47 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 1-5-17”

  1. Good morning. I’ve been up since 3- or 4-something.

    Yesterday afternoon I met my potential new student and her mom. Very nice people. The girl did quite well with all aspects of the mini-lesson I gave her. At one point while she was improvising a melody while I played an accompaniment, she turned and looked at her mom, smiling as she kept going without missing a beat. 🙂

    They are also going to be checking out one other teacher soon, but told me they’ll let me know Sunday what their decision is about whom to sign their daughter up with.

    Obviously, I hope it will be me, but if that is not God’s plan, well, then that’s the way it will be. He knows what is best.

    Liked by 6 people

  3. Good morning, Chas, Six, and AJ.
    Not much going on here except that the decision as to what Art will carry for lunch has been made. Also coffee has been made. Thank goodness that Miss Bosley moved so I can have my arm free to pick up my coffee cup. Now she’s back. At least I got two sips. She is on my other arm now so I can get to my coffee without CATastrophe.

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  4. Kim, Sorry, I didn’t see your question from yesterday until this morning. We live only about 17 miles from York so are very familiar with the area. I posted your question on the Southern York County FB page a few minutes ago and already have three answers. One is Honey Baked, as you suggested. Another said, ” Take Them a Meal is a great site for food delivery. You can pick the meal, leave a hand-written card message and have it delivered to the family. Never disappointed.” The third was for Brown’s, which is a place we love and visit frequently. For something different and local, it is what I would recommend. http://www.brownsorchards.com/

    I’ll let you know if any other interesting places show up.

    Liked by 2 people

  5. QOD for me–what time is it?

    I went to bed at 7:15 last night and was asleep by 7:30. I’d been lethargic and dragging all day and after botching dinner (how do you both cooking a roast chicken?), started yawning and thought, “I’m going to bed.”

    I thought I’d been asleep for nine hours when the alarm went off at what I thought was 4:30. This is a San Jose day for my husband. He got up and left for work–he leaves at 5.

    I remained in bed drowsing and praying–a bunch of you got prayers–and after what seemed a long time, I decided to get up and face the day.

    My watch said it was 5.

    The alarm clock said it was 6.

    When I got into the office just now, it said 5:05.

    But my husband left at 5, so how could that be?

    Yikes. I think he left at 4.

    So, should I send him an email and apologize for somehow screwing up the alarm clock? He should be at work by now . . .

    Liked by 1 person

  7. Michelle, in response to your question yesterday about Jerusalem, I attempted to find some LCMS literature to share. I haven’t found exactly what I was looking for, but did find the Lutheran response to the “Left Behind” series. Here is an excerpt from that document (which pretty much answers your question with “God doesn’t especially love Jerusalem”):
    “The land of Israel plays an important role in the Left Behind series because LaHaye and Jenkins embrace the belief that God has forever promised the land of Israel to the Jews. In fact, in their book “Are We Living in the End Times?” LaHaye and Jenkins call Israel’s becoming a state in May of 1948 a “super sign,” the beginning of the last generation before the rapture of the church. That the Israeli settlement of Palestine was to occur, they say, is indicated by numerous Old Testament promises that grant the land forever to Israel. This teaching is often understood as a form of Zionism, a nationalistic Jewish movement that believes the land of Israel belongs to the Jews. However, the land never did belong to Israel as such. Throughout the Old Testament the land belongs only to God (cf. Ps 24:1), for He is the one who gives it to Israel (e.g., Deut 6:10–11). Land could not be permanently bought or sold (cf. 1 Ki 21:1–16). It could not be permanently given away, let alone stolen or confiscated. The land was never at the disposal of Israel for its national purposes. The land of Israel, furthermore, is conspicuous by its absence in the teachings of Jesus. He makes only a few explicit references to the land in the Gospels. The strongest is found in the Beatitudes. In Mt 5:5 Jesus quotes from Ps 37:11, where the blessing of the meek is the inheritance of the land. Yet it is not the land of Israel but the entire earth that they will inherit. And, in light of the strong eschatological dimensions of the Sermon on the Mount, this earth is the “new heaven” and the “new earth, the home of righteousness” (2 Pt 3:13). Additionally, like the Old Testament prophets, Jesus predicted the destruction of Jerusalem as a judgment on Israel (e.g., Lk 19:41–44). But He did not promise that there would be another return to the land. Instead, He predicted the coming of the kingdom of God in terms drawn from Daniel’s vision of the Son of Man coming to the Ancient of Days to receive His kingly authority (Mt 24:30–31; Lk 21:25–28; cf. Dan 7:13–14). It can only have been deliberate that Jesus had so little to say specifically about the land of Israel and so much about “the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky” (Mt 24:30).”

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  8. By the way, this same document addresses the contemporary beliefs in “the rapture” and about the antichrist. If anyone is interested, it can be found by googling “A Lutheran response to the Left Behind Series.”

