64 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 9-30-19”

  2. I believe “Black Jack” is the horse of someone, or the name of someone on the face of Stone Mtn. They put a replica of it’s buckle inside so you could get an idea of scale.

    I think that’s correct.

    Janice can correct me. 🙂

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  3. Good evening Jo.
    I don’t get it either. Looks like a floor mat with the impression of a small shoe.
    But I suspect I’m completely wrong on that.
    Good morning everyone.

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  5. Good morning all. No sign of snow this morning but there may be ice. I have not been out yet. Daughter left a while ago to begin clinicals for her CNA course. One more step.

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  7. I’ve never seen snow in September, and hope to keep it that way. I’ve seen it every month from Ocober (earliest: October 7) to April, and that’s enough. In Chicago we sometimes had flurries before December, but rarely anything that lingered–though one year we had lots of snow from October to December, and then very little. I determined that I didn’t want to see snow before December, but when we hit December I had better be resolved to accept it.

    I do better with snow when it’s rare. In Chicago there was simply too much of it for my taste (including the lake-effect stuff), but when it comes a few times per winter, I can better appreciate its beauty.

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  10. I took the same photo—AJ is correct, it was to show scale. I’ll look ay my photos later, I think I have a good one on the same subject.

    Beautiful day but chilly. Yesterday’s pool party was great if you were a kid in the heated pool. We parents froze.

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  11. Boy’s football team won their first game of the season this weekend, by a wide margin, and the boys were so happy. Nightingale had told me that after their loss last week, the boys all looked so dejected, so she was glad they finally got a win.

    *************
    This is a nice piece about prayer, and how God answered one young man’s prayer.

    “The apprentice’s miracle”

    https://gotherefor.com/offer.php?intid=17359&changestore=true

    The question has come up on here before about whether or not God ever answers the prayers of unbelievers. This seems to point to a positive answer, at least sometimes, and for His own purposes.

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  12. Michelle – I’m assuming you are referring to “California chilly” and not “Connecticut chilly”. Did you have a tough time with the winter weather when you lived in Connecticut?

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  13. Things have been going well with me getting Boy out to the bus stop three mornings a week. (Well, this is only the second week of that, but still.)

    This morning I miscalculated, thinking Boy was awake and ready, but finding that he was asleep on their couch. At least he was dressed, but he hadn’t had breakfast yet. I had waited longer than I should have to go up and check on him, so I had a moment of anxiety. But he got himself up, put his shoes on, and came downstairs, and I gave him a bowl of cereal. Although we went out several minutes later than we have been, he still had a few minutes to play with the other kids before the bus came.

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  14. I like snow to come anytime after the leaves are gone. We are not there yet. I have seen snow every month except August, I think. We were watching a couple of our daughters march with their high school band in a 4th of July parade when we saw snowflakes coming down. It was cold! They melted immediately, of course, and there was no accumulation.

    I agree, mumsee about the snow being good for the plants. The septic systems and pipes are also kept from freezing with a good layer of snow. It brightens everything up once the leaves are gone. With the early darkness, it is especially a blessing even for visibility when driving.

    We have water standing in our yard again this morning. We have had more than enough rain. Daughter in TN is in drought. Some of you are way too dry. Sure wish we could spread it around.

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  16. Kathaleena, on e of the worst snows we had in Northern Virginia occurred in October when the trees were full of leaves. Limbs breaking, power lines down, roads closed.

    The term, “prayers of unbelievers” is contradictory.

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  18. Morning! The fellas are here working away…we are going to escape to Home Depot…I’d rather go to the antique mall! 😊
    We want snow. We are under a high fire danger warning once again. Winds are howling and it is “snowing” pine needles!

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  21. Snow is beautiful. It’s also cold, and I don’t trust my footing on it. In Chicago I determined I could handle cold–even brutal cold, if I was dressed warmly enough–or snow, but not both at the same time. That is, if it was 25 degrees or so and we had snow, that was fine. But if it was 10 below, the snow would be icy, and it was also harder to wear a long-warm coat if one had to tramp through snow. It also got dirty and ugly really quickly in Chicago, so by the second day I was ready for it to melt already. It wasn’t as bad when I lived out in the country and it stayed pretty.

