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Our Daily Thread 2-21-15

Good Morning!

Today’s header photo is from Janice. For some reason I’m wondering if the Princess can feel the pea. 🙂

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On this day in 1804 the first self-propelled locomotive on rails was demonstrated in Wales.

In 1858 the first electric burglar alarm was installed in Boston, MA. 

In 1947 Edwin Land demonstrated the Polaroid Land Camera to the Optical Society of America in New York City. It was the first camera to take, develop and print a picture on photo paper all in about 60 seconds. The photos were black and white. The camera went on sale the following year. 

And in 1975 former U.S. Attorney General John N. Mitchell and former White House aides H.R. Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman were sentenced to 2 1/2 to 8 years in prison for their roles in the Watergate cover-up. 

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Quote of the Day

“It is absurd to argue men, as to torture them, into believing.”

John Henry Newman

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 Today is Andres Segovia’s birthday. So it’s the Maestro playing Bach, from Music-Engraver.com 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBQfHJA2Lng&feature=player_detailpage

And on this day in 1911 Gustav Mahler performed his last concert. He collapsed after the performance from a severe strep infection and died later in May. 😦

Here’s Mahler’s 8th Symphony Finale.

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Anyone have a QoD?

69 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 2-21-15”

  2. Leaving on a jet plane! Stopping in Phoenix where I will doff my hat to the former state of Cheryl and Peter!

    Current temp in northern California: 45 degrees and clear. Perfect for flying. Of course I’m not in Oakland yet. 🙂

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  3. I’ve been up since 6., posted everything, got dressed and ready, fed the cats, scraped the windows, went to the store for some groceries, came back, put everything away, switched over to decaf and am on my 2nd 16ozer, cleaned up around the kitchen a bit, played with the cats, listened to Maestro Segovia’s talented fingers yet again, and everyone else is still sleeping. I love Saturday.

    And there’s your caffeine fueled run on sentence for today. 🙂

    Oh yeah, and bring on the snow and ice. Yay. 😦

    Rage away Winter, your days are numbered….. 🙂

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  5. Good morning. We had a slight patchy snow on the driveway last night around 8 pm but it was melted by around 11 pm when I took the garbage out. Thankful for the warmer weather in the thirties.

    I got up early to put together some lunch for husband. The battles with Miss Bosley over the tv continue. I told husband she is just a high energy cat which probably needs to be outside because she is bored indoors. She is cute when she goes behind the tv screen and stretches to the top of it so on the front side you just see the tips of her paws hanging on with her head peeking over. I am really looking forward to her outgrowing this stage. I may ask my friend with the kittens if Miss Bosley can visit sometime. The kittens would chase away her boredom. Rocket and Romeo would probably learn bad habits from Miss Bosley so I better not initiate a visit.

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  6. I love Segovia. He made a concert instrument out of a flamenco guitar.

    Michelle- Make sure you doff your hat to the south-southeast in honor of my hometown of Tucson. So what’s in Phoenix for you?

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  7. I saw the history above about Watergate. When I was a teenager I had a regular babysitting job with a family. For one weekend there were some extra children who were visiting their cousin. Their dad had just been imprisoned for his involvement in Watergate.

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  9. Good morning. I didn’t wake up at all last night. A rare treat. Went to bed at 11:30 and slept until 7:00. Laid in bed a bit, wondering at the marvel of uninterrupted sleep, and then fell back to sleep until 8:30! I’ll take it. 🙂

    Segovia is great. And that Mahler excerpt — gorgeous! Thank you for that wonderful music today, AJ. A great way to start the day, seeing and hearing those videos.

    We’re going to visit my parents today. They have a birthday present for our younger son, who turned eleven a couple of weeks ago. My dad’s health hasn’t been the greatest, so they preferred for us to go there, rather than them coming here. This is the first opportunity we’ve had this month to get together, so today is the day.

    Blessings on your day, all.

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  10. Cheryl and Phos have had a thing going about miracles the last couple of days. I have reckoned that the course of wisdom would be to stay out of that kerfuffle. Now that things have settle down, and not to start another. I thought I would share this.

    At Southwestern Seminary, we considered miracles during our study.
    A miracle was defined as the definite intervention of God to order or change events in such a way that defies natural explanation. e.g. The truck cutting me off in my discussion yesterday was obviously, to me, an intervention. But I could not convince an unbeliever of that. It was a fortunate turn of events. But not a miracle.
    Jesus healed Peter’s mother and she got up and ministered to them. That was a miracle. If she had slept well and recovered overnight, that would not have been a miracle, no matter how Jesus intervened. A miracle has no other explanation than the hand of God.

