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Our Daily Thread 1-1-14

Good Morning!

And Happy New Year!!!

I’m taking the Christmas decorations down tomorrow. 😦

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QoD

Any new resolutions?

Or, like me, do you prefer to not set unrealistic goals for yourself? 😯

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On this day in 0404 the last gladiator competition was held in Rome.

In 1622 the Papal Chancery adopted January 1st as the beginning of the New Year.

In 1808 the U.S. prohibited import of slaves from Africa.

In 1863 President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that all slaves in the rebel states were free.

In 1892 Ellis Island Immigrant Station formally opened in New York.

In 1902 the first Tournament of Roses (later the Rose Bowl) collegiate football game was played in Pasadena, CA.

And in 1937 the First Cotton Bowl football game was played in Dallas, TX.

Go Horned Frogs! 🙂

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Quote of the Day

“There is no limit to what a man can do so long as he does not care a straw who gets the credit for it.”

Charles Edward Montague

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Today would have been Raymond “Boz” Burrell’s birthday.

It would also have been Xavier Cugat’s. So it’s Mambo #5.

And here’s another song by Xavier, from the Esther Williams movie “Neptune’s Daughter”

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59 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 1-1-14”

  5. Happy New Year, all!

    Tomorrow my husband and I will be making salsa and ketchup from our frozen garden tomatoes. Looking forward to having tasty salsa in the freezer again.

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  6. HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

    We went out to the beach at midnight and looked across the water to see the fireworks over at Tybee Island, the beach associsted with Savannah, Ga.
    It seemed they did not have the typical grand finale, but fun to see anyways.

    I have not had good connection to WV and other sites while here. Don’t know why that would be.

    I have not decided upon any resolutions for 2014 except to draw closer to God.

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  11. Good Morning Everyone. I think I was was out by 10:30. We live within walking distance of downtown and with some gumption the Bay. When the fire works went off at midnight they woke me. I listened for a moment and went back to sleep.
    I am so thankful that the past two nights I have slept very well.

    I have been inspired by several of you here to read the Bible through next year. Hubbykins gave me a Daily Devotional for Christmas. It sort of sparked a notion in me again. Yesterday Michelle posted on FB that A Woman’s Guide to Reading the Bible in a Year by Diane Stortz was for sale on Kindle for $1.99. Spur of the moment decision to buy it and download it. I am not calling it a New Year’s resolution, just a goal.
    My other goal is to organize my life again. I have let a lot of things slip over the last 6 months. I have battled a little depression and haven’t taken the best care of myself or others.

    Happy New Year!

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  14. Good Morning, early birds. I never had made any resolutions. Why wait until the beginning of the year to change something that isn’t right? If one realizes there is a problem in his life in July, then change at that time!

    This morning I started reading the Psalms, as I do twice every year. (Many years ago I made my own plan to read through the Psalms in five months, then the Proverbs, repeating the cycle twice a year.) Anyway, I like Psalm 1 as a resolution for life:

    1 How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked,
    Nor stand in the path of sinners, Nor sit in the seat of scoffers!
    2 But his delight is in the law of the Lord, And in His law he meditates day and night.
    3 He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, Which yields its fruit in its season
    And its leaf does not wither; And in whatever he does, he prospers.
    4 The wicked are not so, But they are like chaff which the wind drives away.
    5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, Nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
    6 For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, But the way of the wicked will perish.

    (ESV)

    Having grown up in a desert region, I always picture the cottonwood and other trees growing along the dry riverbeds. From a mountain or high hill, you can see where the water is by the trees. Usually, the rest of the landscape is dry grasses and small bushes, along with the cactus. But wherever there was water, there would be tall trees. That’s what I want to be, a tree with deep roots, drinking in the water of life, standing tall even in the driest of times.

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  15. Good morning.

    (AJ, are you up yet?)

    We stayed up till midnight, and those of us who are of age got champagne (DD#1’s first taste of it, and she liked it), while the youngest had apple cider. Midnight is really late for my husband, and being out of the habit it was late for me too.

