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Our Daily Thread 7-18-13

Good Morning!

On this day in 0064 The Great Fire of Rome began. Some say it was tomorrow the 19th, but I’ll go with History.com and just say today.

In 1914 six planes of the U.S. Army helped to form an aviation division called the Signal Corps.

In 1927 Ty Cobb set a major league baseball record by getting his 4,000th career hit. He went on to hit 4,191 before he retired in 1928.

In 1932 the U.S. and Canada signed a treaty to develop the St. Lawrence Seaway.

In 1936 the first Oscar Meyer Wienermobile rolled out of General Body Company’s factory in Chicago, IL.

In 1947 President Truman signed the Presidential Succession Act, which placed the Speaker of the House and the Senate President Pro Tempore next in the line of succession after the vice president.

And in 2001 a train derailed, involving 60 cars, in a Baltimore train tunnel. The fire that resulted lasted for six days.

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Quote of the Day

“If by chance some day you’re not feeling well and you should remember some silly thing I’ve said or done and it brings back a smile to your face or a chuckle to your heart, then my purpose as your clown has been fulfilled.”

Red Skelton

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My Dad always loved Red. He used to watch him every chance he got.

It’s this fella’s birthday.

I know I’m a Yankee and all, and don’t take this the wrong way, but… Yee-Haw! 🙂  That’s some serious playin’. 🙂

Next up, another birthday, and Widespread Panic, probably the ultimate cover band. 😯

You should hear them do Clapton. You’d think Eric was playin’ the guitar.

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Anyone have a QoD for us today?

60 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 7-18-13”

  4. Yep, I woke up early this morning. I don’t sleep as well sleeping somewhere other than my own bed, which is sometimes the case when there’s a sick child in the house, like now.

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  7. Good evening AJ. No, I am saying that we are encouragers and we bring a smile to each other and chuckles tend to abound on this blog. Where else would you fight over virtual cake for birthdays???!!

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  8. I too, loved Red Skelton. And Ricky Scaggs.
    When I’ve been away and come into my room, I always check my answering machine for messages. Makes sense.
    When I come in every morning, I check my answering machine.
    I have been around all night and would have heard a ring, but I always check my machine.
    Just a reflex, I guess. And no harm done.
    Except it makes me feel silly.
    So, when you see me here looking silly, you know I just checked my answering machine.
    :blush:

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  10. The one with the woman in the orange shirt is good too. Those “breakdown” pieces are usually instruments that give each band member a chance to show off. But everyone enjoys them.
    Speaking of music:

    I learned last night that this song was the first single to make a gold record. Elvis sang it on the Ed Sullivan show in1956 and the pre-orders made it gold before it was actually released.

    I, personally, never cared much for Elvis. But he was much better than most who followed in the same genre.

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  15. I thought of Mumsee and company, reading from Psalm 36 this morning.

    5 Thy mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens; and thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds.

    6 Thy righteousness is like the great mountains; thy judgments are a great deep: O Lord, thou preservest man and beast.

    7 How excellent is thy lovingkindness, O God! therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings.

    8 They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house; and thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures.

    9 For with thee is the fountain of life: in thy light shall we see light.

    10 O continue thy lovingkindness unto them that know thee; and thy righteousness to the upright in heart.

    Blessings to all of you today.

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  16. That’s beautiful 6 arrows. AJ, I enjoy the teasing. Living alone, this blog is so much fun and family. You can tell I spent years lurking and feel I know most of you. Now that I have joined in, I check it all the time. So fun to stay up to be first instead of getting up early.

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  17. Good morning. I love Red Skelton. I never saw the earlier pieces like the one i the video until recently when I bought a 4 DVD set. But I do remember the variety show he had in the 60s. Remember those? Interesting how the genre of TV shows has evolved from the variety show a la Ed Sullivan, to the “reality” show a la American Idol. I prefer the old version. Think of all the stars launched on shows like Sullivan or Skelton, or even the Carol Burnett show– and without all the hype and big named stars pretending to listen and vote for them.

