52 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 12-18-17”

  3. Re: yesterday’s discussion. I have never “exchanged” gifts. I didn’t understand the concept was my problem. Seems kinda weird.

    Last night Elvera and I watched a rerun of “Hee Haw”. She sat there laughing at their corny jokes. Just like a child It was fun watching her. Gene Autry was a guest on that segment.
    The beautiful young women on that program are in their fifties now. Hopefully onto other things.

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  4. In researching Gene Autry on the internet, I came across the song “You Are My Sunshine”.
    A song written by Jimmy Davis, who was also once Governor of Louisiana. The interesting thing about that song. (I think I’ve said this before.) it was said that at one time everyone in America knew the chorus of “You Are My Sunshine”>

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  5. On this date 21 years ago at about 10:30 am at Providence Hospital a miracle occurred. I didn’t know it at the time but I received the best Christmas present ever. It took until September 9 of the following year to “un-wrap” the package.
    I spent a wonderful day with her yesterday. My biggest regret was not getting video of her and her Nana dancing in the rain.

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  6. Regarding our Yankee Swap, it is not a white elephant event. We bring nice gifts ranging in price from $25 to $50. Most of us stay on the lookout all year for a good bargain on something that would be our great YS gift. I bought mine ours in the spring. One is a dart board and darts; the other is a portable clothes steamer. Shhh – don’t tell.

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  7. My Sicilian family calls it “The Game,” and has been playing it every Christmas since I was a child. You couldn’t join the game until you hit 18 and were no longer eligible for the family Christmas present name draw for kids. After that, have at it.

    All those years I wasn’t home for Christmas, I’d call home to chat with my mother after they got back from the family gathering and the first thing we’d talk about was what the coveted gifts were during the game.

    One year it was an umbrella, for example. Which made everyone laugh since they all live in Southern California and never need one.

    Our limit, however is $15-20, so everyone could play.

    I’ve always loved that game.

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  9. That picture is a huge bee on bachelor’s button (aka cornflower), taken next door to my sister’s house several years ago. Last week I found a fun website (free), where you can choose how to render a photo–this was one of two or three “pencil” renderings that they have, but they also have “crayon” and watercolor painting and oodles more (you can add lights to the edges and stuff like that, but I wasn’t interested in those). You choose the effect, upload a photo, wait a minute, and it pops up. Then you can copy it to your computer. I spent way too much time uploading wedding photos (my own and my daughter’s), photos of my husband, nature photos, photos of Misten . . . but I sent AJ my top three or four favorites of the nature photos (mostly in the “crayon” format, which I think is really more like colored pencil, and which has some beautiful effects).

    The website is funny.pho.to if anyone else wants to try it.

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  10. Oh, and most of the photos I rendered didn’t have the pho.to “watermark” in the corner, but I saw that even if it does come up on your photo, you can turn it off and have it without. I left it on this one since I was sending it to AJ and it seemed fair that it was labeled. But the others I sent him either didn’t have it in the first place or it came up and I turned it off before downloading the photo.

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  17. Michelle, is that a subject for debate?

    Before the lesson started yesterday, I mentioned the Jewish celebration of Hanukah. i told about Antiochus Ephipines and his abomination.
    But I forgot to mention that some Biblical scholars believe that this was the fulfillment of Daniel’s prophesy in Dan. 9:27. However, in Matt. 24:15, Jesus says it is yet to come.
    Some Non-millenialists believe the prophesy was fulfilled in AD 70 with the destruction of the temple. But there was no abomination. And Israel was not dispersed in AD 70, a some teach, but in the rebellion in AD 135.

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  19. And Kim, you have to admit the controversy about Jingle Bells being racists might be the most important thing in the news right now.
    Besides the Atlanta airport.
    Be thankful for that.

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  22. I remember umbrellas. I still have one. We used to actually get to use them.

