I need a haircut.
Why is that important?
Every barbershop in Guilford County is closed.
My fault. I learned in the AF, and it has been a working principle all my life: “Do it now” That is, if you have something to do, do it.
But I messed around and may need curlers before this is over.
I kept wondering why what was showing up on my feed was the thread from a week ago. Oh, right thread, wrong date. I hope AJ is beginning to feel a little better. Hard when the whole household is sick! (My husband and I experienced that, though for me it was a somewhat light case, simply completely sapping me of energy and taking away my appetite–but it was the most tired I have ever felt in my life for a week straight, I think. In other words, I have felt that tired before when I’m tired, but never just felt exhausted for a week and a half.)
Chas, yesterday my husband used his electric razor (for his beard) to give himself a haircut, calling me in to do the parts in the very back. Having been sick most of the time since Christmas, he was already overdue for a haircut before this lockdown started.
Good morning all. Another beautiful day in the neighborhood and the sun came up, surprise surprise!
Reading in Revelation 7 this morning which took my thoughts back to Chas and Romans 11. At the time, I thought, well, it means what it says. Roscuro came up with an explanation which I have certainly heard before but I still thought, it means what it says. And then in reading Rev 7 I thought, it means what it says.
Knocking out my Continuing Education for Alabama today. Make good use of your time.
I took the Quarantine Test. After days of wearing t-shirt dresses and pajamas I decided to try on a pair of real pants. They still fit.
We once had a man come several times to the tiny family church who insisted that Revelation 7 and the parallel passage in Revelation 14, meant what it said, and therefore, only 144,000 people would ever be saved. He left when our pastor refused to countenance his interpretation. I remember the ensuing discussion about correct Biblical interpretation.
The Jews thought they had figured out what the prophecies of the coming Anointed one meant, but they did not recognize him when he came, because they interpreted the prophecies of a King to mean what it appeared on the surface to say. They failed to consider the prophecies of a suffering, dying servant alongside those of the coming King; they did not link Isaiah 9 with Isaiah 53. No Biblical prophecy should be interpreted alone. Other Scriptures must always be consulted, which is why I brought in other passages to interpret Romans 11.
Similarly, Revelation 7 cannot be interpreted outside the rest of Scripture. It would be tragic if only 144,000 people were able to be saved, and that interpretation would directly contradict the next vision given in the same chapter of a great multitude that no one could number. Even if the passage were only interpreted as only 144,000 Jews would be saved, that would still be tragic, as the ethnic group has comprised hundreds of millions over the centuries. If only 144,000 Jews could be saved, then over 5 percent of that number were already saved in the earliest days of the Church (Acts 2:41, 47; 4:4). So the passage cannot be saying what it appears on the surface to say. It must be interpreted in the light of all Scripture.
The 144,000 passage in Revelation 7 closely resembles a far different book, the book of Numbers, which also lists the twelve tribes by number. But Numbers does not tell the entire population of each tribe. Rather, only the men of fighting or working age are numbered. Nowhere in the Bible where people are numbered, is the entire population numbered, not even in the feeding of the five thousand. So, it would be a mistake to assume that the 144,000 in Revelations 7 and 14 is numbering the entire population of those sealed by God. It is clearly a representative number, just as the four and twenty elders around the throne of God are a representative number.
Morning! The sun is shining here too Mumsee and the air is fresh to breathe in! More walking today and I will drive over to the post office. Then I will be cutting out my new appliqué pattern while I watch Monk! 😊
AJ we continue to lift you up in prayer and are in hopes that you are feeling better ❤️
My cousin posted a photo of his apple pie with vanilla ice cream on top…he said he would probably weigh 600 pounds after this is all over with…my reply…”what a way to go”…tongue in cheek!! 😂
Hey all. Good…. whatever it is…. It’s hard to keep track.
The girls are continuing to improve and feel a little better each day. I was the last to be infected with whatever this is, so my recovery is lagging. The vomiting seems to have stopped, and the diarrhea has lessened. So today I hope to try some food that isn’t bread or crackers. I even stripped the bedding and have washed that this AM, the first activity I’ve had in about 10 days. I feel that’s progress, pathetic as it is. I had to stop a few times and just catch my breathe, but I finished my task. Hopefully improvement continues. 🙂
We’ll see how things go.
And just a personal note to all of you. Your prayers on our behalf are most appreciated. I cannot express the deep gratitude I have for them for those of you petitioning the Lord on our behalf. Thank you all, so much, every one of you.
Roscuro, of course there is more to it. But for those of us who are not scholars, we are still expected to pay attention and in so doing, we often take it for the first layer, knowing there are many more as God has much depth.
Aren’t the JW’s thinking the 144,000 is the total? Kind of a challenge for them as they have more than that number on their rolls. Roles. Whatever.
But yes, as I read it, which may or may not be accurate, after the Gentiles have come around, one hundred forty four thousand will come from the Israelites. 12,000 from each tribe. Does not say if that is the males between such and such ages or not. Nor does it say how many from the beginning of Hebrew life until the end. Irrelevant to me. What it does tell me is that God is steadfast and continues to love us and will love us to the end. He does not give up. He does not say, “You Hebrews failed me so I am so done with you!” That sounds kind of like the mythological Norse gods though.
Mumsee, if you got from my post on Romans 11 that I think God is saying, “You Hebrews failed me so I am done with you!”, I would recommend reading it again.