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  18. Good morning all, I am off early–it’s 5:30am here–for an angiogram. Pray the cardiologist can figure out what’s going on with the old ticker. It’d be nice to get to surf a bit this summer 😉

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  19. This was part of an e-mail I got:

    President Obama’s approval ratings are so low now, the Kenyans
    Are accusing him of being born in the United States.

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  20. For those who may have missed it late last night, may I share a cool blog-connection discovery? Jo knows my DIL’s cousin and his wife who were missionaries with Wycliffe in Ukarumpa. Isn’t that awesome?

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  21. That is awesome, Linda.

    Does anyone else have some “it’s a small world” connections? I was amazed to hear, when a boy, my current pastor was a patient of my former pastor’s father who was a doctor in a small town. The two pastors are from different denominations.

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  23. “Does anyone else have some “it’s a small world” connections? ”
    I’ve been on that ride at Disney World. That song really does get on your nerves after a while.

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  24. Here’s another small-world connection (not blog-related). When my GP decided to discontinue providing gyn staff, I asked him to recommend a gyn. He gave me the name of the doctor who had delivered my first-born son 28 years earlier. Subsequently, I recommended her to my DIL and she has since also delivered the two daughters of that son.

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  25. It seems that with all the places I’ve been, and things I’ve done in my life, I would have a “small world” story. But I don’t recall a situation that hasn’t been initiated somehow. I reconnected my sister and a childhood friend, (The one who got me the job at Parker lab.), and contacted guys I knew at Carolina, and Southwestern. An AF buddy and I reconnected briefly. I ran into a guy I knew at the Naval War College on the street in Alexandria.
    But not a single incidental event that I can recall

    In Rutherfordton, NC, Elvera ran into a man who taught at Jefferson HS in Alexandria while she was there.

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  26. After I’d been in college a while, I met a guy who transferred to the school I was attending. He was a music major, as I was, majoring in vocal performance. Sometime during his senior year, when I was serving as an accompanist for him as he prepared his senior recital, we got to talking about where he grew up, and he and I discovered that he had been the next-door neighbor of my (then)-boyfriend, now-husband!

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  27. Prayers adios. And continued prayers for mumsee & co.

    kbells, yes, that incessant “It’s a small world after all!” jingle, looping over and over and over again, can drive you batty on that ride.

    I’m having such a hard time waking up this morning, I got to bed too late after working until 9 last night covering the roller derby practice. Then the photographer and I spend a good 30 minutes talking in the parking lot about the state of the local news biz.

    6 arrows, I love Ps. 36, what a beautiful way to start the day.

    I don’t check the messages on my landline more than every other day or so, it’s mostly marketing calls on that one these days. I’ve gradually switched to using my cell as my primary line. Anything important comes on that line (or via email or text) anymore. I keep the landline for just emergency backup for the most part.

    But that reminds me, I still need to give my mom’s cousin a call. She turned 90 a few weeks ago and I sent her a birthday card saying I’d be calling in the next few weeks. I know I tend to put it off because she talks a really long time (last time she had me on the line for 4 hours; the time before that it was 3 hours).

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  28. Good morning everyone. Mumsee and the clan are off to the doctor to have eyes examined, them two of the children have driver’s training. I have cleaned up breakfast and am planning lunch. I thought I would scan Allrecipes and look for inspiration. I have had a request for enchiladas but will need to follow a recipe. I KNOW I can find the ingredients around this house!

    I can’t think of a small world connection. I just am systematically working my way through meeting people from this blog. I am up to 5 now, who’s next?

    This morning I have to remind myself that “Life is good. It isn’t always great, but it is always good”.

    Tomorrow will be a long day for BG and me. We will leave the Little House on the Prairie at 7 am and arrive in New Orleans around 10:30pm, then drive a couple of hours home. Saturday, I will be up rather early to drive to Valdosta, GA….good thing I don’t have a real job…LOL

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  29. Kim, I was just trying to think the other day who all you’ve met from this blog. I know of Adios, Tammy, Linda, and now Mumsee. Who’s the other? Was it NJL?

