64 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 12-11-17”

  8. Having a crisis of confidence on a day I will be running around like an idiot woman/grandmother.

    Do you like Christmas letters?

    Help me out here, I’ve been broadsided by two people I thought liked my Christmas letter and I’m not sure what to think.

    Climbing into the gerbil spinner now.

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  11. I personally have never sent out Christmas letters. I think now, most people you would send them to keep up with your life on Facebook. I have liked receiving them in the past, but I think some people don’t know how to properly write them and straddle the line between sharing happy news and down right bragging.
    I think I have received yours and Cheryl’s in the past, but you are writers and editors so you know how to make them personal and chatty without coming across as “Oh look at me and how perfect my life is and yours isn’t”.

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  13. I could do a Christmas letter with pictures of the horrors that have been my house for a year and a half.

    It would be real.

    It’s only going to be 80 today, it’s a cool spell.

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  16. My family struggled with one Christmas letter that we got every year in which the exploits of the acquaintance’s children seemed larger than life. It turned my parents off from sending out Christmas letters, unless they were handwritten ones to particular friends whom they knew would be interested in more than a signed card. That’s not to say they don’t enjoy getting letters from their friends, as some people move out of one’s vicinity but not out of one’s heart and hearing any news from them is, in the words of the Proverb, as cold waters to a thirsty soul. As Kim says, there is a difference between telling the news and boasting of deeds done.

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  17. I like receiving Christmas letters. There is one friend whose children all seem to be exceptional in some way, which makes me feel like a bit of a loser as a mother. But I don’t think the mom intends to brag, as she is merely writing about their lives.
    ______________________
    Nightingale & I are not going to be ready to go back to probate court tomorrow after all. I thought it would be easy-ish to get things together today (I have most of it already), & fill out the other form the lady mentioned (Federal Form 712), so I figured I’d do that today.

    Federal Form 712 had me in tears of frustration. Again, wording that is confusing, & lots of questions, many of which seem irrelevant to me, especially considering that life insurance is NON-TAXABLE, for crying out loud. I googled the definition of one word that had me stumped, & the definitions were clear as mud.

    If I weren’t already in favor of smaller government, I sure would be now. Why does the IRS need to know what the monthly premium was, for instance? Filling out not one, but two (& possibly more) forms for NON-TAXABLE income is ridiculous!

    I am feeling very tired, worn down, & stressed. Maybe we can figure it all out tomorrow together.

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  20. Which is also why it’s helpful to have someone go through it with you who is not personally involved, preferably an upstanding man.

    Several widows and would-be widows (husband in a nursing home) or single women in our church who lost their homes have got elders from our church going through all the fire stuff with them. It’s a terrible, hard, emotionally gruelling task but to have someone standing next them on their behalf asking pointed questions is a major gift.

    Do you know anyone like that you can trust?

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  21. Okay, here’s what stumped me:

    After asking for information on the decedent, & the name & address of the life insurance company, it says, “Assignor’s name. Attach copy of assignment.” & then, “Date assigned.”

    From what I could figure out, “assigning” has to do with transferring the ownership of a policy to someone else. But that doesn’t seem to be the same as a beneficiary receiving the benefits of the policy. Or is it? And if it is, why don’t they use the word we are all familiar with, “beneficiary”?

    I don’t mean to brag, but I was told by my high school counselor that my IQ is “well above average”. Nightingale is just as intelligent as I am, if not more so. If we have trouble with these kinds of forms, how does the person of average intelligence navigate this crap?

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  26. I guess I could find someone to help, if we needed to. I’m thinking even the lady at the probate court could help. I just want this stuff to be finished. Life is busy enough without this stuff, & now we have the Christmas season upon us.

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  29. Kizzie, 😦 Sounds awful, how frustrating. I’d also try to find someone in your church or other circles (atty, insurance agent — maybe your own?) who might help translated. Maybe there’s a translation app on your phone. 🙂

    I’m lamenting my decision to hire the old house guy to help with paint colors. He sent me two mockups with no narrative (I had to ask him to provide some context on why he picked those colors, etc.) and then did a mockup I’d requested with a different trim.