By the way, the man who came to the church was not JW, although the similarity of his interpretation to the JWs was noted at the time. No, he had come up with that interpretation independently, a not uncommon phenomenon. Over the years in that tiny church, various independent interpreters have come to our church to try to impose their unique interpretations on Scripture. Paul would say they came in secretly to spy out our liberty in Christ and seek to bring us into their bondage (Galatians 2:4). One of them left when the pastor would not listen to his interpretation that consumption of intoxicating beverages were absolutely forbidden. Another left after the pastor rejected his interpretation that the church should financially support him fully, even though he was able bodied and not carrying out any kind of ministry. Yet another left when the pastor would not modify his expositional style of preaching in order to spend a series of sermons preaching against the man’s pet peeves. Still another left when the pastor disagreed with the man’s insistence that the word ‘Shekinah’ should not be used because it was a feminine noun and therefore made God to have feminine attributes.* These cases spanned three different pastors in the two and a half decades I regularly attended the church, and each time, the church, following the admonitions in the New Testament, did not give space for these unsound interpretations (Galatians 2:5). Rather, the encounters spurred them on to warn and more carefully instruct their flock in how to discern the truth. I have had no formal Bible school training, my degree is a Bachelor of Science in Nursing, not Theology, but I have been trained as a lay Christian under the preaching of appointed pastors in interpreting the Scripture.
*Shekinah is a feminine Hebrew noun, but so too is the Hebrew noun for wisdom, Chokhmah, hence the personification of Wisdom as a woman. Clearly, the Bible itself has no problem using a feminine noun to describe an attribute of God. Both male and female were created in God’s image, and the orthodox theological position is that God is neither male nor female.
Back from the post office, filled the car up with gas, stopped in Walmart and found my neighbor some eggs. Not too many out and about (that’s good) and everyone of the store employees were so kind…. 😊
Long day already, with our first coronavirus death locally (former legendary football coach at the local Catholic high school). I woke up to a text about that from a port contact so I have been racing all morning. Prayers for his family appreciated.
It did get me out of the zoom assignment.
Chaos reigns.
Although it hasn’t stopped the cat from jumping on to the desk to try to bat a few things off onto the floor.
Nice story about your neighbor yesterday, RKessler. What a blessing all around.
I’m all set up for teaching using Zoom. I tried yesterday and got very frustrated, as things weren’t working right. Tutorials on the tech support pages always seem to assume prior knowledge, but with me, I need it all spelled out. Forget intuiting what isn’t explicitly written.
I didn’t have any trouble joining the Zoom meeting one co-owner of the music studio where I work invited me to when we did a trial run yesterday, but I couldn’t reverse it and start my own meeting and invite her.
We tried it again today, troubleshooting various steps, and I finally was able to “invite” her to a meeting I created. Then I ended the meeting, closed my laptop, and went and did other things. After about 15 minutes, by her prior recommendation, I set up a new meeting with her, and that worked, too.
After our first successful meeting with me inviting her, she walked me back through all the steps we had taken, and I wrote down EVERYTHING. That was key to getting my second meeting with her to work, as well.
This is such a relief that I know I can do this now and keep “meeting” with my students — and now actually *see* what they’re doing at the piano, rather than only being able to hear them over the phone — during this period until we can meet again in person.
My husband is my IT guy–and honestly I’m not sure how I did freelance work before I married him. And he’ll do something on my computer and then explain, “When that happens, go here and here and do this and that,” but my brain doesn’t work that way, that I can remember eight months from now some technological line of events, or even remember what gets done for what glitch! I can trouble-shoot a few things, but I’m quickly beyond my expertise.
AJ, it sounds like what my pastor and two in his family had. It put two in the hospital. It is frightening, but you will survive.
Unfortunately I now have diarrhea. Good thing is I have no where to go except to the bathroom! It started yesterday. I have not been able to reach my brother. Maybe he is out plowing the lower 40 today. The weather is right for it. But still, I feel concerned. He is an hour away.
DJ, regarding your questions last night about Zoom.
When you click the link you get, it takes you to a specific Zoom meeting space set up by the host who sent you the link. If you haven’t connected before, it will ask you your name the first time. You can enter anything you want, real name, nickname, whatever. That name will be displayed so everyone knows you are there.
Then it will ask you if you want to display video or not. If you say no it doesn’t matter if you’ve covered your camera or not.
Then it will ask you if you want to use your computer for audio. If you say yes, the audio will be on your computer speaker and you can speak using your computer microphone. There’s a mute control on the screen so you can mute or unmute your mike any time.
If you say no to using your computer for audio, then you have to call in on your phone. It will give you a list of phone numbers you can call. On the phone it will ask you to enter the meeting number and participant number displayed on your screen. Then it will connect the audio. You can mute or unmute your phone normally.
Once you’re connected, everyone can hear anyone else who talks who’s not muted. The host can mute people too if they get distracted and start making noise without realizing it’s disrupting the meeting.
What’s displayed on your screen depends on whether you select “Speaker Mode” or “Gallery Mode”. If you select “Speaker Mode”, it will display the video view of whoever’s speaking on most of the screen, and will switch whose video is displaying whenever it detects a new speaker speaking. (It can get a little hairy if more than one person is talking at once!) Everyone else’s video is displayed in a line of thumbnails at the top or bottom of the screen.
If you select “Gallery” mode, it will display everyone’s video in a grid. That’s how I display our prayer meetings, because there are usually only four or five people there and I can see all of them at once, which makes it feel a bit like we’re all in a room together.
If someone elected not to display their video, it shows a black window with their name on it in place of an actual video view of them.
It takes a little getting used to, but I’ve gotten comfortable with it at work where we use WebEx, which works similarly. Since we’re all working from home now, we actually turn our cameras on more often in online meetings because it’s such a treat to see each other. But if you’re not comfortable having a camera showing your home office you can always choose not to display video.
