66 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 1-4-18”

  1. I don’t recognize any of those ladies.
    Good morning everyone. I have been following the theological discussions recently.’
    Though I disagree with some of the ideas and practices, I haven’t seen anything that makes me worry about the eternal security of any of our brothers and sisters in Christ on this blog.

    That hasn’t always been so.

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  2. Chas, I agree. It’s hard to put “tone” into written communication and I worried that we might have sounded like we were arguing. As I mentioned, that was not at all my intention – but rather for all of us to share our denomination’s theology and have a civil discussion. I think we succeeded.

    6, I enjoyed your choir story. What songs will you be singing?

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  4. Beautiful three generations in that header!

    We are really snowed in here. This has been the most unusual vacation. First with the news about my cousin right at our arrival, and then this weather. Wesley and I went to Public to stock up early on. The only other trip out was to the library to shop their used book sale. We arrived at 3:45 to find out they closed at 4:00. I did find two cookbooks, one on Wraps and the other for Pressure Cookers. Then we went by Goodwill where I found a few little things. That’s all we have done except walk on the beach a few times, play board games, and watch tv
    We did see the movie Hidden Figures which was good.

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  5. Yes, it was a civil discussion, unlike the “Wild West” days at WORLD Mag blog before we had a moderator.

    Speaking of which, does anyone know what our former “Benevolent Dictator” Lynn is up to now-a-days? I wonder if she still has the scepter MiM made her?

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  6. Good Morning! Weird weather indeed. The south is getting snow and here in the mountains, well…we are in a pout, being left out and all…..
    Lovely ladies up there in that photo. I think I recognize Liz…therefore the two other ladies must be Mom and Grandma? They appear to be having a most enjoyable shopping adventure! 🎄

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  8. Good morning!

    I finally had a chance to catch up on the blog. Happy birthday to Kathleena and any one else I may have missed.

    Yall are all in the deep freeze with snow, and we are in the 50’s and dry. You know it’s dry when the thermometer on the dash says 11 degrees, and there is not a speck of frost on the windshield.

    On the baptism issue, water baptism is the baptism of repentance. I am not sure what a baby would repent of, if they could even understand that concept.

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  10. Blessings on you, Roscuro, as you go into your interview. You have a beautiful smile. Let that be the first impression you make. If you smile, your feelings will follow that smile even if you feel a bit nervous because the position means so much to you.

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  11. I posted this at the end of yesterday’s thread, but am not sure anyone would go back and read it: Peter, I don’t think you would naturally symbolize a cave in the side of a mountain by dunking something underwater, as you could conceivably symbolize something actually underground. As far as I can tell, the “buried with Him in baptism” symbolism isn’t from Scripture, but it just sounded good in terms of “well, it has to mean something,” and that sounds as good as anything. I don’t know that we have to figure out what it symbolizes, if Scripture doesn’t tell us; we simply have to obey and do it.

    Addition to that thought: I have often said that I wish Scripture gave more detail on baptism: Do it this way, to these people, at this time, with this meaning. In one way we are left to assume a whole bunch of those points. I personally have seen immersion in a baptistery (free standing and built in), immersion in a swimming pool (no lake baptisms), sprinkling of a baby, and pouring. I’ve even seen video of babies being baptized by immersion! John the Baptist practiced a baptism for those repenting of their sins, but His baptism was before Christ’s death (John was killed before Jesus was), and thus John’s baptism wasn’t the same as Christian baptism. And clearly Jesus did not get baptized because He Himself was repenting!

    We aren’t explicitly told do or don’t baptize whole households, immerse or sprinkle or pour, or even (as far a I know) whether or not there is any specific symbolic meaning involved (the “buried with Him with baptism unto death, raised to walk in newness of life” sounds good, but I don’t think it is even an allusion to something in Scripture and it certainly is not a scriptural quote).

    My husband’s answer, based on his own study, is something like this: We aren’t told more detail about the mode and purpose of baptism, or those being baptized, because the early readers (and writers) were Jewish believers, and they would have understood it. Baptism was replacing a rite they already understood, circumcision, except that it was now being offered to women and to Gentiles as well. “How much water is used” was never an important part of the equation. But whereas circumcision publicly identified someone with being one of God’s people, so does baptism. But with both events, someone might be “marked” as one of God’s people and yet not actually be one. Baptism is no more salvific than circumcision was, but it was marking the child as being set aside for God. That child had honors and privileges those outside the community didn’t have–but he himself might or might not identify with that community, and their God, as he got older. It is the circumcision of the heart, the baptism of the Spirit, that is really important.

