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Our Daily Thread 1-8-13

Good Morning!

What’s on your mind today?

Quote of the Day

“All  political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can  foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most  grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.”

George  Orwell

49 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 1-8-13”

  3. I posted a comment a little while ago that said the following:

    “First? I must still be dreaming!”

    Not sure where the comment went. Perhaps I was dreaming!

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  7. This does not have to be considered to be a Question of the Day, but if anyone would care to answer, I am interested to know if your church has a library or media center and is it utilized?

    We have a small but nice church library where I have volunteered in the past to help with processing new books. The person who was head librarian left and no one has come in to fully take her place. I don’t think there is an emphasis on the library anymore. That makes me feel sad. I am just wondering what is happening at other church libraries.

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  10. Our church does have a library, but one of our deacons and his wife have a book ministry. The ministry deals with providing members with books and commentaries by both past and present reformed teachers. One of the books now available is Spurgeon’s letters to his students. For those men ascribing to the office of elder, I highly recommend this book. But be forewarned. Steel Toed safety shoes will not help.

    😉

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  11. Donna, from yrsterday;
    I’m praying for your, for patience and wisdom and God’s leadership.
    It may be that you should start considering options. Maybe make some.
    We are continuing to subscribe to the Tines-News, but honestly the reasons for doing so become fewer all the time.

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  12. I didn’t hear the final result last night, but I take it from the ESPN Radio announcers that the first half was all Alabama needed.

    QoD: We meet in a house church, and the host (our “pastor”) has a large library of books he gladly lends out. In fact, sometimes a conversation will remind him of something and he’ll recommend one of his books.

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  13. Our church has quite a large library. The pastors also mention specific books from the pulpit that they have been studying and that are available in the library. I’m not sure of how much it is used – I haven’t used it yet, but we’ve been too busy for casual reading 🙂

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  14. I just had the pleasure of spending $600 for new children’s (chapter-type) books for our church library. The adult library needs to be culled, but we’ve had amazing succes with a book donation cart.

    We encouraged congregation members to donate their old books–they had to be theologically correct (I’m on the Board of Education which handles the library and we check. Problem books go to the public library or, in worse case, get thrown away). Since we have a variety of groups that meet at our church during the week–food basket giveaway, BSF, Alcoholic Anonymous–no surprise, the cart emptied pretty quickly. We’ve give away over 2000 books off that cart in the last two years.

    No surprise, it’s pretty popular. 🙂 Which encourages me folks still read and has also convinced me to cull my own shelves–several times. 🙂

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  15. Thanks for the prayers Chas. On top of the usual challenges all newspapers have, we now seem to be run by people who are taking us in a direction that’s only going to make our situation worse. Honestly, it would be funny if it weren’t so sad & scary.

    Our church has a library, but I’m not sure how much it’s used. We also offer books and other literature (many are reprints of pieces written by the various puritans and others from the past) for sale/donations — there’s an envelope on one of the shelves with suggested prices for books, large/small pamphlets, etc., and people just put the money in there if they buy something.

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  16. Why church libraries don’t get used?

    I need to get a tablet to read books on. Ebooks are much cheaper.
    My 4 book shelves are already full. Where would I put another book shelf?
    Who has a VCR to play those videos on?

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  17. We have a church library. The children from the Academy use it as well, My children go through phases of using it. I generally don’t as I donated a lot of the books.

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  19. QoD: Our church does not have a library due to space limitations. But our public library is good about purchasing suggested books so that the Christian section is very good.

    Who’s ready for playoffs instead of BCS computers?

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  22. I have too many books in my own library I haven’t read yet. Most church libraries seem to be made up of books that people didn’t want anymore, which often means they’re books I’ve already read combined with books that don’t interest me. If they had good theology books, apologetics books, commentaries, and memoirs of missionaries and church fathers, I’d be more inclined to use them. (I did borrow a few books from my Nashville library, but really only a few were interesting.)

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  23. Chas, I agree. We have a playoff system. It’s called the SEC. I think there are five or six SEC teams that could have beaten that team last night.

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  24. Thank you all for the comments about your church libraries. When the head librarian was over the program at my church she had a few book discussion groups which were interesting. We also did monthly receptions just after the church service where we served punch and cookies, cake and mixed nuts/snack mix. Books were out in the reception area for people to consider for checking out. Since we don’t do that now at least I don’t have to clean the punch bowl anymore 🙂 😦 .

