they are simply not convinced by the evidence. However, the existence of God is intuitively obvious to the most casual observer. Much of His nature is clear as well. (Romans 1:18-22) When these folks are willing to engage in rational discussion with me, I find that their claim of rationality is a veneer. When their irrational core is exposed, I either discover into which of the four categories they fit, or they close up and retreat, before I can tell which it is. However, I remain open to the idea there may be another category. I just have not seen it, yet.
Number 1 is the most difficult to overcome, at least, I have not been successful at it, so far. (See my attempt to answer it at www.tntcarden.com/atheist/evil.htm) Number 2 takes care of itself when the pleasure of sin passes. They then usually drift into Number 3. Number 3 is the easiest to overcome with a simple, clear presentation of the gospel. Number 4 can be easily dealt with as well, by simply opening up the Bible to them. However, many times Number 4 turns out to be what they show to you, when really they are in one of the other three categories.
Tuesday night at the jail The services went well at the jail Tuesday night. We had 30 guys. Rolly sang a special song on the Thanksgiving theme. My wife played Count Your Blessings and Wayfaring Stranger on her bowed psaltery. The sermon was entitled "Maintain an Attitude of Gratitude" on Philippians 4:4-9. The table topic was; name something for which you are truly thankful, and explain why.
Thanksgiving Day tomorrow I hope my gratitude exceeds my gluttony.
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Conclusion of Thankful List:
(86) My recollection of my wedding day.
(87) My recollection of the births of my children.
(88) My recollection of my children's salvations.
(89) My recollection of watching a little boy running with a giant butterfly
net across a broad green field
(90) My recollection of little girl hugs that would barely go all the way
around my neck.
(91) My recollection of the sight of my family waiting for me to get off an
airplane.
(92) My recollection of the faces of my children on Christmas morning.
(93) My recollection of a beautiful rainbow in a Mexican sky
(94) My recollection of seeing the tops of the tallest buildings in Nashville
sticking above the fog, below a clear blue sky, like buildings built on a cloud
(95) My recollection of a ride in a speeding bus next to a speeding train
across the flats of Texas
(97) My recollection of stone fences snaking across the Irish countryside
(98) My recollection of enjoying the art in the London museum that the British
had collected from all over the world
(98) My recollection of visiting Old Ironsides and the city of her birth.
(99) My recollection of a cold ride in an Ottawa taxicab next to a frozen river
(100) My many good memories
The challenge next year will be coming up with 100 more with out repeating myself from this year. I think I'll cheat, like a certain person I know, and make notes all year. Hopefully, it will keep me in a grateful frame of mind.
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Services report: We had 15 in the morning chapel service. There were three staff but no outside visitors. My wife played Count Your Many Blessings on the bowed psaltery. The sermon was on Persistent Prayer is Powerful Prayer from Luke 11:1-13. We did the same for the service in the lock-up ward. We had six up there.
This evening we had only the two of us and one other. We finished checking the Bible correspondence lesson on Philemon. The sermon I am preparing for this week is on Philippians, but I have not narrowed it down to particular verses yet. The title is "Rejoice in the Lord always."
Costa Rican Dinner Some friends of ours from Costa Rica invited us for Sunday dinner. She prepared Costa Rican food and it was wonderful. This is the nice lady who is translating the Bible courses into Spanish for us that my wife works with. The man is thinking about coming and helping us in the worship services on Tuesday evening. They have a very mannerly and charming little boy.
Back to the Future We watched it again last night. I can not believe I watched all three of them. I was shocked by how much cussing there was in it. I had not remembered that about the movies. The humor does not all seem to be standing the test of time either. It was not nearly as funny as I remembered it. I am not ready to throw it out yet. It is still a fairly engaging story and funny in spots. We are only eight years from the "future" they visited in the movie. I can not believe it has been 22 years since they made these movies or that back then I was anxious for the sequels to come out.
Thankful list additions for today:
(56) FCA letting us have our church meetings in their cafeteria
(57) The beautiful chapel at the hospital where we meet on Sundays
(58) The nice piano in the chapel at the hospital
(59) Chocolate Chip cookies
(60) Thunderstorms (viewed from inside, of course)
(61) Our cabin and land
(62) Campfires
(63) Limited access divided highways
(64) Disposable garbage can bags
(65) Scotch tape, paper clips, glue, post-it notes, desk calendars, and copy
machines. I'm serious. I like to play office.
(66) Chess, and knowing a little bit about playing this elegant game
(67) That even when my hair fell out I still look good
(68) Our new scanner
(69) The privilege of preaching
(70) Exhaustive concordances
(71) Internet search engines
(72) Electronic Bibles
(73) The people who figured out how to divide the Bible into chapters and
verses so we could find stuff
(74) My eyesight and hearing
(75) The preaching of Ravi Zachrias and Andy Stanley
(76) The writings of all the people who influenced me for good - C.S. Lewis,
Charles Colson, Chris Thurman, David Wilkerson , Frank Minirth, Paul Meir,
Frank E Peretti, John & Elizabeth Sherrill, Josh McDowell, Lee Strobel,
Norman Geisler , Richard J. Foster, Steve Farrar, to name a few of the most
influential
(77) Clocks that do not have to be wound up
(78) Ziploc baggies (You will not understand this one unless you have had to
eat sandwiches wrapped in wax paper.)
