41 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 2-17-16”

  2. Cute picture. Is there bird food in that hollow? My screen is too small to tell.

    I need my hoodie on since Miss Bosley is in my lap and making bread with her claws on my shoulder. Ouch, ouch, and more ouch. At least her purrs are comforting. She has now fallen asleep on the job, and her paws are slowly slipping down from my shoulder. Now she can make bread in her dreams. She is such a cuddle baby.

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply

  5. Just call me the early morning blog hog 🙂

    I talked to my friend, Karen, last night. I said something about my son teaching the college class. She then told me about when he was in his second kindergarten class, and she helped at the school, that when the children got lined up for carpool that Wesley would read to them and that they loved it. I never knew that until last night. Such a sweet thing to hear.

    Liked by 5 people

    Reply

  6. If only I had posted here first instead of checking my email!

    Woke at 2:30, forced myself to,stay in bed until at least 3, but I wasn’t sleeping. One walk and then a writing day. I have a lot to do before my daughter comes home tomorrow.

    Given the time I woke up, I’m not sure I’ll make it to the Lenten service tonight! Off to the war!

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  7. Not sure if this link will work, but it is a page of study bibles on sale at Amazon for Kindle for $4.99 each. One is the MacArthur, another Lucado, etc.
    9781401679330|9781401679064|97814

    Like

    Reply

  12. Here is my question and I have been pondering it since a friend posted something on FB last week about the Devil stealing the God’s Sabbath and having us worship on Sunday rather than Saturday. I reached out to her about it and she sold me she no longer trusts anything to do with the Catholic churches and ALL churches have broken off from the Catholic church. She went on to say that she no longer trusts man and will mostly be worshiping from home and through her own Bible study and research. This is one of the websites she has referenced. (I must admit I have not read the whole thing and reserve judgement on it)

    http://www.amazingfacts.org/media-library/study-guide/e/4997/t/the-mark-of-the-beast

    This is obviously worrying me for her. How would you handle it? Would you try to reach out more or would you let her go her own way? Any thoughts are appreciated.

    Like

    Reply

  13. Kim, first pray that she will have spiritual discernment if she is being led astray. She is trusting in a person’s message, and she can be led astray even by herself. She really needs discernment, and also she needs to practice grace and forgiveness toward those she feels have wronged her . The Bible says that Christians are known by their love. Her method does not allow her to show much love.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  15. No. I warned her about 7th Day Adventists. She most recently was attending one of the Mega-Non-Denominational churches. (I truly don’t get a church that can have multiple “campuses” and video in the sermon from the main church).

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  16. Does her bible tell her to assemble with other believers? Of course, she does not realize she is relying on man when trusting her own intellect. There is a reason we are encouraged to assemble together. That does not mean you just believe everything you are told, no matter what church you attend. It sounds like her theology may come from a modern novel and movie or perhaps the internet more than the bible.

    I would pray for her and be careful to just speak the truth in love when invited to do so. Not much else you can do.

    Like

    Reply

  18. Without reading the link, it also sounds a lot like what the late Harold Camping was teaching 10-20 years ago — that the church age was over, that all churches were corrupt, and that believers should gather in homes and not be associated with churches (that they all now bore the mark of Satan, if I remember it right). We actually lost a couple members in my former church to that apostate teaching.

    Of course, Camping went on to predict the end of the world, buying up billboards to warn everyone to repent (the date came and went, of course). He died a few years ago. He did apologize publicly later. But many followed him, unfortunately, out of their churches.

    Like

    Reply

  20. On the “boys are stupid” list. While cleaning out son’s room, looking for more drugs, alcohol, or nicotine products, I found the last two of a bag of firecrackers. So, I asked the seventeen year old. He snickered and said, yep, they had used those for paintball. They light them and throw them at each other. They have only played paintball once and that was with a large group of guys in Grangeville about a month ago. Anyway, they had some leftovers and one day, sitting around in his room, he was playing on his Iphone and the other two boys were giggling over something. Next thing he knew, they had lit one of them in the room and the oldest was trying to pull the fuse out with his fingers. He burned his hands and they made so much noise they were afraid they had woken us up. I suspect seventeen would have talked them out of it had he noticed. He is not beyond stupid but maybe not that stupid. And life goes on. I lit the remainder of them out on the basketball court this morning.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  21. If you have a thick sweatshirt on, cats making bread on your shoulders can feel a lot like a nice massage. 🙂

    I let the dogs & Annie out at 6 a.m., opening the doggie door. Annie often then scampers over the side gate to get to the front porch.

    She was insistent that she be let back in at around 7, when I was getting up, clawing at the front screens. I opened the door. She stood there. Then began wandering away. I shut the door.

    Cats.

    Isn’t there a cartoon I saw about a cat pausing to considered all the options as St. Peter stood there holding the gate to heaven open? Waiting, waiting …

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  22. Talk about not Biblically sound doctrine, but it is funny. Especially for all of you cat people.

    God’s Creation of the Cat
    On the first day of creation, God created the cat.

    On the second day, God created man to serve the cat.

    On the third day, God created all the animals of the earth to serve as potential food for the cat.cat looking through goldfish bowl

    On the fourth day, God created honest toil so that man could labor for the good of the cat.

    On the fifth day, God created the sparkle ball so that the cat might or might not play with it.

    On the sixth day, God created veterinary science to keep the cat healthy, and the man broke.