Besides just meeting together and seeing/hearing each other, someone can share what’s on their computer screen so everyone else can see it, useful for groups working on something together, or for a leader to display presentation slides. I use WebEx that way for work all the time.
I hope that helps. There are a lot of demos online to let you see what it looks like.
6, I’m sorry to hear your Zoom experience didn’t work well. I’ve never hosted a meeting using Zoom, so I don’t know how hard or easy it is. I hope you can get the kinks out.
Remember recently I mentioned my disappointment about Nightingale’s devout Christian friend Mom-of-5 going overboard on Facebook with anti-vaccination posts (the kind that claim that the CDC and the media are in the pocket of “Big Pharma”, and coming from questionable and known-to-be-bad sources)? Well, now she is sharing a bunch of things claiming that this virus is not nearly as bad as the media and government say it is, as well as saying that it is “not naturally occurring”, but is some form of biological weapon. She says that, because of churches closing for the duration, this is a way of taking away our freedom of religion.
When I commented on one of her posts yesterday, she said something about Christians “parroting TV news”, not realizing that she is parroting these unreliable and bad sources. She then said that the mainstream media is all lies, and that it bothers her that so many Christians lack discernment. So I have been praying for God to give her some real discernment.
That comment about other Christians lacking discernment made me wonder if that is a common accusation among cultish Christians.
And remember the man I mentioned from my church who questions the critical thinking skills of those he disagrees with? Yesterday he posted something about the stimulus bill, and said that if you wonder where the money is going to come from, then you don’t really understand how money works, but it’s not your fault because you believe the myths about money you’ve been taught since receiving your first piggy bank. I have to admit that my pride – not wanting him to look down on me again – kept me from asking what he meant.
So, does anyone understand what he may have been getting at, and if so, could you explain it for us here in the cheap seats? 🙂
Kevin, thanks for your information at 3:02. I know you weren’t addressing me there, but that gives good tips about how I could answer some questions my piano families might have when we start Zoom lessons.
One question I have: am I understanding correctly that my students don’t need to have Zoom downloaded on their own devices to be able to participate in lessons I host on the platform? Just clicking on the link in the email I send them is enough to get them into the “meeting”?
I have another question, too, not about tech, but about capitalization.
In my 4:59 post, I wrote, “One question I have: am…”
What I wonder is whether “am” should be capitalized or not, being that it follows a colon. I’ve seen it both ways — sometimes capitalizing, sometimes not — and want to know which usage is correct, or whether it depends on the context, or… ?
Kevin, my son mentioned he uses WebEx with meetings at his workplace.
Oh, by the way, I had to laugh at myself when I read something in Kevin’s post at 3:02. I read this sentence: “You can mute or unmute your phone normally.” I was reading silently, but could still “hear” myself pronouncing the words in my head.
You know the /u/ sound in “mute” and “unmute”? When I got to the word “phone” in that sentence, I accidentally read it as “phune,” with the same /u/ sound.
Which reminded me of hearing Inspector Clouseau’s pronunciations of certain words. Can’t you just hear him saying, “You can mute or unmute your phune…”? 😀
Kizzie, I met a mom at a library program a couple of months ago. We happened to be sitting next to each other at the presentation, and we struck up a conversation before it began.
Turns out she is a homeschooling mom, as well, and as soon as she learned that I was, she immediately started in about anti-vax stuff, asking me questions, informing me about her activism, etc., on that front.
I felt extremely uncomfortable with how she came across, and obviously with the assumption that I would be on board with her extreme views, like homeschooling and anti-vax go hand in hand.
Um, no. My views are not so black and white. And one can’t decide that a certain demographic of the population is enlightened and everyone else needs educating.
She said she’d email me more information, but thankfully she hasn’t, so I think she could tell I didn’t really want that. I didn’t come right out and tell her “No,” but perhaps she was seeing my discomfort with the conversation and decided to back off.
(The reason she had my email address in the first place was because we’d been talking about piano first, and I mentioned that I teach, and then gave her one of my business cards. The vax discussion came after that. I’m sure glad I’m not getting vax information/propaganda through my business account! Or anywhere.)
6 Arrows, I think Zoom does need to be downloaded, but it downloads itself automatically the first time you go to a Zoom meeting. So your students don’t need to take a prior action to install it. Maybe they should just click the link a few minutes early the first time to give it time to download and set up before lesson time.
Honestly, even though our first Zoom prayer meeting was only 10 days ago, the initial setup was so painless that I hardly remember it.
Caveat: That was on a Windows computer. If they’re using a phone it might need them to install an app first. I’ll try using my phone for the prayer meeting tomorrow and see what happens.
I’m pretty sure that anything not a desktop computer needs to download the app for Zoom. I had to do so on my Chromebook, but not on our Windows 10 desktop.
Thanks for all the zoom advice, I did click the invite link in the email last night and it appeared to download zoom so I think I have the access on my laptop now. As I said, I escaped being thrown into the deep end with it today for the port news conference, but it’ll come up shortly again, I’m sure — in fact my church women’s group is hosting a prayer meeting via zoom tonight, so there you go.
This has been an exhausting and emotional day with the loss of our local football coach to the virus (his wife also is very ill, hospitalized and not doing well, but it’s not confirmed, only being assumed because of her exposure, that it’s also the virus); and we also had to scramble to gather the latest info on the arrival of the navy hospital ship tomorrow morning. It’ll be docked at the cruise terminal which is close to the bridge and the center of town, so it’ll be very visible on the waterfront.
