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Our Daily Thread 12-20-13

Good Morning!

Only 5 Days Until Christmas! 🙂

On this day in 1606 the “Susan Constant,” “Godspeed” and “Discovery” set sail from London. Their landing at Jamestown, VA, was the start of the first permanent English settlement in America.

In 1803 the United States Senate ratified a treaty that included the Louisiana Territories from France for $15 million.

In 1820 the state of Missouri enacted legislation to tax bachelors between the ages of 21-50 for being unmarried. The tax was $1 a year.

In 1860 South Carolina became the first state to secede from the American Union.

In 1864 Confederate forces evacuated Savannah, GA as Union Gen. William T. Sherman continued his “March to the Sea.”

In 1879 Thomas A. Edison privately demonstrated his incandescent light at Menlo Park, NJ.

And in 1946 the Frank Capra film “It’s A Wonderful Life” had a preview showing for charity at New York City’s Globe Theatre, a day before its “official” world premiere.

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Quote of the Day

“Moving between the legs of tables and of chairs, rising or falling, grasping at kisses and toys, advancing boldly, sudden to take alarm, retreating to the corner of arm and knee, eager to be reassured, taking pleasure in the fragrant brilliance of the Christmas tree.“

T. S. Eliot

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Yes, as a matter of fact it is. 🙂

Next up, C’mon Ring Those Bells. Since she has a lot of fans around here, we’ll use her version.

For those who may be interested, here’s Evie’s YouTube channel.

And one more bell ringing song.

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Anyone have a QoD?

66 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 12-20-13”

  3. Cheryl, I hate that you can’t infuse “tone” into questions, so am prefacing this by saying that it is a legitimate question and not a challenge or an affront. Yesterday you said that some sins are more serious than others. Could you share the Bible passages that lead you to that conclusion? Thanks!

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  4. How is it that I can be up, go to the Y and return and still be first?
    Don’t ask Chas, it’s too embarassing. 😳

    I learned some few years ago that Elvera has never seen the endong of “It’s A Wonderful Life”. She doesn’t watch much television. She goes to sleep in front of the set.

    I wonder what people were thinking when they left at the end of December to make a trip to a wild and unsettled land? Maybe the same thing that makes a guy get up at 5:30, have breakfast, look at the computer and see that no one is there, go out to the truck and wait for his bride.
    😳
    It isn’t until she says, “Why are we going so early today?” that I realize that I have been reading the clock wrong all morning. I got up almost an hour early.
    But dwaddling along the way has put me only about half-an-hour ahead of schedule now.

    😳

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  6. Now I ask the bright souls here to ponder this. A kitten was crying loudly on our front porch this morning. My guess is that it is 6 to 8 weeks old. It is a cute black and white with a black mustache so it could be called Hitler or Groucho or a combo of the two. Our car is in the shop so I have no way to get cat supplies if I was so inclined. I called the neighbors who have children but it is not theirs. Am I suppose to feel responsible for this little one or hope it goes elsewhere? I left it outside since it is not too cold and I no longer hear the MEOWING so it either went to sleep or elsewhere.

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  7. To add to the kitten mystery, my friend in CA who I exchange gifts with gave me a book, More Cat Stories (by Guideposts) and the kitten looks a lot like the one on the book cover except for the mustache. I think that is a coincidence, at least I hope it is. I do miss having a pet but since we are traveling more as empty nesters, I do not want to have to constantly be finding help for pet care.

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  11. I have C troubles today. Car and cat. Car alone is enough and preferable.

    Just call me sucker. I opened a can of salmon and drained the juice to give to kitten who was still quietly waiting on front walkway. I rewarded the quietness. Then I liiked over at the porch and saw our black and white visiting big cat who I call “Hissy Cat” and husband calls “Bad Boy.” He is the one who would bite or nip at me if I did not give him a handout. And he most aggravatingly would walk in front of me directly in line of where each step would land to try to herd me back to the house when I would try to walk to the mailbox. Husband already asked if I thought kitten might be related to Bad Boy. Anyways since I gave kitten salmon juice and then saw Hissy Cat Bad Boy I was afraid he would take the kitten’s juice and maybe eat kitten in the process so I gave HCBB some salmon in another spot. Do I need to be concerned that HCBB mivht hurt kitten?