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  12. It is late to make blueberry orange buckwheat pancakes, but it is the plan. Maybe a touch of maple syrup will not be bad for the diet. The sun shines brightly while the island has the melts and drips.

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  13. Well said, Cheryl. We do like to “fill in the gaps” and overthink some of the simpler, straight-forward commands in Scripture, don’t we? Human nature I suppose. If there was a particular mode or place or age required, surely we would have been told. But we’re not.

    It’s another foggy day here for us with rain (at last, we hope) in the forecast for early next week.

    I still have a lot ahead for the house, but the worst is behind me, I’m convinced. I’m dreading the painting, it’ll be a mess and it’ll be expensive. But onward …

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  14. The quote from the baptism ritual that I posted yesterday comes directly from the Bible:

    Romans 6: 3 Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?
    4 Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
    5 For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection

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  15. Yesterday’s thread makes for an interesting read. I am accustomed to agreeing to disagree on the baptism question, as Eldest sibling and family attend a Presbyterian church. It was something of a shock to us, who were firmly in the Baptist tradition, when Eldest decided with her husband to baptize their first child, but any tension over that decision has long since dissipated. I also have a cousin who went from the Baptist church to an Anglican and is now Catholic who has had her children baptized as infants, and she also is one whom I would not question her faith in Christ. That doesn’t mean that I am at all inclined to join the Presbyterian or Catholic traditions. I established my own convictions about baptism by personal study after my Eldest sibling’s decision. I am, however, careful not to attribute exaggerated interpretations to the Protestant or Catholic practices. Eldest has said that she does not believe that infant baptism saves, and I believe her – certainly she and her husband have not neglected to explain the gospel to her children. In her eldest child there is the clear evidence of faith, and we wait and pray for the salvation of the younger ones. I do not question the salvation of those who practice church traditions such as infant baptism or the lighting of candles (something my cousin does during family devotions which otherwise closely resembles my family’s devotions). It is part of the Baptist tradition to question the value of those early church traditions and to measure their merit against Scripture.

    Certainly, nowhere in the New Testament does it actually relate a case of infants being baptized – the baptism of households argument is only speculation that the infants were baptized, and it could be just as easily argued that the only the members of the household who could confess faith were baptized, since the accounts do not tell us either way. There are, however, many accounts of adults being baptized after declaring faith. Baptism and circumcision are not equivalent. If they were, those who were circumcised would not have needed to be baptized. Christ was both circumcised and baptized. John’s baptism was one of repentance, while Christian baptism is a reflection of the spiritual baptism of the Spirit into the death of Christ (Mark 1:4, Acts 13:24; Mark 10:38-39, Colossian 2:12). Incidentally, we do have a case of a group of people who were rebaptized in Acts 19:1-7:

    And he said unto them, Unto what then were ye baptized? And they said, Unto John’s baptism.
    Then said Paul, John verily baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people, that they should believe on him which should come after him, that is, on Christ Jesus.
    When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.

    Paul labeled circumcision as valueless (Galatians 5:6), and the New Testament writers make it clear that physical circumcision did not save anyone in the Old Testament, that only those of the circumcision who had faith were saved (Romans 2:25-29). In other words, Israel and the Church were never equivalent, because all those in the Church are saved, but not all of the nation of Israel were saved. The nation of Israel was an earthly kingdom, and it becomes apparent, reading the Old Testament in light of the New, that it existed to preserve the line of Abraham and then David from whom the Christ should come. Once He came, there was no further need for that preservation, and the nation collapsed as a result of its unbelief in the Christ. Now Jews are merely one among many unique ethnic groups, all of whom are in need of Christ.

    Cheryl, about the phrase about being baptized into Christ’s death and whether that was simply Baptist tradition or actually from Scripture, it is from Scripture:

    Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. (Romans 6:4)

    It is one of the verses that would indicate that baptism is a spiritual work of the Spirit, of which the physical baptism is only a symbol.

