57 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 2-8-16”

  2. Good night, Jo!
    Good morning, folks.
    Lindsey had a bad migraine all day yesterday…unfortunately, it was still hanging on this morning, but it wasn’t as severe…she made it on the bus at 6:15…I’m praying it abates and she doesn’t have to come home early.

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  4. I just heard a man on the radio say, “Football is over with until August”.
    Strange to hear that. I haven’t heard the phrase “over with” in years.
    Nay. Decades. It must be distinctly southern.
    I don’t know what part of speech “with” is and what it adds to the statement.
    But i used to hear it all the time when I was a kid.
    Probably said it myself.

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  6. I’m looking for the answers to a couple questions about why people go to Bible school for two blog posts I’m writing this week (the first one will be written this afternoon). Pauline already has answered, but if any of you have answers, I’d love to hear them. No names will be printed.

    Here are my questions:

    1. Why did you go to Bible school?
    2. What did you hope to get out of it?
    3. What did you come away with that has stayed with you the most?
    4. What types of classes did you take?
    5. What class was the most useful?

    If you don’t want to answer here, feel free to email me.

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  7. Michelle: I have never been to Bible School, so can’t answer your questions. At 18, I was quite the rebel and a staunch atheist. I went to undergrad at UT, a bastion of liberal bias… When I was 22, I participated in a small group Bible study which was led by the chaplain of my sorority. My heart began to slowly soften to the idea that Jesus’ story was real… But it would be four more years before I surrendered to Him. Like C.S. Lewis said, “I was a reluctant convert” (not a direct quote–just the essence of what he said).

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  8. I did something yesterday I have never done. Mostly because since I have been old enough to drive my family hasn’t owned parking lots in downtown Mobile and I felt violated paying $20 to park. Next is the whole bathroom situation. I don’t do Port O’ Potties if I can help it. Now I have your attention don’t I?
    I went to Joe Cain Day yesterday afternoon. I had friends staying at a hotel, I couldn’t part there. I had to park several blocks away where some sketchy people overcharged me for parking, but they did have tickets to put in my truck so I wouldn’t get towed. I was able to use the facilities at the Battle House Hotel and my day was made complete by seeing the Budweiser Clydesdales second in the procession behind Joe Cains Merry Widows.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Cain

    At about 4 minutes in you ca see the widows

    I once attended a funeral of a charming raconter who planned his own funeral. He requested that the Merry Widows bemoan his passing at his graveside and that an open bar and dinner be set up across the street.

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  11. Michelle, I went to Christian school K-11. From about 8th or 9th grade on almost all of our teachers were graduates of Bob Jones University. Most of the male teachers were also preachers. The female teachers were not. I left with some scars that did not heal until I was in my mid twenties, but looking back I did learn a few things.
    I still don’t agree with a K or 1st grade teacher telling her students that Santa Claus wasn’t real. Her reasoning was if you tell them Santa is real and then they find out he isn’t how will you get them to believe in Jesus. Santa is fun and people who don’t believe in (the fun of) Santa get underwear and socks for Christmas. I have assured my own child that as long as she is my Baby Girl Santa and the Easter Bunny will bring her something–never mind she emails me a list. 😉
    On the what the scripture says about losing your salvation?
    “Believe you can’t, but live like you can”.

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  14. I’m writing about Oswald Chambers’ Bible Training College. Here is part 1.

    Oswald Chambers & a Bible College (Part I)

    I’m trying to put Bible school into context in the next two blog posts, which is why I was asking for some modern reflections. I’ve got five, and now what is above, so I’m good to write at this point. Thank you.

    Tomorrow I’m writing about the classes taught and Friday will be about outcome. That’s it.

    Since Saturday morning, I’ve written four other blog posts–almost all about writing so they’ll be dribbled out over the next months. I’m in the clutches of writing mania right now–which is good and bad. My blood pressure was up 15 points yesterday but given my life, no surprise.

    Maybe if I treat myself to a relaxing vacation when this is done, it will help? It did with Poppy. I finished the last ten chapters in five days and then left for Hawai’i.

    I’ve got ten chapters to go in Biddy . . . .

    LOL. Yikes . . . Off to dance instead.

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  15. My only glimpses of this year’s Super Bowl were through windows of various neighbors as I walked the dogs last night. 🙂 I’ve seen a couple of Super Bowls in past years sitting in hospital waiting rooms with Carol. 🙄 But otherwise, I manage to avoid it.

    Sounds like it was a pretty political half-time show, though.