    Liked by 2 people

  9. Linda, I knew I drove past the exit for York when I came to your house. I didn’t realize you were so close — I “went sight seeing” in your community for a little while. 😉

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  10. Seems as though several of us were awake early. I was awake at 3, got back to sleep around 4:30. When the alarm went off at 6:15 I felt like I could have slept for days. I get up on time because if I laze about I won’t sleep tonight either. I am blaming it on having Hibachi with BG for dinner and that caused me to drink a lot of iced tea.
    Turning on the TV helps me go back to sleep. I have a couple of things I record because I can listen to the voices but pretty much ignore what is being said. One is What On Earth. This morning’s episode dealt with swastikas in the desert near Roswell, NM, an iron dagger being found in King Tut’s Tomb (he lived before the Iron Age), and something else. I don’t know how the iron dagger ended up in King Tut’s tomb because I fell asleep. I was awake for the swastikas in New Mexico. It seems that swastikas have been around for much longer than the Third Reich and they are especially tied to the Navajo. Eventually the investigators found the outline of a battle ship carved into the earth, and some other carvings. Turns out it was a training area for pilots during WWII. They were targets for where to drop bombs. Who knew? I find tidbits like that fascinating which is why you never want to play trivia with me. 😉

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  12. And for once I wasn’t up in the middle of the night, either because I hadn’t yet gone to bed / to sleep or because I had awakened. I took a melatonin about 9:00 and went to bed, and I awoke a few times but told myself “I took a pill; go back to sleep” and then I slept till 8:15. Badly needed sleep.

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  13. Good Morning! It is snowing and we have 3-4 inches of new fallen snow on the forest floor…and it is -2 degrees out there (with wind chill it feels like -21 ). ! Doggies were not happy going out first thing this morning…frozen tootsies!! Our high will be 6 and we will see another 3 inches by this evening…staying in and reading books…with coffee in hand! It is so lovely to look at on this side of the window 🙂

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  14. Good morning. We have -19 and I will not even guess at the wind chill or, as they currently like to call it, the “feels like temp”. I did just hear that we are supposed to have the worse winters in the nation. It is normal winter here. Even the ski hills and skating rinks will be closed today. Snow and cold is good for many businesses, but there is a point when it goes too far.

    On a good note, my husband is thrilled not to have to be working at the job from which he retired when we experience this weather. He does have to snow blow, but not today.

    This is the best time of the year to bake, organize, clean and read etc. I love the seasons, although we could certainly do with a bit less winter. Yes, it is beautiful, NancyJill.

    Liked by 2 people

  15. I’m up but I feel awful, I must be coming down with something. Sore throat, headache, groggy.

    Yesterday went late, we had a helicopter go down in the harbor at about 6 p.m. (witnessed by several passengers on an outbound cruise ship who called 911) so another reporter and I were at the office until about 8 p.m. working on updates for that (so far helicopter or occupants not found). I got home to a text from the port saying the coast guard was having a press briefing at 9:30 p.m., but it was a little late for me to make that one — I don’t think I could have/would have been able to get there in time, it was 9:10 by then.

    The dogs also had managed to steal (and I’m sure devour completely in the backyard) two almost-new bags of ‘pill-pocket’ treats from the counter sometime during the day when I was gone. Great.

    So I had to call the port contact to get the info from him after the briefing I missed, but there wasn’t enough new to update the story and I fell into bed exhausted (and already not feeling great) at around 11 p.m.

    I’m going to try to drag myself in today, but I may wind up bailing out early if I don’t feel any better after a few hours. A friend is supposed to come over tomorrow for a daylong visit but I may need to cancel that also.

    Editor has been in a foul mood this week, on top of everything else.

    On the up side, it rained all night long and is supposed to continue on through today.

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  18. I was reading the fourth chapter of Matthew this morning. About the temptations. For some reason, I happened to think of Dostoevsky’s “The Grand Inquisitor”. It is a single chapter (5) of his book The Brothers Karamazov. I read that decades ago, but the Grand Inquisitor stands out by itself. In Russia, Ivan tells about a monk in Seville who encounters Jesus again.
    It is a great work about the status of mankind and the temptations of Jesus. More than just stones to bread.

    I went to Amazon, searched “The Grand Inquisitor” and up came the story. Just like that. I printed it out, twenty pages, and reread the story. It is part of a larger story, but stands alone in its own. I highly recommend reading this tale. It is very deep in meaning and in understanding in many places.
    It would be great for a discussion group.

    I just went back to Amazon to try to repeat the event/ Bit it didn’t come up before. There is a way to print the story.

