62 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 11-27-18”

  2. SIX: I apologize for not answering your question sooner. The hymns we sang for Christ The King Sunday were:
    Opening Hymn: Thine the Amen, Thine the Praise
    Hymn of the Day: Lord, Enthroned in Heavenly Splendor
    Distribution Hymns: Wake, Awake, for Night Is Flying and Jerusalem the Golden
    Closing Hymn: We Praise You and Acknowledge You, O God

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  3. I got an e-mail from Sarah G. She reminds me that this is “Giving Tuesday”. Never heard of giving Tuesday before. She wants money.
    I don’t have enough money to give to everyone who wants it.

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  4. The photo at the top is, of course, from our ice storm last week. I was thrilled that we had it when there was still color to be found, in colorful leaves and in berries. That particular photo was taken of the bush right outside my office window. I looked out and saw the ice and wanted so badly to go out and get photos, but I didn’t know if the footing was safe. Having fallen twice in recent years (once hitting my head and once injuring my knee) without ice, it wasn’t worth hurting myself and the camera. When my husband pronounced the footing safe, I went out, though by that time it was melting and I had to move quickly.

    This big drip of ice and small drip is my husband’s favorite of the ones I got that day. My own favorite is a different one, and I sent it to AJ, too. (I also sent him frost photos, though.) By the time I got this shot, it was beginning to snow lightly, and you can see a few snowflakes stuck to the ice.

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  5. Another e-mail, for someone else, said that it is “Giving Tuesday”. I’ve never heard of that before. How did this get invented?

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  6. First there was Black Friday, then Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, and Giving Tues. We live in the land of opportunity so each day has an opportunity to part with your money. Next we shall see what Wed. and Thurs. are. They probably have dedicated names already, but if not does anyone have suggestions?

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  11. I’m glad I saw that icy photo! It reminded me to turn the heat back on.

    I had a live interview with “Off the Bookshelf,” in Michigan at 6 am! I woke up at 5:15 and have been talking to myself ever since, trying to get my voice to work!

    My husband is in Rochester, NY, so he wasn’t around to engage in conversation. I bet he’s cold!

    Anyway, the heater blows so loudly through the ceiling, I knew I’d have trouble being heard on the phone, so I turned it off. It got cold . . .

    More rain coming. It’s been wonderful to walk outside the last couple days, but we’re always grateful for rain here.

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  12. Good morning.

    Linda, great list of hymns. Three of them are in our main hymnal; your opening and closing hymns were not. I went to YouTube to listen to the two unfamiliar ones, and when I clicked on a version of We Praise You and Acknowledge You, O God, it had the same tune as the Jerusalem the Golden tune we sang in our last hymn on Sunday! (The one that uses the “Jupiter” theme from Gustav Holst’s The Planets.)

    So did your Jerusalem the Golden have the same melody as We Praise You…? Or did you have a different tune for Jerusalem the Golden? Our older version of the hymn has this melody for the first phrase (4/4 time with an upbeat):

    Do | Re Do Fa Mi | Re(half note) Do Mi | So (high)Do Ti Si | La(dotted half note)…

    You label your hymns the same way we do: Opening Hymn, Hymn of the Day, Distribution Hymns, Closing Hymn. We had communion on Sunday, too, but only had one distribution hymn instead of the usual two. I don’t know why they only had one this time. It wasn’t like it was a long hymn — only four verses (Beautiful Savior).

    Can’t believe I forgot to mention that one the other day! It had slipped my mind already by the time I was typing my comment Sunday evening. The other one I forgot was The Head that Once was Crowned, in the End Time section of our hymnal. We don’t sing that one very much.