    It snowed a bit overnight and is supposed to continue. The birds appreciate that the feeders are all full, and I appreciate chipping sparrows, juncoes, house finches, and two kinds of woodpeckers (so far) coming and getting their pictures taken in the snow. We aren’t seeing chickadees this winter, though, probably because the house sparrows are trying to monopolize the feeders. And we never get cardinals to the feeders, but sometimes they come to the tree they’re in. It’s rare that they come, but I’d like to see some today and get some photos of a cardinal in snow. Titmice are regulars, too, and I haven’t seen any yet today, nor many goldfinches this winter.

    So, for Christmas we had a bit of powder, but nothing deep. Looks like we get a white New Year’s instead!

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  16. Peter, I like your thoughts on the tree near water. Water is something most people kinda take for granted, but when you’ve lived in a region where you may not see a drop of rain for months at a time, you get a different perspective!

    One of my sisters-in-law once traveled from Georgia to Phoenix with a friend. The friend was shocked that women in Phoenix were excited about a 10% chance of rain the next day. (And they did indeed get some rain.) It’s all in the perspective.

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  17. I like Psalm 1, it is very encouraging.
    New Year’s Resolutions: I hope to read through the Bible again, though you might say I am cheating as I finished reading through it a month ago so got an early start. But that is not so much a resolution as the thing I like to do. I will try again to get off of my blood pressure meds by eating healthily instead of grabbing something from the cupboard as there is no time. I have given up asking husband to not bring “stuff” into the house. Though it would be nice to have a partner in this, it is something I have to do myself.

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  18. I have a keyboard. It takes some getting used to, but it works, as you can see.

    I also have started a “read through the Bible” this year. It’s an ambitious plan in which you read a Psalm, a NT chapter and two OT chapters a day. I didn’t do it last year because Numbers gets more attention than Romans, and that, in my opinion, is not best. But I’m doing it this year. The result of this plan is that you’ve read the OT in historical order, the Gospels twice, and the Psalms twice.

    Duke gave A&M a fit. But A&M finally won.
    Gamecocks beat the Badgers today.

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  19. Psalm 1 is nice. The pastor who did my father’s funeral used that as a passage that spoke of my father so it will always hold special meaning to me.

    It’s a rainy day. I wonder how many did the Polar Bear Plunge this morning. I can’t imagine doing it myself although this year is warmer and people have been out in the heated pool in addition to the hot tub.

    Son found a Charles Wysocki (sp?) jigsaw puzzle. We traditionally do a puzzle while on vacation. Just wondering if others here enjoy jigsaws and if you have any favorites you remember in particular?

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  20. Cheryl, what do cardinals like to eat? Maybe if you put out their absolutely favourite food, they would stop by. (I’m sure you’ve thought of that, but I’d like to know what they eat)

    I was awake past 4am!!!!! I will never take oil of oregano in the evening again!

    It’s still very cold here – it’s been such a long stretch of continuous cold – I think it’s worse than Alaska!!! Our furnace has been going non-stop for weeks. Hope none of the belts, etc. break.

    I’m hoping a less ambitious Bible reading plan will work for me. I really need to get into the Word.

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  21. Psalm 1 is one of the passages I learned in Grade 12 chemistry. We got an extra 5% if we could write out the assigned verses absolutely accurately. Boosted my mark above 95!! 🙂 It has always stuck with me. I should memorize more Scripture.

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  22. Memorization: my brain is broken. It refuses to memorize. I memorized a bit as a young believer (late teens) but looking back, the only thing that stuck was in song. I have tried to memorize Psalm 1 and even tried to memorize the book of Ephesians while I was empty nesting in Greece, but it just won’t stick. But I even get the names of my children mixed up….

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  23. My children, on the other hand, have lots of Scripture memorization in school so they are all good at it. They memorize poems, facts, other stuff. Always amazes me.

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  24. Kare, cardinals love sunflower seeds, and we have two feeders exclusively for sunflower seeds (one on “the feeder tree” and one on a post outside our other kitchen window), in addition to one of thistle seed (mostly for goldfinches, though they tend to eat other seeds too), a mixed-seed feeder, and a suet feeder we put out in winter. (We also have an oriole feeder we’ve put out in the spring, but so far no orioles.) I think the cardinals want a larger feeder, though, with more “leg room” since they’re larger birds. The female has eaten at the bird feeders a few times (not very often, but occasionally), but I’ve never seen the male do so. I suspect he picks up some stray seeds that have fallen to the ground, since sometimes he spends some time on the ground, and sometimes in the tree.