    Michelle, that sounds like so much fun! All those nice children’s books! And all that good encouragement for the young from Christian authors!

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  28. Who’s ready for playoffs instead of BCS computers?

    I am. Yeah, an SEC team might still win, but at least other teams would have a chance to prove themselves. And the playoff needs to start closer to the actual season with the final being New Year’s Day. How many teams perform at their best after a five or six week break?

    Also, I think next year or in 2014 there is going to be a four team playoff after the bowls are played.

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  30. Yeah, I culled my books in the last move (to get married). Got rid of a whole bookcase worth at one point, enough for two bookcases total (three feet wide, six shelves). And I promptly got fourteen new books our first Christmas, with my husband getting several as well. We have about 20 bookcases between us–a couple are small, only two feet wide with four shelves, and a few are bookcases for the top half and storage for the bottom half. But altogether it’s thousands of books, and making one room into a library/study was a very good use of space for us.

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  32. Some people like to sing. Others whistle or hum. My wife likes to “meow” her favorite songs. Tonight I was pleased to hear her “meow” The Bonnie Blue Flag: “Meow, Meow, For Southern Rights, Meow!”

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  33. Church libraries: yes, we have one. When we first joined our church, the church library was 1 or 2 shelves in the multi-purpose room containing almost all books for adults, and only a handful of children’s books.

    When our congregation outgrew our space and we built a new, much larger church on site, a separate room for a library was made, and we now have many more volumes (not sure exactly how many), plus CDs, DVDs and videos.

    My friend J, who died in 2011, was instrumental in especially building up the children’s section of the library during her years as one of the two church librarians. She was the mother of 4 children and had an interest in providing quality Christian materials for children of a variety of ages. We’ve utilized the library quite often (mainly checking out children’s materials, but sometimes literature for adults) in the years since the library offerings were expanded.

    Which reminds me, I need to finish reading The Five Love Languages of Children and get that returned. I’ve had it since last year 😉

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  39. That’s my contribution to the sports discussion, other than…is Notre Dame in North Dakota, then? 😉

    Oh, one other contribution. (This is true, BTW.) My college daughter, 2nd Arrow, when she came home around Thanksgiving time from her current locale (not in the South) was wearing an ALABAMA CRIMSON TIDE sweatshirt! Yay! Roooooooooooolll Tide!!!!! 🙂

    (Did I spell Roll right?) 😀

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  40. What about Boise?

    Now Africa — hmmm. They do get snow there, right? 😉

    My day was bearable … although the latest news is that they’re going to start “counting” how many tweets we produce.

    Ugh.

    I love posting toTwitter. But when it becomes a job standard to meet in terms of numbers, it pretty much takes all the enthusiasm out of it for me. 😦

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  41. My husband’s truck, that we spent $1500 on last month getting the transmission rebuilt, started “slipping” again today, and on the way home from choir practice broke down entirely. I am waiting up for a phone call from my husband saying the tow truck has him and the truck at the mechanic’s, so I can go pick him up. Not sure how we handle transportation tomorrow.

    He is not a happy camper right now, and neither am I thinking about trying to pay for things. I had reluctantly used a cash advance on a credit card to cover part of the transmission cost last month, hoping to get a tax refund enough to cover both that and leave something for replacing the air conditioner that broke last summer. But as this is the first full year of my husband having this part-time pastorate, I have very little idea just how the tax situation will look.

    As for church libraries, our church has two bookshelves in the fellowship hall which constitute its “library.” There’s no system for checking out books, as far as I can see, so I just borrow one occasionally, and bring it back when I’m done. Not that there are many books there I’m interested in, but occasionally I forget to bring a book with me to read while I’m waiting for my husband to be done with his pastoral duties, and I find something there that interests me. I don’t know if anyone else ever uses the books.

    At the last church where he was a temporary pastor, they had about the same situation. I borrowed an interesting book on prayer one day, but mislaid it at home and never returned it. When I mentioned it to someone at the church, she said don’t worry about it, no one would know the difference and at least this way it will get read. (I finally found it last week, and wondered for a while where in the world it had come from.)

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  42. This is probably too late in the day for many people to see this (unless you’re reading this tomorrow morning) 😉 but I have a question.