More work to do still before today ends, though, have to pre-write the ship’s arrival story so we can post it immediately tomorrow. I’ll be down there but I’m assuming they’ll have some way to keep media people spread out from each other, should be interesting. We’ll have a couple photographers spread out so we can get some nice shots of it as it comes into the harbor.
You can find interior photos on the US Navy Twitter site–and all Navy photos are free to use to the public since the Navy pays photographers to take them. Just an FYI. I may have retweeted one today myself. 🙂
okay, I have been taking care of things. I sent off my medical information to PNG which I need to do before I return. Is that faith??
What I haven’t done yet, and it is next on my list. is to download windows 10. I still have windows 7 on my computer. I purchased windows 10 professional from someone, still in the shrinkwrap. so should be okay. Until I worked a while ago at deleting things from my computer, I did not have enough free memory to download windows 10
So… anyone have any advice for me?? I know I should first do a backup. What else??
I guess I’ll get to do Zoom video sooner than I expected. I got an email today from the ESL program at the college saying our meeting for tomorrow is on – but on Zoom, not in person. (They match up ESL students with volunteer “mentors” from the student body and staff, and I’m a mentor, this semester for a woman from Sudan, though unfortunately we only got to meet once before spring break, and then all in-person contact was ended because of COVID-19. We talked on the phone last week but I find it much harder to understand ESL students on the phone, just as when I was a student in Spain I found it hard to understand Spanish on the phone or radio even though I did fine in person.) I discovered today that the work laptop I was issued has a camera. So I really don’t have an excuse not to figure out how to use it.
Son just mentioned his company announced a 20% pay cut for all employees around the globe for the next three months, suspension of merit increase and stopping of matching 401k’s . And so the snowball continues to grow.
How are the supermarkets where the rest of you live? Here they are mostly back to normal. Aldi’s had everything on my list, although the grape tomatoes were such poor quality I didn’t buy any, and Walmart had everything on my list (I go there for the stuff Aldi’s doesn’t have) except chicken gizzards (for the dog).They even had a few packages of toilet paper (not that I needed any). I did notice they were out of webcams (only because I was getting something from the same shelf, and I had just recently bought my son a webcam for his birthday so I knew where they normally would be) – I suppose a lot more people are making use of them these days for online meetings/classes.
Thanks Michelle, we’re planning also to embed this video in the story I’m writing tomorrow:
Our Orange County Reg military beat reporter is hoping also to get some phone comments tomorrow from the ship’s spokesman as the ship comes into harbor. I’ll have to be out there early. I will have to get dressed.
Kizzie, your 4:03 post could have been written of my sister, every word, down to being the mother of five and her thinking that she is extra super discerning (but that women in general are “easily deceived”).
This is laugh-out-loud funny, a “free photo booth” with a computer-sounding woman who is obviously watching her customers and telling them what to do based on what she sees. Some of it is PG, but most of it is simply funny. (The very last customer, she tells him to remove his shirt and then his pants, and he strips to his underwear. If you stop it before it goes that far, you haven’t missed anything afterward since that’s the last one.)
Pauline, Mrs B was out this morning at Aldi’s and Meijer (a Great Lakes regional chain a bit like WalMart). She took advantage of early opening times for “elderly” customers (over 60).
Meijer had a modified checkout procedure, organized like a bank with a single line feeding all registers instead of a separate line for each register. Employees supervised the checkout line and enforced 6-foot spacing.
Shelves appear stocked more normally for the most part. Hand sanitizer, alcohol, wipes, etc., are still in short supply. At Meijer the toilet paper and paper towels are still scarce, but were available at Aldi’s.
I made pizza yesterday and a big batch of chicken soup base today. I made a batch of the soup with noodles and the other batches of broth and chicken went in the freezer for the future.
I have no idea how our stores look, since we have not been to any since early last week. I am holding out until I really need something. I did order a few things online from Walmart, because I am out of baby aspirin. That will come in early April.
mumsee, 7:41, ouch; that sounds similar to what happened to us 10-12 years ago now, although the pay cut wasn’t, thankfully, that steep.
Just had a positive case for coronavirus on the Air Force housing base in town, so that’s now on alert. I just rewrote the press release, it came over very late, about 40 minutes ago. Not much more we could do with that one for now.
Wandering Views 
Good morning Everyone
How is AJ this morning?
I’m praying that he is better.
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Good morning! I almost typed Good mooing. I have not yet had coffee. It’s cooling.
Here is something good to listen to this a.m.
https://www.wsmv.com/news/a-group-of-nashville-studio-singers-perform-an-epic-cell/article_2245fbf8-6eb2-11ea-9be3-db6cec04c8f3.html
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I’m going over to my online Bible study now.
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I need a haircut.
Why is that important?
Every barbershop in Guilford County is closed.
My fault. I learned in the AF, and it has been a working principle all my life: “Do it now” That is, if you have something to do, do it.
But I messed around and may need curlers before this is over.
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I kept wondering why what was showing up on my feed was the thread from a week ago. Oh, right thread, wrong date. I hope AJ is beginning to feel a little better. Hard when the whole household is sick! (My husband and I experienced that, though for me it was a somewhat light case, simply completely sapping me of energy and taking away my appetite–but it was the most tired I have ever felt in my life for a week straight, I think. In other words, I have felt that tired before when I’m tired, but never just felt exhausted for a week and a half.)
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Chas, yesterday my husband used his electric razor (for his beard) to give himself a haircut, calling me in to do the parts in the very back. Having been sick most of the time since Christmas, he was already overdue for a haircut before this lockdown started.