(79) Pens that do not require that I change the ink cartridge
(80) Snow
(81) Old photographs
(82) Good movies
(83) Two men that are willing car pool with me
(84) Time to reflect while they do the driving
(85) Bookshelves full of books in my living room
I was going to do only 15 today, but my wife just told me that my niece has already done her hundred, so I kept thinking until I had thirty more. Now, I'll read hers. Maybe it will give me some ideas for the last few I left to do.
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Commentless I have gotten more than one question about why I do not have a comment feature on my blog. Well, I started out not having comments, because I already had a web site where I could post my stuff, which does not have that capability. I simply did not want to go to the trouble of establishing a place on a blog server. As I have grown experienced I am glad I do not have it. I left a few comments on others' blogs and then quickly discovered, I then had multiple places to check to see if any one responded to me. I only left a few, and yet I was clicking all over the place. Some blogs keep all the comments single threaded, which avoids that problem, but creates another. You have a bunch more stuff to read through, most of which is directed at someone else. Besides, my way of blogging is comfortable and familiar to me. I do not have any motivation to change, so, I reckon I won't. So, if you want to comment, send me an e-mail. If you want others to see your comment, send them a copy. I am confident that my faithful fans will fully understand.
Northern Lightless - the answer Because of popular demand, I decided to post the answer to last week's quiz question. (In this case "popular demand" means one person brought it up, that is, in passing, they casually mentioned it. Well, they sort of implied it.) There were seven errors in the description of the conversation between me and the two postal blatherskites:
(1) England is part of Europe, not Asia.
(2) Even if it was part of Asia, it would make no difference in trying to determine its size, since the size of a country has nothing to do with the size of the continent of which it is part.
(3) If there is Global Warming it will happen worldwide, not just in one place. That is the meaning of the word, "global."
(4) A lack of pollution in Antarctica does not cause a thinner atmosphere.
(5) There is widely accepted theory that certain kinds of pollution have caused the ozone layer to be depleted there, which makes it easier to get sunburned there, because more ultraviolet radiation gets through.
(6) The sun spews particles into space. When they get here, they interact with the Earth's magnetic field, and emit light near the poles. This phenomenon is called Northern Lights or Aurora Borealis in the northern hemisphere and Southern Lights or Aurora Australis in the southern hemisphere. When the sun has magnetic storms the amount of matter it releases increases and the lights can be seen further from the poles.
(7) The Aurora Australis has nothing to do with sunburns.
How many of you identified them all?
Are you illegal? Our government has now created so many laws that we are probably all illegal. There are so many laws, that no one person has ever read them all. In fact, such a task would be impossible. Our laws comprise millions of words, and even if you did read them all, they change them faster than anyone could possibly read.
How much unlicensed software is on that computer you are using? How many illegally copied movies or music recordings are in your home? How many codes violations would be found if an inspector were to look through your house? How many traffic laws do you violate every time you drive? When people in your household sell things on e-bay, do they collect and pay sales tax? Do you keep a record of all the money you receive and report it on your income tax? Have you measured the tread on your tires to make sure they are legal? Do you even know how much tread is required by law? Perhaps you and your household do manage to obey all these laws. Do you report it to the authorities when you see others disobeying any of these laws? That is required by law as well.
There are many, many laws that you could easily break, and never know it. In Topeka, Kansas, if you stop by a Kentucky Fried Chicken and buy lunch, and then drive on Kansas Avenue with it in your car, you are breaking the law. They have a law against transporting dead chicken meat on that particular road. In Arkansas it is against the law to honk your horn near certain kinds of restaurants after 9 PM. In Oregon you can get a ticket for leaving your car door open, even when it is parked. In Eureka, Nevada, kissing with a mustache is illegal. An Illinois state law requires that a man's female companion shall call him "master" while out on a date. The law does not apply to married couples. In Los Angeles, California, it is not legal to bathe two children at the same time in the same tub. There are literally hundreds of these kinds of stupid laws.
More Thankfulness My list of things for which I am thankful continues
to grow:
(41) The lady that is translating the Bible lessons into Spanish
(42) The people who are working on making best answers for the prisoner's Bible
lessons
(43) The inmate who started being our de facto song leader in our services
(44) Mark Lang joining with us in our jail ministry
(45) Generous brothers in Christ that have allowed our ministries to have
needed resources through their contributions
(46) The ability to imagine
(47) Our recent vacation to Paris Landing
(48) Our upcoming vacation to Florida
(49) Chicken pot pie
(50) Tires that rarely go flat. Unless you drove back before the 1970's you
have no idea what a blessing the newer tire technology is.
