55 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 12-21-17”

  8. I have 45 minute drive in to work. Today was foggy. I now have satellite radio which means I can listen to all sorts of different types of music. Today this song came on 50’s on 5. It made my mind wonder to today’s question of the day:
    How does music effect our beliefs. Did this song from 1959 have a message that helped usher in the Civil Rights movement of the 60’s or is it just a catchy little tune?

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  9. Isn’t that Amos?

    37 degrees here, I sent a coat in the car to the airport with my husband when he picked up our LA daughter at midnight!

    Somewhere in our house is an old Calvin and Hobbes book called “The Days are Just Packed.” I laugh whenever I come across it but this week it would almost make me weep.

    It’s a sad day when you’re grateful for getting your teeth cleaned because at least you get to lay down for 45 minutes and close your eyes.

    Today is another one of those days and I suspect it will roll like this until next week if not beyond. I scanned the posts yesterday while standing in line at the pharmacy.

    Suffice it to say Cheryl and I have exchanged emails and we still love each other.

    There is room in the body of Christ for all sorts of believers as long as they agree on the central tenet of Christian faith: Jesus is Lord and He died for our sins.

    OC was not a perfect man. He died 100 years ago and all Chambers scholars agree he had errors in his theology–or did Biddy? All we really have is what she produced and no one has ever seen her notes.

    Several of us raised eyebrows at each other when discussing that fact when we gathered at Wheaton.

    While a trained Bible teacher from Dunoon Bible College–where he later served on the faculty–OC was part of the Holiness movement of the late 19th and early 20th century.

    Even I with my ecumenical flexibility have uneasiness with the Holiness Movement.

    My Utmost for His Highest is not for everyone. It also may work better for folks in one time of their life than enough. It is not holy writ. It has taught and challenged me, personally on several lines and my spiritual walk has benefited from it.

    That’s not true of everyone.

    My aim in writing Biddy was two fold: that from her story readers would open My Utmost for His Highest and from there would examine the Bible and learn from it. The point of a devotional is to put people in the word of God in small snippets with a short gloss to put it into living context.

    My aim in all my writing is to bring God glory and to encourage people’s faith to grow when they look at Him for a slightly different angle.

    Otherwise, there’s no point.

    Must eat breakfast and then report for Adorable duty.

    If I don’t get back, Merry Christmas1

    What day is it? 🙂

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  11. That isn’t Amos, but if you would like to see him I can arrange a photo shoot.
    My father was raised in the Assembly of God church. I personally am not comfortable there. Of course, since I typed those words I may have to eat them one day and you can all laugh at me.

    Today is going to be busy. I am looking forward to the end of it. Then I shall have 4 days in which to do everything I haven’t done.

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  13. Kim. I knew the song existed but in 1959 I was too busy to be concerned about what it meant. I don’t think I was listening to music then.

    The Assembly of God churches are similar to the church, Church of God , Cleveland, tn.(I think there are several “Church of God” denominations) my parents belonged to. My experience is that they are all good people. I disagree with some of their theology. e.g. My dad was saved three times. He thought those cigars he smoked would send him to hell.
    I have never attended an Assemblies of God service, but I suspectt that you will not like their order of service.

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  14. Zeta!

    Our pastor frequently makes the point that what comes in the sermon after he reads the opening Scripture is not infallible.

    My phone was doing weird things this morning, I’m hoping it’s not going to have to be replaced super soon. It’s an iPhone 6 and other than the fact that the battery runs down fairly quickly now, it is still kicking. But this morning the screen went blue and it showed the battery was drained (I leave it plugged in to the charger all night but figured maybe I didn’t get it connected well). I plugged it into my laptop this morning and it took a while, but suddenly it was resurrected and now the battery looks to be fully charged. Weird.

    Another busy day but my house is finally looking like a house again. I’ve just been picking away at it for so long now, month after month — I didn’t realize how close I’d gotten until this week. The computer room still needs clearing out as does the patio (my job for January). And the spare bedroom, while “close,” still needs work.