    A house in our neighborhood has a very tall cactus, just like the ones in Arizona, and the people have strung green Christmas lights on it. It’s actually very cute. I hate cactus as landscaping in our (once) mediterranean climate on the coast. But it’s what we may all have to accept, one of these days. 😦

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  23. Chas, I have read Josephus’ eyewitness account of 70 A.D, once for myself, once to my parents. The temple was utterly polluted by the murderous Jewish factions who warred among themselves even as the Romans besieged the city, and once the temple was destroyed, razed to the ground by the Romans, the centre and the heart of Israel as a theocracy was taken away. While the Jewish people still existed as a distinct ethnic group from a specific geographic region, they were no longer a nation. When Rome punished a rebellious state, it ripped its heart out and left only tattered remains behind. What Christ predicted in his words to his disciples in Matthew 24 : 1-2 & 15-22 (where he quotes Daniel) and his words to the women of Jerusalem in Luke 23:27-31 came to pass in 70 A.D. Josephus, witnessing the siege as a Jewish prisoner of war, wrote that it was almost a mercy that the Romans finally broke into the city, as the actions of the warring factions within the city had destroyed the grain stores (the stores caught fire as a result of the infighting) so that people were dropping dead from starvation, while the cruelty of the Jewish factions even wreaked itself on women and children. Jesus wept over Jerusalem and told the women of Jerusalem to weep for their children because of the imminent destruction he foresaw.

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  24. I, also have read Josephus. But I gave my copy away because I can’t read the small print anymore. You have stated the non-millennialism reposes.
    I, and most pre-millenialis, believe that it is unfulfilled prophesy.

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  25. Michelle, I have had times when a Scripture passage has seemed to apply directly to my situation. When I was so sick in West Africa and was unable to sleep because I was struggling to breath, Aji suun sat by my bed and read from the Psalms, particularly 91 and 118. When she came to the verse “I shall not die but live, and declare the works of the Lord” it brought a measure of peace to my anxious mind and heart (to be so close to going home and yet so perilously ill was almost too much for me). I still didn’t know how things would turn out, but the verse gave me hope and I knew whether my physical body lived or died, I would live in Jesus Christ (John 11:25-26). I could recount other times, like the time I woke up, after falling asleep wondering how I would pay for my schooling (this was at the very beginning of my long journey, after completing my GED) and the words that came to my waking brain were “The Lord will provide.” I didn’t have to look those up to know they were Biblical, and he has provided, not in the way I would expect but in the way I needed.

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  26. Thanks, Roscuro. I was going to point out that the sacrifice of a pig on the altar is generally seen as just such an “abomination.” But I appreciate your research, and your much better ability to remember details of history than I have.

    My husband pointed out just the other day that basically Israel is a country today not because God brought them back together in some fulfillment of prophecy, but because dispensational Americans decided to help God along in their interpretation of prophecy. The country of Israel today has nothing to do with the Israel of the Old Testament or the people of God (the church, which includes Jewish and Gentile believers) in the New, except that it has Jewish people in it.

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  28. That header pencil rendering is so neat! I thought perhaps it was a card you had made, Cheryl. The pencil renderings on cards would, IMHO, work well for note cards or thank you notes to give to a man. I sometimes give such things to my brother who still makes use of thank you notes.

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  29. Michelle, I replied to your question on your blog, but disapproving of Oswald Chambers’s method of using Scripture, randomly claiming verses completely out of context. Roscuro’s example above is not doing so–focusing on “I shall not die, but live” and realizing that even in death, for the Christian, is life is not improper use. She was properly turning her focus to the God who has the power of life and death. But randomly focusing in on a verse with no notice of the story or passage in which it is set is incorrect.

    I remember when I was in college, Christian bookstores were big on books of “Bible promises.” So you could consider yourself spiritual, I suppose, by reading and “claiming” various verses of the Bible, without any idea of whether a specific promise was to a certain individual, whether it had conditions, etc. One could, for example, “claim” Deuteronomy 11:24: “Every place on which the sole of your foot treads shall be yours; your border will be from the wilderness to Lebanon, and from the river, the river Euphrates, as far as the western sea.” Does claiming this verse mean that I now own every place I walk? Or maybe that I now own this particular plot of land? No. And not every promise in Scripture is given to me, as an individual. It is all useful for me to read, but it is not all specifically to me. I think those books of promises were spiritually harmful, since they made it look as though the biggest benefit of the Bible is what it gives to me–it makes the Bible a catalog or a wish list, not the Word of God that points to our need of a Saviour and God’s provision of One.

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  30. The foggy morning in Atlanta just makes the airport situation seem a bit more depressing for all the stranded. Now I am concerned whether son’s flight will be rescheduled. It is for later in the week.