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  25. Misten was outside running in the snow, apparently for the sheer joy of running in it (coupled with the need for exercise), so I went out to play with her. My husband grabbed my camera and got some good photos of us through the window. He often plays with her in the snow, and I’ve gotten some good photos that way, but these are the first photos of me playing with her in the snow, and maybe about the first photos of me playing with her. (I’ve gotten “posed” shots with her, but not natural ones, since I haven’t had anyone to take pictures of us unless I’ve asked them to.)

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  26. Scripture memorization is a very good thing to do. It has helped me personally to take a verse or passage and work with it until I can turn it into song. Then it gets planted deep into memoty.

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  27. Just asked my daughter, we think we’ve done at least six puzzles this Christmas. We like to watch movies and do them–a couple Wysokis or knock offs in the pile. The hardest puzzle was of Van Gogh’s Starry Night.

    I’m with Mumsee in the memorization situation. I can only tell you the fruits of the spirit by singing the song first, sigh.

    Anyone want to join Kim and me with Diane Stortz’s A Woman’s Guide to Reading the Bible in a Year? You don’t have to be female and she suggests weekly conversation on the specific chapters. Info here:

    $1.99 on Kindle, $6.38 for the book.

    I know Diane; good woman, mother of a missionary.

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  29. Misten! In snow! 🙂 Pretty, I’ll bet. 🙂

    I love Psalm 1, too, and had memorized it at one time. With Kim, I want to get back a bit of organization in my life this year. But most of all, I hope to grow in my knowledge of God (which means, of course, more time spent in Scripture). My resolutions each year seem to be the same, I think because each of us tends to battle our same specific weaknesses of the flesh all our lives. But the fight is important.

    Lots of noise at midnight and well beyond last night, to the point where I had two border collies on the bed with me, Tess trying to hide underneath me which didn’t work all that well. 😦 I was up before dawn, unable to sleep, but went back to bed and got up just in time to race the dogs to the groomer for their 9 a.m. appointment.

    Now it’s work — I’m about to make the cop calls, already know of a couple incidents, including a drunk driver who took out a power pole and left a good portion of one of our cities in the dark today — and vandals who broke out several shop windows in my town, I stopped and talked to some of the shop owners on the way home from Petco.

    Now we’ll see if something worse than that happened, but hopefully not.

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  30. My wife and I have just started a two-year Bible reading plan (OT readings done in the order of the Hebrew canon). There is a “day off” every ten days or so that can be used for further study or simply to catch up. I feel that this two-year plan is much more manageable, with more freedom to concentrate on the text rather than the constant pressure to just “get it done.”

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  31. Cheryl- I put out a feed with a mix of milo, cracked corn, wheat and sunflower seeds. We get three mating pairs of cardinals regularly.

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  32. Wish I could have a bird feeder, but they always attracted too many squirrels and I was afraid the dogs would catch and kill one of them eventually. Plus now that I have a cat, a bird feeder is definitely not a very good idea.

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  33. I don’t think the Bible reading through thing should be used in place of time with God in His Word. I think, for me, it needs to be extra. Just something I enjoy doing. The time with God needs to be more focused. Because reading through sometimes does just become reading through.

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  34. I agree with Mumsee. When I did that a few years ago, I found myself rushing through just to get in my quota for the day. I’m glad I did it, but once you’ve done once you need to slow down.

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  37. Mumsee, in high school I used the KJV for memorization as it didn’t sound/flow like everyday language so it wasn’t so easy to substitute words. (It was primarily to boost my marks, but I am thankful to this day for that wise man, Mr. Turner, who knew that it would remain in my heart and mind to this day).

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  39. Happy New Year!

    I read Psalm 1 today, too, as well as Genesis 1-2, and parts of Matthew 1 and Acts 1. The Bible reading plan I’m following (it was one of the plans at the Ligonier site — thank you for that link the other day, Donna) has four readings per day, two from the OT and two from the NT. There are 25 scheduled days of readings per month, with suggestions for how the remaining days of the month can be used (catch-up days, doing a deeper study into favorite passages you read that month, etc.).

    I like that the readings are listed in four columns: Gospels, Other NT books, Poetry, and Other OT books. If one wanted to read through the Bible in two years, or even four years, you could pick either two columns or one column to go through in a year, which might be desirable for anyone who wants to take a slower, deeper look into the scriptures. There’s a lot of flexibility with this plan.