    But the living room and kitchen are almost back to better-than normal in their pre-house upheaval days. Much progress. Whew.

    What an ordeal it’s been in the past year and a half, everything was so thoroughly upended for so long around here. More to come with painting, probably, but compared to what I’ve been through, that should be the easy (and much more fun) part of this whole project.

    I have some cards to finish off this morning and need to get to the vet’s to pick up some dog meds. Today / tonight I may finally get my little tree brought into the house to decorate. My neighbor saw it on my porch the other day and said it’s “adorable.” It is very cute.

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  16. Yeah, I’d heard something about that … I’ve long believed that the phones were designed to last 2-4 years tops. A colleague had an iPhone 5 and could no longer make calls on it (he ‘upgraded’ to a 7 — iPhones are currently on their 8th model).

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  17. Cute Hairy Header!

    I am still finishing cards. I found some lovely ones yesterday at Marshall’s.

    Art had the appointment with the spine doctor. It is basically arthritis, but he has some fatty deposits in his spinal column, too, which causes a narrowing of the area and pain when standing. We have even more reason to keep up with the dieting. Also, he heard from the knee specialist on that MRI. The little tumble on the stairs during our blackout from Irma gave him a hairline fracture so he will get a knee brace to wear for awhile. For the back they will do two tests of novacaine injections into nerves. Art will keep a record of relief from pain until the novacaine wears off. If it seems to help then he can have those nerves burned so they cause no more pain.

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  19. Yes, my vintage flip phone has to have the battery replaced periodically. They just don’t make things like they used to…. Remember when a flip phone was good for thirty years? Now you do well if you get fifteen out of them.

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  27. My flip phones tend to last 5 or more years, mainly because I hardly use them. I originally got a phone for emergencies during a 25 mile commute in Iowa. I still only make one call a day, and rarely send texts or get them. The scammers and sales people call all the time, but I ignore the call if I don’t recognize the number.

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  28. The article Mumsee linked doesn’t say that Apple deliberately slows down older iphones so they will get upgraded. It says they do it to compensate for declining battery life, and if you change the battery the performance will improve again.

    Replacing an old battery in one of the affected models should return the phone to its former speed…

    It is a combination of urban myth and conspiracy theory – the idea that Apple builds planned obsolescence into the iPhone, slowing down older models to make you splash out on an upgrade.

    Now it turns out to be true – the slowing down part, if not the motive behind it.

    Apple’s explanation that it is all about managing the performance of ageing batteries seems quite reasonable. After all, the fact that the lithium-ion batteries that power mobile phones degrade over time is well known and owners of other leading smartphones also complain of poor battery life after a few years.

    But what will frustrate and anger many iPhone users is Apple’s lack of transparency.

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  33. Poor battery life is really the reason most electronics have to get replaced. When my laptop batteries stop holding their charge, I generally have to get a new laptop simply because there are no replacement batteries available to buy, not that there is anything really wrong with the computer itself. It is frustrating, because I know how polluting the materials electronic devices are made from can be so I would rather not produce so much electronic waste, but when they don’t provide part replacements, I have no choice. That is where the market is creating demand because they refuse to supply what is actually needed.

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  34. It is always an encouragement to be able to view the whole of Scripture, not just the New Testament and the easy prophecies of the Old, as centred around our Lord Jesus Christ. This blog writer and pastor has a couple of very unusual, but encouraging posts on just how great a need we had for the Incarnation: https://myonlycomfort.com/2017/12/21/a-greater-king/

    I’ve been thinking lately about a challenging passage in the Bible. I think that too often, we read the stories of the Old Testament as quaint fables of old, or stories of another people and another time and we wonder what it has to do with us today.
    But those stories are written records of God’s redemptive history. The written accounts of the Old Testament are given to us by God to teach us how God has prepared the world for his Redeemer, who would save his people from their sins
    The disturbing account that I have been meditating on is found in 2 Samuel 24, and the parallel account is in 1 Chronicles 21.