    Here’s the version of We Praise You and Acknowledge You, O God that I listened to just now — using the Jupiter tune:

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  14. We have a lot of Lutherans on the blog. I have known only one Lutheran here in Atlanta. I think the family went to a liberal Lutheran church downtown. I really like the church building. It’s beautiful

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  15. Morning! That is a beautiful photo Cheryl. The headaches of an ice storm can be scary but the beauty you have captured bring a smile and an ahhhh…..
    Day of cleaning this house and catching up on neglected must do’s! Thankful for a day to stay at home! 😊

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  16. Yes, today is “Giving Tuesday”. I think the idea is now that you’ve spent all that money on gifts for yourself or family and friends, it’s time to think of those less fortunate and give money to a charity. It’s the world and its ways. You know, you get a guilty conscience since you fell for the greediness that Christmas giving has become, so you think you’ll drop a few pennies in the Salvation Army bucket today.

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  20. Janice, none of the Lutherans on this blog is of the “liberal Lutheran” variety. The Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod (LCMS), of which Linda and Michelle are members, and the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS), to which I belong, are vastly different in theology than bodies like the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America). ELCA’s theology is so far off biblical orthodoxy, I wonder if they even have a theology anymore. They’re following the shifting sands of culture, IMO, but are just a little behind step.

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  21. Yup, that’s the tune we used (and the other for the opening hymn). I was going to mention that it was from “The Planets.” I love, love, it.
    Funny “Lutheran” story. Last year I traveled to a client site with a gentleman from our company who I’d worked with many times but never in person. Somehow our denominations came up in discussion and I said I am LCMS. He said, “Oh, you’re the liberal ones.” Thinking he had little knowledge of Lutheran synods, I said, “No, that’s the ELCA” to which he replied, “No, I’m Wisconsin Synod – you are the liberal ones.” I guess you have to be Lutheran to get it.

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  22. The liberal, mainline churches have some of the most beautiful buildings. Sigh.

    Beautiful photo. Every time I see the word “ice” I mentally fill in the word “cream.” I must be hungry. I’ll have yogurt for breakfast this morning. For now, it’s coffee.

    Frugal Friday. ?

    I have another busy work day today with a 5:30 p.m. meeting that will unveil the plans and other details of the temporary homeless shelter they’re building in our town. They’re expecting 500 people but it’ll be an ‘open house’ style event, sort of like a job fair where people go to different stations or booths to see the info, no formal presentation.

    I asked the council office yesterday if they’d be able to ship most if not all of the info to me during the day today on an embargoed status so I could write the story mostly in advance (they said they could/would). That way I can have it all ready to go when I show up at the meeting for just an hour or so to get some quotes, reactions, color. There also might be some demonstrators. I’ll top the story off with that and be able to turn it all in quickly.

    At least that’s the plan.

    I’m looking forward to decorating the house this weekend! And yes, we’re expecting rain also, looks like Wednesday, Thursday and again on Saturday. Yay.

    Meanwhile, my heater is ON. It’ll be the era of high gas bills coming up for the next few months.

    But I did manage to (finally) get my flu shot yesterday, I dashed out for a very late meal break at 4 p.m. and got it at a local drug store by the ocean. I typically don’t get flu shots but honestly, after catching the flu a couple times in the past five years, I do think maybe my immunity isn’t what it used to be. So while it may not work, it’s worth a shot. Shot, get it? 🙂

    I’m so funny in the mornings. My animals think so, too.

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  23. Linda, funny.

    Carol is LCMS. There is a church near her new residence, we looked it up and drove by it a few weeks ago when I was up there. I’ve encouraged her to call them to see if perchance someone might be able to provide her with rides. But it’ll depend, too, on how well she recovers from this latest period of hospitalization and rehab. She should be getting out late this week and they are giving her some physical therapy there to get her up and walking.

    Meanwhile, I’ve been in touch with the man from the LCMS church where she has her membership — he’s taken a special interest in trying to reach out to her, though he has health problems of his own and now is on oxygen 24/7. But he said she’s back on their active prayer list. For a while, he was getting the pastor to visit her to give her communion once a month or so but that’s seemingly fallen by the wayside.

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  24. The pastor she knew when she attended there some years ago is gone, and I think they’ve had 2 since then who don’t really know her, of course (she first became involved with MS in NY as a teen — when she came out to California she continued to affiliate with the denomination but has moved frequently). Her friend did take her to her home church during the summer, he came all the way up to Hollywood (probably a 25-mile drive?), picked her up, took her to the service & to the summer picnic afterward, then back home again.