(51) Banks providing a safe place to keep my money
(52) e-mail
(53) That I finally learned how to type
(54) Blogging
(55) Pillows, blankets, sheets and mattresses
Forty-five more to go. Over half done. How are you doing with your list?
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Thankful list growing I set out yesterday to think of 25 things to
put on my list of things for which I am sincerely thankful. After I posted it,
other things started coming to my mind. I decided to challenge myself to think
of 100 things for which I am truly grateful before Thanksgiving Day. Here are
some more items for my list:
(26) My niece who lives near me, and her family
(27) My extended family
(28) Our Soldiers, Marines, Sailors, Policemen and Firemen
(29) Missionaries on the front lines of the Great Commission. Especially the
ones our church supports: Jonathan & Tina White, missionaries to Costa
Rica; Jonathan & Erin Matthews, missionaries to Brazil; Dennis & Sandra
Barnette, missionaries to Mexico; David & Susan Butts, missionaries to
Romania; and Earl F. Yates III, missionary to Mexico.
(30) My education
(31) The many paddlings I got from my Latin teacher in high school, teaching me
not to procrastinate, as much.
(32) My ice scraper. I got to use it this morning. It is so much better than
not having one.
(33) Glasses so I can read
(34) A day of rest tomorrow - we do no ministry work on Saturdays
(35) Lexicons, parsing guides, analytical lexicons, and web sites that do the
same thing, like BlueLetterBible.org
(36) Cell phones - one of the few things predicted by the science fiction I
read in my youth that actually came to pass
(37) The ability to laugh and funny stuff about which to laugh
(38) Warm coats, hats, and gloves on cold blustery days
(39) An umbrella when it rains.
(40) A third floor apartment with a porch and a view of a playground, creek,
and trees
If I do fifteen more each day, I'll be done in plenty of time for Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving Challenge I was talking about my Thanksgiving list to one of the guys I car pool with this morning. He thought it was a great idea and has started working on his list. That inspired me to send a Thanksgiving challenge to some of my co-workers.
Thor: Make a list of 100 things that you are truly thankful for by Thanksgiving Day.
Some responses:
Cathy: Thanks Thor, you make the list for reminding us!
Debbie: Thanks, what a good idea.
Mike: You just wanted be sure I had room for you on my list. #93 Thor
Thor to Mike: Wow! That is much higher than most people. Usually I am 99, 100, or not on the list at all.
A challenge to you, my loyal blog fan: Make a list of 100 things that you are truly thankful for by Thanksgiving Day.
Blatherskite My friend, Bill, taught me a new word today. We were talking about what a great research tool the internet can sometimes be. He said, in his usual dry way, that it was also a place for blatherskites to express themselves. I had never heard the word before, but right away I knew what it meant. What a wonderful word. I looked it up, (on the internet, of course), and sure enough, I was right about what it means.
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Digital Tyranny When I first became a computer programmer I was amazed at the scope it gave me. The only limit I had was my own imagination. Over the years I have watched that change. Now my limit is Microsoft's imagination. The strength of their monopoly has increased to the point that they are now forcing an operating system, Vista, on the marketplace that by all accounts I have heard, nobody likes because it is a resource hog. I hope this is the beginning of the end for them.
Greekless Last week, my department called a lunch time meeting for today, so I canceled Greek class, since they were going to serve pizza. Then yesterday, a few minutes before I left for the day, they canceled the lunch time meeting. I thought about trying to reschedule the Greek class, but I just did not feel like dealing with the confusion and explanations.
Thankful Next week is Thanksgiving! Have you made your list yet?
There is not much time left. Some of the things I'm thankful for:
(1) My Salvation
(2) My lovely and talented Wife
(3) The three best children in the world
(4) The three best children-in-law in the world
(5) The most wonderful grandchildren in the world
(6) The blessed hope of His return
(7) My son earned his EIB
(8) My oldest daughter came home to be a stay at home mom
(9) My youngest daughter's MS showed dramatic improvement
(10) An abundant ministry that keeps me in the Bible and helping people
(11) Many good friends
(12) Good health
(13) All my needs met - food, clothing, shelter
(14) A job that allows me time to work in our ministry and furnishes much
entertainment as I enjoy the foibles and follies of my leadership
(15) Functioning equipment: 2 cars, 2 computers, electricity, stove, refrigerator,
DVD player, 3 TV's, 2 VHS players, radios, tape players, CD players, inside
plumbing, printer, heater, air conditioner, lights, light switches, door locks,
hinges, etc.