    I have mentioned my friend Kelly here before (mostly on the prayer thread — she just had her 10th baby, and has had her house hit by two tornadoes, first time destroying it, second time damaging it after they rebuilt). She lives in Northern Alabama, and has invited us to come there anytime (I haven’t met her yet, as we hardly ever get out of our little part of the world quite a long ways from there). But if I ever get to Alabama, maybe you and I could connect somehow. It would be a great privilege for me. 🙂

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  30. I’ve only met 2 — Cheryl and Michelle. Adios actually would be easy, she lives closer to me than anyone else here.

    I have talked to mumsee on the phone.

    Remember when we were all going to meet up at mumsee’s one summer for a big group barbecue and working retreat? 🙂

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  32. “It’s a small world” connection. I have a couple, but this is my favorite:

    I have a friend from college, let’s call her CZ (the initials of her maiden name) I met in college. We e-mail each other daily, sometimes multiple times a day. She and I worked together in the library at college, and two summers we were roommates.

    One of those summers I needed to repay a small loan from my mom. I didn’t have a checking account yet, but CZ did. So I gave her cash and had her write a check for me. Next phone call from Mom: “Z—-? Is she related to John and Jane Z?” I asked, and sure enough, those were her parents. So of course I had to determine how Mom knew her parents.

    Well, many years before, maybe 25 or 30, my parents and her parents had attended the same church in Illinois, and in fact my dad and her mom had both worked at the same company (Scripture Press).

    But here is the funny part: When our parents knew each other, her parents had had multiple miscarriages but no live births, and my parents had four sons but no daughters. So for their daughters to meet in college was remarkable. (Both of us lost our fathers in teen or pre-teen years, so it was only our mothers left when we met in college.)

    But her mom had a couple of very positive memories of my parents. One was that my dad was a very good Bible teacher on the occasions he taught or preached, and two was that it was obvious my parents were very close.

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  34. Seems like I remember that Pauline and her family did a cave tour with Peter L. That sounded fun to me.

    I believe there are two others who live in Georgia besides me: MakeItMan and maybe inbutnotof (am I correct on that one?). I have never met them but think they are not too far from the Atlanta area.

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  36. Oh, here’s another fun one. Two of my cousins who didn’t know each other – one on my mother’s side and one on my father’s side (whom I barely knew, myself) both taught night classes at Hopkins. They knew each other there and even shared the same classroom. Through a series of e-mails, they discovered that they are both related to me and my sibs. We all got together for dinner one night (at the Chart House in Annappolis, Kim) and had a grand time and a lot of laughs.

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  37. I’ve only met Joanne (AIJSUUN) and Kim. Looking foward to meeting AJ one of these days (and wearing my Orioles t-shirt when I do).

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  38. Ephesians 4 :1 I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, 2 with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, 3 endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6 one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.

    My prayer today is that we walk worthy of the calling and not surrender to society pressure. That we come to an understanding of what it means “2 with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, 3 endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” That this does not mean we do not have the right to speak about sin, as society want us to be quite about. But that we need to keep in mind the mercy, grace, love, forgiveness that is found in the right relationship of Christ.

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  39. Oh, Idaho Mike is the other one; of course! He used to comment on WMB, right? (I think I’d heard that, although it was probably in the days before I knew of the blog.)

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  41. There was a change of plans. I couldn’t find the ingredients listed in some of the recipes and considering some of the children are from Texas I was too intimidated to wing it.
    They will have Curried Chicken and Broccoli Casserole with brown rice and my corn bread…which for some reason didn’t turn our as well as it does at home, but shhh. They won’t know will they?

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  45. I was sitting on the porch and a “small world” occurred to me. It’s a long story, but interesting.

