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Our Daily Thread 10-18-13

Good Morning!

It’s finally Friday! 🙂

On this day in 1767 the Mason-Dixon line was agreed upon. It was the boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania.

In 1842 Samuel Finley Breese Morse laid his first telegraph cable.

In 1867 the U.S. took formal possession of Alaska from Russia. The land was purchased of a total of $7 million dollars (2 cents per acre).

In 1873 the first rules for intercollegiate football were drawn up by representatives from Rutgers, Yale, Columbia and Princeton Universities.

In 1943 the first broadcast of “Perry Mason” was presented on CBS Radio.

And in 1969 the U.S. government banned artificial sweeteners due to evidence that they caused cancer.

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Quote of the Day

“A family is a place where principles are hammered and honed on the anvil of everyday living.”

Charles R. Swindoll

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Today is Janet Paschal’s birthday.

Today is Cynthia Weil’s birthday as well. Her and her husband Barry Mann have written numerous songs for a wide variety of people. Everyone from the Righteous Brothers, Elvis, and Skynyrd, to the Monkees, Andy Williams, and Dolly Parton. It was tough to pick a favorite to play. But I settled on this, from one of my daughter’s favorite movies. And I’ve heard it a million times because of that 🙂  I like this version better than Linda Ronstadt and James Ingram’s anyway.

And now we have yet another birthday, Gary Richrath’s, and one of my favorite bands as well. 

And this one, because it gives Gary more of the spotlight. “The Flying Turkey Trot.” With a little “Ghost Riders in the Sky” in the middle. 🙂

We sure have a lot of musicians with birthdays today. Last one, I promise. Chuck with some old guy in a suit. 🙂

I seem to have gotten a little carried away today. But this is nothin’, you should see the news thread. 🙂

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Anyone have a QoD?

53 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 10-18-13”

  4. Awww… Poor Donna. 😦

    KBells,

    If you see this, you missed a game in the football challenge, the Minnesota and Northwestern game.

    Now if you win, I expect partial credit for helping you out.

    Hey, I need all the help I can get. I mean c’mon, have you seen my picks? Sheesh.

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  5. oh, Donna, I hope you got some consolation for being first. Not sure I would want it at 3:46am your time. I pray that you will be able to sleep for a few more hours.
    We ended our last night of our Spiritual emphasis week by singing “A Mightly Fortress is our God” powerful

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  7. Good Morning/Evening everyone. I am off to the beach today. I hope to show some property today. I had a closing yesterday and have another coming up the end of the month.

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  8. You know, I seldom know who these singers are . . . I’m better with the classical music!

    I’m not even sure I know what day it is. Thanks for including the date, AJ! 🙂

    I returned from a packed trip to the UK and France to a crazy schedule over the next two weeks. I thought I’d finally have time to write, but

    I have three groups of Navy wife friends coming to visit (first one yesterday included a surprise guest), 10 people coming to dinner tomorrow night, a party on Sunday afternoon (elsewhere), two benefit meals where I have to host a table and find ten guests, window coverings finally arriving, a TV interview three hours away, a TV interview an hour away, two surprising and troubling medical appointments and a dental cleaning. Not to mention going to work (ah, bliss, 10 days off next week) and preparing to start teaching the second half of Matthew next week.

    Oh, and I also need to organize, make and print invitations to a launch party at my house a month from Sunday.

    Did I mention I got to see a swirl of adorable granddaughters yesterday with my friends. The baby, a month old, has her eyes open now . . . and she knows how to scream! Such progress . . . 🙂

    Venting done. Off to work.

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  9. You folks don’t seem to realize that Donna was up at 3:46 her time.

    I presume Kim is showing property at the beach, vice sunning at the beach.
    Kim is going to be wealthy by the end of the month.
    🙂

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  10. Kim, second thought on giftedness. God has gifted all people for His purposes. It is only mankind that has thought to use the term “gifted” for certain features of a person that are obvious. God sees the true giftedness of all people. We are flawed in our perceptions and limited in our descriptions and labels. I truly blieve this, that all people are gifted. I think when my son was younger and those things seemed important to people that I might say, “My son is gifted, but so are all other children.”