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  21. Chas, I had “The Grand Inquisitor” as a reading assignment in college. Unfortunately the bookstore wanted something like $7 for it, and that would have been two hours of income for me, so I got it off “Reserve” in the library (which meant I had two hours to read it, and it had to stay in the library while I read it), so when we discussed it in class I didn’t have it in front of me, so I didn’t get much out of the reading or the discussion. I’ve meant to read it and/or the book itself sometime, but so far I have not done so. I’ve read Crime and Punishment and many other classics, but I hear so much about how it’s hard to keep track of the characters in a Russian novel, and I have too hard a time keeping track of characters in many an American novel, so I haven’t made the attempt though I mean to . . .

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  24. Interesting information. I am not on any kind of diet but I am trying to track calories –doing away with empty ones like soda, sweet tea, wine, coffee creamer and make better decisions about what I am eating. I have a program called S-Health on my phone so I have been putting in what I eat and tracking the daily allowance of calories and nutrition I am getting.
    1. Some how EVERY day I seem to go over the daily recommended percentage of Vitamin A . It is lunch time and I am already at 14,037/700 whatever the unit is.
    2. I rarely if ever salt my food. I have gone over the recommended unit 3 times this week. Currently at 1280/1500mg
    3. It is next to impossible to get to the recommendations for the other nutrients without going over the 2,000 calories a day recommended.

    Liked by 1 person

  25. Thanks, Michelle. I watched, and I shall read later. I remember the very general story line of the book, but not the details.

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  28. Seeing you, Linda, reminds me I didn’t respond to the above–I was reading on the IPad.

    I agree with totally with all the information about Left Behind, etc. My question had to do with how Jerusalem is used in Scripture–I was reading Psalm 87 and happened to be in the Matthew 23 where Jesus talks about “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!”

    Psalm 87 begins:

    On the holy mount stands the city he founded;
    2 the Lord loves the gates of Zion
    more than all the dwelling places of Jacob.
    3 Glorious things of you are spoken,
    O city of God. Selah

    I was putting the two ideas together in my mind–wondering if Jerusalem (which I see is not mentioned by name in the psalm), could be used as a metaphor for all believers–how God loves His people; how God wants to brood over them to protect them, and so forth.

    It made me wonder if one could read about Jerusalem from that angle, and I wondered if anyone else had seen that.

    That’s all.

    Liked by 1 person

  29. Karen, the story I didn’t want to tell you on Facebook about the black the story you posted on the black guy who had befriended KKK members. When we adopted our biracial son one concern was the rumor that our next door neighbor was a member of the Klan. But we decided not to worry about it and continued to be friends with them and they came to love our son. Years later when he was dying of lung cancer one of his last request was a visit from our half black child.
    http://www.businessinsider.com/daryl-davis-making-friends-with-kkk-documentary-2016-12

    Liked by 4 people

  30. Michelle, the quote in Matthew 23 is not complete until we include

    Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, You shall not see me henceforth until you shall say, Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord.

    I see that as a threat and a promise. Jerusalem has been the most contentious city in the world for a reason.

    Paul, in Romans 11:29 says, “The gifts and calling of God are without repentance.”

    Liked by 1 person

  31. I have always said prejudice is “complicated” . Here you are hating someone you don’t know. Once you get to know someone how can you hate them? People who hate a group of people generally know someone in that group that is the exception to the rule of “all _____ are worthless, and I hate them…except for Joe, he’s a stand up guy”

    Liked by 1 person

  33. Reminds me of nineteen year old daughter who despises all Mexicans, though seven of her siblings are of Mexican extraction. She has always been angry that we adopted them. I have not noticed them be angry that we adopted a Scandinavian.

    Liked by 3 people

  34. Hard day out covering the search for the downed helicopter all day, standing with photographers and tv crews at the end of the foggy, rainy fishing pier.

    Passanger who went down sadly was someone we all knew, he was one of our photographers in the 1990s (nicknamed by the photo guys as “Calamity,” I learned today) and now contracts for photography with the port and lax. He was taking aerials of departing cruise ships when something happened and the 2-seat helicopter went down. They’re doing the recovery today out by the breakwater.

    Anyway, just sad and strange to cover, it feels like I’m connected to this one (though I probably knew him less than any of the other staffers at the paper).

    Stopped in at home for a quick lunch but off to the 2 p.m. news conference now. Water in my house is turned off for the bathroom work, of course. So that may force me to head in to work to finish writing this up afterward.

    Liked by 1 person

  35. Michelle, I answered your question on Jerusalem on yesterday’s thread. To add to what I wrote, my old paster (not the one who resigned, but the one who retired) pointed out that the New Jerusalem in Revelation was pictured as a city as a metaphor, but is actually composed of the people of God.