    Background. Put this in the back of your mind: When we moved from Spartanburg to the DC area, we got lots of visitors because of the location. One of them was Polly, Elvera’s baby sister. Polly was 28 and single. She was a nurse working at Grady Hospital in Atlanta. Polly really liked the area. So she went to Fairfax hospital and got a job. She went to Atlanta and resigned and moved to Falls Church.
    She moved in with us until she could find a place.

    Meanwhile, I was at the Army Map Service training center. It was really a holding pen for those of us waiting for a Top Secret SCI clearance. One of the guys with me was a guy named Mel, and a common friend named Ed.
    While we were training, we were looking at a USGS map of part of SC. Mel said, “I know where there’s a USGS marker.” I said, “Where?” “See that railroad that crosses this road? There’s a big rock there in front of a house. When we were on maneuvers a couple of years ago, we used that as a check point.”
    I said, “How about that?” “My father-in-law lives there.”
    “Is that so? The lady invited us in for something to eat.”
    I knew Mel had the place because Sophie, Elvera’s step-mother liked to feed people.

    Back to Ed and Polly:
    Ed got sick and was in the hospital. Mel and I went to see him. I don’t know the reason, but Mel came home with me. Mel happened to see Polly and was favorably impressed. He probably knew already, from knowing Elvera, that he wanted a Collins girl. 😉
    Mel and Polly started dating. One evening, Mel put an engagement ring in a cocktail glass.
    Mel & Polly celebrated their 47th this month. They are the reason we are in Hendersonville.
    Mel got to visit that rock several times.

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  47. Small world connections? Well, let me tell you… Several of my extended family were/are pastors, which means that I can’t turn around in a group of Christians (especially of the Baptist persuasion) without someone knowing one of the said relatives. That even happened here. Some of you might even have that connection, considering that at least one of my relatives has pastored in the States and others have spoken there.

    Then there are the connections which I have made by attending different churches and then there are the connections I have made through World and now this blog. I have only met two of you so far, but I have had email contact with many of you.

    I am constantly amazed at the connections that the Lord has brought into my life. Like my varied educational experiences, each of them has been to accomplish His purpose in my life. My family was very skeptical about my internet activity when I started commenting on World. I still don’t know how they allowed me to go all the way to Idaho by myself (some of them were really nervous about it) – and none of us dreamed that my anonymous comments on a Christian news site would take me across the ocean to another continent.

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  48. 😳 AJ missed the big one.
    On this day in 1913,the T-shirt was introduced by the Navy.
    I wonder if JoeB knows that.
    FoxNews is my source.

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  49. I was reading Anonymous’ post above, trying to figure out who it was. It took me until the last sentence to figure it out. 😉

    Hi Phos/Roscuro. 🙂

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  50. “Anonymous,” 🙂 when I was engaged I liked to tell people I wasn’t really all that tech-savvy (I don’t own a smart phone or a laptop or anything newer than a CD player for music), but I bought a car I found on the Internet, then a house, then a dog, and then finally a husband.

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  51. Chas, I have a different sort of story of “small world,” like yours. I may have told it on here before.

    My mom went to the mission field as a single missionary, somewhere around age 25, assuming she would never marry. (I sort of think she had a heartbreak at some point, but if so she never told us the story.) In those days, single women missionaries outnumbered single men 50:1 or 100:1 or something along that line; single men simply didn’t go to the mission field. So she was sealing her “fate” by going single.

    A church in Georgia was greatly influential in sending her; I don’t know whether they provided all her support, or just much of it, but they were definitely her sending church, and many of their members became lifelong friends for her. One couple in the church even named their daughter after two of the missionaries, one name for her first name and one name for her middle name; she was called by her middle name, which is the name of this particular missionary.

    One single man missionary was stationed near her, but she only knew two things about him, neither of them good. One, he was short and skinny, and two, he hadn’t done well in language school. (Language came easily to her.)

    But the single man knew of a redheaded missionary stationed near him, and he knew he wanted to meet her. So when she had a week vacation at his station (staying with a married couple who were friends of hers at his station), he volunteered to meet her at the bus station. Her first sight of him was the bus headlights glinting off his gold tooth because he was grinning ear to ear in his eagerness to meet the redhead. Ten days later they were engaged; three months later they were married; fifteen years later I was born.

