46 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 6-6-16”

  2. Four days of school left. Grades and comments are done. Got a school program done for the first five weeks of the next school year for a family that has gone to Cairns to await the birth of their sixth child. Took things off the walls and sent them home. I am even beginning to see the surface of my desk. I wasn’t sure it was still there.

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  8. Good morning! Good turtles!

    I took an online media fast yesterday so have not read yesterday’s posts yet. I may start doing that on Sundays.

    Our new part-time worship leader started yesterday. He’s only a year out of college. He has a great voice. It will be interesting to see how he handles our blended service covering music to appeal to young and old.

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  9. Bragging aunt. My nephew is on the Berkeley crew team that just won the NCAA championship.

    He joins his older sister who won one for the same crew team, female of course, two years ago.

    My mom was a P.E. teacher. My dad wanted to go to Cal but when the Navy didn’t come through with the $$ ended up at UCLA (and the rest is history. Thanks again, US Navy). They were both big sports fans. I can’t imagine how proud they would have been.

    My nephew,btw, is a really fine young man.

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  10. Three turtles sunbathing.

    I sent 2 other shots with faces and their very cute feet. 🙂 I’m not normally a big turtle fan — and to be honest, I didn’t even *see* these guys right away, they blended in so well with their environment (and I was focused more on shooting the ducks & geese that day).

    Our sermon yesterday was from Rom. 12:9-13 and was excellent. The pastor opened by recalling the time he and another one of our elders went to China some years ago to help with some underground churches there. He said the churches had to keep moving their locations for safety and would only announced hours beforehand, through networking phone cals, where they’d meet that coming morning.

    Then, hundreds of small vans would pick people up and bring them to the location (there were sometimes a couple thousand people to an empty paint factory or other kind of building) and the service would go on for several hours. Then, they’d all quickly board the vans that were waiting inside and the building would empty out literally within minutes.

    From the sermon notes after that story (in which he notes he had the feeling the Christians in China would have loved to have spent many more hours together than they were able to):

    “Being raised in a highly evangelized nation like the USA, it has not been the common experience for Christians to be out of favor with their culture. We live in a very Christianized society. Perhaps the unintended consequences of this is a very casual pursuit of brotherly affection, depending on the level of our theological convictions, we can find fellowship almost anywhere. But we need to recognize that for quite some time thee has been a hostile trend fomenting toward Christians in the west. It makes us a bit more like the churches we read of in the New Testament — surrounded by Romans with their weapons and Greeks with their philosophies.”

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  11. He mentioned that the world won’t “tolerate Christians being Christians.”

    Some churches capitulate to the culture, accepting ideas that are not biblical. They’ll fare better with the powers that be.

    “But if current trends continue (our pastor mentioned we essentially are there ‘now’), the value — the necessity — of true Christian fellowship will become much more apparent; it will become more obviously critical. The world will not suffer the folly of the cross (1 Cor. 1:18). I will either seek to snuff out the church or (more likely) demand the church simply become a religiously bland extension of its own ideals — something we see these days with great regularity.”

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  14. Noticed the discussion yesterday about the song ‘Mack the Knife’ yesterday. Sometimes, certain things will trigger a load of associated facts in my memory. ‘Mack, the Knife’s history goes back to early 1700’s London. It was apparently Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver’s Travels, who first suggested writing an opera based on the low life of London. At that time, London was awash with wickedness – highwaymen, uncontrolled prostitution (some estimates say that one out of every four women in London worked as prostitutes), open and unchecked crime of every description, and high society joining in with organizations like the Hellfire Club. The Wesleys and George Whitefield had reason for their revivalist zeal. High society enjoyed Italian operas, with the likes of Handel composing such works for their entertainment, but the public was bored by them. It was John Gay who produced the The Beggar’s Opera, using tunes from popular ballads. The main character of the opera was a highwayman named Macheath. It was produced in 1728 and was wildly popular. The decreasing popularity of his Italian operas caused Handel to turn towards writing oratorios, culminating in his glorious Messiah.