    I’m going to try to stick with reading every day through the 25th of each month, then use the remaining days to maybe try memorizing one or two of my favorite passages.

    I’ve been reading from the King James Bible for a number of years, but I have a 1599 Geneva Bible that I’d purchased several years ago that I am using for my readings this year. There are study notes, also, which I might look into on the unscheduled days at the end of each month.

    Lots of possibilities — I’ll see where the Spirit leads me.

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  40. No more free plastic bags for us in L.A. beginning today. I need to get a system going so I won’t forget to bring my own bags to the markets now — they also need to be washed frequently as they tend to harbor bacteria. So I need to get an enclosed container to store them in for the Jeep, then as they’re used I can wash them out and put them back.

    Yeah, right (says Ms. Disorganization). More often than not, I’ll probably wind up paying the 10 cents extra for the brown paper bags I think the stores will be stocking. Sheesh.

    And the dog parks around here will surely miss the plastic bags.

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  41. I read an interesting piece last week (I thought I saved the link, but I didn’t I guess — though maybe I posted it here?). The author was urging an approach to Scripture that focused on reading but also on immersion in which you would take maybe 1 book and spend a couple weeks or even months reading and re-reading it, over and over again, so you really come to “know” it.

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  45. Donna, “immersion” has been my idea a couple of years. One year I was going to spend a lot of time in Paul’s epistles, one year in the Gospels. Neither year worked out very well, which was part of the reason that last year I chose the discipline of reading all of it. And I thought the chronological plan would be a good way to do it once, so that’s what I did.

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  46. Peter, do you have a platform feeder? From what I have seen, that’s a better way to attract cardinals. The ones we have are all for perching birds, but they’re harder for larger birds. The suet feeder attracts birds as large as a red-bellied woodpecker and occasionally a flicker, but I haven’t seen cardinals come to it.

    It’s snowing pretty hard this afternoon. We may end up with quite a bit at this rate. It’s sticking, so the trees are gorgeous. But I’m glad we’re home and none of us has to go out again today, to the best of our knowledge.

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  48. Dogs are still “drying” so I can’t pick them up yet — and I have to leave shortly for the tide pools. But now I also have to check on a stabbing homicide from yesterday, I think. Oy.

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  49. Memorizing: growing up we memorized in KJV and memorized quite a bit. Several years we kids were involved in BMA (now defunct). Later we chose a few chapters to memorize as a family. We memorized Psalm 1, Psalm 19, and one or two New Testament chapters / portions. And I’ve “picked up” quite a few without even trying. Now when I try to look up a verse, I usually pull up Bible Gateway and go to NKJV–because I memorized in KJV but I don’t always remember the “Old English” endings to words. I might remember it as “has” rather than “hath,” for instance. I haven’t really done intentional memorization as an adult, though I’ve learned some additional verses in teaching children or just in reading the text.

    I first realized that I had memorized some verses just through familiarity when I was a teenager and involved in a Bible quiz game at a week at camp. Someone was asked, “Who had a dream about Jesus?” and the answer (according to the book) was “Pilate.” I said no, it was actually Pilate’s wife, because I remembered that she said to Pilate, “Have thou nothing to do with that just man, for I have suffered many things in a dream because of him.” I just looked this up on Bible Gateway, and the only thing I got wrong in looking at the KJV was that I left out “this day.” (And the comma was a colon.) I never deliberately memorized that verse. That, by the way, is an argument for reading the Bible all the way through at least sometimes. Whether we are aware at the time of absorbing it, the more familiar we are with it, the more chance it has to work on us and become familiar to us. It’s not really terribly important whether we remember it was Pilate, or his wife, or someone else who had a dream about Jesus, but sometimes it might matter that in a moment of temptation the Holy Spirit brings to mind a verse about that temptation, or in a time of grief we are comforted by God’s promises. Or in a discussion we have with an unbeliever God brings to mind the verses we need.

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  50. Re: reading through the Bible – I know a young man who is using the “immersion” technique, as suggested to him by (I forget who). It sounds like a good idea. Another man of God I know says to pray through the Bible, i.e., pray while reading, asking God to show you what you need to get form each passage.