    After that, it apparently was up to me to come up with things I wanted him to try. But the 2 color charts he sent me were virtually unreadable (I’d told him that early on, he suggested it was my email server). They just aren’t user friendly, the colors are tiny thumbnails id’d only by #s that blurred out whenever I tried to enlarge the chart.

    I also just felt that he was never invested or interested in my house, he just threw things at me with little or no explanations. I paid for this service so really expected a lot more in the way of some give and take and pro-active work on his end.

    Anyway, he’s now advised me my 30 days are up though he’ll grant me an extension. Sigh. If he asks for my feedback when this is all over and done with, I’ll give it to him (nicely). Seriously, if you’re going to charge $ for a service like this, get involved with the client a little bit, have some more initiative to earn that money. Don’t just throw a couple ideas out and then sit back with zero communication.

    Argh. Live and learn.

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  31. Consultant also has the personality of a pet rock. In his email granting me a 2-week extension, he scolds “You really have to make this a priority.” Sheesh. I still am struggling with those stupid color charts, what a pain.

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  32. I mean, I’ve paid him, not the other way around, he works for me, right? I realize the process needs to include a give and take with my weighing in, but he seems to just be sitting there while I’m lost in the woods and too-tiny color charts.

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  33. That Ravi story needs to be told. Men need to know that they are not safe with certain women and they have no idea which ones. We need to pray for those in authority and those teachers we never actually meet but learn from through their books or whatever as well as the ones in our churches.

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  35. In a past life my husband was a banker, so when my sister’s husband died unexpectedly, hubby and I spent nearly two weeks down there, largely with him helping her with paperwork. There were times she found it frustrating, but he knew finances and he himself had lost a spouse, so he was able to help her both emotionally and practically to get through it. Sometimes he would ask a simple yes or no question and she would panic, and he would take a step back and walk her through it again, helping her to stay calm and to get through it. And if she broke down, I’d hold her hand and we’d just sit for a while. But we got life insurance and social security sorted out, and a couple of other things, and helped her get started on other things that needed paperwork. It helped.

    Re Christmas letters, generally I like them. I do have one person from my college days who is single (she’s older than I; she was my boss on my first college job and had already graduated) and her life seems to consist pretty much solely of herself, her single sister, her single best friend, and two female dogs. She also has a brother who is married with children, but she somehow makes her life into something like a six-page Christmas letter every year, and I have a hard time (me, who reads cereal boxes if there’s nothing else to read) considering the lives of three “old maids” and two dogs in Wisconsin or wherever they live to be worthy of six pages a year. If they traveled around the world or something, maybe, but “we worked on our patio, and we went to the park with our nephews, and the dogs got into chocolate and threw up” gets old eventually. But it helps me to see what not to do, and I do remember all three of the ladies, and I skim it every year.

    I started writing Christmas letters simply because I refuse to send out cards with nothing more than a signature, so it was taking several sittings to write cards and think of what to write on each one, once I got up to about 70 I sent out. And a letter can include photos.

    One year I started mine with a joke (based on conversations on this blog) about how some people send them to brag and then everyone else feels they don’t measure up, and others to complain and then other people say “My life is harder than hers,” but that my own reason was simply because it’s an easy way to summarize the year without having to write dozens of individual letters.

    One of my young women from Chicago, in her late twenties by then, got so upset with that introductory paragraph (which was supposed to be tongue in cheek, but she read it as me being angry) that she pretty much cut off contact with me. I don’t think she even read far enough to see my “big news” of the year, since that was the year I lost my brother-in-law and my little sister was left a widow with five children. That was certainly a bigger deal than a silly introduction, but she was somehow offended by my intro, offended enough to tell me never again to send her any mail and to tell me a few other faults she saw in me, too. That was sad to me, partly because I’ve loved her for 20 years (including some great sorrows in her life) and partly because the whole point of the paragraph was to make fun of Christmas letters and to say “If you don’t like Christmas letters, just throw it out; this isn’t a life or death thing, just a Christmas letter.” I mean, I personally don’t like Christmas cards that have nothing but a signature; they’re a waste of postage to me. But I don’t get offended when people send them, because I understand the person is saying that I or my family means something to them. And it makes sure I have the person’s current address. So, I don’t have to like cards without so much as a single sentence written on them, and others don’t have to like my Christmas letters. But it’s best if we at least understand “This person thought about me enough to keep me on their list.” That matters.

