66 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 12-15-17”

  8. A person who is up at 4:30 has to be up for mischief.
    That NancyJIll pops in to proclaim “Morning” then disappears.

    I notice the Storm Troopers are being ignored by the peasants. Mostly.
    Is it Friday yket?

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  10. This mountain zone person cannot sleep…there are some advantages to it…like getting first for once!! On my second cup of coffee…it is graduation day around here and I find myself deep in reflection mode…the day I got the call to pick up a precious 3 week old baby to care for until she went to her forever family…to finding out she wasn’t going to a couple back east after all…watching a divine plan unfold before us revealing this precious baby girl was ours…and here she is 23 years old and graduating from college….oh the emotions running amuck in my heart….where will the Lord take her next? I don’t know..but I know He has a plan…oh my does He ever have a plan…leaning on Him and trusting….

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  11. Yes they’re storm troopers, along with Capt. Phasma (female villan) and Kylo Ren (son of Han and Leia who turned to the dark side and killed his father, Han Solo).

    We’re going to see the new Star Wars movie this afternoon. 🙂

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  12. Time to scurry on to cook eggs and make lunch for Art. And feed Miss Bosley who talks to me about her food bowl while I cook eggs. Service to Kings before Queens in this house. Queen B always impatiently awaits her turn.

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  17. Pedestrian! that’s the word I was trying to think of when I said “peasants’ at 6:50.
    Frustrating. Have you ever just wanted a common word that wouldn’t come to you.
    I was eating Cheerios and the word popped into my head.
    Pedestrian.
    It wouldn’t come to me twenty minutes ago, but only with a mouthful of Cheerios.

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  18. Oh, Nancyjill! That is all good stuff to keep you awake. I had fitful sleep thinking about Karen and praying for her.

    That movie sounds good, AJ . Enjoy!

    Art and I watched another good BBC DVD last night. It was two in the Sharpe’ s Peril series based on novels by Bernard Cornwell. Good production and character development starring Sean Bean who Art said acted in the Lord of the Rings.

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  19. But sometimes when we use that other word it causes someone reading it to giggle…that did it for me Chas…looking at those pedestrians and thinking of them as peasants just brought a smile to this old face….I am certain they are all lovely people standing about watching aliens cross the road

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  20. Good morning! It’s quite a crowd on the blog this morning. I was up at 3:30, but not for mischief. I was making burritos. It is 14 degress here.

    Precious memories, Nancyjill. So happy she is graduating.

    Today is my daughter, April’s, 32nd birthday.

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  21. You are up early RK…we both have 32 yr old daughters!! Happy Birthday to April!
    It is 27 here with a predicted high of 57….at 14 degrees you are making brrrrrritos!! (Corny I know I just feel a bit loopy on my third cup of coffee!)

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  24. As Chas always tell us, if you are around a microphone, assume it is live and don’t say anything you wouldn’t want the world to hear or read.
    Wednesday we had Leadership training at the local Board of Realtors. I joined a committee this year and attended. The immediate Past National President of Certified Residential Specialists spoke. She also owns several ReMax franchises in the Carolinas. She was funny, but a little crass. One thing she did, had a man done it would have caused an uproar.
    I introduced myself to her and told her I worked for a KW team out of the Carolinas and mentioned a name.
    Yesterday she was on a podcast with the #1 ReMax agent in the state. They were talking about real estate and she was talking about being a Christian and business leader, etc. When the podcast was “over”, the two of them started talking about KW and mentioned the person I work with by name and how they couldn’t wait for the states to step in and end “expansion” because it had to be illegal and she hated when KW agents introduced themselves and tried to recruit her, she got pretty specific. Then they talked about how KW was a pyramid scheme.
    People were typing they whole time that they were still live and everyone could hear what they were saying.
    One of my agents got to the Christmas party and told me that I was being talked about by “Top Agent”. I said I doubted I was important enough for him to talk about me. Then he told me about the podcast, and I had to admit they WERE talking about me!
    So I guess if someone is going to speak ill of you, it ought to be by the best! 😉

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  25. May the Force be with you all this morning . . . 34 in California, but the northern end, not the frozen southern.

    Kid fun, walking in freezing weather, last day of work in 2017, funeral and then maybe I can figure out the rest of my life.

    But I’ll be smiling all day long about NancyJill’s daughter. 🙂

    Isn’t it wonderful how God gives us what we least expect, which makes it even more of a joy?

    Why, it’s just like Christmas! 🙂

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  27. Saw a Netflix movie, taking place around Christmas, in which one character takes the blame & punishment for someone else’s deed. Made me wonder if the writer even realized that that’s what Christmas is really – ultimately – about.