    Is it right to admonish an older person (a Christian) who is acting unbiblically? What if that person is a relative? A parent? Is that dishonoring one’s elders? Is rebuke rightfully directed only to one’s peers or younger?

    Thanks for any answers any of you would care to give. (I guess that was more than “a”, singular, question.) 🙂

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  43. That is a tough one, 6 Arrows. Is the person a member of a church that could/should be taking responsibility?

    Our pastor has said that because churches have so often failed in their charge of discipline, it too often falls to friends and relatives, putting them in a very uncomfortable and unfair position.

    I have a Christian friend who’s been living with a boyfriend (late in life) over the past few months — it’s been a major burden on me. But just recently she told me that she is in counseling about it with her pastor (and she and the boyfriend were to meet with her pastor today). That lifted a huge weight off my shoulders.

    As long as she was meeting with her pastor (and this is a conservative Lutheran church), there was no need for me to say anything at this point. Whew.

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  44. 6 Arrows, I suppose you could tactfully ask the person what is their understanding of what the Bible says about whatever sin appears to be practiced by the person. Are they doing something blatant or is is something that has the appearance of sin? I think you need to be careful of wrongly judging if it is something that has the appearance but could possibly be something else. If the person is a sincere Christian, I would think they would not want to be giving the wrong impression to people and risk leading someone astray. If nothing else, they may be tempting people to judge them with their actions. I hope this makes sense and is somehow helpful. I have no experience with this myself.

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  45. 6 arrows, I would say yes, it is right, but it is certainly not easy to do, and especially not easy to do in the right way. Several years ago, my (widowed) father-in-law moved in with a woman and they chose not to get married for financial reasons. My husband had to ask him to resign from the board of elders of the church. I was not present for the conversation, so I don’t know how it went, but apparently his father understood and respected his position – though it didn’t change his mind about his relationship.

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  46. Thank you for your input, Donna, Janice and Pauline.

    There are some details I don’t know, of course, but the situation is relatively new, and to my knowledge, is not too serious right now. I don’t believe it’s to the point where the church would have to step in at all.

    There is potential for the situation (a marital issue) to escalate, possibly causing division not only within the marriage, but also extending to outside relationships (a taking sides sort of thing). There’s a part of me that wants to step in now and say something (or at least ask some key questions to get them thinking) before things go sour. But the other part of me asks if I’m overstepping my bounds, especially from a Biblical standpoint, in addressing an elder. (I don’t think it would be wrong to ask questions, but if the answers lead me to believe an admonishment is in order, I guess I want to make sure I’m not acting unbiblically in delivering one.)

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  47. 6 Arrows, Timothy was a young pastor, apparently younger than a good number of his flock; and thus Paul addressed his youth (and how to respond to his flock) in 1 and 2 Timothy. It might possibly be helpful to read those letters, though they are not “about” the situation you face. I personally think that older people are our brothers and sisters in Christ, and I can’t imagine that someone who outlives everyone around him therefore outlives the privilege of having others love him enough to speak into his life when necessary. Sure, in an ideal world it should be less necessary as a person grows older, but it doesn’t always work that way.

    But dealings with those who are quite a bit older always must be done with respect.

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  48. Yes, there is a team or two in North Dakota: ND State and U of ND. They both play in in Division 2 and usually make the playoffs (notice that odd word in relation to college football).

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  49. Thanks, Cheryl. I’ve read 1 and 2 Timothy in their entirety before, and while I haven’t had time to reread them today yet, I skimmed them and found some interesting passages that stood out to me, particularly this one from 1 Timothy 5:1-2:

    Rebuke not an elder, but intreat [exhort] him as a father; and the younger men as brethren;
    The elder women as mothers; the younger as sisters, with all purity.

    That led me to an interesting search in my Webster’s 1828 dictionary to look up the definitions of “rebuke”, “intreat”, “exhort” and “admonish”. Then more synonyms I found in the definitions…you know how it goes 😉

    Anyway, without going into all the subtle distinctions I found between those terms, I found that looking up those words, skimming 1 and 2 Timothy, and reading the comments of all of you here who offered advice did help me get an idea of how I could approach this issue in a respectful way with the person to whom I referred in my 23:17:27 comment last night.

    Thank you, all.

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