    Fast forward two hundred years, to the late 1920s, in post-WWI Germany, another wild era. European culture is often forgotten between the two world wars, but it was a very decadent place, not unlike that of London two hundred years before. Berlin was one of its cultural centres, with artists producing Expressionistic films, paintings, poetry, and music. The Beggar’s Opera was translated into German, and a Jewish composer, Kurt Weill, set it to his own music, using the jazzy sounds that were popular in the nightclubs of Berlin. The finished work, The Threepenny Opera, was a success, with its most popular song being ‘Die Moritat von Mackie Messer’. Then the Nazis rose to power, and Kurt Weill was among those officially denounced. He fled first to Paris, and then came to New York. It wasn’t until 1954 that a popular English translation was made of Wiell’s popular song, with ‘Die Moritat von Mackie Messer’ becoming ‘The Ballad of Mack the Knife. Weill went on to write more music in America. The most well known of his American works comes from another musical, Knickerbocker Holiday, inspired by the stories of American author Washington Irving, best known for ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’. The musical isn’t as well known as the solo ‘September Song’ written for Hollywood star Walter Huston:

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  17. Meanwhile, we lost another duck this morning to a coyote in our neighborhood park (which is where the turtles were photographed). Neighbors managed to move the park’s favorite 2 geese (their photo ran here several weeks ago — everyone always thought they were sisters, but turns out they were ‘brothers’ — who knew?). They’re not in a refuge several miles away.

    They were moved out after 2 other geese were killed for breakfast by coyotes.

    The coyotes love that park, obviously, there’s no shortage of food.

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  18. Donna, your speaker describes the early church as under siege, surrounded by Romans with their weapons and Greeks with their philosophies. In reading the early church writings, they did not perceive themselves as under siege. They were realistic, but their realism included the unshakeable faith that God’s word would outlast anything the Romans or Greeks could do to them. They took what Paul, and Peter, and John had written before them and applied it consistently to their situation. As a result, although they faced far worse than anything Christians in the West have had to face, they wrote with dignity, calm, patience, and concern for those who made them enemies.

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  19. Which is why our viewpoint is so different today, we’ve been lulled by living in a ‘friendly’ culture. The Chinese know.

    We’ve never had to endure that kind of opposition.

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  20. Donna, which is why I often think it would be better if the Church turned into the storm now than try to keep finding shelter behind conservative politicians, wrongful dismissal lawsuits, campaigns for religious rights, etc. I was just discussing with my mother the level of corruption in the evangelical church. I’ve said it before, the Church is the Jonah in the Western ship and we’re the ones God wants thrown overboard. Christ said that the salt which lost its taste would be cast out and trodden under the feet of men. When the evangelical church has the same kinds of scandals as the world, it has become tasteless.

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  24. Donna, I’m not saying to jettison all of our rights and privileges of our respective countries. Rather that, when we perceive that our rights are threatened, our first appeal should be to God. When we are constantly ramping up ourselves to take part in the next political rally or protest, there is no being still and knowing that God is and that He is in control. When we fail to let the Holy Spirit take charge of our responses, we end up angry, impatient, fearful, and bitter towards those who oppose us.

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  26. Well, I doubt anyone here goes to political rallies or protests. 🙂 We (usually) vote. We engage. And I do believe we all appeal to God, first and foremost.

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  27. I do attend religious freedom rallies. Excellent speakers who I want to support with my attendance 🙂

    I look forward to reading your blog, Roscuro. Right now I am breaking from lawn mowing.

    I just reviewed Jesus and the Jehadis. I strongly recommend that everyone read it. You can find my review on Amazon or Goodreads.

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  28. It is so humid out, but with cloud cover I decided I would attempt to mow. It is still highly uncomfortable. Miss Bosley adores sitting in my lap when I am sweaty from mowing. I just don’t understand why. She misses me while I am outside I suppose. She still has her first toy I made for her when she was a kitten and it appears by the door when we are gone. It was there when I came in from mowing just now.