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  14. When husband left for office I held the kitten so it would not get run over. It was shaking badly about the car so I think it must have been dumped out of a car. That is so very mean of whomever. I have a friend whose cats have mostly gotten old and died. She and her husband had a black and white named Groucho. They may want a Grocho, Jr. or Grochona. They have cat supplies.

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  15. Aww, Janice got a kitten for Christmas. Those are the best gifts, the one’s we don’t expect. 😮 😉

    Last night I watched the Charlie Brown Christmas (so sweet, and I hadn’t seen it in a few years) but I also caught the end of A Christmas Carol (the one with Alistair Sim as Scrooge).

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  16. Went back to see what happened with cats. HCBB was gone since he is in the habit of nip, eat and run. I heard a very slight mewing which I could not tell from where it came. Then kitten came out from the leaves that had collected behind the trash can on the carport. Big cat could not fit in there. Kitten already showing signs of having at least nine lives. Next check on kitten, it had gotten up in a chair on tbe carport. I found a small box and put old fleece jacket in the box which I placed in chair and plopped kitten into. It seemed happy with that. Stray kitten care on a shoestring and worn out jacket. Now I need to find a shoestring to see if it likes to chase strings 🙂

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  17. And tonight at 8 p.m., CBS is showing a once-lost Christmas episode of the 1950s I Love Lucy series. 🙂

    It’s finally Friday. Yay. And I’ve fallen way behind on Christmas this year, I’m afraid. Oh well. 🙂

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  25. Yes, the older male may well hurt the kitten. Or it may not. Sometimes they will kill the kittens, sometimes just antagonize them, and rarely, just except them.

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  27. or accept them, probably would be the better term, Unless you are saying the tom is excepting the kit from death. For now. They are territorial, aggressive, and bipolar.

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  29. Janice,

    Male or female? Most males will tolerate a female kitten, for obvious reasons. If it’s a male, the Hissy one may not tolerate it as well. They don’t like competition.

    If it’s a girl you can send it to me. My girls are in the market for one. 🙂

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  31. I have a conundrum and am hoping someone will have an idea what I should do. I mentioned the other day that I just recently got a personal e-mail account (via Comcast). I must have signed up for it at just the right time because I was able to use just my first initial and last name, a combination that is very common. However, it turns out that several other people have had it in the past and that because there are seven different spelling of our last name, I get a lot of e-mails that aren’t intended for me. I get many for a guy named Larry and a sprinkling of others. Whenever I get one, I e-mail back and tell the sender that I’m not their intended recipient and also tell them that if they know Larry, they can ask him to send me his new e-mail address and I’ll forward his to him but so far, no one has acknowledged knowing him.

    Yesterday I got an e-mail from Amazon that looks totally legitimate, telling me that the Tareks have sent me a $75 Amazon gift card for Christmas (and it includes a personal message from them wishing me a Merry Christmas). I don’t know the Tareks and I’m sure this was intended for someone else – maybe Larry. There’s no contact info in the e-mail for either Amazon or the Tareks. Any ideas what I should do?

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  32. Linda,

    I don’t know how your e-mail works, but mine allows me to block senders. I would do so. It saves you the trouble of continuing to deal with it, and the sender gets notified that it’s undeliverable. That way they should know it’s not who they’re looking for.

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  33. Amazon has the information about the sender. Contact Amazon and tell them that you received a gift card that you think is intended for someone else. They will be shocked, but they should be able to contact the sender.