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  14. Good morning everyone. We have inventory today. It is cold here in OKC and the rain is moving in. Later on the cold front comes through. Temperatures are supposed to drop to 35 tonight. Take care guys. My knee is hurting today so it is going to be a long day with inventory going on late into the night.

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  17. I found yesterday’s answers (including my own) about keeping the Sabbath puzzling.

    As Christians, we seem to be straddling the fence on whether this is a commandment that applies to us today or not. I’m thinking that it either does or it doesn’t, with no middle ground. If it doesn’t, then why did we all say we “try not to” shop, work, and eat out on Sunday? If it does, then why do we say we keep it only when it’s convenient? We certainly wouldn’t say “I only steal if I need one or two items and really can’t wait,” “I commit adultery because I like it” or “I kill because it makes practical sense” (all things that were said yesterday about Sunday activities).

    Please understand that I’m not being critical of anyone – just curious about this commandment.

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  19. Linds, it confuses us too. We understwand that we are not to be legalistic.
    Yet, the Sabbath is the only commandment that we regularly break with impunity.
    Like it’s the only one that doesn’t apply.

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  20. Grace, Linda. I needed something to differentiate the Sabbath from the rest of the week. Rest–which is what we’re supposed to do–can be different things to different people. I stopped shopping as much as possible on Sundays when a woman serving me noted I was wearing a dress and asked where I’d been.

    “To church.”

    “I wish I could go to church,” she said.

    Chastened, I remember her often–that was 38 years ago.

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  21. I’m probably not going to have time to tell all the stories from my trip, but I can point you to my blog (which has photos!). On Monday, my husband and I took a 10 hours tour to the Western Front in the Somme. We went with a bunch of Australians since this was an ANZAC-centric tour (and the character in my novel is NZ soldier).

    Very sobering. Astounding information. I’ll be writing about it all week. http://bit.ly/H7R0Dg

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  22. We had a very good speaker at our church one Sunday who wrote a book called 24/6 about keeping the sabbath. His main point was to intentionally keep a sabbath day of rest, but not get legalistic about it. My hubby, a teacher, finds a lot of mental rest in running and hiking, while our basketball coach neighbor finds rest in not doing anything real physical. He reminded us that our pastor is technically working on the weekend–as are his sons who are 2/5 of the band Switchfoot–so let them have their Monday sabbath. If we go out to eat on Sunday–which is rare–I get a rest. If we have all the family here–which I love–I am doing what I do all week, but it’s different, feels more enjoyable than obligatory.

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  24. Hope you get to feeling better today, Donna.

    Short night for me, though I’m getting over my cold and don’t feel miserable with it anymore. I didn’t get to sleep until after 1 a.m., but was awake by 5:30 after having my second bad dream of the night — both of them virtually the same — being in an unfamiliar place, and not being able to find a safe place to shelter from a natural disaster (same natural disaster in both dreams). After the second one, I was awake for good. 😦

    Internet is out at home again, and so is our phone now. After running some errands, I’m going to head back home and see if I can be more civil than I was leaving the house this morning. Lack of sleep and other things I won’t mention really shortened my fuse, and an old irritation that I thought had seen its last days came back on top of those things. Let’s just say I didn’t handle the combination of stresses at all well. 😦

    Thankful for God’s mercy and grace, though. It’s always there, if I would just accept it.

    You all have a blessed Friday.
    ~6 arrows

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  25. Ahh, just had a bowl of hot chicken noodle soup for “breakfast.” But I’m still feeling lousy, I don’t remember colds being this miserable. I haven’t actually had one in a few years now.

    On the Sabbath, I agree with what’s been said regarding grace, rest and not getting too caught up in the legalities (although some personally-imposed ‘boundaries’ such as no unnecessary shopping can help put some structure to the day).