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QoD
Where does $2,000,000,000,000 come from?
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Monopoly money.
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Good morning all. Another beautiful day in the neighborhood and the sun came up, surprise surprise!
Reading in Revelation 7 this morning which took my thoughts back to Chas and Romans 11. At the time, I thought, well, it means what it says. Roscuro came up with an explanation which I have certainly heard before but I still thought, it means what it says. And then in reading Rev 7 I thought, it means what it says.
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Knocking out my Continuing Education for Alabama today. Make good use of your time.
I took the Quarantine Test. After days of wearing t-shirt dresses and pajamas I decided to try on a pair of real pants. They still fit.
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We once had a man come several times to the tiny family church who insisted that Revelation 7 and the parallel passage in Revelation 14, meant what it said, and therefore, only 144,000 people would ever be saved. He left when our pastor refused to countenance his interpretation. I remember the ensuing discussion about correct Biblical interpretation.
The Jews thought they had figured out what the prophecies of the coming Anointed one meant, but they did not recognize him when he came, because they interpreted the prophecies of a King to mean what it appeared on the surface to say. They failed to consider the prophecies of a suffering, dying servant alongside those of the coming King; they did not link Isaiah 9 with Isaiah 53. No Biblical prophecy should be interpreted alone. Other Scriptures must always be consulted, which is why I brought in other passages to interpret Romans 11.
Similarly, Revelation 7 cannot be interpreted outside the rest of Scripture. It would be tragic if only 144,000 people were able to be saved, and that interpretation would directly contradict the next vision given in the same chapter of a great multitude that no one could number. Even if the passage were only interpreted as only 144,000 Jews would be saved, that would still be tragic, as the ethnic group has comprised hundreds of millions over the centuries. If only 144,000 Jews could be saved, then over 5 percent of that number were already saved in the earliest days of the Church (Acts 2:41, 47; 4:4). So the passage cannot be saying what it appears on the surface to say. It must be interpreted in the light of all Scripture.
The 144,000 passage in Revelation 7 closely resembles a far different book, the book of Numbers, which also lists the twelve tribes by number. But Numbers does not tell the entire population of each tribe. Rather, only the men of fighting or working age are numbered. Nowhere in the Bible where people are numbered, is the entire population numbered, not even in the feeding of the five thousand. So, it would be a mistake to assume that the 144,000 in Revelations 7 and 14 is numbering the entire population of those sealed by God. It is clearly a representative number, just as the four and twenty elders around the throne of God are a representative number.
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Morning! The sun is shining here too Mumsee and the air is fresh to breathe in! More walking today and I will drive over to the post office. Then I will be cutting out my new appliqué pattern while I watch Monk! 😊
AJ we continue to lift you up in prayer and are in hopes that you are feeling better ❤️
My cousin posted a photo of his apple pie with vanilla ice cream on top…he said he would probably weigh 600 pounds after this is all over with…my reply…”what a way to go”…tongue in cheek!! 😂
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Hey all. Good…. whatever it is…. It’s hard to keep track.
The girls are continuing to improve and feel a little better each day. I was the last to be infected with whatever this is, so my recovery is lagging. The vomiting seems to have stopped, and the diarrhea has lessened. So today I hope to try some food that isn’t bread or crackers. I even stripped the bedding and have washed that this AM, the first activity I’ve had in about 10 days. I feel that’s progress, pathetic as it is. I had to stop a few times and just catch my breathe, but I finished my task. Hopefully improvement continues. 🙂
We’ll see how things go.
And just a personal note to all of you. Your prayers on our behalf are most appreciated. I cannot express the deep gratitude I have for them for those of you petitioning the Lord on our behalf. Thank you all, so much, every one of you.
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Good to see you, the real. Rest and recover. Along with helping your afflicted ones. Tough place. But God….
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Good to hear some good news this morning, Aj.
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Roscuro, of course there is more to it. But for those of us who are not scholars, we are still expected to pay attention and in so doing, we often take it for the first layer, knowing there are many more as God has much depth.
Aren’t the JW’s thinking the 144,000 is the total? Kind of a challenge for them as they have more than that number on their rolls. Roles. Whatever.
But yes, as I read it, which may or may not be accurate, after the Gentiles have come around, one hundred forty four thousand will come from the Israelites. 12,000 from each tribe. Does not say if that is the males between such and such ages or not. Nor does it say how many from the beginning of Hebrew life until the end. Irrelevant to me. What it does tell me is that God is steadfast and continues to love us and will love us to the end. He does not give up. He does not say, “You Hebrews failed me so I am so done with you!” That sounds kind of like the mythological Norse gods though.
I am happy to serve the Risen Savior.
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Cell phone music: https://www.wsmv.com/news/a-group-of-nashville-studio-singers-perform-an-epic-cell/article_2245fbf8-6eb2-11ea-9be3-db6cec04c8f3.html
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Mumsee, if you got from my post on Romans 11 that I think God is saying, “You Hebrews failed me so I am done with you!”, I would recommend reading it again.