    On the seventh day, God tried to rest, but he had to scoop the litter box.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  23. I’m off to a Catholic-Jesuit university today to cover the Philippine president who’s getting an honorary degree. The event is at noon but our photographer had to get there at 9:30 as the Secret Service is involved and has to go over all the camera equipment being brought in.

    Women can’t bring purses, but we can bring our cell phones. 🙂

    The president apparently was in town for the gathering of Asian world leaders that Obama presided over in the past week.

    Like

    Reply

  25. Kim, it is a familiar scenario. I’ve lost count of the number of people my family and I have encountered over the years who’ve given up on the church and get into strange religious ideas. In my experience, they cannot be reasoned with and one can only pray for them and model true Christian faith. Paul describes such people, both men and women like this:
    The men: “If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain. (I Timothy 6:3-5, ESV)
    The women: “For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.” (II Timothy 3:6-7, ESV)

    Like

    Reply

  26. This is disturbing, very disturbing. We will never rid ourselves of the abortion industry so long as children, and the wombs of women, are goods to be bought and sold: http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2016/02/custody_case_over_triplets_in_california_raises_questions_about_surrogacy.single.html

    In California, that industry is known for pushing boundaries. It is the state that gave us the so-called Octomom, Nadya Suleman, who gave birth to octuplets in 2009 after her fertility doctor implanted her with 12 embryos. Also in 2009, the Modesto-based surrogacy agency SurroGenesis was revealed to have defrauded clients of millions of dollars, leaving some intended parents unable to pay the surrogates who were carrying their children. The New York Times reported that one surrogate, pregnant with twins and confined to bed rest, received an eviction notice after the couple who had hired her were unable to reimburse her for lost wages.

    Three years later, in 2012, a prominent California surrogacy broker named Theresa Erickson was sentenced to prison for leading an international baby-selling ring. Erickson, a former board member of the American Fertility Association, recruited surrogates and sent them to Ukraine, where they were implanted with embryos created from donated eggs and sperm. She put the resulting babies up for adoption, telling prospective parents that they were the result of surrogacies in which the original intended parents had backed out. Erickson collected between $100,000 and $150,000 for each baby. After she was sentenced, she told NBC San Diego that her case represented the “tip of the iceberg” of a corrupt industry.

    Even when it’s not corrupt, the industry often tests the limits of bioethics. Steinberg, the doctor who performed Cook’s embryo transfer, was last in the news for marketing embryo screening for hair, eye, and skin color. “This is cosmetic medicine,” he told the Wall Street Journal. “Others are frightened by the criticism but we have no problems with it.” He was a pioneer in the use of IVF for sex selection, and his clinic draws clients from countries around the world where the practice is banned.

    “We don’t have good oversight of the whole fertility industry,” says Marcy Darnovsky, executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society in Berkeley, California, and a longtime women’s health advocate. “It’s very underregulated, and we need to be taking that really seriously. California is a surrogacy-friendly state and thinks that it’s doing surrogacy the right way. But there have been enough problems in California that clearly something is not right.”

    Like

    Reply

  29. Sitting here in the quiet of the morning waiting to hear a plane. It is a Morning in Prayer and we don’t fly this morning. But friends who just returned last Friday are due to be medevac’d this morning as the husband is ill. She was so worn down last night. I hugged her and prayed and left her my car so she could take him dinner at the clinic. Prayers appreciated, looks like pneumonia

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  31. What is your understanding of the term “lame duck president”? I’m not looking for a dictionary definition, which I’ve already seen, but your own understandings of the term. (This has to do with a little disagreement that I was a part of about the term.)

    Like

    Reply

  32. Okay, I’ll just go ahead & tell ya how it went. I referred to President Obama as a lame duck. I was told, in a rather snotty manner, that I was using the term incorrectly, that a president isn’t a lame duck until after his successor has been chosen.

    But I was pretty sure I’ve seen the term used for Obama, so I looked it up on Dictionary.com. The first definition fit what the person said, but the second one fit how I used it.

    Anyway, I was just wondering what the general understanding of the term is.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  33. Karen- I understand it as a politician who is in his/her last term.

    And as often happens, two people in a disagreement of word meaning are both correct in how they use it. Happens a lot in this household.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  34. A lame duck is any politician or other official who is rendered ineffective because he has lost his influence.
    An officer becomes a lame duck as soon as he gets his transfer orders.
    A politician becomes a lame a lame duck when he can no longer influence the outcome.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  35. Example. Obama is not a lame duck when he is directing military or similar operations.
    He is a lame duck when he can no longer use his influence to determine the outcome of a law. or, in this case, an appointment.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  36. The snotty remark was made after I pointed out that there is precedent for holding off on a new Supreme Court justice when the president is a lame duck (I worded it better than that, though). The response was that there is also precedent for not using a word incorrectly, followed by the other definition. Sheesh. (This was on Facebook, if you hadn’t already guessed that.)

    Like

    Reply

  37. I get a perverse satisfaction at seeing someone with a haughty spirit humbled somewhat. Not greatly embarrassed or humiliated, of course. So many people can get so haughty & snotty when they are sure they are correct & the other person is wrong. To then see them proved wrong gives a perverse kind of satisfaction. (This is not referring to the lame duck discussion, though.)

    Like

    Reply

  41. I’ve always understood “lame duck” to refer to the last year or final months of an incumbent’s term (when he or she is being termed out and can’t run again). The office holder naturally loses much of his or her clout and influence in those final months as they’re on their way out.

    Karen, check out the post I left on the politics thread about the NYT 1987 editorial regarding the Bork nomination.

    Hilarious, both sides do the same thing in these situations.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

Leave a comment