    I have been wrapping gifts lately. Art does not always give gifts. Some years he does and some years he doesn’t. I give him gifts regardless. He is getting a new briefcase, new bedroom shoes, the Baylor windbreaker I found at Goodwill, a used book about the Appalachian trail club in Georgia, and a Grinch t-shirt in size Large along with a small beanie baby suited man pig. We are on our diets, and I’m hopeful he can wear the shirt by next year (I found these at Cracker Barrel along our way home from TX). We are doing well on our diets so far.

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  31. Chas, I am not a non-millennial, although I find it impossible to define what the millennium will be from such a short passage in Revelation. In my take on Biblical prophecy, I differ from both millennials and non-millennials. I do not, for example, believe that Christ returned in judgement in 70 A.D. My take on the Jesus’ sermon in Matthew 24 is that Christ was asked two different questions and answered both of them, so that part of his sermon deals with 70 A.D. and part does not. I think the similarities in the visions of the evil beasts in Daniel and Revelation is that the evil beasts are spiritual beings that may be found behind any earthly tyrannies and false religions – much of my reasoning for that interpretation comes from the fact that the visions of the Four beasts or angels with six wings in the OT prophets are also repeated in Revelation, and there is near consensus among Christians that the Four are eternally attending on the Throne of the Most High. It would make sense that if they recur, then the evil beasts, fallen angels probably, are also recurring spirits behind the events of history, in Daniel’s vision for Persia, Greece, and Rome and their respective state religions, in Revelation for the powers that have risen and fallen and will rise and fall, along with the false religions that accompany those empires, in the ages between Christ’s Ascension and his Return. In other words, I do not attempt to predict the future from the prophecies of the Bible, beyond the Return of Christ, the Resurrection of believers, the Final Judgement, and the New Heavens and Earth. Those are the points of universal agreement among Christians.

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  32. I learned a long time ago that I am a lousey gift giver. I don’t think like other people so what I think is a lovely gift, others look at and wish they could be thankful but rarely are. So I don’t trouble them. I give husband gifts and he gives me gifts. We give the small folk gifts and throughout the year, if I happen upon something I think the olders would enjoy, i will pick it up for them. And I really do not like receiving gifts in public.

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  34. mumsee, you just need a pop-up mall or an Amazon account.

    I refused to accept a gift request from Carol this year and instead bought her what I thought was needed and that she’d never, ever buy for herself: A comforter and fuzzy socks as she’s always freezing (circulation issues mainly, and the staff there does elevate her legs and feet but they’re still so cold she told me she’s now wearing her heavy shoes to bed). I also threw in a little 2018 diary/date book & a “Hope” Christian wall calendar from the artistic folks at CCOjubilee cards and prints.

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  35. Cheryl, yes, Antiochus Epiphanes only sacrificed a pig on the altar before the Maccabean revolt, but the Jewish rebel factions during the siege of Jerusalem shed their compatriots’ blood in the temple.

    I would be careful to ascribe too much power to the American dispensationalists in the creation of modern Israel. It was Britain, after all, who signed the Balfour declaration in 1917 assuring support of the Zionist movement and Britain who held the Mandate for Palestine in the period between 1920 and 1948 when the Zionists moved enough European Jews into Israel to be able to hold it against the surrounding nations who attacked after Israel declared independence in May 1948. It really was a combination of the increasing anti-Semitism of Europe throughout the 19th century and into the early 1900s which triggered the sheer willpower of the European Jews, who decided they were no longer welcome in Europe and must create their own nation, and the Zionist’s own considerable financial resources to buy land in Palestine and then arms to fight those who opposed them (the Arab historian George Antonius concluded there was no real evidence that Zionists bought the support of Western governments), that were the driving forces behind Israel’s creation. Many of those Jews who opposed the initial Zionist movement changed their minds in the wake of the Holocaust, and the Nazis’ genocide of the Jews also led to international support to the fledgling nation of Israel. Certainly, American dispensationalists supported the movement, but America did not dominate in the Middle East during those formative years between the World Wars. It was the distinct and accurate impression of being unwanted on a people who had wealth and intelligence to seek a solution that led to Zionism and modern Israel. Tragically, in so doing, they created another group of wanderers without a country, the Palestinian Arabs.