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  36. That is what we were discussing about gifts yesterday. You might not like the gift you were given but what matters? Ten year old said, “it is that the person thought of you and wanted to give you something they thought you might like.” I love my children.

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  37. There seems to be a lot more to that 12:53 story than Ravi’s side of things. RZIM is posting some spin on this one, sorry, and dealing only with the nicest sounding aspects. He has long been one of my favorite writers and speakers (I have heard him in person several times, and read several of his books). But he has made some really foolish decisions here. I don’t know the whole story with the woman, but enough to see he is not pure as the driven snow on this one (he threatened suicide if she told her husband about their correspondence) and he has done some very questionable resume padding. (From stuff that is pretty much outright lies to exaggeration, and multiple instances of it.)

    I’ve supported him financially through the years (not heavily, but here and there), and the last few weeks I have lost all confidence in him and his ministry. I still believe he is probably a Christian and I am praying for repentance, but I think he no longer belongs in the ministry.

    I’ve avoided posting anything on here because I have felt great respect for him and I’m the last person on earth who wants to be seen as “attacking” him. But I don’t think he can be defended, and since he has been mentioned by other people I’m going to say that.

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  38. I leave it up to the courts and maintain what I said, men need to know that not all women can be trusted, just like women need to know that not all men can be trusted.

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  40. I don’t anything about this story, either, but I have a writer friend who is lovely and kind and has been taken in by a woman who has done her great harm. My friend offered compassion to this woman in a difficult time (according to the woman) and she turns out to be pathological in a lot of really evil ways.

    Our heart breaks for my friends whose reputation may very well be ruined by the time this woman is done. Sick.

    So, Mumsee’s comment stands well. Men and women need to be as wise as serpents in their dealings with people they don’t know–no matter how flattering or needing (in a Christian sense) they may be. Leave the counseling and help to professionals who know how to see through some of this.

    There’s nothing wrong in protecting yourself. Someone who genuinely cares about you should understand.

    (Just finished my Bible study prep for David and Bathsheba . . . )

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  41. I just had an interesting phone call. I picked up and the party said hello, grandma! It sounded much older than my grandchildren so I said I did not think so. The party said, guess who it is. I said I don’t know, he said, you always said I was your favorite. I said I did not know. He said, it’s me, Chris. I said I don’t have a grandson named Chris. He hung up. I noticed the sound in the background like a call center. Be aware. There are strange folk out there.

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  42. Ha. Cheryl gets married and now single gals are “old maids”??? Yikes. That’s ok … I think my aunt once said that to me when I was still in my 40s and mentioned I wasn’t dating one particular guy anymore. “Oh, so you’re going to be an old maid?”

    Well, at least I don’t wind it all out into a long Christmas letter 🙂

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  43. Kevin, Christianity Today has an article, for one. While it does not outright say that the suicide threat was genuine, Ravi refused to answer the question, pleading the NDA. That is super, super fishy. You can slam this woman in an interview, but the moment they ask whether evidence against YOU is genuine, you say “Legally, I can’t talk about that”? Uh-uh. If it had been fake, he would have said so. Plus, why settle a case against you out of court, with a payment and a non-disclosure agreement, if the other party has no evidence that you yourself went along with inappropriate conversation? That part is circumstantial evidence, but a minister is supposed to be “above reproach,” and settling a case with an NDA, without ever showing your ministry the evidence, is too strong circumstantial evidence to be “above reproach.” Basically, Ravi said, “This is what happened, and I’m innocent,” and his ministry said, “We believe you” and chose not to investigate further–and that is totally unacceptable. If the elders at my church were to receive a charge against our pastor, they would not say “We heard his side of it, and we trust him” and expect that to be the end of it–they’d be failing their duty. Read the CT article.