    The left can’t resist. 🙂 Everything’s political. Sigh.

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  16. Our cop/crime reporter is on vacation this week so we’ll all get to juggle some of those stories. There’s so few of us now in the newsroom, it’s this surreal atmosphere … and when one person is out, it’s almost Twilight-Zone-ish. All the energy is just sucked out of the room these days (and we all sit scattered in a huge room with so much empty space everywhere around us).

    Meanwhile, I think I’ll get out the sandals, it’s going to be a very warm week here, still in the low 80s. And dry as a bone.

    Where is our El Nino? 😦

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  17. Yes, it was a tough call. And the pressure was enormous. Not what I had expected at all. There was actually a person here at the house who thought the Panthers were the one. But I resisted and put down my foot. Others scoffed and mocked but I held firm.

    As to Santa and Jesus, that has been a tough one for me. Raised as a nonbeliever, we celebrated Santa and I was a firm believer. It was a lot of fun. Raised the first that way. Eldest is not walking with God, he was a firm believer in Santa and was devastated when he learned the truth in second grade. Crushed that we had lied to him. It has been left to the side from then on. If they want to believe, we talk about it and we play at believing but they will not think that I believe a jolly fat man is coming down the chimney.

    El Nino? You folks whined when you got some rain. Get the sandals and the water hose to the Colorado and you should be set. Plant those lawns in cacti.

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  19. I have a question for my writer and editor friends and anyone else who fancies themselves a Grammar Guru. I have been re-reading all of the Jonathon Kellerman Alex Delaware books on my Kindle. It jumped out at me again and I memorized the sentence so I could ask you.
    In part of the book he is packing up something things to vacate his house because of a crazy person stalking him. The sentence reads “I brought the books to the Seville, then went back for the dog”. Had I written that sentence I would have said I took the books to the Seville, put them in the trunk, then went back to get the dog”.
    What is the correct way “brought” or “took” ? If I came to your house I would say I brought a casserole with me, but I I were just dropping it off because you were sick I would say I took you a casserole.

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  20. questions about why people go to Bible school for two blog posts…

    I had to read that twice. It could be interpreted several ways:
    -the person answering the question receives two blog posts;
    -the person answering the question, or attending Bible school pays two blog posts (what a bargain!);
    -the person asking is going to write two blog posts about going to Bible school

    Perhaps wording it differently would help my literal brain.

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  21. Michelle, if I decided to go to Bible College, my decision would be based on a desire to better communicate the Good News. Also, it would be for additional grounding in the scriptures, making friends with those who have similar interests, and drawing closer to God by spending long study hours in His word.

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  22. I got released at lunch time! The young lady beside me had to stay. I felt sorry for her since she works at night in some type of nursing facility where she is a med tech, so she basically had no sleep. I was so hopeful she would get to go home.

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  23. Kim, when I boxed up son’s books, I “took” them to the office. When I got to the office, I “brought” them in to shelve. So it might be the difference between where the character was when he made the statement? Just a guess. Good question for Cheryl!

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  24. My brain is too shot to answer grammar questions, though I see Peter’s point, sigh.

    I’ve got a crazy research serendipity in my life right now. Yesterday I heard from a college student writing his senior thesis on the YMCA during WWI. A search of the Internet brought him to me.

    I sent him most of my resources, and then laughed. Today is the day I start writing about OC working as a YMCA chaplain during WWI. You can’t make up the stuff that happens to me–particularly the weird timing!

    I was wild in Zumba, danced every step and am calming down now–which was the point. I have Bible study prep to do–but the Lord gave me a great idea this morning that should help.

    What a fun life He leads me on. Very thankful.

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  25. Yes, life is strange. In the 500 people in the big jury room, I discovered the pastor to seniors at my church was there. He did not have to serve either. I have never found anyone else I knew in the room when I had to go before. As you can imagine, my county is really dense with many people I do not know.

    One man sat snoring all the way through our time there. That was entertaining, especially as the clerk called out names and got his attention by saying a loud “SIR!”

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  27. Cheryl, I am reading The Elegant Entrepreneur for review for Net Galley. It has some info about product pricing and other considerations for business startups. I thought you could use a bit of what is in the book.

    Michelle and others might be interested in the book, too. If home school families want to start a business, it could be helpful to them as a resource.