By the way, the man who came to the church was not JW, although the similarity of his interpretation to the JWs was noted at the time. No, he had come up with that interpretation independently, a not uncommon phenomenon. Over the years in that tiny church, various independent interpreters have come to our church to try to impose their unique interpretations on Scripture. Paul would say they came in secretly to spy out our liberty in Christ and seek to bring us into their bondage (Galatians 2:4). One of them left when the pastor would not listen to his interpretation that consumption of intoxicating beverages were absolutely forbidden. Another left after the pastor rejected his interpretation that the church should financially support him fully, even though he was able bodied and not carrying out any kind of ministry. Yet another left when the pastor would not modify his expositional style of preaching in order to spend a series of sermons preaching against the man’s pet peeves. Still another left when the pastor disagreed with the man’s insistence that the word ‘Shekinah’ should not be used because it was a feminine noun and therefore made God to have feminine attributes.* These cases spanned three different pastors in the two and a half decades I regularly attended the church, and each time, the church, following the admonitions in the New Testament, did not give space for these unsound interpretations (Galatians 2:5). Rather, the encounters spurred them on to warn and more carefully instruct their flock in how to discern the truth. I have had no formal Bible school training, my degree is a Bachelor of Science in Nursing, not Theology, but I have been trained as a lay Christian under the preaching of appointed pastors in interpreting the Scripture.
*Shekinah is a feminine Hebrew noun, but so too is the Hebrew noun for wisdom, Chokhmah, hence the personification of Wisdom as a woman. Clearly, the Bible itself has no problem using a feminine noun to describe an attribute of God. Both male and female were created in God’s image, and the orthodox theological position is that God is neither male nor female.
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I agree with all of that.
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Back from the post office, filled the car up with gas, stopped in Walmart and found my neighbor some eggs. Not too many out and about (that’s good) and everyone of the store employees were so kind…. 😊
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Long day already, with our first coronavirus death locally (former legendary football coach at the local Catholic high school). I woke up to a text about that from a port contact so I have been racing all morning. Prayers for his family appreciated.
It did get me out of the zoom assignment.
Chaos reigns.
Although it hasn’t stopped the cat from jumping on to the desk to try to bat a few things off onto the floor.
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Glad to hear from you, AJ. Keep getting better. We’ll keep praying.
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Our pastor posted this today with this comment: “Not to be uncharitable, but one of the blessings of a plague is how God uses it to expose heretics.”
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AJ, so glad to hear you’re feeling better. Keep resting (not that quarantine gives you much of a choice in that matter)
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Nice story about your neighbor yesterday, RKessler. What a blessing all around.
I’m all set up for teaching using Zoom. I tried yesterday and got very frustrated, as things weren’t working right. Tutorials on the tech support pages always seem to assume prior knowledge, but with me, I need it all spelled out. Forget intuiting what isn’t explicitly written.
I didn’t have any trouble joining the Zoom meeting one co-owner of the music studio where I work invited me to when we did a trial run yesterday, but I couldn’t reverse it and start my own meeting and invite her.
We tried it again today, troubleshooting various steps, and I finally was able to “invite” her to a meeting I created. Then I ended the meeting, closed my laptop, and went and did other things. After about 15 minutes, by her prior recommendation, I set up a new meeting with her, and that worked, too.
After our first successful meeting with me inviting her, she walked me back through all the steps we had taken, and I wrote down EVERYTHING. That was key to getting my second meeting with her to work, as well.
This is such a relief that I know I can do this now and keep “meeting” with my students — and now actually *see* what they’re doing at the piano, rather than only being able to hear them over the phone — during this period until we can meet again in person.
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DJ, that is a very sad video.
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Wonderful, 6 Arrows!
My husband is my IT guy–and honestly I’m not sure how I did freelance work before I married him. And he’ll do something on my computer and then explain, “When that happens, go here and here and do this and that,” but my brain doesn’t work that way, that I can remember eight months from now some technological line of events, or even remember what gets done for what glitch! I can trouble-shoot a few things, but I’m quickly beyond my expertise.
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Michelle, it is well with my soul. Thank you. What a picture of the unity of the Body in these challenging times.
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So glad you are back among the living AJ.
DJ my dad used to call televangelists some of the best entertainment on TV. Charlatans, all of them.
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AJ, so glad you could check in today. Rest up!
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AJ, it sounds like what my pastor and two in his family had. It put two in the hospital. It is frightening, but you will survive.
Unfortunately I now have diarrhea. Good thing is I have no where to go except to the bathroom! It started yesterday. I have not been able to reach my brother. Maybe he is out plowing the lower 40 today. The weather is right for it. But still, I feel concerned. He is an hour away.
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I just missed a call from my brother. I was in the bathroom.
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DJ, regarding your questions last night about Zoom.
When you click the link you get, it takes you to a specific Zoom meeting space set up by the host who sent you the link. If you haven’t connected before, it will ask you your name the first time. You can enter anything you want, real name, nickname, whatever. That name will be displayed so everyone knows you are there.
Then it will ask you if you want to display video or not. If you say no it doesn’t matter if you’ve covered your camera or not.
Then it will ask you if you want to use your computer for audio. If you say yes, the audio will be on your computer speaker and you can speak using your computer microphone. There’s a mute control on the screen so you can mute or unmute your mike any time.
If you say no to using your computer for audio, then you have to call in on your phone. It will give you a list of phone numbers you can call. On the phone it will ask you to enter the meeting number and participant number displayed on your screen. Then it will connect the audio. You can mute or unmute your phone normally.
Once you’re connected, everyone can hear anyone else who talks who’s not muted. The host can mute people too if they get distracted and start making noise without realizing it’s disrupting the meeting.
What’s displayed on your screen depends on whether you select “Speaker Mode” or “Gallery Mode”. If you select “Speaker Mode”, it will display the video view of whoever’s speaking on most of the screen, and will switch whose video is displaying whenever it detects a new speaker speaking. (It can get a little hairy if more than one person is talking at once!) Everyone else’s video is displayed in a line of thumbnails at the top or bottom of the screen.