    It’s something I used to wrestle with a lot more than I do now, but I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing.

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  26. Like Chas said, we believe the other 9 still apply; why are we so cavalier about this one? And I also think that most of the comments so far have misconstrued it. The commandment isn’t to rest – it’s to keep the Sabbath holy. You cannot twist that around and say that doing what you consider restful, like gardening and running, is keeping the day HOLY. I don’t think that the rest of the commandment (to do no work) is the definition of keeping it holy, but rather in addition to it. And notice that we don’t rest because the LORD rested, we are to keep it holy becuse the LORD blessed and hallowed it. Again, I’m right in there with all of you in what I do on Sundays – I’m just sayin’ . . .

    Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

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  27. Okay. Let’s see if I can get this borrowed laptop to cooperate. If I leave the mouse cursor over a link for more than half a second it goes to that link. Frustrating. Anyway, I am at a conference in Chicagoland. Ever feel like the red-headed stepchild? I seem to be the only one here from a small school. All these others are form the Chicago area or one of the other larger districts in Illinois. I say that I am the entire foreign language department and they look at me like I need sympathy. No, I just need people to realize teachers like me exist.

    Anyway, here is Chas’s Friday Funnies fix.

    So now I am off to lunch. Hopefully I’ll have time to make my entry inn my own contest!

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  29. Peter, your mouse cursor problem sounded interesting so I did a little surfing. It looks like this feature came with Windows Vista and later, so I can’t test it on my XP machine, but here are a couple of excerpts from notes I found.

    1. Type Ease of Access in Start or Control Panel>Ease of Access. Click on ”Make the mouse easier to use” deselect the box that says “Activate a window by hovering over it with the mouse”.

    (My XP machine doesn’t have “Ease of Access”.)

    2. Open any folder you like, maybe My Computer.
    Click on Tools in the Menu Bar above and then click on Folder Options.
    Then see the 3rd section: ‘Click Items as Follows’.
    Under that select: ‘Double-click to open an item’
    Click on Apply then OK.

    Thanks for faithfully posting the funnies each Friday. I have to confess that today there were several I just didn’t get. What’s “IRSAY”?

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  33. “Unto These Hills” and a story (forgot it’s name) about Virginia Dare on the east coast, have been in competition for state “Playhouse” recognition. But they are the same play every year.

    “Unto These Hills” is about the “Trail of Tears”, the movement of the Cherokees from NC to Oklahoma. It was an atrocity. Indians and settlers got along fine as neighbors until gold was found in the mountains and Andy Jackson got involved

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  34. Linda, what does “keep it holy” mean? “Holy” means more than one thing, depending on the context. It means (1) what we tend to think it means, sacred in a “clean” and religious sort of way, but it also means (2) set apart. So when the text says, “Keep it holy, don’t do any work on it,” it sure sounds (without consulting any commentaries) like it is saying, “This day is different; it isn’t a workday.” What it isn’t saying is “Go to church instead of to work” because the post-Resurrection concept of “church” didn’t exist.

    And if we are to “obey” the commandment as written, then we need to see Saturday as our Sabbath, not the Lord’s Day. So clearly, the Sabbath has changed in at least two respects: it is a different day of the week (the first, not the last) and it has a different focus (gathering with God’s people to worship and fellowship).

    The Israelites added all sorts of details about what it meant to keep the sabbath–how many feet one could walk, how much weight one could carry. Jesus regularly got into discussions on such triviality. Two examples leap to mind: when the disciples were gleaning and eating grain, and when the man who was healed carried his mat. Jesus Himself was “commanded” not to heal on the Sabbath, and the people were told not to come for healing on the Sabbath–but the religious leaders were in error.