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  35. Linda,

    The concept that some sins are worse than others: first, obviously any sin is damnable and any sin is destructive. There is no such thing as a little sin.

    At the same time, Scripture does speak of some sins as “worse” ones, and it is obvious some sins have far deeper repercussions–more damage.

    Here are a few examples of some sins in Scripture being considered worse than others (if you need references, I can get them, but for now I’m just listing things, assuming that many or most of these are actually familiar):

    1. The very first sin–our sin is traced to Adam even though Eve sinned first. Why? First, he was more accountable; he was supposed to be the leader, and not only did he fail to protect Eve, he knowingly sinned. Scripture tells us that she sinned because she was deceived, not willfully. He sinned willfully.

    2. Pride is the sin of thinking oneself equal to God. It was behind Satan’s sin and Adam’s, and is treated as a heinous evil biblically (though not in our culture, where it is almost a virtue: “high self-esteem”).

    3. Murder is a sin that destroys a human made in God’s image–a serious sin indeed. So serious that the person forfeits his own right to life. (The Jewish law contained the death penalty for other sins as well, but the death penalty for murder pre-dates the law and would seem applicable to all cultures.) Murder is becoming an acceptable sin, depending on the circumstances–abortion is OK, and we’re heading toward some forms of euthanasia.

    4. The apostle Paul speaks of sexual sin as being on its own plane. All other sins are “outside the body” (he says) but sexual sin takes God’s own temple and joins it unlawfully to another person. Again, fornication has become a non-sin in American culture. We still don’t like adultery (unless one’s spouse agrees to an “open marriage”) and homosexuality still feels kinda icky to a lot of people even though they know we should be enlightened enough to accept it, and we still reject incest and rape and bestiality as non-consensual.

    5. One can find multiple examples in Scripture of one nation or one person being called worse than another, more worthy of judgment. See some biblical comparisons between Sodom and other nations, for example. Or Jesus telling Pilate that those who turned Him over, knowing He was innocent, were committing a worse sin.

    6. Teachers are told that they have a greater level of accountability and judgment, because they have more ability to lead others astray. Likewise, some sins rise to the level of excommunication from the church and some do not.

    Finally, we know intuitively that some sins are worse than others, though we may think that theologically that is “false” and try to tell ourselves that they must not actually be worse. But surely it is worse for a grown man to murder someone than for a six-year-old to giggle over using a dirty word. Surely Hitler actually was more depraved and worthy of greater judgment than the kindly grocer who goes out of his way to be honest and kind. And I’d argue that deliberately seducing your married neighbor “for fun” is worse than being carelessly alone with your beloved two days before the wedding and finding your self-control isn’t as strong as you thought it was. But one can go deeper into rebellion against God and deeper into depravity.

    The point of the Law was always to drive us to despair in our ability to keep it, and to drive us to Christ, never to allow us to judge ourselves against others and consider ourselves “better”–or to consider ourselves worse and despair that we are too bad for God to save us! So in one sense this is an academic discussion. But it is simply untrue that all sins are equally bad; nowhere does Scripture suggest that.

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  36. Chas, a spam filter won’t filter out e-mails that were sent from individuals who have the wrong e-mail address. This is more like a “wrong number.” In Nashville I had a phone number that had formerly belonged to some woman who was bad at paying her bills, and so I got several calls (for her) from collection agencies. Being on the do-not-call list didn’t affect these calls; their problem was that the “wrong” person was at the other end of the line, not the one they were trying to reach.

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  37. Hello, all. I had a very nice chat with my dad yesterday on his birthday. We talked on the phone for over an hour! That. has. never. happened. 🙂 My mom is almost always the one who answers the phone; if Dad does, as he did last night, he’ll talk a brief while, a few minutes at most usually, then hand the phone to Mom. However, last night I called at 8:15, which isn’t past their bedtime, but Mom had already gone to bed, as she had been up since 5:00 a.m. (unusual for her).