If you select “Gallery” mode, it will display everyone’s video in a grid. That’s how I display our prayer meetings, because there are usually only four or five people there and I can see all of them at once, which makes it feel a bit like we’re all in a room together.
If someone elected not to display their video, it shows a black window with their name on it in place of an actual video view of them.
It takes a little getting used to, but I’ve gotten comfortable with it at work where we use WebEx, which works similarly. Since we’re all working from home now, we actually turn our cameras on more often in online meetings because it’s such a treat to see each other. But if you’re not comfortable having a camera showing your home office you can always choose not to display video.
Besides just meeting together and seeing/hearing each other, someone can share what’s on their computer screen so everyone else can see it, useful for groups working on something together, or for a leader to display presentation slides. I use WebEx that way for work all the time.
I hope that helps. There are a lot of demos online to let you see what it looks like.
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6, I’m sorry to hear your Zoom experience didn’t work well. I’ve never hosted a meeting using Zoom, so I don’t know how hard or easy it is. I hope you can get the kinks out.
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DJ, I meant to mention that you need a Zoom account only to organize/host a meeting. You don’t need an account to join someone else’s.
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6, clearly I hadn’t read your whole post. Glad things are working better now!
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Remember recently I mentioned my disappointment about Nightingale’s devout Christian friend Mom-of-5 going overboard on Facebook with anti-vaccination posts (the kind that claim that the CDC and the media are in the pocket of “Big Pharma”, and coming from questionable and known-to-be-bad sources)? Well, now she is sharing a bunch of things claiming that this virus is not nearly as bad as the media and government say it is, as well as saying that it is “not naturally occurring”, but is some form of biological weapon. She says that, because of churches closing for the duration, this is a way of taking away our freedom of religion.
When I commented on one of her posts yesterday, she said something about Christians “parroting TV news”, not realizing that she is parroting these unreliable and bad sources. She then said that the mainstream media is all lies, and that it bothers her that so many Christians lack discernment. So I have been praying for God to give her some real discernment.
That comment about other Christians lacking discernment made me wonder if that is a common accusation among cultish Christians.
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And remember the man I mentioned from my church who questions the critical thinking skills of those he disagrees with? Yesterday he posted something about the stimulus bill, and said that if you wonder where the money is going to come from, then you don’t really understand how money works, but it’s not your fault because you believe the myths about money you’ve been taught since receiving your first piggy bank. I have to admit that my pride – not wanting him to look down on me again – kept me from asking what he meant.
So, does anyone understand what he may have been getting at, and if so, could you explain it for us here in the cheap seats? 🙂
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Kizzie, yes, people in cults tend to think they have the truth and the rest of us are deluded. Hmm, I guess it is not confined to cults.
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Kevin, thanks for your information at 3:02. I know you weren’t addressing me there, but that gives good tips about how I could answer some questions my piano families might have when we start Zoom lessons.
One question I have: am I understanding correctly that my students don’t need to have Zoom downloaded on their own devices to be able to participate in lessons I host on the platform? Just clicking on the link in the email I send them is enough to get them into the “meeting”?
Thanks.
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I have another question, too, not about tech, but about capitalization.
In my 4:59 post, I wrote, “One question I have: am…”
What I wonder is whether “am” should be capitalized or not, being that it follows a colon. I’ve seen it both ways — sometimes capitalizing, sometimes not — and want to know which usage is correct, or whether it depends on the context, or… ?
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Kevin, my son mentioned he uses WebEx with meetings at his workplace.
Oh, by the way, I had to laugh at myself when I read something in Kevin’s post at 3:02. I read this sentence: “You can mute or unmute your phone normally.” I was reading silently, but could still “hear” myself pronouncing the words in my head.
You know the /u/ sound in “mute” and “unmute”? When I got to the word “phone” in that sentence, I accidentally read it as “phune,” with the same /u/ sound.
Which reminded me of hearing Inspector Clouseau’s pronunciations of certain words. Can’t you just hear him saying, “You can mute or unmute your phune…”? 😀
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Kizzie, I met a mom at a library program a couple of months ago. We happened to be sitting next to each other at the presentation, and we struck up a conversation before it began.
Turns out she is a homeschooling mom, as well, and as soon as she learned that I was, she immediately started in about anti-vax stuff, asking me questions, informing me about her activism, etc., on that front.
I felt extremely uncomfortable with how she came across, and obviously with the assumption that I would be on board with her extreme views, like homeschooling and anti-vax go hand in hand.
Um, no. My views are not so black and white. And one can’t decide that a certain demographic of the population is enlightened and everyone else needs educating.
She said she’d email me more information, but thankfully she hasn’t, so I think she could tell I didn’t really want that. I didn’t come right out and tell her “No,” but perhaps she was seeing my discomfort with the conversation and decided to back off.
(The reason she had my email address in the first place was because we’d been talking about piano first, and I mentioned that I teach, and then gave her one of my business cards. The vax discussion came after that. I’m sure glad I’m not getting vax information/propaganda through my business account! Or anywhere.)
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6 Arrows, I think Zoom does need to be downloaded, but it downloads itself automatically the first time you go to a Zoom meeting. So your students don’t need to take a prior action to install it. Maybe they should just click the link a few minutes early the first time to give it time to download and set up before lesson time.
Honestly, even though our first Zoom prayer meeting was only 10 days ago, the initial setup was so painless that I hardly remember it.
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Caveat: That was on a Windows computer. If they’re using a phone it might need them to install an app first. I’ll try using my phone for the prayer meeting tomorrow and see what happens.
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I’m pretty sure that anything not a desktop computer needs to download the app for Zoom. I had to do so on my Chromebook, but not on our Windows 10 desktop.