(16) Good books
(17) Liberty, Safety, Peace, Happiness, Joy, Love
(18) I finally learned Greek well enough to translate from the New Testament
(19) The privilege of listening to my wife's piano playing
(20) The privilege of listening to my wife's psaltery playing
(21) My wife's talent for cooking
(22) Cool water, warm cookies, ice cream, and hot chocolate
(23) Eggs, bacon, sausage, pancakes, pancake syrup, fried potato cakes, toast,
biscuits, strawberry jam, butter
(24) Thanksgiving dinners
(25) Living in a creation full of beauty: sunsets, sound of rain, flowers,
singing birds, trees dressed in fall colors, symphony orchestras, Christmas
trees, Christmas music, starry nights, brass bands, full moons, bells,
rainbows, the faces of my loved ones, the voices of my loved ones.
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Persistent Prayer is Powerful Prayer The services went well at the jail last night. We had 24 guys. My wife played two songs on her psaltery. She talked to them about the Christian words that could be sung to them but you would recognize the tunes as O Danny Boy and The House of the Rising Sun. I preached a sermon entitled "Persistent Prayer is Powerful Prayer" based on Luke 11:1-13. Our inmate song director led Amazing Grace sung to the tune of The House of the Rising Sun during invitation.
New Parking Permits They are issuing new parking permits to all the employees. They are purple instead of orange. Each person has to fill out a form to get a new permit. To save printing costs they e-mail us the form, and we print it ourselves. We get the form from the printer, write all the information they already know about us on it, plus the make and tag number of our cars, which for me has not changed since last time I told them. Then we take the form and our old permit, to the department secretary. She gives us a new permit, enters the number of the new permit in a database together with some of the other information on the form, and then throws the paper away. Purple does not go with the color of my cars any better than orange did, but it does not matter, since it does not get attached to the car. We are supposed to hang it from our rear view mirror when we are parked in the lot. We are in an office park, not downtown. All the buildings around here have plenty of parking spaces. Our parking lot never fills. Our lot is not useful to park in, for anyone except people coming to our building. I carry my permit in my lunch bag just in case I need it. For what?
Amazing Grace The movie has come out on DVD. I recommend it highly. I saw it in the theater. It is the only movie I have ever attended where the audience would proclaim, "Amen!" from time to time. We all clapped at the end. It is not a good children's movie, not because it is offensive in any way, but because mostly it is a about politics, and will be above their heads. My wife bought one for us as soon as we heard it was available. The trouble with doing that is you get a version with fewer special features. In a few months they will come out with ones that have the deleted scenes or director's cut and we'll have to buy another one.
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Sunday Services Report Services at the hospital Sunday morning went really well. We had four visitors in chapel, who were neither patients or staff. Three of them came to the hospital just for the services. One of the people we expected did not come, but there was a new lady we had not seen before. I saw her earlier in the halls. I think she must have been visiting someone in the hospice, or something, and just heard the announcement they make over the loud speakers, inviting people to attend the chapel. My wife played Going Home on her psaltery for a special. We had a good response to the message. I preached on John 3:16, "God loves me. God loves you."
Several people (not our morning visitors) had promised to show up for service Sunday night. Only one did, but he made up for everything by his enthusiasm. Bob is hungry for God's word. My wife and Bob helped me start planning for this week's messages. The scripture is Luke 11:1-13, and the title is "Persistent Prayer is Powerful Prayer."
Hedge of Thorns my wife recently read about a kind of prayer called a Hedge of Thorns prayer. The idea is that if you have loved ones who are making a lot of very bad decisions, you ask God to take away any joy they might get from their sins. Through this, a "hedge of thorns" is put around them to protect them from getting into too much trouble. What they do not enjoy, they will do less. So, if your sins have fewer "passing pleasures," blame my wife.
Time Tracking Some of the guys that come to worship service at the jail tell us it is difficult to keep track of time in there. They asked us for calendars. My wife created some little pocket sized ones that we started handing out at the jail services a couple of weeks ago. I have created a larger version that fits on a letter sized sheet that we are mailing to the students, who take the correspondence courses. I send them two, so they can share one with a friend. It has a little advertisement of our Bible Correspondence Courses on the bottom of the sheet.
Give them the Pickle In order to be able to preach at the hospital, I have to maintain my status as a Volunteer Hospital Chaplain. This requires that I get a yearly TB test and that I attend an "Orientation Refresher" session once a year. Tonight I attended the session. It was just chock full of useful information like, I am supposed to respect the privacy of the patients, and if something catches on fire, I am supposed to notify someone, and if possible put it out. That is three hours of my life I will never have again. It concluded with a 20 minute video on being customer service oriented, that was pretty funny. I mean intentionally funny. The premise was that if you are working in a restaurant and a customer wants and extra pickle, you should give them the pickle. It talked about how this concept applies in a lot of different industries. At the end of the session she passed out little plastic pickles, we could pin on our clothes. I was a good boy during the entire session, even though the instructor gave me many opportunities to make fun of her, and or, the material. However, I at last reached my limit and succumbed to temptation. At the end, I asked her if next year, instead of plastic pickles, could we please have edible donuts.