    Liked by 2 people

  36. I once read The Grand Inquisitor, but I didn’t fully understand it at the time. Watching Gielgud’s performance of it was wonderful. I find it interesting, because Dostoevsky, as a Russian, would have been raised Russian Orthodox. The Patriarchs of the Eastern Churches, while sometimes opposing and sometimes working with their governments, have never really attained to the power of the Catholic Church – they have been associated with separate nations, not with many nations as the Pope has been. Now, however, Putin is attempting to elevate the Patriarch of the Russian Church above the other national patriarchs of the Eastern Orthodox Church. I wonder if there will be yet another attempt to, to use Dostoevsky’s words, give mankind what they need in exchange for their freedom.

    Liked by 1 person

  37. Roscuro”
    The thing that brought me back to “The Grand Inquisitor” was reading about the temptations. As Dostoyevsky says, The statement about these three questions was itself a miracle”. The temptations comprehend all the desires of mankind.
    Bread: “In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say ‘Make us your slaves, but feed us’”“
    Miracle: “Didst Thou forget that man prefers peace, and even death, to freedom of choice in the knowledge of good and evil”
    Authority: “The great conquerors …..whirled like hurricanes over the face of the earth striving to subdue its people, and they too were (seeking)….universal unity.”

    Dostoyevsky isn’t easy to read. But every time I read about the temptations, I recall the three words, Bread, Miracle and Authority

    Liked by 4 people

  38. Since after Christmas, at least a couple people have referred to almost everybody getting time off for the holiday. None of us in this house has ever worked a job that gave us extra time off for the holiday. Makes me wonder what percentage of employees do get extra time off for Christmas. I would hazard a guess that the greater percentage does not, but I could be wrong.

    Liked by 1 person

  39. Chas, the thing that I always think about Christ’s temptations is that he accomplished all those things, but in a completely counterintuitive way. He is the Bread of Life, he is the Resurrection, the ultimate miracle, and he is the King of Kings. Yet he did it by laying down his power and dying. I was reading an article the other day called ‘Jesus is the smartest man in the world’. It pointed out how we are tempted to think that Jesus’ instructions on how to live are idealistic and unrealistic. The author underlined the fact that Jesus knew exactly how hard real life was, and that his commands were intended just for those cold, hard realities of life. Jesus Christ rejected the obvious, pragmatic way to power, and in doing so, he won. In God’s plan, things are always turned upside down, the wise become foolish and the weak become strong.

    Liked by 1 person

  40. Kizzie, what do you mean by “extra time”? This year was different because Christmas and New Year’s both came on Sunday, so that people who normally do not work Sunday and normally get those holidays off got two days in a row. Are you saying you have never worked a job that would have gotten those days off? Or extra days?

    I once worked a job (my job in Chicago) that got three days for Christmas and two for Thanksgiving. But we didn’t get a lot of the “banking” holidays, such as President’s Day.

    My first full-time job was at a drugstore, and I think they were closed Christmas and Thanksgiving but open all the other holidays. (That was 30 years ago, so I don’t remember for sure.) The way it worked there was that the most recent hire worked on a holiday. So I had to work maybe Memorial Day, and after that I wasn’t the newest hire any more (we usually had high school students coming and going). When I worked McDonald’s, for sure we were closed on Christmas and I think we were closed on Thanksgiving, and I didn’t work Sundays . . . but other than that, holidays were exactly the same as any other day. You weren’t going to get off because it was New Year’s Day; you got off if the managers didn’t schedule you on that day. Since my family did nothing special for any holiday other than Christmas Eve and Thanksgiving, and sometimes July 4, it didn’t matter to me. In later years, when I worked full-time at jobs that got holidays off with pay, I appreciated it. Now I don’t get any holidays unless I choose not to work, as I did in fact choose on December 26 and January 2. (If I’d had several projects, I’d have worked those days, but with one smallish project I just took them off.)

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  41. Some companies here give employees 1-2 weeks off for the Christmas/New Year’s holiday.

    Government, of course, always shuts down for a few weeks as do schools.

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  42. Aerospace is one industry that does that her in Southern California, though I think the trend is fairly recent. Maybe the tech companies as well?

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  43. Cheryl – What DJ is referring to above, that a lot of people get a week or more, or even just a few days, off at that time of year. There are businesses that do that, along with schools & such, but my guess would be that more people don’t get that much time off than do.

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  44. Hubby got those Mondays off, but then worked five days in a row afterward, rather than having his usual Wednesday off (which he volunteers to work on most weeks anyway).

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  45. It’s all about Idaho and California when it comes to the wicked weather headlines on Drudge today:

    _____________________________________________

    California braces for ‘once-in-10-year’ storm amid fears of flooding, avalanches, blizzards…

    Record snowfall Idaho…

    Chill map
    _______________________________________________

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  46. Cheryl – Did you see my reply to your comment in the not-so-secret room? I should have specified that I was referring to muscle aches (as well as tendons & ligaments), not all aches & pains.

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