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  29. Resting in Portland. So nice to have a quiet place to stay at a reasonable rate.
    Grands were excited to see me and we have already had some special moments of connection. So sweet and I thank the Father for them. And praising them for the special gift that let me come without worrying about the cost, but just enjoy the time.

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  31. Ah, happy graduation day and may the force be with you who are taking exams. I’m not a real Star Wars buff, but I did enjoy the first films in the series. Have fun AJ.

    I was up at 5:30 to do that 5 minute radio interview on vegan dogs. Sheesh. Had to be in the newsroom and on a land line (which I no longer have at home) before they called (at 7:30).

    At least I got an early start to my day, I have 2 stories now to write & am also meeting a former colleague for a rare lunch out.

    Today is also the office chili cookoff day, our top editor arrived a little while ago with his contribution in a slow-cooker. It’s mostly an advertising thing. The difference between our two departments is stark — they have twinkle lights and all kinds of cute decorations in their part of the building. We have next to nothing, though there are some giant Christmas ornaments hanging (very low if you’re tall) from the ceiling here and there. And advertising hung them.

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  32. Nice tribute to Sproul from Al Mohler:

    https://albertmohler.com/2017/12/14/bright-burning-light-robert-charles-sproul-february-13-1939-december-14-2017/

    A Bright and Burning Light: Robert Charles Sproul, February 13, 1939-December 14, 2017

    ____________________________________________

    … But the power of his teaching was the vitality and virility of biblical Christianity, presented logically, forcefully, biblically, and passionately.

    My own pilgrimage as a theologian cannot be traced without the indelible influence of R.C. Sproul. Had I never met him in the flesh, I would have been in his debt and gifted with his influence. By God’s grace, I came to know R.C. Sproul as a teacher, colleague, encourager, and friend.

    He was, as the British would say, a man in full. He never made a half-argument, presented a half-correction, preached a half-sermon, or laughed a half-laugh. He was all in, all the time. His voice would fill the room, his preaching would shake the timbers, and his passion would spread like a virus. He showed up as everything he was and with everything he believed – every time.

    He was one of the great defenders of historic Christianity of our times. It is fair to say that R.C. was the greatest and most influential proponent of the recovery of Reformed theology in the last century. …

    … When he taught about the holiness of God, a generation of evangelicals was rescued from the emaciated and desiccated theology of cultural Christianity. When he defended Reformed theology, he taught us all how to understand the gospel in terms of God’s eternal purpose to save, consistent with his sovereignty. He was rigorously biblical and ruthlessly logical . . . with a smile.

    He loved to introduce Christians to both the splendors and the humbling lessons of church history. He wanted evangelical Christians to stand in a line of faithfulness that began with the apostles and continued to the present. He had the heart and courage of Martin Luther and the theological precision and passion of John Calvin. He was a proud son of the Reformation, and the solas of the Reformation were the architecture of his mind. He urged and taught Christians toward the development of the Christian mind, and ideas were his battleground.

    He was a preacher of the Word of God, a faithful steward of God’s mysteries. …

    …. Our prayers are with the Sproul family, and our hope is in Christ. Listening to one of R.C.’s messages in the last few hours, I realized that R.C. had been preaching – decades ago – as a man ready to die, trusting in Christ.

    In a tribute to his own beloved teacher, Professor John Gerstner, written in 1976, R.C. stated: “In an era of church history when theology is in chaos, the church is being shaken at its foundations, and Christian ethics shift and slide with every novel theology, we are grateful for the vivid example of one who stands in the midst of confusion as ‘a bright and burning light.’”

    Indeed, we are grateful to God for the bright and burning light named R. C. Sproul. Soli Deo Gloria
    ______________________________________________

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  34. So if a Sith Lord comes to the US without a visa or passport, that makes him an illegal alien. ICE would have a hard time deporting him, and there isn’t a wall in the universe that could stop him, so what would we do? I guess we could “force” him out. 😉

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  36. Between all-day meetings at work, shoveling snow, and major reorganization of the house, I’m way behind here.

    Janice, I see I missed your birthday. I hope it was a good one and you have a great year to come!