    The long and the short of it is I was born a desert rat and never took readily to a cold climate, though I can see its beauty. I’m glad to be a bit farther south again, where we will have snow a few times per winter, but it isn’t likely to sit on the ground for three months at a time.

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  22. And I’m wearing a sweatshirt this morning, it seems that fall is arriving right on schedule for us.

    I’m guessing Michelle acclimated fine to wherever they moved, I have this theory (based on personal observation) that our bodies, fearfully and wonderfully made, adjust rather quickly to new environments and weather. Carol, the NY native, still complains that it’s “cold” if it’s below 70; likewise with Real Estate Guy who grew up and spent all of his young adult life in Buffalo NY and another friend from Canada. My former pastor (an LA native) and his wife pastored a church for several years in CT and seemed to survive 🙂

    Individual people do seem to favor either cold or hot weather personally, though, wherever they happen to be living. I think of it as the Cheryl vs. mumsee/nancyjill phenomenon. 🙂

    When I’ve stayed with family and friends where it snowed, the one aspect of it that seemed annoying was having to put on all the extra clothing, boots, gloves, and “stuff” just to go outside 🙂 I guess it led to a lot of combined trips and better planning than I’m used to; in California we can come and go on a whim. I often found the houses too warm, though, but I suppose that was part of what they were acclimated to, also, in the winter time. I’m sure it takes some getting used to if one moves from an area with no snow to an area where it’s a major fact of life for several months out of the year.

    I’ve always disliked hot (and especially humid) weather — and the winters here never seem to feel “too” cold or even cold enough for me unless I’m at the dog park. Someone said having ancestral genes from northern Europe or other northern parts of the world may have something to do with our natural tolerance or preference for cold or hot climates. Kind of makes sense, but I don’t know that it’s scientific.

    The header photo seems to be something of a Rorschach Test. I can see a welcome mat, too. But that’s probably because I’ve been so long buried in the house projects.

    I am so glad I took today off, I slept for 10 hours after getting so little sleep (and what sleep I did get was fitful at that) the night before. Cowboy was much better last night, I did have to get up to let him out at around 3 a.m., but other than that he slept through with (from what I could tell) no long stretches of pacing.

    I’m hoping to do some more work on the patio today and maybe I can even clean/scrub down the old patio set so I can apply the weather sealer I bought. I also should probably change the heater filter and pull off the heavy top grate, it has a hair/dust catcher screen attached as an undercarriage which requires it to be taken off and cleaned (and it has very teeny-tiny screws, I think I lost one of them last year). With 3 pets, there is always a collection of pet hair to get out of there. I usually don’t have to turn the heater on until sometime in November but it would be nice to have it ready to go before it’s needed. (And every year I hold my breath when I turn it on for the first time, hoping it still works and the house doesn’t blow up.)

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  23. And Cheryl brings up a good point about walking through snow (not to mention unexpected ice). My Iowa grandparents always spent winters in California once they reached a certain age.

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  24. Congratulations on the football win!! And I liked the strategy used where he’s dressed and ready to go to practice when X picks him up. 🙂 Very clever. And it worked, at least that time it did.

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  25. It actually surprised me how well I acclimated to Chicago–not particularly liking to have anything on my hands, for instance, I’d look around in a group of people and realize I was the only one not wearing gloves. Or I’d not bother to put my coat on walking between buildings, look around and see really heavy coats but not feel especially cold.