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  28. Yep, I agree that “brought” or “took” depends on the perspective, and it’s one of my pet peeves when writers get it wrong, though I see it all the time. They’ll say “I brought a casserole to my mom, but now that I’m back at home I have to cook my own supper.” No, your mom can say you brought her a casserole, or you can say you brought her cookies back home, but in that sentence it should be “took” or a synonym. Now, you can say, “Mom, I brought you some cookies,” and that is the sense in which I read the sentence Kim quoted. Or “How about if I bring you some peaches.” And I’m assuming that’s why people end up saying “brought,” in a more colloquial sense.

    I’ve actually never heard this mentioned in any English class (or none that I can recall), but it is mostly how my editing brain works, that this is logically the correct word choice.

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  29. Actually, my mom was picky about similar grammatical issues, so that might be well one that she corrected as I was growing up, or pointed out when someone else got it wrong.

    Thanks, Janice.

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  30. Haha — the latest in our inboxes. We figure they’re getting ready to launch us out into the open market for health benefits next year if they can legally swing it.

    CORPORATE BENEFITS is giving away a $500.00 Amazon Gift Card and YOU have the chance to win it! All you have to do is opt to receive your Affordable Care Act Form 1095-C electronically by March 19, 2016.

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  32. Bring and Take, I don’t remember when they are introduced but they are in the seventh grade grammar book here. Bring indicates movement toward you. Take indicates movement away from you.

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  33. ….but you wouldn’t say I brought the books to the car..and then go about doing something else besides getting in the car and taking the books with you.
    I read it all the time and it always screams at me.

    Hubs has finished water proofing the adirondack chair and foot stools. They turned out “blonde”. Quite comfortable and the sun was shining. I tried to go sit outside for a bit but the wind was blowing and even wrapped in a blanket it wasn’t comfortable so I came in to harass all of you.

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  34. I’m no editor, nor expert in the English language.
    But I I always say that I took something that was here someplace else.
    I brought something that was somewhere, to where it is now.
    I know that sounds contorted, but the difference is real.

    I went to the library and brought it home. When I finished the book, I took it back.
    Seems simple to me.

    Whatever the reason, going to school, of any kind, is about the future.
    If you go to Bible school, you apparently have some interest in future events that warrants your time and money invested in this.
    If you want it to make you more Spiritual and closer to the Lord, you’re on the wrong track.
    I’m a graduate of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, BTW

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  36. I wanted to go to Bible school. I wanted to study Greek, and Hebrew, and Church history. I even applied to a Bible school, and was accepted. However, I did not have the money, and had to withdraw before I started. I still think wistfully about going and studying, but I probably never will.

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  38. You can learn church history and theology without going to school.
    When you want to learn some non-technical subject, you can learn it by yourself.
    You don’t have to pay to learn what someone else wants you to know.
    I had to have chemistry and math explained to me.
    But not history, sociology, political science and psychology.
    You get degrees in those subjects to impress someone somehow.

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  39. Chas, you might also get degrees in those subjects to study under good teachers. Yes, you can learn from books–but learning from a master is also valid. (I personally think that a degree in history might be the most valuable learning one could do, if taught well. I just don’t have enough interest or aptitude to have specialized in that way.)

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  42. My husband has a degree in history, but has never formally used it. He also is a final paper short of a Masters in Theology. He did that by mail before online courses came about. He did it for his own interest and in helping others. I read all the books from his courses, however, I did not write answers to the questions he had to answer to complete each course. I also tend to retain less from what I read than he does. As someone else noted here, I tend to read faster and retain less than he does.

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  43. I have a degree in History and English and I also have a Master’s in Education. There are different ways people learn and a good teacher has to teach to each method. I am an auditory learner mixed with what for lack of a better term is kinesthetic. Tell me something and I have it forever. I also “imprint” it by physically writing it out in long hand not by typing. Many years ago I read the manual for setting the VCR. I couldn’t figure it out to save my life. I called the 800 number. They talked me through it one time and I could record something next month at 2am Pacific Time and taught everyone else how to do it too. Reading it I may as well have been reading it in Japanese. Which is kind of funny because I CONSUME books and pick up the most obscure information from them. Toss away sentences for some reason always capture my attention and I will retain that more than the actual plot of the book.

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  44. I guess we must have received more than our quota of packages over the Christmas season. (We order most gifts online, and in addition we ended up with gift cards to use.)

    Three weeks ago I ordered a free book through Shutterfly. Tracking told me it was scheduled to deliver Saturday (two weeks ago), but when it didn’t arrive, I went back to tracking and it showed “shipping label created,” but nothing further. I continued to check it every few days until it was two weeks past the date it was supposed to be shipped. When it still hadn’t arrived, I contacted Shutterfly, who is sending out another (and hopefully they will receive payment from UPS for it).