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Artist still wanted, no longer needed We have purchased the right to publish 90% of the artwork we are currently using in our Bible Correspondence Lessons. The rest will be re-evaluated to see if we can use it as we like. When we first started we did not think we would be using the lessons beyond our own church sending the lessons. That would be legal based on the web sites where we got it. However, we would like to expand our ministry, so we have had to revisit that notion. So we have a shorter list of websites with free clip art that have licenses that allow us to publish it. We purchased access to one website and got a CD full of artwork.
What we want to do is get some other churches involved in helping us. The idea is that several volunteers in a particular church would agree to write a prisoner. They would use grading and responding our Bible lessons as a way to begin the relationship. After the student was done with the course they would continue to write him. One prisoner would be connected with several volunteers, all at the same church. That way when they got out they would have a significantly altered circle of friends instead of going back into their old situation. I believe it would make all the difference for them by dramatically reducing their chances of falling back into their old habits. They mean well, but it is hard when your circumstances and friends are the same ones you had before.
There is still a lot of work to do. I need to develop some guidelines like - do not ever, under any circumstances, for any reason, ever give them money unless they earn it. Many of them are already struggling with learned helplessness. Also, money can be a huge temptation for some people in certain circumstances. Strategies to deal with those members of a church who do not like having convicted felons in their midst need to be developed. The have such people in their midst already, but since they do not know who they are, it does not bother them.
I have Wednesday night's free. (Well, no appointments, anyway.) I am hoping I can find some churches that would be willing to let me come and speak to them about this idea. One lady at work that I talked to about this already thinks her church would be interested.
Northern Lights or lack thereof: When I went to the post office to pick up our mail, there was a notice saying we had a package that would not fit in our PO Box. While I waited in line to get it, the three postal clerks that were working were having a conversation. Clerk one said that someone had called the postmaster to let him know that one of the clerks had done a really good job for this customer, and handled some issue in a very professional manner. The second clerk wondered which of them the customer was talking about. The third clerk said the customer probably called the wrong post office.
When my turn finally came I found that we had received the CD of Bible artwork mentioned above. I knew what it was, because it is the only package I was expecting from England. The clerk who waited on me decided she wanted to know where in England it came from, so she studied the return address. She was not able to make it out. I remarked that since England was not that big, perhaps it did not matter hoping she would give up the effort. There were half a dozen people waiting in line behind me. No, she was sure England was big. After all, wasn't it a whole country? It was part of Asia too, which is the biggest continent there is. I affirmed that Asia was indeed the largest continent.
Apparently this triggered the clerk next to her to say that he had seen a show on TV the night before about some people who took a cruise to Antarctica. I have no problem with folks chatting on the job. However, these particular people were incapable of chatting and working at the same time, and the line behind me was becoming longer. The cruise was on an old Russian ice breaker that had been overhauled adding some nice cruise ship accommodations on top. The people paid $25,000 dollars each for the cruise. He emphasized the price several times during his monologue. He thought it a rather high price, even though they did get lavish meals with wine, and a helicopter ride to be able to walk around where no human had ever walked. (I wanted to ask how they could possibly know that, but out of respect and pity for those in line behind me, I did not want to open a new topic.) I soon discovered, that this was out of my control. My clerk asked if Antarctica was where the global warming was. He was not sure, but the passengers could not sunbathe on the ship deck for more than thirty minutes, because there was less pollution down there making the atmosphere thin. The sun would really bake you if you stayed out too long under a thin atmosphere with less pollution.
My clerk disagreed. It was not the pollution. It was the aurora something or the other, wasn't it? She looked at the ceiling. People do that when they are trying to retrieve something from memory. But it was not to be found. I finally said that there were some lights in the sky called Aurora Borealis up here in the northern hemisphere, but they called them something else down there. That triggered her memory. That's right. It has two names. But its Northern Lights up here and Aurora Borealis down there. As she finally surrendered my package to me, she had a smug little smile, like she was happy to have helped me overcome a little of my vast ignorance.
So, how many geographic and scientific errors of fact or terminology can you find in the above three paragraphs?
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Blogless It is not that nothing has happened. It is just that nothing has happened to me that was blogable. In the ministry we have been counseling several different people, which while filled with delicious gossip, it would be unethical to enjoy it. We have also been busy answering Bible lessons, but there is little blogable in that. At work I have been very busy writing computer programs. Writing computer programs is interesting to do, but boring to talk about. I learned a new way to count rows in SQL! I'm excited that I did, but the sentence reporting it is a yawn, even to me. In Greek class we finished up translating the poem I already talked about last week. My wife has had a visitor and an interesting outing, but those are her stories not mine. I had a great niece playing in the band at the CMA awards, which were broadcast nationwide, but I did not get to see it.