    The Catholic Church decrees sainthood on certain people. One criterion, as I understand it, is that that person must have performed a miracle. It seems to me that they have gradually redefined miracles to something other than, “In the name of Jesus, get up and walk”.

    The birth of a baby is a wonderful thing, but not a miracle. The sun rising every day is the hand of God, but not a miracle. The “apparent” sun standing still for a day is a miracle.

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  11. Yes, Michelle, say hi to Phoenix for me. I haven’t been there since Mom’s funeral in October 2003, and I do miss it. 😦

    I think it’s the United terminal in Sky Harbor airport that has a beautiful sculpture of a phoenix bird. If you get a chance to see that, do so. I always thought it beautiful, and last time I was there I finally got a chance to get its picture.

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  15. Mouse!

    Maybe Miss Bosley needs a kitten. Or a PUPPY. 🙂

    I had a glorious morning sleeping in until 9 today. When I got up shortly after 6 to let the animals out I was thinking “one more hour to sleep.” Then I remembered it was Saturday.

    Ahhh.

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  16. gotta get to work cleaning up this home. Living alone I have gotten very comfortable and there is no haus meri here. Someone is coming to spend the night to visit tomorrow. I have never met her and know almost nothing about her. She is interested in PNG.

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  19. Well, Cheryl, we know it wouldn’t have been you or Chas eating onions.

    Raw onions are too strong for me, but I do like sauteed onions, & I enjoy onions on my pizza.

    But I haven’t had any onions today.

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  21. Several days ago, while babysitting, I showed Chrissy a picture of a cake with a layer of some flavor of mousse. Then I had to explain to Forrest that no, there wasn’t any moose in the cake. 🙂

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  22. That reminds me of Rosemary’s Baby — remember that mousse the coven people gave her that had an actual “mouse” in it? Or at least that’s what I remember about the movie which is pretty old now …

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  23. It definitely explained why it tasted so bad and she kept dumping it down the sink as soon as they left after delivering it to her each day.

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  27. SS is cancelled, church and the semi-annual congregational meeting are on schedule. That’s not gonna happen most likely, because I have hours of back breaking work ahead of me first. 🙂 And I doubt I’ll feel up to much else after that’s done.

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  29. I’m actually on my way to church in El Paso this morning; it was just a plane change in beautiful, warm AZ.

    Though I traveled through four states, I spent the day, mentally, in WA. I was reading the terrific The Boys in the Boat–about the 1936 Olympic crew team.

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  31. The boys no longer do schoolwork upstairs as it is too difficult for husband to get up there. So they brought their foosball table down to their rec room. We have been playing lots of foos again.

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  34. It’s foggy, but church is still on.

    Bosley!

    Annie curled up last night in one of those round, braided straw storage/laundry baskets that’s empty for the time being. It was a perfect fit for her.

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  36. Bringing up a topic that was discussed previously, but that I wasn’t around for until after the fact, but seeing the word “cancelled” a lot today, I’ll just revisit it…

    The question was asked whether to spell the past tense of “cancel” as “cancelled” or “canceled.” (That was the gist, anyway.)

    Whenever I see the word “cancelled,” my mind goes back to a story I wrote for my creative writing class in high school, entitled “Cancelled Dream.”

    The first thing I saw when I got my paper back was the red slash of my teacher’s pen through the word “Cancelled,” with “Canceled” written above it.

    He didn’t explain why it was wrong, but I (an ordinarily good speller) had thought that the final consonant was doubled before adding the “ed.”

    Some years later I learned the “rule” (with perhaps exceptions — you know how the English language is) that the final consonant of a root word, if it follows a vowel, is not doubled when adding a suffix if the first syllable of the root word is the syllable that is accented.

    Thus “cancel” becomes “canceled” and worship becomes “worshiped.”