    I think the woman was most likely seeking to entrap him to get money from him. I don’t think she is innocent. Thing is, she seems to have succeeded.

    That’s also not the whole story. For many years, he has been exaggerating his credentials–pretending links to Oxford and Cambridge he doesn’t have. The smallest issue in that is calling himself “Dr.” when he has only honorary doctorates. Now personally I don’t care about that–apparently it is quite commonly done, and like the question of whether it is legitimate to use a ghost writer, there are varying opinions on whether it is proper to call oneself Dr. with only honorary doctorates. Thing is, RZIM is (1) pretending that is the only credentials question, and it is actually the smallest one and (2) lying about their own involvement in even the “Dr.” part. I haven’t checked their website in the last three or four days, but as recently as the last week they themselves still had at least one use of “Dr. Ravi Zacharias” on their own website–I saw it with my own eyes. Yet they talk about other organizations doing it above Zacharias’s protest. Nonsense.

    Google “Ravi Zacharias Warren Throckmorton” for several relevant articles. WH is not a full conservative and I’m sure most of us won’t agree with everything he says, but the facts are well researched . . . including conservative scholars coming out and saying that they have been saying for years that this exaggeration of credentials is going to come back and bite Ravi.

    If Ravi was a liberal, conservatives would be outraged. Since he is “one of our own,” people are choosing to be outraged only at the woman and to assume the man is innocent. I don’t think the facts bear that out (completely–I don’t know to what detail he “went along,” but the suicide note says he isn’t innocent), and the resume padding is clear and damning. I’m praying that God would lead him to repentance–I mean that sincerely–but believe he is no longer “above reproach” or qualified for further ministry. As with Clinton, the cover-up is worse than the original sin, but the cover-up means he is done, as far as I can see, even if he continues to draw a paycheck.

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  44. DJ, “old maids” was definitely in quotes. But when you have a circle of three never-married women of 55 to 60 and two little female dogs, all five of them writing their own portion of the Christmas letter, it is kinda old-maidish, right?

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  46. I like to receive Christmas letters from people I am not friends with on Facebook, like my aunt & uncle in the 80’s. If you’re FB friends with me, I usually know pretty much all that happened in the year.

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  47. Who is Ravi?

    Mumsee, Chris was going to tell you that he was abducted to Mexico and held for ransom until you wire $200 down there.
    Some free advice I once paid a lawyer $50.00 to hear. It only took the lawyer 15minutes to hear my side of the sorry and he settled it with one sentence.
    “Never, under any r circumstances, wire money to an off shore bank.”

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  49. Chas, Ravi Zacharias, an evangelist born in India (now Canadian) who has several ministries named after him. He tells extremely riveting, memorable stories. When he speaks you think he is quite well educated and he tells you regularly about the academic circles in which he is well respected. I have heard him in person several times, on the radio here and there (“Just Thinking” and “Let My People Think”), have read several of his books. I’m on his mailing list, have supported him from time to time, have prayed for him. If you had asked me two years ago to name my five favorite living Christian authors, he probably would have been the second one I would have come up with.

    When I first saw an article about the charges against him, I was inclined to believe it was “much ado about nothing.” Even when I became convinced the charges were real, I didn’t post about it on here because it hurts even to think about it. It’s the same kind of hurt as when the elder for whom I had the most respect in a previous church was caught in adultery–I hate this.

    But I hate the denial even more. That turns this from “fellow sinner” into “wolf” and “permanently disqualified from ministry.”