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  16. Grayson, the name of the storm hitting the east coast. Brutal from the sounds of it. Stay safe if you’re in its path.

    Meanwhile, I just looked out and can hardly see across the street through the heavy coastal fog here this morning.

    Looks like my gardener, unasked, chopped up and disposed of my bare Christmas tree that I’d had sitting out on the front porch, thinking I’d get it into the recycle can Friday night after work. One less thing to do.

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  18. I stand corrected, that text is from Scripture. Nevertheless, I do not believe the verse can be used to prove baptism must be by immersion.

    Roscuro, just as within Israel, there are indeed unbelievers within the church today. That’s why many make the distinction between the visible church (which includes unbelievers) and the invisible church (which includes those who have died in Christ, but does not include unbelievers). Several New Testament passages say clearly that New Testament believers (the church) are in the same body as Old Testament saints (Israel or “the true Israel”). This was actually my biggest gripe with dispensationalism while I was still trying to believe it–Paul says so clearly, and so does Jesus actually, that there is no distinction between believing Jews and Gentiles, and further that it is the church (and not vice versa) being grafted into what was already there, not merely that believing Jews are now part of the church.

    As I said, I fretted under that one, trusting that these men who were greater scholars than I somehow saw it differently, when Scripture itself looked very clear. I rejoiced when I was then shown how the rest of it fit together, too, with Jews and Gentiles alike within Christ’s family.

    Circumcision is meaningless under the new covenant–we have a different sign and seal. But it was of utmost importance in the Old Testament. The fact that it was superceded by a new sign and seal doesn’t mean the older was meaningless then, nor does it prove that they didn’t signify roughly the same thing. I no longer use my maiden name (except somewhat in my writing life), but it identified me for many years, and it had the same place in my life as my new last name (in that case, my first identified me with my father and my second with my husband, but both were marks of identification).

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  22. Still thinking about baptism and remembering that the pastor who did my believer’s baptism, after he said what Chas posted, also added at the end, “What prevents you from being baptised?” That reminded me of the story of Phillip and the Eunuch. After the Eunuch received instruction about the passage of Isaiah and how it related to the Good News of Jesus, he said, “Look! There is some water! Why can’t I be baptized?” Then, “He ordered the carriage to stop, and they went down into the water, and Phillip baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Phillip away.”

    In thinking through this logically, it seems they would have had enough drinking water to do a sprinkle for baptism. If they had done the pouring baptism, then they would have done that at the edge of the water. In my logical mindset, it seems they went down into the water as a customary practice of how they thought of and did baptism.

    I say this with my background being Presbyterian and Methodist. I am the one who bought a beautiful earthenware pitcher for the Methodist pastor who wanted to use that as part of his baptism routine with infants. He liked pouring the warm water into the baptismal font for the effect. When I began attending the Baptist church, I had never been around baptism by immersion. I admit that at first it seemed odd. It seemed radical. Then at one point an eighty year old lady, a former Presbyterian, decided to be baptized by immersion. I decided for sure that if she could do it, that I could, too. It seemed right under my circumstances. But I do not judge others who think, believe, and feel convicted otherwise.

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  24. Meanwhile, what would you do if you got an email like this?

    During my morning devotional time, I felt directed to pray for someone named Michelle. That did not come as a shock, but since I only know one person with that name, I was uncertain. Since I have been serving my Lord for many years, I obeyed him. I simply prayed for Michelle (?) for God knows the Michelle that is in need of prayer.

    But let me stop and share the following with you. As I was praying, I felt directed to check the authors listed in a book that I received for Christmas. To my surprise, the name of the last author in the book was listed as Michelle Ule. The book’s title was A Pioneer Christmas Collection. So, when I checked the internet, I found your information.

    Now before you wonder if I belong in the ‘strange and unusual’ category, let me share a little more. I’m a lady who has serve the Lord since youth. I am now retirement age. I was blessed to have been born into a godly home. So, when I feel directed of the Lord, I obey.
    I will be praying Michelle! (P.S. My father pastored a church in northern California and I met my now deceased husband there and we pastored in Central California. I graduated from Fresno State University, taught school and, as an artist and writer, I had a gallery and bookstore in Clovis. So, although we do not know each other, we have the same Savior and similar assignments.)