    After more than thirty years of marriage, the man died. Fifteen years or so later, the wife of the couple in Georgia died, and the widower courted the widow and married her. So Mom ended up with a stepdaughter who had been named for her. Actually, come to think of it, my middle name is for my mom too, so she had two girls with her name as a middle name, one with each of her (Mom’s) married last names.

    But, really, how many people meet their second husband before they meet their first one, and have a stepdaughter as a namesake before they have a daughter as a namesake?

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  52. Yes, I met Pauline and her husband when they came down this way. I don’t think I was the one who took them on a tour, but I may be wrong. They did come to church with us and Mr P and our pastor had a great theological discussion after the fellowship meal.

    Giving tours at a world famous cave has given me a few “small world” moments. One comes to mind. I like to ask folks where they are from. One lady said “A small town near Iowa City, Iowa.” I asked which one. She said, “You’ve probably never heard of it.” When I told her my wife comes from that area, she told me the name of the town. I told her, “Oh really? My wife’s cousin lives there.” It turns out this woman was the best friend of my wife’s cousin.

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  53. Figured that you could guess who ‘Anonymous’ was. It will not let me sign in today – Sigh…

    Donna, that link about the young people seeking more formal church experiences echoes my experience. I have seen it happen in my extended family, who was all Baptist at one point. One has gone all the way to Catholicism (I know them quite well and I truly believe they are Christians). Another has joined a Presbyterian church (there was something of a stir made when they announced they would baptize their children). Others have tried Anglican and other liturgical denominations. We all still fellowship as fellow Christians, generally communicating on our common ground, rather than debating our differences.

    I, while studying away from home, attended a church that incorporated some liturgy into their service. I didn’t pick it for that, though I did feel drawn to the idea of more ceremony in services. The homely informality of my own church wasn’t so bad (just boring sometimes), but larger Baptist churches irritated me with their loud, somewhat tasteless, worship team performances and snappy sermons inspired by pop culture. However, I would now hesitate say that ceremony enhances worship. I daily see (and hear) empty religious forms – several (prayer beads, rote prayers, etc.) similar to those used by certain churches. I don’t think ceremony and liturgy are wrong, but they are not to be compared with personally knowing the true and living God.

    I think jaded evangelicals are seeking something they will not find in liturgical services, nor in house churches, or in charismatic assemblies. They are seeking their first love (Revelation 2:4) and that will not be found simply by shifting one’s place of attendance.

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  54. Phos, I think there is a vast difference between “liturgical services” as a whole and formality for its own sake. I attend a fairly liturgical church (PCA), but it is because I have come to believe that its theology is more correct, not because I’m seeking experience.

    That said, how one worships matters. Scripture has a lot to say, for example, about worshiping correctly, reverently, and in an orderly way. All churches have a “liturgy” (the word means only the order of service, not the amount of formality involved), but some involve more structure than others. For example, I love it that our liturgy includes readings from both Old and New Testament, responsive readings, a recital of a creed, and an invitation to silent confession of sin with a prayer based from the sermon passage for the week. All of that is helpful, God-directed liturgy. I also think it’s a legitimate to have a short time in the worship service in which people can share prayer requests or praises, as was done for a time in my Nashville service–but such a time does need to be short, and the pastors/ elders need to be concerned that people aren’t getting up and using the opportunity (intentionally or otherwise) to express false doctrine. Even that time needs to be part of an “orderly” worship time. I also am glad that my current church doesn’t have the “walk around the church and greet people” time as part of the worship service (though we do have cookies and coffee afterward, and people stay and talk).

    I think it can be said that churches that seek creativity and experience, that need to sing at least one brand-new song every week and that look for unusual ways to visualize sermons, and so forth, are focusing more on entertaining people than on leading people to a holy God who demands reverence . . . and I can see why people would prefer to keep their entertainment separate from their worship, and would flee from that to churches that are very different. I don’t thinl Roman Catholicism or Orthodoxy are the place to go, but I can understand why people run there. (And why many more are landing in churches that include a more formal liturgy but still care about orthodoxy, little o.)