    “Just Keep Quiet, Sister”


    Recently I’ve been meditating on the rape of Tamar and the coming of the Christ. These two are connected.
    This might need some explaining. King David was anointed by God Himself. He was the king “after God’s own heart.” After the oppression and abuse against him by King Saul in 1 Samuel, your heart is cheering as David is finally anointed king. The good guys won! You expect the fairy tale ending, “And they all lived happily ever after…”
    But the accounts of Israel’s history rarely end that way. Ever since sin entered into the world, our stories never end well. David was a righteous king – compared with Saul. But he was never really the point of the account. If salvation could come by government, David’s kingdom would have succeeded and Christ need not have come. But the problem with the world is universal. Not even David is immune. The sin that lies in the heart of every man also lies in the heart of David – and not “sin” in the mild “everyone sins” kind of way, but hateful, ugly, destructive and vile sin.
    Like every good story teller, the author of 2 Samuel doesn’t just give us a treatise on total depravity and our need for a greater king and greater savior; instead, he shows us.

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  35. Winter doesn’t start until 4:18, so It’s still warm in Greensboro.

    This really belongs on R&R, but it isn’t up yet:
    😆 Elvera got a red notice in the mail.

    i”mmediate response to this notice required”
    What they’re saying that if she doesn’t subscribe to their vehicle service contract, she will be responsible far all expenses of vehicle repair

    Elvera hasn’t owned a vehicle since 1998: I don’t know how they got her name. .

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  36. Yeah, AJ (1:30), blame the victim

    I actually like the design of the flip phone, seems sturdier and more protected. But they now have the glass screen protectors and that, along with a rubberized case, has kept mine from breaking despite having dropped it more than a few times.

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  38. It used to be that you should let the battery run down before recharging. Is that so”
    The flip phone I had in Hendersonville rested in a charger, so it was always 100% charged.

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  39. The dog park has been especially cold lately.

    It was chilly in my house, too, last night, plus the little closet hopper window kept blowing open. That’ll be fixed when the window people come back.

    Poor Annie, as soon as she’d settle down on top of me I wanted to turn over, this happened several times, I guess I was restless last night. She’d wait until I stopped moving and then “hop on” me again.

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  42. Here’s an educational article on the winter solstice, with maps showing sunrise and sunset times across North America: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2017/12/21/winter-solstice-2017-five-things-you-should-know-about-the-shortest-day-of-the-year/?utm_term=.0559f996bd91

    I found this especially interesting:

    Wait a minute, the earliest sunset and latest sunrise don’t occur on the solstice?

    Let’s clear the record: The winter solstice marks the shortest daylight period in the Northern Hemisphere. However, it’s never the day of the latest sunrise or earliest sunset. This astronomical quirk happens because of Earth’s 23.5-degree tilt and our elliptical orbit around the sun (read more).

    You can see in this next map (and in this table) that most places see their earliest sunset two weeks before the solstice, while the latest sunrise isn’t until early January. So don’t expect brighter mornings anytime soon.

    So afternoons have been getting longer for two weeks already, but mornings will still be getting shorter into the new year.

    Happy winter, everyone!

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  43. The maps showing sunrise/sunsets for Saskatchewan is wrong in the summer – we’re on the same time zone as Alberta in summer and Manitoba in winter. We don’t change our clocks, ever. We’re smart.

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  44. Happy Birthday, Linda!

    Do you splurge and have cake on your birthday? Maybe you would like some orange chocolate chip cookies. They are made with some cream cheese, gratwd orange peel, and dark chocolate chips. They are one of our favorites. Or perhaps some crushed peppermint candy baked in some double chocolate chip cookies? I will prepare them virtually for you. 😊

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  48. I got rid of my ipad because it was full. At only 16 g the 1500 pictures that I had on it had filled it up. Now I have a 128g ipad. Should last me a while. I had fun giving my old one to my daughter and my grandkids. Not they can facetime or text me. Win for me.