    I am totally unfamiliar with your work, but I will become familiar with it starting today. My writings have been academic to date. However, I am presently writing Christian Fiction, Romantic Suspense as a ministry to people who are not receptive to traditional ministry.
    I will be using my name on the series that I am presently writing.

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  25. Chas, amen to your first comment: Though I disagree with some of the ideas and practices, I haven’t seen anything that makes me worry about the eternal security of any of our brothers and sisters in Christ on this blog.

    And I agree, this has been a respectful discussion.

    Our senior pastor and his wife have a son who is regularly attending (maybe has joined? I don’t remember) a church outside of our denomination, and one with very different beliefs on baptism and holy communion than what we Lutherans hold. Pastor’s wife and I were talking recently, and while she admitted it wasn’t easy at first when their son began believing differently on those things, she is very grateful for the civil discussions they have about their varying beliefs, and she recognizes that they agree on the fundamental tenets of faith, reporting with a smile and hope on her face, “We know we will be in heaven together some day.”

    That made me smile, too.

    Linda, the SATB piece I mentioned yesterday is entitled “Christmas Song,” by Peter Cornelius, and arranged by Walter Damrosch. (English version by Dr. Th. Baker.) It’s old — copyright 1897 — and might more appropriately be titled Epiphany Song, as the baritone solo begins, “Three kings have journeyed from the eastern land…” It is sung a cappella, and slowly, and there are some gorgeous harmonies in it, including one place where Alto 1 is on the G above middle C, and the tenors are in unison on the F# a half step below that. Gives me shivers right there, that one beat! 🙂

    The other two pieces we’re doing include a more recent (copyright 2008) arrangement of Psalm 2 by Hal H. Hopson, and a 1954 version of “Hail to the Lord’s Anointed” that appears in a collection called The Parish Choir Book, compiled and edited by Paul Thomas and published by Concordia in St. Louis. The latter song is also a cappella, but just a simple SATB (not split into eight voices like “Christmas Song,” and the Psalm only has unison voices, with a rich and exciting rhythmic and textural framework in the piano part. The congregation sings the refrain (after we introduce it), and that keeps alternating with the choir on the four verses — women on verses 1 and 3, men on verses 2 and 4.

    There is also an optional tambourine part, and the director asked us last night if anyone has a tambourine. Well, I do. 🙂 I’ll take it to practice next week, and I suspect I’ll be the one playing it during the 10-bar refrain. A simple but dynamic rhythm it has (quarter, eighth-eighth, quarter, tremolo in 4/4 time) that I’m excited to hear paired with the driving rhythm of the piano part.

    I can’t tell you how joyous I felt coming home from rehearsal last night, and I am looking forward even more to our practice next week, and singing in church on the 14th.

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  26. Linda, did you say you are a soprano? Or am I thinking of someone else? I remember you saying you traveled to Carnegie Hall to sing in a mass choir for a special Reformation anniversary service, was it? What an awesome experience that must have been!

    There was some big Midwest trip to Madison, Wisconsin for a Reformation service in the WELS sometime in October. I don’t know anybody who went to it, but it sounds like there was a bus coming through my area who would take interested participants to worship and sing in a similar mass choir. I would have enjoyed going to something like that, if I’d had the means to do so.

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  29. Alto 1 and I love being in the choir (except for last night when I had to go out in single-digit temps for practice). Our choir is about in proportion to our congregation and usually more like a quartet. But we have an awesome director who picks pieces that are appropriate for us and doesn’t push us too hard (he’s also the only tenor).

    Yes, we did sing in a combined Reformation choir in Carnegie Hall this summer, which was an incredible and fun experience. We practiced at Concordia, Bronxville on Friday night and all day Saturday and the concert was Sunday afternoon. We (DIL and two friends) also took the opportunity to see “Aladdin” on Broadway on Saturday night, which was fabulous. It’s my favorite Disney movie and I’ve always wanted to see the play. I worried (needlessly) that no one could top Robin Williams and the Genie and was not disappointed.