    Two or three days ago amazon told me they couldn’t ship an order, since they didn’t have updated payment information for me. (I got a new credit card several months ago, none just recently.) I went to the site itself rather than replying to the e-mail, but the site said the same thing, so I update my credit card information. Now, five days after placing the order, it is still waiting no ship. Not a really big deal compared to “the old days” when you just expected mail order to take six to eight weeks. But while I was on the site, I glanced through my old orders just to double-check I’ve received everything else I’ve ordered . . . and I landed on one that gave an estimated arrival date of January 23, but it didn’t show it has arrived and I didn’t remember getting it. So I clicked on it. I ordered it Christmas Dad (with a gift card I received Christmas Eve) and it was shipped a few days later. But after January 2 (when tracking shows it in PA), there is no trace of it. So I contacted the third-party seller. It isn’t their fault, but maybe the package is insured and even if it isn’t, I never got it and tracking proves I didn’t.

    But really, I’m used to mailing something, or ordering something, and expecting it to get there with no glitches. Having to contact two sellers within a week, and also update my account so that another order can be shipped in the first place, is a lot!

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  45. Oh boy! I can have more fun with odd wording:
    I went to the library and brought it home.

    That must have been fun bringing home the entire library. Was it just the contents or the building, too!

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  46. Languages cannot just be learned from a book (I know, as I tried to learn Koine Greek from a book), and while I read extensively in history, including church history, it helps to have a systematic, structured course to place events in proper order and context. I throve in a classroom environment when I studied first French and Spanish, and then nursing in college. It helps to have input and feedback from other human beings instead of learning in solitude. I may have got 93% when I studied Biology by distance learning, but I got 100% in Chemistry when I studied it in class.

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  47. Roscuro, I took high school by correspondence. Any questions for the teachers had to be mailed, and then waiting for a mailed reply. I did great overall . . . but French and algebra just about killed me. I’d sit for hours doodling in my algebra workbook, unable to figure it out, until I’d filled entire pages with doodles. Mom saw the book and forbad further doodling, and I obeyed and stopped doodling . . . but I didn’t magically start understanding the material.

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  48. Cheryl, I know what you mean. Math was never my strong point growing up, but I had trouble even sticking to subjects that interested me. I would get distracted and read nearly a whole encyclopedia when I was researching something for a project. The classroom environment helped me to focus, strangely enough.

    Also, the Bible course I applied for wasn’t a degree, just a Christian Service diploma, if I remember correctly. I don’t care for degrees unless they are needed for a job.

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  49. And the jobs that require degrees are frequently unexpected. A librarian position requires a degree, as does the curator of a museum, so history and language degrees have their use. One that most people do not realize is that of missionary. Now every mission has their own set of requirements, but they all require some kind of formal Bible training, even if you have to take the courses from the mission. In order to do other kinds of work on the field, in, say, medicine or teaching, one quickly realizes that a degree helps to legitimize your work, not only to the mission, but also to the people with whom you are working.

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  50. Chas, wouldn’t it be a by product of Bible College that a person would be drawn closer to the Lord through spending that much concentrated time in the word? I would not go with that alone as a reason, but it seems logical that a deeper relationship with the Lord should develop. Did you not have that experience?

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  51. Janice I can’t speak for anyone else bit once Christian school got “intense” and what I perceived as over the top rigid it actually drove me away from God for 7 or 8 years. I had had enough shoved down my throat. I never stopped be living in God. I knew He was there. I just didn’t want anything to do with Him.

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  52. Janice, No.
    You don’t really study the Bible so much as you study about the Bible.
    And reading for devotion, and even reading to prepare messages and lessons are different from preparing for a test. Same for classes in evangelism.
    You get a lot of useful knowledge, I’m not knocking it. But a class on Romans is not a spiritual experience.
    I’m not saying this is useless. I am saying that College and all education is about the future.
    You go to school to develop a capability to do something.
    My seminary training is very useful as a SS teacher. I’m glad I took civil engineering before I changed to get my degree in Psychology.
    My Psychology and seminary training were useless for my family.
    That’s the reason I went to Purdue, to get updated on a discipline in which I should already be proficient. I got a Masters in doing that.

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  54. Janice, I think it depends a lot on the people, the classes, etc. Intense studying of the Bible in such a setting can become “academic” or it can be exciting. Sometimes you don’t get to spend as much time “processing” as you might like, and so you have to just take it in as information but it’s there for later.

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