    But I detested the sense of being cold, and ice scared me. And some people thought I was a wimp if I avoided certain things, like deciding not to go to an event because several inches of snow was predicted and I didn’t want to drive home in it. Several years into living in Chicago, I thought OK, I live here, I have to come to terms with it for at least a few more years, so what do I need to do to “survive” in Chicago? I decided I needed three things. One was a REALLY warm coat, so that it would never be “too cold.” The one I ended up buying was hot if it was warmer than zero, so I rarely wore it–but it was a comfort to know I had it for those brutal days. Two, I needed to give myself permission to say “no thanks” to any event, no matter how important (other than work and church) in winter months if I didn’t feel comfortable with the weather, and not feel guilty about it and not act like I was sinning when I gave my RSVP. I think the third one was buying a space heater, because my housemate was always nudging the thermostat about two degrees below my comfort threshold, and sometimes running a space heater in the room I was in for five or ten minutes would make a difference.

    I have sometimes found that a good practice, though: If some situation is difficult, what small changes can I make that keep it tolerable? If my budget is uncomfortably tight, what small splurges can I allow myself that will help it feel a little less onerous? (In Nashville it was going out to eat Sunday afternoons with a group from church–I couldn’t afford it, as I wasn’t earning much–but socially it was necessary for a freelancer, and so I did it anyway. The good thing was that several of us were pinching pennies, so we usually kept it inexpensive.)

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  26. DJ, I agree that we get acclimated to some extent. My dad grew up in southeastern Pennsylvania and was accustomed to cold. But after living in California for 40 years he said if it was below 60 degrees he couldn’t even take out the trash.

    I went the other way, starting in California and moving to Michigan in mid-life. When we first came here I had to wear jackets even before it got what people here consider cold, and in real winter I was bundled up in lots of heavy layers. Now I don’t put the jacket on quite as early and don’t bundle up quite as much.

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  27. I had to buy a thermometer when we moved to CT.

    I ran out one sunny morning just wearing my flannel nightgown and barefoot to toss something in the trash can before the truck came. It was sunny. How was I suppose to know it was only 32 degrees?

    I had never seen it snow before, either, and at 22, called home to announce, “It’s snowing!”

    My father laughed and my mother said, “Is that the only reason you called?” That was my parents . . . LOL

    In later years, mom would call and say, “It’s 82 here, what is it at your house?”

    Uh, mom, 5 below zero . . .

    On the other end, four years in Hawai’i also wrecked us. My sons refuse to go in the California ocean, “Why would we? We grew up where the water is warm,” explained one son.

    You adjust. I hated the humid heat more than the cold–even if we did heat our house with wood. (Because the oil radiators didn’t work well. How could my engineer abandon his wife and infants in the winter with a wood stove while he sailed the seas?

    (You’ll have to ask him. He did chop the wood when he was home . . . I used to dress the boys in two flannel footie pajamas each night and one actually slept in a sleeping bag. It was 38 degrees in the house one morning when we woke up. Brrrrrr.)

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  29. In my last house in Chicago, I would step out of my bedroom in the morning and glance right–because if I did that, I could see the garage roof and see if there was any snow on it. When I caught myself doing that one day in July, I knew I had lived there too long.

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  30. Michelle: “I ran out one sunny morning just wearing my flannel nightgown and barefoot …”

    Yep, I still remember having to get “dressed,” at least with boots and a jacket, just to fetch the morning paper from the walkway for my aunt in Idaho. 🙂 What a hassle, I remember thinking. It felt strange to have to go through all that work just to go out for a few minutes.

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  31. Btw, the article I shared earlier is not specifically about the prayers of unbelievers.

    But the mention of that had me thinking about how I did believe in God and Jesus before I was actually saved. Since very young, I believed in God, and somehow knew that Jesus was/is the Son of God. Any hostility I may have had to the gospel or born-again Christians was aimed at the idea that not everyone goes to Heaven, but not from doubting in God or Jesus.

    Later, at age 24, I surrendered my life to Jesus, and asked God to help me, and give me peace, to believe His truth, even if it was something I didn’t want to believe.

    Some would say I was saved earlier, because I did believe in Jesus and the truth of His resurrection, but that my growth as a Christian began with that surrender and prayer. Others would say my salvation didn’t happen until then.