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  51. Well I enjoy “some” Christmas newsletters…and some I do not.
    The newsletters I enjoy most are the humorous ones. We are so blessed to have a particular friend who writes his family letter…family member by family member and their escapades…including all of their family “zoo” members. He is quite witty. The ones I do not care for are the telling of their “perfect” lives….especially from those of whom I know for a fact their lives are not “perfect”….I just find myself asking “why”?!
    Paul and I read about Ravi when the news first broke…we did read the CT article as well. We have been great readers of Ravi’s books and have greatly admired his wisdom and insights. We have been deeply grieved over the news of his apparent failings and lack of wisdom in certain situations before him. We pray for the Lord’s restoration and healing in his life…this is going to be difficult from which to recover for him…

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  52. On infant baptism:

    http://www.patheos.com/blogs/troublerofisrael/2016/11/the-real-reason-evangelicals-dont-baptize-babies/

    _________________________________________

    Friends (especially those expecting children) ask me with surprising frequency why I believe in infant baptism. For a couple of years, I replied by giving what I think the best biblical reasons are. But I usually don’t take that route anymore, because I’ve realized that’s not what convinced me.

    For most evangelicals, what stands in the way of baptizing infants isn’t a lack of biblical evidence, but an interpretive lens they wear when reading Scripture. That lens–shaped by revivals, rugged individualism, and a sacramental theology untethered from the church’s means of grace–makes conversion the chief article of the faith. We should expect this, since American evangelical theology was forged on the frontier, in camp meetings, to the sound of fire-and-brimstone preaching. …

    ……

    ….. Infant baptism runs counter to this entire system. It declares visibly that God induces a change of heart and a saving faith in those too young to even speak or remember their “conversions.” It illustrates that the branches God grafts in to His Son aren’t sterile. They bud and blossom, producing new branches that have never drunk another tree’s sap. And most importantly, it matches the lived experiences of believers’ children, rather than continually imposing a system on them that was designed for first-generation converts.

    Almost always, I see the lights come on after explaining this point to an evangelical friend. And in most cases, their acceptance of infant baptism isn’t far behind.

    __________________________________________

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  53. Interesting about Ravi Z.

    I don’t mind Christmas letters. I usually skim them. I’d rather have them instead of a card with a signature from someone we never hear from any other time of year. Mrs. L tries to write one every year, but it doesn’t sent out until after Christmas most years.

    What do people think of the trend of sending a card with pictures but no explanation or signature? My cousin sent us one. She doesn’t post on Facebook, and we don’t have contact any other way. So her card has a few pictures of her and various family members. I’m not even sure of her children’s names.

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  54. I have to agree with Cheryl on Ravi. I too have known about it since the allegations first arose a couple of weeks ago and have said nothing on here because it seemed to serve no good purpose. As much as it is painful, when I read the court filing from Ravi’s lawyers, which held quotes from certain email exchanges, I had to conclude that Ravi was not wholly innocent, despite the obvious attempt to build up a case against the couple by his lawyers. Certainly the woman involved seems to have done her own amount of wrong, but it would seem obvious from his own lawyer’s account that if it was a trap by the couple, it was one Ravi Zacharias consciously and deliberately entered, as he seems to acknowledge in fragments of an email quoted in the filing. The filing can be found just by googling ‘Ravi Zacharias court filing’: http://www.celticguitar.com/uploads/3/7/8/9/37891281/9-main.pdf

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  55. I myself have never paid much attention to Zacharias, as apologetics are of limited value to me. My own struggles with faith were not helped by clever arguments based on logic, but by meaty expounding of the Scriptures. I did mention here, however, about Zacharias coming and speaking, and Second Sibling and Second In-law coming to hear him, because Second In-law likes to listen to him. I grieved to hear the news about Ravi for his sake. I didn’t hear all of Zacharias’ message, as I was taking care of Tiny Niece so her parents could listen, but what I did hear made me think how much I prefer expository sermons to the light philosophical fare of apologists. What he said sounded good, but it lacked the authority that a preacher of the word speaks with.

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  56. I want to add something else. A couple of weeks ago I was beginning to feel like I was in Wonderland with Alice, or that I somehow had become a rabid defender of the faith who was burning people at the stake, that I was being contrary and arrogant and aggressive, and I had to seriously ask myself was it pride speaking? Was I deciding that I was right and the whole world wrong? Or was I legitimately doing my place to defend truth? I prayed and asked God that question, because I know how fine is the line between speaking for truth and speaking out of one’s own sense of righteousness.