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  57. Cheryl, I was not endorsing a non-formal church service over a more ceremonious one. My conclusion is simply that changing the outward forms of worship will ultimately satisfy people’s spiritual hunger and may in fact, prevent them from realizing what they really are seeking. My own experience is a case in point.

    A few years ago, as I finished school, I was deeply dissatisfied with my home church. Not only did I find the people lacking in giving me the support (spiritual, emotional, etc.) that I felt I needed, but I also found the services uninteresting and unsatisfying. Frankly, many of the members were cranks who liked to harp on their own particular hobby (politics, the end times, evolution, etc.) in any spiritual discussion. The teaching, while Biblically correct, lacked the intellectual flair of such authors as Chesterton and Lewis, whom I had come to enjoy. I wanted to leave.

    I did, temporarily, as I had the opportunity for further study in a distant city. It was there that I attended the more liturgical church and felt a strong pull toward other, more formal denominations (I was amongst Catholics, attended a couple of Anglican services and generally spread my religious wings). However, the real reason I picked the church I attended was because of the real, open fellowship with other Christians.

    Away from all that I resented in my home church, I had a chance to evaluate why we are told to attend church. I found myself pondering that bald statement in I John that the mark of a true believer was that they loved the brethren, and was haunted by Paul’s command to “Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate.” I realized I had no good reason to leave my church (unless I moved permanently). They might be unsophisticated, outdated, unintellectual and even boring, but they were doctrinally sound and, most importantly, they were fellow Christians.

    I realized my desire to leave was not because the church was flawed (the people were, because they were human) but due to my spiritual pride. I had wanted my ears tickled with intellectual sermons and sophisticated liturgy. I had already seen the same thing in those in my family who also went elsewhere – in fact, the higher the educational level, the more likely they were to be dissatisfied with the church they grew up in – but it hadn’t occurred to me that the same thing had happened to me. Not surprisingly, when I returned to my home church and chose to love and fellowship with the people, they became less eccentric and more supportive. I was the problem, not the church.

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  59. Cheryl, what a lovely story about your mom and, ultimately, about you.God is good. Let’s see I came here at age 55 and now I have a gold tooth thanks to the clinic, nope, don’t think it works. I do have a new friend here who had been married over 9 years with no children. When she decided to come here with her husband, she thought that she would never have children. Anyway, at a stopover on the way, she found she was pregnant and is now on her way home to have the baby before she returns.

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  60. Phos, I appreciate what you’re saying. I too have been in a church where people were “simple” and fairly uneducated and where I had to work not to feel as though my greater education were some mark of superiority. We Presbyterians can be smug at times, a very real spiritual danger.

    At the same time, I have seen that smugness on the “other” side too–that is, people who are happy that they don’t teach “theology” (not understanding that theology just means “the study of God” and that a church had sure better teach theology!) but just preach the Bible . . . as though a less focused study of God’s Word is somehow more holy.

    I’ve also (many times) see forms of worship reduced to “worship wars” or “trivial discussions,” when in fact proper worship is very important. We might end up having some disagreements on what proper worship is (and by “we” here, I don’t necessarily mean you and I), but surely we shouldn’t sidestep the question as unimportant. We can talk about the proper way to cook beef or the proper way to change oil; surely it is at least as important to talk about the proper way to worship God!

    Sometimes you have to accept some “secondary” error because, yes, at least the preaching is theologically sound. (I have found it nearly impossible to find a church that doesn’t use silly choruses in “worship,” for example, and while it grieves me, it’s better to attend a flawed church than not attend. Blessedly, my current church does not use them.) But still, it’s best if at all possible to attend a church that has proper doctrine but also does everything else correctly–how they worship, how they choose leaders, how they teach their children, etc.

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