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  35. And Kizzie, we’d say you were already, before you were born, chosen by God so perhaps we do get “glimpses” and feel a pull now and again many years before that reality, in God’s good and “just right” timing, blossoms into actual regeneration by the Spirit and a full, saving faith.

    I also remember having those rather strong glimpses and little “hints” here and there through especially my early teen and college years. I grew up in what I’d now say was a nominal Christian household, I was taught by my mom to believe in Jesus (but without a lot of questions explained very fully, so I never had a very full understanding of what that meant). We attended church and SS in fits and starts through my growing up years.

    My next door neighbor friend, on the other hand, was in church (Methodist) every single weekend with her family and appears now not to be a believer (nor does she seem to know much about the Bible or care much about finding more out about it, interestingly). But I like to believe her day of coming to faith is still yet to come.

    Who can fathom the ways of God.

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  36. Husband and son are off on a drive, taking eighteen daughter to Boise. The hospital there should admit her, and then find her a place in a psych unit somewhere for some time. Her doc prescribed a sedative for the drive. She won’t need it but she sure needed it yesterday.

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  39. The older we get, the more difficult it becomes to deal with the cold, I think. We’ve lived in this house for 19 years now, but it is just in the last couple winters that I found myself feeling particularly cold when inside, not only outside.

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  40. Praying for your loved ones Mumsee….and trusting the Lord to right what is wrong….
    I have been known to walk outside in the snow in my bare feet….snow can be warm and insulating you know….no really!!
    Guys are working away and we went to the Depot…purchased new blinds for the office and a new toilet seat…sounds fun huh? Oh and then we had lunch at Rosie’s Diner…. 😊

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  42. Karen’s article was so long, I didn’t finish it. But I identified the problem.
    “Prayer moves within the natural laws which govern life.”
    Prayer splits the Red Sea and stills a raging storm.
    I think I told you before of my encounter with an angel.
    I may do that again if I get a chance..

    Did I tell you about the miracle of meeting Elvera Collins on the stairs of FBC Columbia?

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  43. This was posted on FB by my cousin this morning. We just never know.

    So yesterday I posted about God defying logic and anxiety. This isn’t necessarily my testimony to tell, but I was just a simple tool in the toolbox. My main job for the Delta Dash race is the course volunteers. I help map the course and place volunteers for each station. Yesterday, I had about a dozen volunteers that didn’t show up which left me scrambling to separate and disperse as best I could at the last minute. One of my main girls, Ashley P, brings a lot of her Paramedic/medical students to help, so I like to keep her around me. And at the last minute (and against my judgment) I placed her on the farthest point of the course.

    An hour into the race there was a call over the radio for someone “struggling.” The ambulance crew that was beside me for first aid, took off. That’s all I knew at that point. Later, I learned that a man was in cardiac arrest in the area Ashley was in.

    Not only did this man fall out near Ashley, a paramedic, there was a paramedic running behind him as a racer. He’s the one that saw him fallout and immediately started CPR, he had no pulse. Additionally, all of this happened within 200 feet of where we had another med unit stationed. Everyone sprung into action and he was eventually airlifted to USA.

    We went to USA after the race and met with his wife. What we’ve determined during this chain of events is that God was in control this whole time.

    Had this man’s heart stopped a quarter of a mile down the path, there could have been a different outcome. Had the paramedic not been behind him and Ashley been with me instead of the obstacle, different outcome. This man was a last minute entry into the race…had the man been at home, different outcome.

    From what I understand, he is awake and conscious, and while he isn’t out of the woods, he is alive.

    There are many more events that unfolded and stories I may not know. But all I know is just last week I felt like I lost my fire and prayed to get it back. I prayed to feel Jesus back in my heart and life again. If this didn’t open my eyes and my heart, nothing will. Won’t He do it!

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  44. I lost my comment. Not good.