    So Dad and I were talking about all sorts of things — current events, family history, you name it, we covered it. 😉 Before I knew it, it was 9:15! I could hear Mom’s voice in the background — she had heard Dad’s voice, and wondered if someone had come to visit. When she realized he was on the phone with me, she got on the other phone, and the three of us talked until 9:30!

    Dad had a nice birthday. They didn’t go anywhere, but he and Mom were both very happy to have received phone calls from all five of their children. And they’re looking forward to our family Christmas gathering tomorrow, too.

    Which reminds me, I need to finish writing the family Christmas cards. Last weekend I did the cards that were to be mailed, and sent them on Monday, but the cards for family who live in the area need to be written out so I can distribute them this weekend. We see my family tomorrow, as I said, and my husband’s family on Sunday.

    All you guys have a very nice weekend!

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  38. The kitten seems content for now snuggling in the fleece jacket in the box on the chair. I sat for a bit in the chair beside it and it came over into my lap and tried to root up under my arm. I am thinking it has not been long away from its mama cat and siblings. I do sorta want to keep it but will probably call my friend later today or tomorrow when I have transportation.

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  45. I am not on Facebook, but I am on Twitter and Google+. I have not done much with Twitter because I had some difficulty when I tried to update my password. I also need to get set up on Linked in.

    Thanks, Michelle, for letting those on Facebook get to see the cute kitty. I have wondered if someone used a black magic marker to put the mustache on it. I see some wet looking spots on the carport floor. Not sure what to do about that. I know cats get litter box trained, but is their some way to train them to use the dirt instead of concrete?

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  46. JaniceG, I’m just catching up on earlier posts from the week and saw the link to the quartet from Covenant College. That was lovely! Covenant is my alma mater, too, and one of my nephews graduated from there in May. 🙂 Have you made a decision yet about that adorable kitten?

    Re: shoes: Zulily sometimes has good deals on Birkenstocks and Birkis, but you have to jump on the deals when they appear.

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  48. This evening husband and I picked up car from the shop. It was only the battery so tbat was good.

    We got Chick-fil-A sandwiches so I chopped up a bit of mine for the kitten. Nothing like teething on Chick-fil-A (and the cows all chime in,”Eat mor chicken.”)

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  49. Today on Facebook, my friend Anne, an outspoken liberal who is kind of anti-Christian, wrote about what one of her friends, supposedly a Christian, posted. She (the friend) posted a photo of the Christmas card she received & then tore to pieces because it didn’t say “Merry Christmas”. (It must have said “Happy Holidays” or “Season’s Greetings”.)

    I cringe when purported Christians ruin their witness in ways like that, especially in the sight of somebody who already has a low opinion of Christians & Christianity. 😦

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  57. I don’t know if it is a boy or girl kitty. It is very young and husband said he thought it was still wanting to nurse because it tried to nudge up under his armpit and bury its head in his hand. We really don’t know what to do because it needs the warmth and nurture of its mom and the harassment of its siblings. It seems it could easily have me be its replacement mom. But we can’t be here so much. Can’t take it to the office because clients may be allergic.

    Husbandvthought it did not have the power to get up in its bed box in the chair so I found an old wooden step stool that it can manage.to walk up.

    Not ready to name it. I ztill need to check with my friend. She has bealth problems and does not drive so cats have been great companionship for her.

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  58. JaniceG, sent you a FB friend request — at least I think it’s you. 🙂

    A friend of mine does cat rescue and she’s always bottle feeding babies and getting them weaned onto solid food.

    But as you probably already know, cats, once they’ve grown out of early kitten hood, really are so self-sufficient. I can leave my cat here inside for several days with her food, water and litter box and know she’ll be fine. Dogs, no — they need walking and much more attention.

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  59. Watching the I Love Lucy Christmas segment from the ’50s. Their Christmas tree cost $5. And Desi is smoking in the apartment. And wearing a suit and tie. 😉 How things change …

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