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  49. Mumsee,

    Yes I did. But I don’t always look years back to see what I might have missed, or I may not have been on Facebook for a reminder. I find out that way sometimes too, or if someone mentions it here. 🙂

    Plus, I asked for birth dates because my memory is awful, and I didn’t want to offend anyone by missing them. That’s why I write them down. I remembered Janice’s a few weeks back, but only because she’s on the list. And my wife says I have to write stuff down.

    If you’re not on the list, it’s because I don’t have it, even though I may have noted it from Facebook 3 years ago, I wasn’t told when I asked, so I didn’t write it down and then I forget. Some people are more private, so I didn’t push those who chose not to give it.

    My desk is a mess of notes and lists. But believe it or not, I know where stuff is when I need it. Mostly. The blog birthday/anniversary list anyway, and the “First to Get Extraordinary Rendition When I Become President List”. Ya’ know, the important ones. 🙂

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  50. I move my photos off my Ipad onto my computer–which is backed up by Mozy and thus the photos are safe. That’s the only way I can manage having a 16GB Ipad. Next time I’ll pay the extra money and get one with a larger memory. The apps take up so very much, I’m continually moving stuff and closing items.

    I’m Roscuro–you should be able to get a new battery. It’s one reason we prefer Dells over Apple products, but that’s because my husband has a reasonable success rate with fixing PCs. Apple–expensive and they use cheap parts.

    Go ahead and throw the tomatoes, all you Apple fans.

    Things have calmed down here, kids are home and now I should be wrapping gifts.

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  51. Our gifts to my sister’s family are a hit, and they haven’t even opened them yet. 🙂

    I wrapped five gifts so that each child can open a gift. But I can’t really say, “This one is for this child,” because one is a big book of birds, one a big book on insects (those will likely be the most coveted), and one is just a laminated pamphlet on wildflowers and trees of Alabama. It’s useful along with the other field guides, but whichever kid got that might be disappointed, and all of them are likely to find all of them useful.

    But I thought I need to put something on the label, if nothing else to make it clear that these specific gifts are the ones that came from us. So I labeled each one with “To be opened by the ___ [last name].” For adjectives (filling in each blank), I listed smartest, kindest, most handsome . . . and ugliest and most klutzy. I explained that each child needs to prove to his siblings’ satisfaction that he is worthy of a particular gift. And one child might be voted as earning more than one gift (in other words, her clownish son can compete for all of them if he wishes) . . . but any child who earns more than one then has his siblings vote which one he can actually open. So he can win most handsome and ugliest both, if he wishes, but his siblings will have the last laugh in awarding him “ugliest.”

    In a lot of families such a game might bring tears, but in their family of mostly boys, children 10 to 19 (well, almost ten to almost 19), it will be something they’ll enjoy, and they’re already laughing about it.

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  52. That “ugliest” part reminds me of something one of my education professors in college told our class he’d said to another ed. prof.

    He said, “I told [the other prof’s last name], ‘When I die, you’ll be the ugliest man alive.'” 😛 LOL.

    Well, the other guy died first, so he never got to take the honors. 😉

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  53. Happy Birthday, Linda.

    Happy (very) Belated Birthday, Janice.

    Late November / early-mid December got very busy, and the Daily and News threads went to the back burner for me. You all have had some very interesting discussions, though, I see, now that the pace has slowed down for me at home. (Concerts and other piano business are finished for the year now.)

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  54. Kevin, thanks for that link on the winter solstice. That made for an informative science lesson tonight for the arrows and me.

    Regarding the discussion on screened windows: we have some screens that pop right out, so we remove them in the winter and tuck them behind furniture until springtime. I like looking through screenless windows when possible.

    One year, though, I was dismayed to discover in the springtime that a screen we had put behind the loveseat in our living room had a big hole chewed in the middle of it.

    Mice. Ew.

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