    So, to add to the conversation today, I would say that because our church wasn’t canceled today, my family and I went and worshiped. 🙂

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  38. We had a meal for missions fundraising after church today. We also were honoring two people retiring, the church pianist/ organist and our maintenance man. It was a really nice lunch. Those retiring will still be in our church, but they just won’t get be employed there. Last Sunday I felt badly about asking the retired maintenance person where I might find a small table for the hallway outside the library. I told him I could go get it if he could tell me where I might find one. A little later he brought one to me. So, it is going to be difficult for him to break away from doing things because we all know he has a wealth of knowledge. And the retired pianist was playing today, too. 🙂 in the library there is a sign that says, “Old librarians don’t retire; they just check out.”

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  39. Pastor Steve preached again from Philippians 2:12-13. He says he has two more sermons there.
    He mentioned a comment, concerning the apparent contradiction between verses 12 & 13 and quoted a Scottish theologian named Bonar, who said “Beware of one sided truth”. I hadn’t heard that before. I need to cogitate a bit on that.
    But he gave five interesting points about how committed Christians fall away.

    1. They lose their support system. True. He didn’t mention it, but reminded me of Tom’s Wolfe’s novel, “I Am Charlotte Simmons”. It’s about an exceptionally bright girl from Western NC who goes off to a major university. She finds that that declaration is not enough. Religion apparently had no place in her life and she had no support system. Those of you who have young girls thinking of going away should read it. Everyone needs a support system. It ended poorly for her. But she didn’t know it.

    2. They take sin too lightly.

    3. They allow their walk to be crowded out. (Thorns crowded it out)

    4. They relax in spiritual discipline. (I thought this was a subset of #3 and could have been dealt with there. No one suddenly becomes lax. Something causes it. But it wasn’t my sermon. :-) )

    5. They’ve sinned so bad that they think God doesn’t want them anymore. I’m sure prison ministry has to deal with that. But Walid Shoebat, who was an Islamic terrorist said that if God could save Paul, he could save him.

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  40. My pastor is going through Luke. Today he did the part about people asking for signs and how Jesus said he would give only the sign of Jonah and that would be enough, 3 days in the belly of a whale and miraculously saved from death. That aligned with Jesus being resurrected after three days. It was the heigth of miracles and if people would not believe in him after that, then nothing would work to make them believe.

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  42. Chas, was he talking about people who appear to be believers and fall (permanently) away or about believers who go through periods of struggle and wandering?

    I will say I’ve found great encouragement in a book I’ve been reading, “Extravagant Grace,” in which the author suggests that these falling-away times for believers are used by God powerfully (nothing is laid to waste in God’s providence) as a way to remind us how much we depend on His grace and how truly vulnerable we are to sin.

    That also was the theme of a devotional section I read last night by David Paul Tripp — he talked about how his kids wake up and have no idea of the dangers that face them that day, both within (as in temptations) and without, and it is the role of the parent (or in the larger picture, our God) to protect and be with us, even when we spiritually “check out” from time to time.

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  43. We’re spending a few weeks in Rom. 9:19-24, today’s message was titled “The Potter and the Lump” 🙂

    Lots of verses from Job on this one, with regard to the importance of having the right attitude toward God and not “talking back,” as it were. We have a tendency to try to reinterpret God’s word to accommodate our own likes and “experience.”

    Which reminds me of the FB post from a Christian friend I spotted this morning, celebrating the fact that her church (Methodist) is taking more steps toward approving gay marriage. 😦

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  44. Cats sleep wherever they want. I’m glad I didn’t buy Annie a cat bed when I first brought her home.

    She has found sleeping spots in the middle of the dogs’ giant dog beds, on the back of the sofa, in boxes & baskets, in window sills, on the patio chair (her favorite spot for afternoon naps I’ve noticed on days when I’m home & not working).

    They like being tall — another of Annie’s favorite spots is the top platform of her “cat tree” indoors. They like to be able to survey their kingdom.

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  46. But back to Chas’ pastor’s sermon, there certainly are steps believers need to be taking to guard their hearts and minds.

    Left on our own, we will tend to drift.

    A good church, Christian friends with whom we can be honest about our struggles & time spent in prayer and Bible reading are essential for maintaining our focus.

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  50. Today was the first Sunday in Lent so we read the Decalogue. This was the Communion Song. I don’t know how I made it to this point in my life without every hearing this song (that I remember). I hope you enjoy the version I found on Youtube. Ours was even a little more upbeat but the others I found were “gospel” choirs and were too much.