    Now I’m going for a sandwich 😉

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  32. Actually, Michelle, the missions committee chair asked what time I was leaving and they will be praying for me in each service. I have asked my family to come. I just saw the bulleting, which I receive in an email, and they even listed the prayer in the service news.

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  35. A fellow Alto 1 — yay! 🙂

    My pitch seems to have crept upward a little over the years. Have you noticed changes in your vocal range, Linda or anyone else who sings? On one occasion in the past, I sang high tenor when there were plenty of altos and few tenors. I could fairly easily sing down to the F# below middle C, and somewhat faintly on the F, E, and E-flat below, but my voice is pretty weak below a G (below middle C) now, and my comfortable range above middle C extends to about an octave, whereas before, B-flat was about the highest I could do without strain. Now B, C, and C# are no problem.

    I still have a mental block when I see fourth-line treble D. I am convinced I can’t sing it without my voice cracking. Yet, when I sing something without looking at a score, I can easily sing that D and the D# without wavering. (Although my voice starts getting thin right about there.)

    I like when the organist transposes into a higher key that what is written, because then I can sing notes higher than what is printed without getting freaked out by notes that look too high to do! 🙂

    That Cornelius piece we’re doing has a top-space G in the soprano part. You won’t get me trying to sing soprano on something like that!

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  36. DJ, maybe the cold will take care of the infestation of pythons in the swamps of Louisiana? I saw a headline that said frozen sharks were washing up on beaches.

    Well, the interview seemed to go well, although I won’t know if I’m accepted until all the interviews are completed. I was told there is an available placement in the area where I want to go, and I also was able to enroll in a course that I need to complete before I go as a result of the interview (the course was marked as full on the online enrollment form, so I needed someone in charge to make it available to me). The biggest obstacle to be overcome is, of course, those missing clinical days, but the last word was that they would be completed by the end of this semester. So, I’m not completely certain of the future, but it is certainly looking brighter.

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  37. When I was an adolescent, I sang alto in a choir – my speaking voice is naturally pitched quite low and I thought that my singing voice would be as low. I seemed to manage the part without too much difficulty. By the time I joined the city choir in my late twenties, however, my singing voice seemed to have become higher while my ability to go much below Middle C has disappeared. So now I sing the high soprano parts – I managed the high notes of the Hallelujah Chorus, which we sang as part of a Christmas hymn sing, with ease.

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  38. From Writing Skills: Success in 20 Minutes a Day, a book I just checked out of the library last night for 4th Arrow:

    Page 115: Who/That/Which

    Who refers to people. That refers to things. Which is generally used to introduce nonrestrictive clauses that describe things.

    I picked up the above-mentioned book at the library last night after choir practice. I knew there was a reason I went inside the library and looked around, instead of just dropping off the book I’d finished. 🙂

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  40. Roscuro, I still like singing along with The Messiah alto parts as we listen to it each December. I’ve got the full vocal score, and had sung many of the songs as an alto in college choir. I’d probably be afraid of trying to sing the soprano parts, especially if I was following the music. 🙂

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  41. Cheryl, I was running out of time when I typed my post @11:10, but I knew there was another reference I wanted to include in the discussion of baptism and circumcision:

    You were also circumcised in Him with a circumcision not done with hands, by putting off the body of flesh, in the circumcision of the Messiah. Having been buried with Him in baptism, you were also raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. (Colossians 2:11-12, HCSB)

    About the value of circumcision, I meant that circumcision without faith is meaningless – Abraham’s faith preceded his circumcision, and as Paul notes, it was Abraham’s faith, not his circumcision, which saved him (Romans 4:9-12). I don’t fully endorse Got Questions.org, but on this topic, they come closest to what I was trying to say: https://www.gotquestions.org/baptism-circumcision.html.

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  42. Pythons? Sharks? Burrrr. Or rather, Brrrrrr for the purists here. 🙂

    Question: Does anyone have a gas fireplace, especially one that used to be wood-burning but was converted?

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  44. “that/which”: One of my fellow editors was a purist about the difference, so I once asked her to explain, and she explained it in such a way that I now find it an easy distinction. (I never explain it to people I’m editing; I just quietly correct it.) Basically, if you need to use a comma before the phrase, “which” is your word. Rather than explaining it, here are some examples:

    The fish you want to catch here is a large-mouthed bass.
    The fish that you can catch most easily in these parts is a large-mouthed bass.
    That fish on your line, which is a large-mouthed bass, is the species we are known for around here.