    I have tried a read-through-in-a-year plan, but I did find it hard to focus on the word. Now I read a Psalm every day and on or two chapters from each of the testaments, depending on the length of the chapters or where the often arbitrary chapter divisions are.

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  51. Here’s an interesting thing: More than 100 photos have been taken on my camera today (a few of them by my husband, of Misten and me in the snow, but most of them by me). And that was enough to take me over the mark of 10,000 photos taken on this camera (it was bought in June 2011–a sale on Father’s Day) and start over in the running tally. That’s an interesting way to start the new year, especially since it will give me a pretty close count of how many photos I take throughout the year this year. (Last year I took about seven thousand; I don’t plan to take that many this year, but we’ll see.)

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  52. So I’m getting old and forgetful, and this afternoon I thought to myself, Did anyone get the mail yesterday?

    After learning that no one else had, either (usually I’m the one that gets the mail — no one else much cares to), I walked down to the mailbox, opened it up, and pulled out yesterday’s mail.

    There appeared to be two envelopes in the box, but as I was walking up the driveway, I noticed a tiny part of a small white envelope sticking out between the larger two. An envelope mailed from a certain location in California. 😉

    Tonight I’m going to curl up on the couch, covered with a warm blanket, with A Log Cabin Christmas in hand, with its nice bookplate signed with beautiful, distinctive handwriting.

    Thanks, Michelle. 🙂

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  54. Back from the tide pools. I only fell in once (and just my left foot). Slippery out there, especially while trying to take video and photos with an iPhone and taking paper notes.

    If I’d dropped my iPhone I would have probably flung myself under it to keep it from going into the drink, though! My shoe will dry. 🙂

    Gorgeous day out there, bright blue skies, cool breezes (a little bit of fog rolling in). One little boy got yanked out of the walk by his mom when he started trying to pull the legs off a brittle star. 😦

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  55. Day 1 winding down. I did my devotional today and started the read through the Bible. I would love to find a group of women to do this with me. May put out the word next week and start over.
    Friends came for the afternoon and to have dinner. It was a good day.

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  56. OK, time to choose a reading plan … I’ll probably stick with the one I was ‘working on’ last year, McCheyn’s — but may also check out the women’s study as well.

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  57. Bible reading: last year I spent several months working on a Bible study book, then read through the New Testament 3 times. I realized halfway through that I was not getting as much out of it as it was the ESV and not NASB, where I had done some memorizing. So I switched back to the NASB. I probably already said on here that I copied the table of contents for the chronological Bible and use that to read through. This year I plan to read through the entire Bible chronologically. Fun to begin in Genesis this morning after finishing Revelation yesterday.

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  58. Happy New Year!

    Puzzles: We traditionally do a puzzle between Christmas and New Year’s as a family. This year, there was more than one puzzle done, because the younger generation is starting to want to participate, so the puzzles are simpler. We have done 1000 piece paintings, 3D puzzles, shaped puzzles and one Hitchcock puzzle that was a solution to a mystery – but there was no picture on the box to reference to (Mumsee does her puzzles like that all the time). My favorite one was an M.C. Escher print Night and Day. We all love his work.

    Bible reading methods: Being a natural speed reader, I once developed a way to read the Bible in 6 months. I can’t remember the chapter division for that, but I enjoyed reading the Bible quicker so much that I developed a method for 3 months – 10 chapters of the OT and 5 of the NT a day. I found I noticed bigger patterns that I had never seen before when I read more than a chapter at a time. Now, I don’t try to do that, but with my paragraph KJV that I bought (it looks like a reading book rather than the two columns of most), I find myself reading as much or as little as I can take in that day. Some days I will cover several pages, other days a couple of paragraphs.
    As for memorizing, I have become like Mumsee – I cannot remember things by rote memorization. However, I have a photographic memory, and can remember things after reading them once if I’m engaged with the subject, so I am finding that I am still memorizing the Bible the more I read it.

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  59. You gave me some good ideas for future puzzles, Phos. Thanks!

    I do get more out of the Bible reading that includes a devotional reading based on the passage resd. It feels like doing a shared Bible study rather than just plowing through a set amount of reading per day. That is why I enjoy using Scripture Union devotional materials(I use the Discovery daily devotional). I will look at the woman’s study some of you are planning to do. It would be nice to be in a group using the same material.

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