    The horse, Black Jack, belonged to Jeff Davis. This photo was in the Museum at Stone Mountain to show scale. They have many photos to show the process of carving which are interesting. I believe the photo I sent to AJ showed a man to the side of the buckle that helped the viewer see the scale better. I guess the man got cropped for the website header photo.

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  46. I have posted this before. I know because I found it on my word processor:

    Answered Prayer
    A strange thing happened to me years ago
    I was a seminary student in Ft. Worth, ’59 or ’60. I went down with a buddy to work at a mission similar to the one in Same Kind of Different as Me. We talked at a man, and he trusted Christ for his salvation. He wanted us to go talk to his wife. We did, in our car. But he was afraid of leaving his car on the street in that section of Ft. Worth. Afraid someone would steal it. A reasonable fear. To keep someone from running of with his car, I removed the distributor rotor and put it in my pocket.
    I don’t recall the conversation, but I think his wife also trusted Christ. Then we returned to get his car. Now putting a rotor into a distributor is no big deal. Like putting a three-prong plug into a receptacle. You can’t do it wrong. So, I installed the rotor and closed the cap. The car wouldn’t start. I checked again. No way the car would start. I prayed; not because I feared for anything, but we had just witnessed to this guy, and apparently broke his car.
    After a while , a guy came up. He said “What’s the matter?” I told him. He took the rotor, did something and walked away. The car started immediately.
    I had things to do, and didn’t think about it again until maybe 20-25 years later when I was preparing a SS lesson. That was a weird thing to happen. Not that a guy helped, but the way it happened. He just appeared as I was running out of options. He didn’t dilly around but took the rotor and went under the hood. Less than a minute, he was gone.
    Now. Let’s consider how that usually happens. A guy walks up. “What’s wrong?” I tell him. He says, “Let’s see it.” He inserts it, and says, “Now try it”. The engine roars, and he starts to leave. I say, “Thanks a lot”, and reaching for my wallet, I say, “Let me give you something”. He says, “Naw, glad to help”. And he leaves, knowing he helped someone.
    Other than answered prayer, I began to wonder if God sent an angel to fix that problem. The adversary was obviously spiritual. I knew how to fix a distributor rotor. No big deal. I had done it before. Something/someone was working against me. This was unusual, not only because he came and went so suddenly, but the unnatural way it happened.

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  48. Kizzie (3:44), I think you’re right, which also was why my grandparents headed to the west coast for winters in their later years. Not only is snow and ice hard and dangerous to travel across, either by car or foot, the cold can become a health concern, especially for those living alone in old, old houses (which my remaining grandparents were at that time).

    My grandfather’s house was especially primitive with an outhouse. I remember we had to put heated stones at the foot of the bed once when I was a kid. I think that’s the same night the ceiling began falling on us during a bad storm and I concluded the Sky, indeed, was falling — as my mom had just read to me in Chicken Little.

    Janice, I sympathize with the weather you’re having. We’ve had some horribly hot Septembers and Octobers through the years. We’re warming up again next week, I see, but probably only into the 80s.

    I’d say God moves usually within the natural laws — and he grants us the privilege to participate in his works via prayer, though he always is the primary and “first” mover of all things that come to pass.

    Kim, amazing set of “circumstances” — all that God hath ordained. And everyone was in their God ordained place.

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  49. Interesting, because my grandfather was an avid walker and when he was out here during the winter he’d walk and walk and walk. I don’t know that he ever drove, even in Iowa. He died when I was about 12. I’ll have to ask one of my older cousins.

    But he’d walk very long distances sometimes, according to one of my cousins, and he probably made use of a bus or two on his excursions. He loved visiting the Watts Towers, which fascinated him, and Farmer’s Market.

    After his death, my mom, who was especially close to her dad, said she was sometimes taken aback when she’d see a large-framed, tall gentleman wearing a longish black coat, flannel shirt and a well-worn fedora-style hat, using a hand-carved wooden cane (which I still have, leaning up against my fireplace), walking in the neighborhood. I think she just seemed to see older men who briefly of him, even if all the details weren’t there when she looked a bit closer.