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  45. Roscuro, excellent news, potentially. Praying that God will bring it, or something else, together.

    I read your link at 6:09. It’s clearly stated, but I think the writer has a fundamental misunderstanding of circumcision in the Old Testament. Quoting him: “While there are parallels between baptism and circumcision, they symbolize two very different covenants. The Old Covenant had a physical means of entrance: one was born to Jewish parents or bought as a servant into a Jewish household (Genesis 17:10-13). One’s spiritual life was unconnected to the sign of circumcision.”

    This is forgetting that Israel was a theocracy, with the whole nation in covenant with God, under His authority and His law. Circumcision was in fact saying, “I am one of Yahweh’s chosen people.” Yes, what was really important was the heart–but circumcision wasn’t merely a national rite, but very much a religious one.

    In fact, I just googled “bris ceremony” (that’s what Jews call their ceremony) and the sites I looked at were full of references to the covenant with God–even a woman who is not a religious Jew cited her lack of religion as her reason not to want to circumcise her son. Here is an example (from ReformedJudaism.org); the rest of this is a quote:

    “Bris” means “covenant.” At a bris, the boy is brought into the covenant between God and the Jewish People, in fulfillment of the command given by God to Abraham:

    “On your part, you shall keep My covenant, you and your descendants throughout their generations. This is My covenant which you shall keep between Me and you and your children after you: every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskin, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between Me and you. He that is eight days old shall be circumcised, every male throughout your generations….” – Genesis 17:9-12.

    The circumcision is a sign of the covenant, a “membership badge” if you will. What we call the “bris” (Bris Milah – Covenant of Circumcision) is the religious ceremony in which the child is brought into the covenant community by means of the circumcision and the accompanying blessings, prayers which put the “medical” procedure into a religious context. Then, as a member of the covenant community, the boy is given a Hebrew name, linking him to his Jewish family and to Jewish history.

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  46. Cheryl, I would simply say that you have missed where the comparison and contrast lies. The child born to parents in Israel became part of the covenant (what Jews do now is irrelevant, since their customs have changed greatly since the destruction of the temple) to Abraham and was circumcised as a sign of that covenant. Similarly, Christians become part of the Body of Christ by birth, but not by their first birth, but by their second birth. In that sense, baptism and circumcision are similar, but not the same. The reason they are not the same as to do with the difference in how one was born into the covenant with Israel versus how one is born into the Church of Christ. A child born to Hebrew parents was automatically a member of the covenant. A child born to Christian parents is only born to them physically and does not automatically have that second birth. As the saying goes, God does not have grandchildren. This is good news, for the covenant with Israel was limited to those born to Israel, but the second birth is not limited to those born to Christian parents. Nicodemus, you remember, was perplexed at Jesus’ statement that you must be born again. As a member of the Sanhedrin, he fully understood what it meant to be born into a covenant, but he could not comprehend being born a second time. Christ explained that the second birth was not a physical one and only by the Spirit of God could that second birth take place. There is another difference as the second birth is always efficacious for salvation, but the physical birth into the nation of Israel was not. Jesus warned his hearers in John 8 that although they were physically children of Abraham, spiritually they were children of the devil. Birth to Christian parents, as advantageous as it might be in giving opportunities to hear the gospel, is not being born into the Covenant of Christ. Birth into Christ’s Covenant is only by the Spirit, and as Christ said in John 3:8 to Nicodemus, the evidences of the Spirit’s work will be manifest.

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  51. Cheryl, regarding that and which, I understand the difference between your second and third examples (that vs which), but what’s the relevant difference between the first two examples, the second with “that” and the first without either “that” or “which”?

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  52. Regarding Baptism…

    When you wash a pot do you dunk it in the wash water? Do you wash it in the water? Sometimes you may put the side up on the side of the sink to be able to put more pressure on it, but then you put it all the way in the dish water to get all the crud into the water and out of the pot before rinsing it.

    We have had to tell grandkids to put the dishes into the water to wash them.