Blogable Bragable Badge Our son earned his Expert Infantry Badge this week. It is an answer to prayer, and the culmination of many months of effort and preparation for him. He was "true blue" which means he made a perfect score. The pass ratio is like 1 in 10, and those with a perfect score is even smaller. Most people take it and pass it, when they are younger and at a lower rank. Because he started out in the Marines and changed to the army, he did not have that opportunity. Since he is already a sergeant, they made him responsible for shepherding others through the test. In that situation it is considered remarkable if half those for whom you are responsible, pass. All four of "his" guys passed, albeit not all true blue. Of course, these are their own individual accomplishments, but our son took his task seriously. Even while he was in the midst of doing something of great personal interest to him, he took the time to encourage and help "his" guys, and may have made the difference for one or two of them. We are very proud of him. It is a real accomplishment and is a valuable stepping stone in his career in the military.
Will be Blogable If everyone shows up who said they would be there, we will have four visitors in service tomorrow morning and eight tomorrow evening. We are praying they will all be "true blue."
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Almost Arrested The other evening when my wife and I were going some place we noticed some police cars pulled over having a conference not far from our apartment complex. Today I may have discovered what it was about. One of the guys I ride with to work lives in the same apartment complex we do. Apparently the police had the roads to the complex staked out looking for him. They pulled him over and called him by name before he identified himself. That will get your adrenaline pumping, huh? Turns out there are several outstanding warrants for various nefarious deeds that have his name on it. Turned out to be somebody else with the same name. What fun.
Crawling around under my desk We are having technical difficulties. We had a thunder storm Monday evening. It caused our hub to lose its mind. It lost its settings and went back to default. Until my son-in-law has time to re-program it, I am going to get a little extra exercise. I can re-connect things so my wife's computer has access to the internet. When I do that my computer can not print on our shared printer. So when I want to print I have to crawl under my desk and reconnect the hub. Then when we need to get to the internet I have to crawl under my desk and direct connect her computer. There is no configuration that allows my computer access to the net.
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Tuesday Night Worship at the Jail We had the 2nd Floor tonight. There were 22 of them. The reason we did not get them last week remains a mystery, although they offered the theory, that there was so much horseplay in the pod, that they did not hear the call for church. My wife played a medley of old southern hymns. I preached on John 3:16. The title was "God loves me, God loves you." Six answered invitation for rededication.
Daylight Savings Time Why is it that in the Spring the hour you lose haunts you for two or three weeks but in the Fall the hour you gain vanishes immediately?
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World Class Old Fat Man This past weekend one of the men I work with traveled to Kansas City and won a world weight lifting tournament for his weight and class. He broke three world records, also for his age and weight class. I asked him which class that is, and he said, "Old fat men." One of the records he broke was one he had set in an earlier meet leading up to this one. They gave him a little plaque for his trouble. The prize they gave him for the local contest he won a few months ago was much better. It was a real sword. The handle was big enough for two hands. The blade was about three feet long. It was real steel and real sharp. I hope he got some money with the plaque, because the sword was way cooler.
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Services at the hospital went well Sunday morning. My wife played In the Garden on her psaltery. I preached on 2 Kings 5:1-14. "To understand why, submit and apply." One analogy I used was comparing the Bible to learning about mathematics. In mathematics we start with learning our numbers, then addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, then algebra, then geometry, and then calculus. Then we are ready for higher math. It is the same with the Bible. We do not understand it all it once. It takes time. The Lord is an infinitely patient teacher. He does not move us to the next level until we understand the one we are trying to master. The way we know if we are ready to move to the next level, is when we obey what we know. Once we have demonstrated our mastery of Biblical concepts by obedience, then we are ready to move to the next level.
Attendance was down, but that has more to do with how many people are in the hospital than anything else. We are thankful there are fewer people in the hospital than usual. There were three people in chapel, who were not patients or staff. They came just for the worship service. The two men have been coming off and on for a few weeks. One of them brought his girlfriend with him. We find this very encouraging. Please join us in praying that they fix the piano in the lock up ward. It has six broken keys.
Evening at the church was good. One of the men who attended the morning service came to services this evening. We looked at the Correspondence course lesson on Obadiah and started planning for this week's sermon on John 3:16.
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Bella This afternoon my wife and I went to see Bella. It came very close to being an excellent movie. Some people would have been put off by the subtitles. The actors speak Spanish about half the time, and it has English subtitles for this part of the dialog. Sometimes, one person is speaking English, and the other Spanish. Some of the ways they misunderstand each other is funny. I like that kind of thing. It is a good story with an anti-abortion moral. However, I prefer my stories to be told in chronological order, at least for the most part. Between the many flash forwards, and flash backs, I was left puzzling most of the time. The acting was very good. If it could be re-edited, putting the scenes in the order they happened, with a few little notes at the bottom like "5 years later" and "7 years later" et cetera, it would be an excellent movie.