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AJ- Good to see you’re on the mend.
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Thanks much, Kevin. Really useful information to me.
And now for a little Inspector Clouseau phone humor via video. 🙂
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Thanks for all the zoom advice, I did click the invite link in the email last night and it appeared to download zoom so I think I have the access on my laptop now. As I said, I escaped being thrown into the deep end with it today for the port news conference, but it’ll come up shortly again, I’m sure — in fact my church women’s group is hosting a prayer meeting via zoom tonight, so there you go.
This has been an exhausting and emotional day with the loss of our local football coach to the virus (his wife also is very ill, hospitalized and not doing well, but it’s not confirmed, only being assumed because of her exposure, that it’s also the virus); and we also had to scramble to gather the latest info on the arrival of the navy hospital ship tomorrow morning. It’ll be docked at the cruise terminal which is close to the bridge and the center of town, so it’ll be very visible on the waterfront.
More work to do still before today ends, though, have to pre-write the ship’s arrival story so we can post it immediately tomorrow. I’ll be down there but I’m assuming they’ll have some way to keep media people spread out from each other, should be interesting. We’ll have a couple photographers spread out so we can get some nice shots of it as it comes into the harbor.
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You can find interior photos on the US Navy Twitter site–and all Navy photos are free to use to the public since the Navy pays photographers to take them. Just an FYI. I may have retweeted one today myself. 🙂
I’m making chili for dinner. Anyone else?
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okay, I have been taking care of things. I sent off my medical information to PNG which I need to do before I return. Is that faith??
What I haven’t done yet, and it is next on my list. is to download windows 10. I still have windows 7 on my computer. I purchased windows 10 professional from someone, still in the shrinkwrap. so should be okay. Until I worked a while ago at deleting things from my computer, I did not have enough free memory to download windows 10
So… anyone have any advice for me?? I know I should first do a backup. What else??
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I guess I’ll get to do Zoom video sooner than I expected. I got an email today from the ESL program at the college saying our meeting for tomorrow is on – but on Zoom, not in person. (They match up ESL students with volunteer “mentors” from the student body and staff, and I’m a mentor, this semester for a woman from Sudan, though unfortunately we only got to meet once before spring break, and then all in-person contact was ended because of COVID-19. We talked on the phone last week but I find it much harder to understand ESL students on the phone, just as when I was a student in Spain I found it hard to understand Spanish on the phone or radio even though I did fine in person.) I discovered today that the work laptop I was issued has a camera. So I really don’t have an excuse not to figure out how to use it.
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I made pizza.
Son just mentioned his company announced a 20% pay cut for all employees around the globe for the next three months, suspension of merit increase and stopping of matching 401k’s . And so the snowball continues to grow.
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How are the supermarkets where the rest of you live? Here they are mostly back to normal. Aldi’s had everything on my list, although the grape tomatoes were such poor quality I didn’t buy any, and Walmart had everything on my list (I go there for the stuff Aldi’s doesn’t have) except chicken gizzards (for the dog).They even had a few packages of toilet paper (not that I needed any). I did notice they were out of webcams (only because I was getting something from the same shelf, and I had just recently bought my son a webcam for his birthday so I knew where they normally would be) – I suppose a lot more people are making use of them these days for online meetings/classes.
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The 2 blog redheads learning to Zoom.
Thanks Michelle, we’re planning also to embed this video in the story I’m writing tomorrow:
Our Orange County Reg military beat reporter is hoping also to get some phone comments tomorrow from the ship’s spokesman as the ship comes into harbor. I’ll have to be out there early. I will have to get dressed.
What a day.
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Kizzie, your 4:03 post could have been written of my sister, every word, down to being the mother of five and her thinking that she is extra super discerning (but that women in general are “easily deceived”).
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This is laugh-out-loud funny, a “free photo booth” with a computer-sounding woman who is obviously watching her customers and telling them what to do based on what she sees. Some of it is PG, but most of it is simply funny. (The very last customer, she tells him to remove his shirt and then his pants, and he strips to his underwear. If you stop it before it goes that far, you haven’t missed anything afterward since that’s the last one.)
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Martin Luther on the appropriateness of fleeing a deadly plague: https://www.theaquilareport.com/whether-one-may-flee-from-a-deadly-plague/
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Pauline, Mrs B was out this morning at Aldi’s and Meijer (a Great Lakes regional chain a bit like WalMart). She took advantage of early opening times for “elderly” customers (over 60).
Meijer had a modified checkout procedure, organized like a bank with a single line feeding all registers instead of a separate line for each register. Employees supervised the checkout line and enforced 6-foot spacing.
Shelves appear stocked more normally for the most part. Hand sanitizer, alcohol, wipes, etc., are still in short supply. At Meijer the toilet paper and paper towels are still scarce, but were available at Aldi’s.
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I made pizza yesterday and a big batch of chicken soup base today. I made a batch of the soup with noodles and the other batches of broth and chicken went in the freezer for the future.
I have no idea how our stores look, since we have not been to any since early last week. I am holding out until I really need something. I did order a few things online from Walmart, because I am out of baby aspirin. That will come in early April.
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mumsee, 7:41, ouch; that sounds similar to what happened to us 10-12 years ago now, although the pay cut wasn’t, thankfully, that steep.
Just had a positive case for coronavirus on the Air Force housing base in town, so that’s now on alert. I just rewrote the press release, it came over very late, about 40 minutes ago. Not much more we could do with that one for now.
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I have lots of baby aspirin that I bought to take to PNG. Wish I could send you some.
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