    Within about 24 hours I had tried to argue with a friend that if her teen daughter was posting half-naked photos of herself on the internet, she wasn’t in fact being a gentle, protective mother if she was refusing to take away said child’s smart phone; with another acquaintance that no, it was not a good idea to work 50 hours a week with two children under two in day care, and with her own husband pleading with her to come home to care for her children; with someone else on some other matter . . . and I was asking myself if I had gone crazy or if the whole Christian world had, that things that look so obvious and clear were the minority position in the 21st-century Christian world. Some of my discussions were overtly theological, some more on the line of what older Christian women are supposed to teach younger ones, but all with clear biblical weight and not trivial stuff.

    This weekend I have been reading a couple of books with themes of writing and the Christian faith, one of them with multiple contributors (not all of them orthodox believers in any meaningful sense). In one of the chapters, one author (a woman pastor) expressed dismay that people call themselves heretics because they have either too small or too big an image of Jesus for the Christian world. For instance (her examples), they are OK with the idea that Jesus had two human parents and not just one, or that His appearance to the disciples after His death was some sort of vision and not reality (i.e., that He was not born of a virgin or not resurrected), or that Jesus is giving them visions today. Basically, all that matters (in her opinion) is loving Jesus, not what one believes about Him.

    I think what it boils down to is that I really do believe in heresy and orthodoxy. I don’t want to be argumentative for its own sake. But for years now I have been hearing exhortations that we should not be argumentative, or anything less than fully “unified,” for any reason at all–nothing is important enough to speak strongly. Thus, it doesn’t matter if a man is biblically unqualified–clearly, objectively–to be a pastor, if his church chooses to show him “grace” and not remove him, then he can choose not to step down and everyone should be happy. If an author is making up stuff and putting in Jesus’ mouth, we should be OK with it as long as it mostly doesn’t outright contradict Scripture. If someone is “leading lots of people to Christ,” then it doesn’t matter what he does in his life apart from that . . . because while we don’t officially believe in indulgences, for all practical purposes we believe that a famous Christian gets a few free sins.

    I do not want to be contentious, to argue, for its own sake, and I do know how easily a person–including myself–can dig in the heels just because a position has already been established. (But it really does work both ways–those who are for love and grace and compassion, and never for truth, are just as stubborn. And those who believe “my man is good, even if he is caught with blood on his hands” are also just as stubborn as those who say “No, this is what the Word of God says.”) I don’t want to be stubborn just to be stubborn, and I do want to see when I am misspeaking. But oh, I do not want to live by the spirit of the age, and I don’t want to be the one who cannot change her mind when confronted by evidence otherwise.

    Which is why, actually, as much as I have honored Ravi Zacharias in the past, when convinced by evidence, I am willing to say so. That’s part of the irony here, that the man known for promoting truth and thinking is in this one ducking away from both. I would very happily have been convinced on this one that it as the critics who were wrong.

    But those of you who pray for those of us who use words, you could pray for me, because I do know how easily it all goes wrong, and I did have to look at that question for myself just before all of this broke (or just before I became aware of it, anyway). But I don’t want to be on the side of those mocking the whole idea of heresy as long as we all love Jesus! Truth matters.

    And that’s probably it for the night from me. I’m off for a date with my beloved!

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  59. Thanks for the piece on vertigo, DJ. That’s exactly what happened with me–I did get a bump on the head the day before Christmas (from a hair dryer in the beauty salon, see how dangerous getting your hair done can be?). Because I spent a couple hours Saturday morning turning my head and trying different positions before I got up, I basically did the same maneuvers in the video. All good to know.

    And the advice I got here was helpful, as well.

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  60. Speaking of expository preaching, we’re in the last few verses of Romans after 3 (?) years. But last week’s sermon covered only 1.5 verses of that final portion. 🙂

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  61. Cheryl, 7:05 — our pastor made an off-hand remark Sunday about how he spoke to a group of pastors in our denomination at some point and mentioned some of the “popular evangelical” figures of the day. They knew of none of them, for the most part. Some of our Reformed denominations are in a bubble, somewhat.

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