    I wish she were closer — and I wish the church could figure out a way to provide her with transportation maybe just once a month. But it is a distance and she isn’t easy to transport, of course, with the heavy walker that needs car storage space and her trouble just getting into and out of a vehicle now.

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  25. I toyed with the idea of trying to pick her up and bring her to my church on Sundays, but calculated the time factor & all the mobility and other health complications she’s developed of late and decided that probably wouldn’t work.

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  26. Donna, even taking an ambulatory person to church is a project if she/he is not capable of going without assistance. Getting seated and caring for the walker, etc. is not a simple thing. But it can be done. I have never before realized how helpful and considerate people are when they see a need. I have had men in restaurants help me get her out of the booth. People are generally nice..

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  27. Never heard the term distribution song before. It is has always been called the Offertory in the churches where I have attended. That is, technically, an inaccurate term, since the Offertory, historically, relates to the Eucharist, but the term’s use in evangelical circles probably stems from the phrase I heard so often as a child in church about bringing our “tithes and offerings.”

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  28. Linda, you liberal, you. 😉

    Reminds me of a joke I heard long ago. A bunch of people were gathered in a room in heaven. One person noticed that there was a curtain partitioning off the room and asked, “What’s behind that curtain?”

    Someone else replied, “Shhh, the Wisconsin Synod Lutherans are back there. They think they’re the only ones in heaven.”

    LOL.

    Along similar lines, I couldn’t remember the exact wording of that joke, so I googled it and found this:

    http://jokes.christiansunite.com/Heaven/Shhhhhhhh!.shtml

    Apologies to my Baptist friends. 😉

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  30. Good news! My composer friend got back to me, and we’re meeting at a coffee shop next week to discuss music publishing. I. am. so. excited! 🙂

    She suggested meeting Wednesday afternoon, which is great because I’ll be in her city that morning to practice with the middle school choir that I’m accompanying for their concert the next night. Really looking forward to an out-of-the-ordinary day with new musical opportunities. 🙂

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  31. 6 Arrows, I think that link lost part of itself.

    In Chicago I occasionally attended a Lutheran church, mostly for their monthly Bach cantatas but also for at least one Christmas service and a couple of Easters, since their music was spectacular. Even the children’s choirs, going down to choirs of maybe five- and six-year-olds, were very well done with children who sang. I knew I didn’t agree with them theologically–I don’t agree with the Lutheran view of the sacraments, and one of their pastors was a woman–so I never even considered attending more regularly, but they were only a mile or two from my home and had wonderful music.

    Recently I googled them, found them to be ELCA (I knew nothing about the different branches back then) and was shocked at how liberal they are, with overtures to people making all kinds of sexual choices and all sorts of “family” configurations but just one passing reference to “the gospel” (which, I suspect, doesn’t mean the Christian gospel anyway). That was the church that had lots and lots of money (they were raising millions to do some kind of building program) but where someone once suggested to me that I should have sat in the balcony rather than sitting beside her, because in her view there wasn’t enough room in the pew for me (and I didn’t know they had a balcony, and as a lifelong church attender myself I had judged there to be enough room).

    When I was PCA, I was constantly explaining to people that I wasn’t in the liberal PC(USA) . . . but as more and more PCA churches chose liberal doctrines, and as presbyteries refused to discipline even really obvious departures from sound doctrine (theistic evolution, writing a book presenting “new revelation from Jesus”), I ended up telling people that my church was one of the more conservative within my denomination.

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  32. I started reading Cheryl’s post where she tells us that in Chicago, she sometimes attended a Lutheran church, mostly for the money…. and then I was lost.

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  33. Behind again on reading comments, but wanted to jump in with this:

    Lat night there was some discussion of the correct way to write a news story, with the most pertinent facts coming first.

    When I took a journalism class in high school, my teacher taught that, of course, and also said that sometimes there are exceptions, such as in a particular sports story she mentioned. Ordinarily, a sports story would begin with who won and what the score was. The story she mentioned merely jumped into the back and forth of how a high school basketball game played out. It ended with the score – 2 to 0.