    I think it’s hard to know precisely what it means to us today, and I admit I haven’t studied it much. Personally, I’ve come to see the day as set apart, first for worship and then for rest. It isn’t a “workday.” I generally don’t wash dishes on Sunday, didn’t mow the lawn when it was mine to mow, etc. But neither am I legalistic about such things, because the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. For example, I remember mowing on Sunday one time (maybe the only time I did so); we’d had a lot of rain and I hadn’t been able to mow, and my grass was long. We were about to get several more days of rain. In consideration of my neighbors who had to look at it (one at least didn’t like seeing long grass, though he was kind about it; he just cared for his own very carefully), I went ahead and mowed. If I didn’t feel good on Saturday and the dishes have piled up, a couple of times I have washed a few of them on Sunday (out of love for my husband; as a single woman I would have left them anyway).

    If I were to keep the Law in an Old Testament sort of way, I wouldn’t even heat up soup on Sunday; we’d eat cold sandwiches. But then, observant Jews often don’t have electricity, and we are never forbidden such things–but technically the fridge is “working” on Sunday even if the stove isn’t!

    I think we have to draw a distinction between some of the other Commandments and this one! The Sabbath commandment HAS changed, for one thing. Second, some of the commands are black-and-white; you either committed adultery or you didn’t (though Jesus reminds us even that is a heart attitude). But unless we want to resort to legalism (which Jesus expressly overturns with this command), we can’t say we have “kept” the sabbath as long as we onlly drive 15 minutes to church, but if we drive farther, then we haven’t; or we have “kept” the Sabbath as long as we eat food we already have in our possession and that we didn’t have to cook, but we haven’t kept it if we drive to our parents’ house and eat lunch with them. We set the day apart; we treat it differently, we see it differently. But since the details of that aren’t spelled out, we have to wrestle with them. (Does our particular job “require” Sunday work–nursing, for example? If so, how do we keep the Sabbath? Can a mother of triplet babies ever “take a day off”? If the electricity has been off for 48 hours and the house is cold and dark and all the food in the fridge has probably spoiled, is it OK to go out to eat Sunday night? Is it OK to host such a family on a Sunday, and cook for them?)

    My two cents. . . .

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  35. Many Sundays I have the feeling, “This is just what a Sunday should be.” Other times I have the feeling, “This just does not feel right for a Sunday.” It is the conviction of the Holy Spirit at work. Sometimes I might mow grass on a Sunday if it has rained all week and there will be no other opportunity. I will do it and not like breaking the peace of the day with the sound of the loud mower. It will feel like something has been lost. I try to keep such times to a minimum but realize they will happen and I won’t beat myself up over it. It is good to set aside another time during the week to have some make up time for lost time on the Sabbath. I don’t mean to be legalistic in presenting the concept of the makeup time, only saying how valuable that time focused on God can be to people. And truly, people can focus on God while mowing the grass, but they may be breaking the peace for other Christians by such activity.

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  37. Kevin- I am only using this computer for today, so I guess I’ll leave it alone.

    I don’t know what IRSAY is either. I think it is something some congressperson said, or perhaps it is the name of the person who said it.

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  38. Peter, I Googled Irsay – Jim Irsay is the owner of the Indianapolis Colts and said something disparaging about Peyton Manning that put him in hot water. I’m still not sure I get the cartoon but that’s what it’s about.

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  45. I only post when I briefly wake up from what has turned into a daylong nap. Who knew DAYquil made you sleepy??

    I should make some more soup since I haven’t eaten since breakfast (which was a bowl of soup). I’m craving saltine crackers, though, so probably will have to go out and buy some along with some drops to give my ears some relief.

    But that means I have to get dressed I suppose …. And I’m SO tired ….

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  47. SPHS! The Pirates are Best! Go get ’em, go get ’em, go get ’em, Yes!

    Actually, I was in the Pirates Marching Band before I was in the UCLA Marching band. Same clarinet!

    I can’t remember anything we played . . . is there an alma mater? 🙂

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  51. One of the perks of being sick and sleeping all day only to stay up all night: Watching black-and-white scary movies like “Curse of the Demon” (1953) and “I Walked With a Zombie” (1943).

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  53. Scary movies over, time for bed — this always happens when I get sick, I quickly reverse day and night. See you all sometime on Saturday. 🙂

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