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  36. Phos
    Briefly: I believe Paul gives an explanation of the situation in II Thess. 2:3-4. Most of my professors at Southwestern were non-millenialists. That’s the reason for my comment.
    Most of the people in FBC Hendersonville and it appears here, believe in a pre-trib rapture.
    This, I also disagree with .
    But it’s nothing to break fellowship over. .

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  39. I have decided that if I send you a text offering lunch and asking for help with purchasing gifts, that if you go to breakfast, Toys R Us and TJ Maxx on your own and then are too tired to meet me, them I cannot be responsible for you not getting a gift.

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  41. Ok, there’s been significant progress on choosing house paint colors here this morning. Amazing what not having to go to work can do to free up some time.

    We’ve been going back and forth and, for now, it looks like I’m zeroing in on this:

    Body: Sherwin Williams Brandywine #7710
    Trim: SW Interactive Cream #6113
    Accent: SW Tiki Hut #7509

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  42. accent color goes on door, windows and (I think) the concrete porch floor and steps leading up to the front of the house, but I’m still clarifying color placement details.

    Not what I’d started out with in my head, but I do think it will look nice — as well as being a decent historical representation color-wise for the type of house mine is.

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  43. Roscuro, he actually didn’t only specify American dispensationalists, but that was part of what they were doing, working to “help God out” in fulfilling prophecy and then turning around and declaring it a fulfillment of prophecy.

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  44. OK, that was too quick a comment, too; I meant to say he did mention other parties in the creation of the state of Israel, but that wasn’t the focus of his comments and my mind doesn’t retain “facts” very well. I do better with information than with discrete facts. So it was the dispensationalist part of what he said that I specifically remember, because that ties into stuff I already know. But I don’t do well with such things as listing which nations fought in the world wars, what years the U.S. was involved, and factual data like that.

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  47. Michelle, I think the Lord can speak to us in any way He wants to, but what He can do and what He does do are different. I believe in sola Scriptura, and that God spoke to prophets (and occasionally other people) in the past but not today, since we have His completed Word.

    He can and does guide us in other ways than by speaking. He closes doors, for instance. But I think that guidance such as “This would be a good man to marry” cannot be said to be God speaking, and that people who seek God’s direct voice in such matters open themselves up to false voices. Some people say that not only will God tell you “yes, marry this man” or “don’t marry this man,” but that the Christian is obligated to seek such a word on major decisions–but that is adding to Scripture and is thus serious error.

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  48. On this I find myself in agreement with Cheryl. I don’t know that God DOESN’T speak to us, but I am a self confessed bit of a Doubting Thomas when it comes to that. I know of a couple of people who looked for signs and believed that yes, God was telling them to move forward and it was into disaster…

    THE EXCEPTION TO THIS:
    My husband watches Gold Rush on TV. Todd Hoffman of 3:16 Mining, prays all the time for prosperity, as does his extremely annoying father. Then they curse and say “fricken” all the time. I got hooked on the show because of Grandpa Schnabel and now I have a secret crush on the grandson, Parker, on behalf of BG.
    Todd Hoffman is an idiot and fails at his gold mining ventures more often than he succeeds–if he has ever succeeded at all. This season he has pledged 10% if his earnings to God while on the side having a bet with Parker over who would mine the most gold.

    Yes, I DO realize that I am talking about a dumb reality TV show as if it matters.
    Last night as Mr. P and I were catching up on several missed episodes (I am being completely tongue in cheek over this) God spoke to me clear as a bell. “Todd Hoffman, you need to quit mining for gold and find a new purpose in your life”.

    That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. 😉

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  50. Having been asked how you even find the “pencil drawing” link on that site, here is a more direct link to one of the drawing options: http://funny.pho.to/sketch/ If that one doesn’t look like what you want, then go to the link of “Fun effects” at the top left, and you can scroll through a whole bunch of options.

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  52. Survived having three grands overnight in a motel room, including a three year old. It was a good time, but I am peopled out. I have gotten to know my daughter in laws parents this time which has been nice. I will fly home to California tomorrow.
    Hoping to get another Leatherman micra in the morning after losing mine in the airport. I totally forgot about my pocket knife and this is my favorite tool.

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