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  51. We’re supposed to reach 90 here, too. I told my husband it’s trying to get it over with while it’s still September. For the Midwest, last day of September, that is very warm!

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  54. Re: Acclimating to weather- My first experience with the cold came when I visited my sister in Missouri in December. It had been below zero for a week or so. One day it was sunny, and being from Arizona, thought the sun always warmed things up, so I stepped out on the front porch of her house and got a surprise. It was -3° and not warm at all!

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  56. I lost my post again. I do not have time for this!

    The young lady in the photo is my new friend at church who arranged for Michelle to speak and stay at the Baptist retirement facility. She is a retired missionary who had read Michelle’s book, Mrs. Oswald Chambers, and loved it even before she knew Michelle was my friend and would be in town. It was a God thing how it all worked out.

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  57. When Michelle was here I was amused by Miss Bosley’s reaction. Michelle is taller than I am and she wore a long skirt. I think Miss Bosley felt a bit intimidated by that combination. We don’t entertain so the only people Miss Bosley sees on a regular basis are Art, Wesley and my brother and the once or twice a year furnace or A/C guy. They all wear pants and most often I wear slacks, too. Miss Bosley must have wondered if a skirt has a lap to sit in, lol! I do wear dresses to church once in awhile but I change as soon as I get home so she won’t snag my nicer clothes.

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  58. Mid forties here.

    I could not find a rotor or a distributor. Even though I have watched the Sound of Music several times. Though, upon thinking, the distributor is probably somewhere amid the spark plugs.

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  59. hmm, seems I have lost the ability to get in my email. Seems they have “improved” their service and expect me to remember my password. Silly folk. Fortunately, nobody emails me.

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  61. I’ve washed down the old wooden patio furniture — only 2 chairs and one is a little rickety but still usable (there was also a plain back-less bench that came with it that I never got around to putting together, it’s still in the garage). I have a third chair out there I’d picked up at an end-of-summer sale, it’s black metal with cushions so it works fine too. But the wood ones feel more comfy to me (and to the cat).

    I’ll let that dry and then use some TSP/water mixture on it again to really scrub it and try to get some of the water stains out. Then I’ll seal it. I bought some new red cushions (seat/back combo ones) to put on them when they’re all done. For being as old as it is — and as inexpensive as it was, as I recall, on a Target special 20+ years ago — it still looks cute, if a tad wobbly.

    I also tossed a bunch of old insect repellant cans and candles, over a year old now, so that helped to clear things off also. It’s going to look nice out there soon, I think. First the front porch, now the back patio. Slowly coming along.

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  62. Moved some big Mexican clay planter pots from the garage out onto the patio. I will need to plant them with something, but they’re kind of decorative just by themselves, too.

    I hung a wind chime I’ve had for a couple years on a shepherd’s hook next to the patio — I’ve mostly done away with wind chimes, I know they’re annoying to some people and can look ‘cluttery’ on a house, but this one really is so tasteful, and it has just one note, it “bongs” the sound of a west coast ocean buoy which I think is such a haunting and distinctive coastal sound. It’s large, heavy black metal, triangular in shape, so it should takes a stiff breeze to set it in motion. And there’s a way to silence it on windy nights. But so far, even with a cool breeze this afternoon, it’s not “bonging”, so that’s good. I bought it a couple years ago but never put it up as the house work had launched and I wasn’t sure exactly where to put it anyway. I decided I didn’t want it hanging from the front porch (though it could look ok there, actually). I considered putting the shepherd’s hook & chime maybe in the flower bed next to the front steps going up to the porch … We’ll see how this patio position works, I can easily move it around.

    I rubbed some TSP-mixed water solution on the patio table top and chairs, just to make sure everything is well scrubbed — a couple stains in the old wood hardly show now. But the sun is already going down so I won’t get to the step of putting on the sealer today. I think I can get that done during the week, maybe, looks like I’ll have at least 1 night meeting to cover (which means some free time earlier in the day).

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