    Now to go back and catch up…

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  37. and another tribute from michael horton of the White Horse Inn:

    https://www.whitehorseinn.org/2017/12/r-c-sproul-in-memoriam/

    ______________________________________

    The death of a saint always fills fellow pilgrims with inner conflict: joy in their being in the presence of the Lord, without the pains and struggles of this fallen existence, and sorrow at losing a dear brother or sister. These mixed emotions overwhelmed me as I sat next to R.C. Sproul as we shared in the memorial service for our friend, James Montgomery Boice. “A mighty general has fallen on the field, in valiant service to his Lord,” I recall R.C. repeating in his message. And now, with so many others around the world today, I feel the sharp sting of that realization. …

    … R.C. was the same person off of the platform: serious about theology (and philosophy, golf, baseball and the Steelers), but one of the funniest men I have ever known. Banter was one of his favorite ways of showing his friendship, and you rarely (actually, in my case, never) got the upper hand. He was as unique in recalling jokes (an appropriate one for every occasion) as he was in remembering a quote from Aquinas. Jim Boice never cared about my tacky clothes, but R.C.’s humorous chastisements led me finally to shop at Brooks Brothers whenever I could save enough money for the trip. The blazer became de rigueur for me ever since, though I still fall into my old ways when I’m not on the road.

    R.C. did not have much time for cowards in matters of great moment. The great movie “Tombstone” was required viewing for his friends. A son of the mainline Presbyterian Church (after the United Presbyterian Church was absorbed into the PCUSA), R.C. valiantly but unsuccessfully tried to turn things around in that denomination. Since then, he has been at the forefront of the defense of Scripture (co-founding the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy with Boice) and the other key doctrines of the Reformation, including justification. …
    ________________________________________

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  38. Please put up big spoiler alerts if you post any Star Wars VIII spoilers. I probably won’t see it until after Christmas.

    Yes, Mumsee, in Episode VII two years ago an aged Han Solo was killed by his and Leia’s son Kylo Ren. It was sudden, shocking, and sad.

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  39. Apparently Editorial also missed the memo that today was “Christmas garb” day. We seem mostly to be dressed in all black. In Advertising, so far, I’ve seen people wearing blinking Christmas light necklaces, Santa yoga pants, red-and-green reindeer sweaters and fuzzy red Christmas tree slippers.

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  40. Oh, someone has a had with a chimney & Santa’s feet sticking out, very cute. They’re trying to instruct us on the gift drawing today.

    Top editor says he loved the new Star Wars movie, said it felt new & refreshing as opposed to the past ones that seemed to be the same thing all over again. Even our film critic apparently liked it (and he hates “those” movies generally.)

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  46. DJ, editorial and advertising are a study in contrasts, period.

    We once shared office space with marketing for a few months, and it wasn’t pretty. Nothing like trying to edit with a guy in marketing talking loudly in Spanish and laughing at some joke the customer made a few yards from your cubical. Plus, at Christmas time authors sometimes remembered those who promoted their books, but alas not those who made them worth promoting.

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  49. Cheryl (3:56) so true. We have to walk through Advertising to get to the restroom and the kitchen (and the door leading to the parking structure) and it’s especially noticable during the holidays. It’s like walking into Santa’s workshop, lights strung along every cubicle, glittering trees sweetly decorated.

    We sit, wearing black, among mounds of paper and massive stacks of notebooks, searching hopelessly for that city or port board report we need to find for the next story we’re churning out, hoping that our overhead fluorescent lights don’t start flickering again.

    Merry Christmas!

    That’s why I’m love Hallmark this year. And I’m not alone!

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/we-cant-take-any-more-of-2017-so-weve-turned-to-the-hallmark-channel-in-desperation/2017/12/07/1ad3dab6-d6ca-11e7-b62d-d9345ced896d_story.html?utm_term=.cc66339f17c3

    We can’t take any more of 2017, so we’ve turned to the Hallmark Channel in desperation

    _______________________________________

    Consider the Hallmark Channel in December.

    No, but really.

    “I cannot stop watching the Hallmark Channel,” says Mac Cohn, proprietor of a sports website in Ohio. “Usually to unwind I would watch football, but even watching football has become a political thing. The Hallmark Channel has none of that.”

    Hallmark, which often seemed to exist just so you had something to fold laundry to, is now deep into its biggest annual event — “Countdown to Christmas,” a series of several dozen fresh-from-the-oven, seasonal, made-for-TV movies. And it is an event.

    “The Christmas Train” — with a plot that is vaguely “Murder on the Orient Express,” if one replaces “murder” with “festive spirit” — reached 4.9 million viewers when it aired the Saturday after Thanksgiving weekend, the most-watched cable program in the country that day. Meanwhile, the actual “Murder on the Orient Express,” a feature film starring two Oscar winners and several nominees, recently made $10.7 million on its opening day in theaters. Impressive — but divide by roughly $10 a movie ticket, and that means there were five times as many people watching Kimberly Williams-Paisley and Dermot Mulroney poke around a mystical polar express on Hallmark as there were multiplex-goers watching Johnny Depp and Dame Judi Dench.