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  51. From the devotional entry I’d mentioned in 4:52 (and I transposed the author’s name, it’s Paul David Tripp, “New Morning Mercies”):

    “God knows that we are all a lot like my children. We, too, minimize the fallenness of our world and the power of remaining sin, and when we do, we do not guard ourselves from temptation as we should. Isn’t it good to know that God in grace has placed his Warrior Spirit inside of us? He battles on our behalf even in those moments when we don’t have the sense to battle for ourselves (Gal. 5:16-26).

    “Isn’t it good to know that while we still live in a broken world and still have sin inside of us, God constantly battles on our behalf? Now that’s grace!”

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  52. Kim – Something happened in my little New England town today, & I thought you would like to hear about it (because of some of the things you’ve shared about your town).

    A lady posted on our town’s Facebook “Bulletin Board” page about a wheelchair-bound veteran who was worried about all the snow on his roof. (We’ve had so much snow this winter that a roof can cave in from the weight of it.) A bunch of people showed up at a pre-determined time to help get that snow off his roof. He was so grateful & relieved.

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  53. I had a good day. I slept until 8:15 and went to church at 10. After church we went to the store for everything for dinner. Amos and I took a long walk around the neighborhood. I sat in the back yard and read for a while in the sun. All in all I was a good day.

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  54. What a wonderful story Karen. I have seen a lot of that in the news. You think snow and think “light and fluffy” you just don’t think about how heavy it is. Community is all over the place just like the community we have here.

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  55. Kim. I like the song, but I don’t like for them to make up the tune as they go along.
    We used to have a music minister who did that. It only confuses the congregation.

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  56. That was a nice song, Kim. I had not heard it before, though I am familiar with Fanny Crosby. One part of the lyrics did seem familiar, though, so maybe I’ve heard the words before with a different tune??

    Thanks for sharing it.

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  57. In our Sunday evening Study we are using a book that has a chapter about temptation. I had a question about if there are instances of sin without temptation. No one seemed to know. Anyone here have any thoughts?

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  60. Since I can’t see Bosley’s picture, I am assuming it is the one of her up on the pile of towels I had just folded. She does like to be up high, and the top of the highest chest of drawers, or the top of the refrigerator works great for her. The one place she has not yet made it to is the ceiling fan blades…one day I may catch her going on a spin on them. 🙂
    I will need to do a video of that!

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  61. Janice. Interesting question. I hadn’t thought of it before, but I can’t imagine a sin without temptation. However, some denominations used to preach that woman cutting their hair and wearing makeup was a sin. I think that wanting to be presentable is not a sin. But the rejoinder would be it is temptation born of pride.
    So. there we are.
    Some teach so that apparently Eve’s temptation came the next day after her creation. I suspect it was months or years of looking at that tree before Satan brought up the subject.

    There is enough temptation in the world. Sin doesn’t lack for opportunity.

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  62. I can’t copy and paste the Fernando Ortega Do Not Pass Me By version on this Smartphone, but someone else may want to because it is worth a listen.

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  65. I’m thinking there are times we sin unaware … we usually realize it later or if we give it enough thought and reflection … all kinds of things we do or don’t do during the day could qualify, no? But those also begin with an act of our will — and some kind of temptation, recognized or not.

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  66. We have a time of silent confession at the beginning of our worship service each week.

    It’s (too) short. 😉

    Our pastor often says that if we find ourselves running out of things to confess in that brief amount of time, we probably need to do a lot more self-reflection during the week.

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  67. I’m thinking, too, of sinful attitudes or dispositions we harbor, which often go deep — they result in actions, but the problem is more rooted and so is really broader than a mere action we may catch ourselves carrying out. The so-called “7 Deadly Sins” (oh, I almost typed 7 deadline sins, journalist that I am) bear pondering.

    (From wikipedia: wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony. Each is a form of Idolatry-of-Self …)

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  68. Bottom line, sin lies in the heart before it ever appears as an outward disposition or action. We sin because we are sinners. Sometimes our behavior patterns are so ingrained that we sense no preceding period of “temptation,” we just do what we do, what we’ve always done. (Which is when more reflection is in order, so we can line up how specifically we’ve spoken or behaved in the clear light of Scripture.)

    Other times, when it’s a more specific sin we’re actively battling at a given time, the temptation leading up to it can be very distinct.

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  69. Once we’re aware of some of these unthinking, “automatic” behavior patterns — whether it’s anger, overeating, lack of listening to others, whatever — then we are more apt to pause during the course of our day and probably that’s when we can more effectively recognize and then resist the inner temptation that comes beforehand.

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