    She explained that since it is very unusual to have such a low-scoring basketball game, this way of telling the story added to the surprise of that ending score.

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  35. We had a talented reporter who once wrote the Black Friday shopping store in poetry. Editor almost blew a gasket, but decided it actually wasn’t bad so it ran.

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  37. It ended with the score – 2 to 0.

    So the team who had 0 won? That poor other team with negative 2. How do you get that score — shoot a basket in the other team’s hoop and get docked two points? 😉

    Oh wait.

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  39. The new photo is a wildflower, don’t know what kind, in the first frost of the season a couple of months ago. There was still a lot in bloom, and it was so pretty glistening in frost that I got lots of photos. I like that flower itself and think the frost adds an extra touch. And with the green leaves in the background I get a sense of an Oriental painting with some gilding in it.

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  40. Pretty pictures, Cheryl.

    Piano’s tuned and sounds nice. Kids are back from dentist appointments and Christmas shopping and other miscellany. Time to start the school day at 2:30. We’re all energized and ready to go!!

    Have a nice rest of your day, wanderers.

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  41. I actually participated in cyber Monday, to my surprise. Looking for curriculum for next term and the school bought one I had found, an ebook, but it looked too difficult for kinder. So I went online and found one actually for kinder. and it was 30% off since it was cyber Monday. Good for me and then I just downloaded it.

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  42. I’m currently in beautiful Banff, AB attending our Christian Camping Conference. So neat to see and hear all that God is doing through the different camps and to learn from each other.

    The view out my window is amazing 🙂

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  43. Yeah, I bought something on Cyber Monday. I’ve been wanting a laptop and got a Samsung Chromebook. Then today realized that the mouse on the desktop PC was having issues. I should have bought that yesterday at the same time.

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  44. Hey Pigskin Pickers: Do we want to do a 14th week? There are 7 conference championships this weekend and several other lesser games to pick from. If so, AJ gets to pick the tie breaker. Post here your responses.

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  47. I wrapped a Christmas gift today. Yay! One down and too many more to go.

    We are doing a meal out and an ornament exchange on Sunday for a fellowship event for my Sunday school class. We can either buy an ornament or give a gently used one. I will have to see what I have that might be appropriate that I could part with. If you were to receive a gift ornament, is there a particular type you would like?

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  48. I did Cyber Monday, almost by accident. I made an order from a company about 10 days ago, was really thinking the box could come anytime . . . and then saw that the product was still in my “shopping cart” and somehow never ordered! They had a sale when I tried to order, and a similar sale but with an additional freebie Monday, so I went ahead and ordered. Oh yeah, and I ordered some sheets for our bed that were a good enough price they were worth trying.

    Today my husband ordered other stuff for our bed. He and his mom picked out the comforter, shams, curtains, etc. we are using up north, and I told him when we married that they were OK and we could keep them. They really were OK and anyway I didn’t want to spend the money to get new ones. But seven years later, when we were looking to move, I told him that it was time to go ahead and get new ones for the new home. For six months now we have had an oversized blanket and a few pillows, no comforter and no bed skirt. But he narrowed the choices down to two that he thought would look good with the walls (the walls are a very pale green, and in my opinion there is no possible color combination they won’t work with), and I chose one of those. And then he found the best prices and placed the orders.

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  54. Whew, filed my story after stopping in at the big community open house to look at drawings of the temporary homeless shelter. I met the new LA Police chief (new as of a few months ago) who was there along with all the politician-types. Another officer I spoke with was cracking up because I was writing notes in my notebook while I was still looking at him as he talked. “How do you do that?” I really don’t know, I told him, and it doesn’t always turn out too well when I go back to read it.

    So in the end I got a few good quotes, added it to the story along with the photos our photographer took tonight also, editor just read it, said looks good, so I’m done.

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  59. PETER L: In case you’re still looking here for responses to your question, I’m up for pigskin picks any time you want to organize it. I think we can somehow manage without Cheryl.

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  60. Do we have another “last” remark here? Isn’t that how the secret room started down the road to forever? 🙂

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