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  29. We went again for sub sandwiches after church yesterday. Art noticed a couple he thought were Hispanic saying grace over their meal and commented at least that is a good thing about having many Hispanics in our area, they do engage with God.

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  31. Janice – Your comment about the apparently Hispanic people reminds me of a friend of Emily’s. Stephanie is half white & half Laotian. But many people, including Hispanics, think she is Hispanic. They often come up to her & start speaking Spanish, & she has to tell them she doesn’t speak Spanish. 🙂

    Emily & Stephanie knew each other in elementary school, even back in kindergarten, when our family & hers lived in a town about half an hour from here. They hadn’t seen each other since they were eleven, but reconnected about five years ago when Emily started working at Claire’s, & Stephanie was working there. They are now best friends.

    Interestingly, Stephanie posts some very Christian things on Facebook, & does consider herself a Christian. But she is currently living with her boyfriend, the father of her daughter. Praying she gets more serious about her faith & following God’s ways, & that she will be a good spiritual influence on Emily.

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  32. That went quickly, and God was good to give cloud cover but no rain yet. I am not doing the small side area that is still pretty bare. When I came in. I had rivulets of sweat streaming down my face. Miss Bosley hopped up in my lap and watched the water draining down my face and then commenced to washing her face. She was no doubt being empathetic ♡ I got up and went to wash my face.

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  33. Interesting, Karen. I told Art I thought the couple was Muslim, but he said he really believed they were Hispanic.

    I am thankful that Emily is with her good friend who will share some about Christianity so it may spark Emily’s interest. In my experience, people gradually dig deeper into what it requires to please Jesus/God with the way we live. It does not happen all at once. I hope the couple attends a church where the truth is preached. That will make a difference, too.

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  36. my blond haired, blue eyed daughter got asked by Hispanics if she was Hispanic and perhaps from Spain. She worked in a Mexican restaurant and the other staff thought sure she was Hispanic since she spoke Spanish so clearly. Of course she spent six months in Honduras and took lots of courses. They were convinced.

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  37. You know, I am finally realizing how much I am going to miss this class. They are actually a class of leaders. and very sweet. As a class, they came totally undisciplined, so it has been a struggle, but what a class.

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  40. Oh, look, there’s one of my other turtle pics in the header. Quarter of a day early? Or a shared appearance with the three sunbathers … 🙂

    I’m going to have to work election night this time around (with most of the other now-tiny staff). Not looking forward to it. We probably won’t get out until sometime after 1 a.m. and then come back in Wednesday for a regular shift, which is always horrific.

    But at least I’ll have part of Tuesday off during the day in exchange since I won’t have to come in until 5 p.m. tomorrow

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  41. Sorry that was problematic to download, AJ.

    So does anyone know what kind of turtle that is? I just take the pictures and rely on all you to provide the captions.

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  43. It bugs me a bit when I read about an adoptive father (who has adopted his wife’s child from a previous relationship) referred to as the step-father. He adopted the child, ergo he is the child’s father.

    My dad adopted my brother, who was seven when my parents married. Brother was Dad’s son, Dad was Brother’s father. I have never considered him my “half-brother”, he is my brother.

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  44. Karen, I used to have a neighbor who had no biological children; she and her first husband had adopted a couple of kids, who were now long since grown, and who weren’t necessarily making the best decisions. She didn’t talk about her son a lot, but she made frequent references to “my adopted daughter.” Rarely just “my daughter,” nearly always “adopted” thrown in there. I never called her on it, though I thought about it.

    Sometimes I refer to my kids as my stepdaughters (especially initially, when people don’t know the relationship), but more commonly I call them my daughters, our girls, etc. My husband refers to me as “mother,” not stepmother, and he never says “my daughters” but always “our daughters.” I didn’t adopt them, didn’t enter their lives till they were 17 and 19, but it just seems a natural way for all of us to talk. (They do call me “Cheryl,” but they don’t hold me at arms’ length.)

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