    “The Hallmark movie that is my favorite is ‘A Christmas to Remember,’ ” Cohn continues. “It’s a TV personality — I believe she has a cooking show? — and she needed to get away for the holidays, and she ended up wrecking her car in a snowbank, and she got amnesia. Have you seen it?”

    Yep.

    We have seen “A Christmas to Remember.” We have seen “The Sweetest Christmas.” We have seen “Marry Me at Christmas.” We have watched Hallmark movies in which the tax-friendly Vancouver area doubles as a festive Chicago, a festive Georgia, a festive Maine inn, a festive Vermont inn. We have watched Lacey Chabert as an aspiring clothing designer and then as a different aspiring clothing designer, and then as an overlooked baker, and then as an overworked office drone, and it snowed every time at the end. Every single time. …

    … Ginger Christ, a journalist in Cleveland covering health care, had been feeling like work this year was an everyday battle. She took up yoga. She started volunteering. She found Hallmark.

    “I’ve watched in the past, but this is the first year I’ve kind of become obsessed. I don’t even know who I am right now. I know the schedule of Hallmark movies. Who is this person?”

    What gets her, really, is the kindness. How the channel is just a steady stream of people doing kind things for each other and being nice. How that seems, right now, almost like a fantasy. …

    … News headline: “Ferocious wildfires force thousands to evacuate California.”

    Nope. Hallmark.

    “The thing is,” says Mac Cohn, who runs the Ohio sports website. “I really don’t know what I’m going to do when December is over.”
    ___________________________________________________

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  50. We don’t get the Hallmark Channel in our basic cable package. I miss the Hallmark Hall of Fame movies that ran for years on CBS, a couple times a year, I think. Those were some quality movies, often very touching, especially the Christmas ones.

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  51. DJ – Does the Hallmark Channel have Hallmark Hall of Fame movies like they used to have on network TV? (I realize they have lots of movies, but I mean periodic ones that are especially good quality.)

    As for your merry advertising department, I would think that they would be as depressed as you reporters are. Isn’t it much harder these days to get businesses to want to advertise in a newspaper?

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  54. My friend, Karen, is in intensive care. My brother is sick with a bad respiratory illness that is not good with his diabetes. I am trying to not stress about it all. Karen said she saw on the news that the flu is now epidemic in Atlanta. I have not been to see Karen yet, but may go tomorrow unless I need to go care for my brother. I really could use a clone right now. My brain feels like a ping pong ball bouncing between the folks I care about and asking for God to help them.

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  55. Kizzie, I think ad people are just perkier by nature 🙂

    Janice, you’re such a faithful friend and, yes, that can be very stressful..

    I asked my dr for a flu shot when I was in yesterday but he was all out, told me to check with one of the pharmacies in town

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  58. I got my flu shot at Safeway after running into insurance wars at Walgreens.

    I rode an escalator in Macy’s behind a girl wearing Leia buns and carrying a light saber. She didn’t much humor in her either when I commented she looked dangerous.

    Home after 12 hours gone. I need to write Christmas cards, but I think I’m going to veg with my book and call it a day. I’m not used to having to be one step ahead of three clever children in the morning and I’m worn out!

    Memorial service was lovely and because Ellen liked to serve dessert as an entree, we ate apple dumplings for dinner!

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  60. Who knows?

    I don’t often watch Hallmark, only this Christmas — I used to watch it more regularly but my service hasn’t offered it for several years (they finally worked a contract out this past year I guess).

    Talked to Carol who received her money so she spent the day shopping — spent it all on candy, cakes, books (including the “Intellectual Devotions” purchased from the bookstore in her Hollywood neighborhood, I’m guessing it’s for atheists, but there you go, she spends wildly). When she walked out of that bookstore (the Daily Planet), she checked her balance and was elated thinking she still had $412 left. Turns out it was $4.12 so she had to take a bunch of her purchases right back in to return.

    Now she’s broke, as usual, but she sounded better than she has in weeks.

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  62. I’m watching a rerun of this ear’s Hollywood Christmas Parade (held on Thanksgiving weekend). When I was little, I got lost at that parade (we lived in the area) and, as my mom told it later, people passed me over and over the crowd until I was back with her.

    It’s finally cooling off this week (supposedly), back into the 60s during the day, more like normal for this time of year.

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