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  55. Bob, when I was a child we had a sink for wash water and another for rinse water. One of us kids would wash, the other would dry, and which ones would rinse would depend on the speed of the particular children. (In other words, as the oldest of the youngest three, I think I tended to rinse whether I was the washer or the dryer.)

    As an adult I’ve been more inclined to wash under running water, and rinse under running water. It’s probably about the same water usage either way, but the water stays hotter if it is running than if it is sitting in the sink. If any food seems stuck on, I tend to run that dish under the water, maybe even wipe it with the dish rag a bit, and then leave it on the side to soak a little bit while I wash other dishes. I assume your grandkids do something of the sort at home, and thus they are not used to your method.

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  56. I had thought of Bob’s example, only thinking of when we wash ourselves. Do we just sprinkle a little water on our heads and say we’re clean? No, we get wet all over.

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  58. Last one for the night. Dictionary.com has this as the origin of the word “baptize”:

    1250-1300; Middle English < Late Latin baptizāre < Greek baptízein to immerse ( bápt(ein) to bathe + -izein -ize )

    I've read that the King James translators just transliterated the word from Greek to English (i.e. made it an English word) rather than translate it so as to please the King. After all, he might not have authorized the Bible if it had a teaching different than the traditional practice.

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  59. I’d rather keep my fireplace natural but they’re cracking down on them out here, there seem to be more “no-burn” days every year. I think this no-burn period has lasted since early December. Developers and house builders can no longer put in wood-burning fireplaces. And some of the folks on the NextDoor app have become vigilantes, reporting neighbors who are using their fireplaces during ‘no-burn’ periods. Too much drama to deal with. “I can smell something burning over near 9th Street. Someone must be using their fireplace and this is a no-burn day!” Sheesh. Some people have too much time on their hands.

    I’m going to see what the cost would be to go with a gas log, assuming my fireplace has a gas line that can be hooked up (and I believe it does) and it won’t be a huge expense. I miss being able to use it, though I usually don’t use it often, maybe a handful of times a year, if that.

    My first apartment had a gas fireplace in it which my roommate and I used a lot, it was very easy, although you didn’t get quite the ambiance of a “real” fireplace. But some of the gas logs are pretty realistic looking now.

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  60. Surfing coyotes — saw this posted locally online a little while ago:

    “Coyote spotted ON THE BEACH, actually on the sand, Wednesday at about 8:45pm.”

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  61. Michelle, there are some strange things about that email. First, why did she get led to pray for a Michelle, and not the specific Michelle she knows? That sounds kind of weird to me.

    The writer seems to indicate a connection and familiarity with your area, and references what you do — write books.

    This may not be the same situation as you have with that email, but I have received a couple of emails in the last six months from writers claiming to know I’m a piano teacher, and asking me what my rates are and when I teach. One said he’d just moved to [my general area, not my specific town], and wanted lessons for his daughter.

    I never responded to those emails because I looked up the names of the senders, and they were not people I or others I know had heard of.

    If you want to take the time to check out her name and her supposed familial connections in the places she references, you could, but I wouldn’t respond personally to an email like that.

    If she’s legit and praying, great. If not, I don’t think responding would be a good idea, particularly if she’s fishing for more information than what she’s already got.

    My two cents.

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  63. Re the washing all or part of the body, I admit I don’t understand the argument. When you participate in the Lord’s supper, do you eat the entire loaf–or at least make sure you get the very largest piece so that you get more of Jesus than you might get with a smaller piece?

    When you are baptized, do you use soap, or are you really just “rinsed” and not truly washed at all? Do you make sure to swallow a good bit of the water to be sure that your insides receive some of the bathing?

    Physically, circumcision dealt with a small percentage of the body’s skin. When blood was applied to a priest, it was applied to a small portion of him.

    The efficacy of a symbol is not affected by the thoroughness of it. Scripture doesn’t tell us the “proper” mode of baptism, and I have a hunch none of us will be considered to have flunked the course by getting too much or too little water on us. It isn’t about the amount of water.

    BTW, I made the assertion above that it is a Baptist belief that the word itself means only “immersion” and that I have heard otherwise, so I thought I should follow up on that. Here is a good source, looking at not only the word but the biblical history of baptism (the Old Testament background). I learned a few things myself: http://www.opc.org/new_horizons/NH00/0007b.html

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