Prayer Requests Please join me in praying for the salvation of Philip Pullman, author of The Golden Compass books, and Joanne K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter books. These two people are so lost and confused, they are leading children into confusion. Matthew 18:6 "But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!" It seems there is a particularly hot place waiting for these two in hell. Pray for them that they turn to Christ, before it is too late.
Christmas is coming! my wife shops for presents all year long. She also makes presents all year long. Unlike previous years my wife is not going to be able to make a lot of our Christmas presents this year. Between teaching for FCA, working in our ministries, and maintaining this magic castle where I live, she is out of time. Today we are going to retrieve what she has so far from storage, make a list, and check it twice.
This month in history: At various times and places I have made journal entries before having this blog. Last month I decided to add a feature I call "this month in history" with journal entries I have made at some time in the past. Here are two for this month:
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November, 2006 Sometimes my co-workers call on me to be the "preacher at work." Sometimes it is a joke like the other day Jing or Kim, I could not hear which for sure, (they are both three cubes away) got frustrated with her computer and said something like "it has a demon." Robert and Rick almost simultaneously jokingly started calling on me to exorcise the demon. I told them I had left my holy water at home. Sometimes it is almost serious, like the time they got in some kind of discussion about consultants. I tuned it out for a while, and then heard my name and a question mark. I told them I had not been paying attention, because it was a boring conversation. Rick asked if the Bible had anything to say about consultants. I told them that it says there is much wisdom in a multitude of counselors, but that the hired hand is not as careful with the sheep as the owner. They seemed to like that answer. ---------------------------------------- The Dream In the fall of 1973, two of the most significant events of my life occurred. In early November I had a life changing encounter with Jesus Christ. I had become so depressed I was planning suicide. Instead I said a prayer along these lines; "God I don't want this life anymore. You can have it." The Lord honored that simple prayer. I went from taking joy at laughing at Christians to taking joy from being a Christian. People who knew me best, compared it to the Saul to Paul conversion. In mid December, perhaps on the first anniversary of our marriage, our oldest child, Andrew Thor Carden, was conceived. Between these two events I had a vivid dream. I have, before and since, written down accounts of my most vivid dreams. This is the only dream I ever had, where I attempted to draw a picture of it. I kept the picture for years, but I haven't been able to find it to show to you now. I will have to describe the dream instead. In the darkness was an arched doorway. On the other side of the doorway was light. A bunch of people dressed in different colors were looking through the doorway at me. They were crowded together looking over one another's shoulders as if posed for a group photograph. I didn't know them but they knew me. They seemed happy, and I got the impression they loved me. I felt like there was some spiritual significance to the dream. I talked about it with my wife, my wife, and actually made several attempts to draw it. I'm not much of an artist but I did complete one, that I kept. I have wondered many times, what the dream might mean. The other night, perhaps 25 years to the hour, I saw it again. This time it wasn't a dream. In the wee hours of the morning, well past my usual time for bed, I got some cranberry juice to drink before retiring. I went into the living room to drink it relaxing in the dark as I have many times before. As I sat down on the couch I was startled by what I saw. I had forgotten to turn out the lights in the den. Through the arched doorway I could see photographs on the wall of my children and grandchildren. They were dressed in different colors. They were crowded together looking over one another's shoulders posed for group photographs. I know them now and they know me. They seem happy, and I get the impression they love me. It wasn't a dream. It was a vision of my future. |
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Reformation Day I did not realize it but Halloween is also called Reformation Day because October 31st is when Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the Wittenburg church door. There is even a country in central Europe that takes it as a civic holiday. After answering the correspondence course lessons and getting some bibles ready to send, my wife and I watched a movie about Martin Luther last night to sort of honor the event, albeit, two days late. I fell asleep part way through the movie, so I did not get to see the end. So did Luther remain a part of the Catholic Church or not? :)
Electricity to the Cabin We had hoped to get electricity hooked up to the cabin. My wife has been saving to pay for the installation. As we began to look into the details, we discovered there is a minimum monthly fee. We figured there would be, but I had no idea how much it would be. Besides all the expenses of getting the line run in and set up, it turns out it would also cost us a minimum of almost $450 per year to hook it up. That is a little too rich for us.
The Taste of Glasses I have a bad habit of chewing on the temples of my glasses. My old glasses have many teeth marks. I soon will have this habit no longer. My new glasses taste horrible.
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URL Pirates They have taken the URL I had for the church and turned it into something ugly. Over the summer I had serious problems with our internet service provider and we had to change providers. We had purchased the URL for the church through them, so it turns out it is impossible to pry it out of their hands without their cooperation. I talked with the people that sell URL's, and they said if I would just let the registration lapse, I could buy it back in 60 days. So I let LoveBibleChurch.com lapse. Today I tried to buy it back, but someone else has already gotten it. Unless you are looking for a love connection with a partner of the same gender, do not go there.
First John 2:13 Today in Greek class we translated John 2:13. Our work spilled over into verses 12 and 14, because the three verses form a poem. In the NASB, First John 2:12-14 appears as:
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I am writing to you, little children, |
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because your sins have been forgiven you for His name's sake. |
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I am writing to you, fathers, |
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because you know Him who has been from the beginning |
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I am writing to you, young men, |
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because you have overcome the evil one |
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I have written to you, children, |
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because you know the Father. |
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I have written to you, fathers, |
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because you know Him who has been from the beginning |
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I have written to you, young men, |
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because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one. |
In some versions you will see this passage set off as poetry. Clearly, it qualifies as Hebrew poetry because of the obvious parallelism. However, I'm not sure if it is also poetry in Greek, the language in which it was originally written. Seems like it would have to be Greek poetry as well, or they would not set it off, but I am not certain of their criteria. Ironically I know more about Greek than Hebrew, but I know more about Hebrew poetry, than I do Greek poetry. There are several issues with this passage - age of the audience, gender of the audience, range of sense of "fathers," and some textual problems involving the Greek tense of "to write."
At first glance John appears to be addressing three age groups, children, fathers, and young men. However, in the context of the letter as a whole, it seems clear that "children" and "little children," are simply terms of endearment John uses for his readers, as he does in 2:1, 2:18, 2:28, 3:7, 3:18, 4:4 and 5:21. It is generally believed that John was at least 90 years old at the time. (I'm only 56, and most of the world already looks like children to me. I can only imagine what it will be like when I'm over 90.) That means the three groups are more than likely, (1) all his readers, and two subgroups; (2) fathers, (3) and young men.
At first glance John appears to be addressing only men - fathers and young men. However, because of the way gender is used in the Greek, we can not be sure of that at all. He could have meant it exclusively. However, it is just as likely, that he could have meant to include mothers and young women. Typically the Greeks of this time relied on context to make this distinction. If the context is not explicit, as it appears in this case, these kinds of terms should be taken to be inclusive. So, John was probably addressing all his readers, not just the males.
The word translated fathers can also mean grandfathers or even ancestors in general. Most of the time it is taken to mean just fathers, unless there is a specific contextual clue suggesting, that it should be understood as a different sense. Well, its poetry which makes the wider sense more likely, because he may have been talking in some metaphorical sense. In both cases, John says he is writing to the fathers because they knew the Father from the beginning. From the beginning of what? The entire passage has an encouraging tone, but I'm not sure what bearing that might have on the range of sense of fathers. What is John saying here, and who is he saying it to? I will leave you to ponder these questions.
Finally, to make things even more interesting, the verb tense of the verb "to write," which appears six times, is in question in two instances. The first two times it appears it is clearly present tense. ("am writing" in the NASB) In the last two instances it is clearly in the aorist tense, which usually becomes past in English. ("have written" in the NASB) The middle two times "write" appears it does not always have the same tense in the old Greek texts. Some of them have these two as present tense. Some of them have these two as aorist tense. The NASB takes the first one of these two and translates it present and the second as aorist. This is my preference as well because I believe it makes more sense for the first three to agree and the last three agree. However, the various English versions vary widely on how they handle this particular textual difficulty.
The reason the NASB version makes more sense to me has to do with the aspect of the verbs, and the general context of the epistle as a whole. In English, verb tense is mostly about time; past, present, or future. In Greek these are a factor, but aspect is much more important. Did it happen at some particular point in time, is it happening continuously, or both? There is nothing in this epistle to suggest John is referring to some previous communication. Because of this, I believe he was not interested in making a time distinction between writing in the past or writing in the present. English translations usually do not attempt to convey the Greek aspect, because it makes the English wordy and awkward, however with aspect included the passage becomes something like this:
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I am continuously writing to you, little children, |
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because your sins, have been forgiven at some point in time, and are being forgiven continuously, for His name's sake. |
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I am continuously writing to you, fathers, |
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because you came to know Him at some point in time, and continue to know Him, who has been from the beginning |
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I am continuously writing to you, young men, |
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because you overcame the evil one at some point in time, and are continuing to overcome the evil one |
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I have written to you at this particular point in time, children, |
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because you came to know the Father at some point in time, and continue to know the Father |
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I have written to you at this particular point in time, fathers, |
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because you came to know Him at some point in time, and continue to know Him, who has been from the beginning |
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I have written to you at this particular point in time, young men, |
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because you are strong, and the word of God is abiding in you, and you overcame the evil one at some point in time, and are continuing to overcome the evil one |
Someone could make a case for making the third "write" aorist tense or the fourth "write" present tense, but this seems to be the most elegant construction to me. Since it is poetry and John writes beautifully, shouldn't the prettiest choice also be the correct one?
No point of doctrine hangs on this decision, as far as I know. How do you understand this passage?
The part which the Greek reveals, that I truly love the most, is in verse 12, when it says, " ... your sins ... are being forgiven continuously, for His name's sake." How cool is that?
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