Good Morning. After Wednesday’s closing my car died. Just, sputtered and died. I got it started again and got home. I backed it into the driveway but it had given up. Thursday Mommy had to bring Little Miss and it was me and Clifford the Big Red Truck for the day. Mr.
P had someone come tow the car to a shop. They can’t do anything with it until next week, so today “Clifford” and I will go about our business. I will need to rent a car for next week.
We’re taking our first overnight trip since Covid hit.
We’re heading north to see CSU’s version of Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest.” Elizabeth is a crew member for the play. We’ll spend the night in a hotel near the school that opened right before the pandemic, so it’s hardly been used and they are only renting at 25% capacity max. It’s only one night, we’ll be back tomorrow. 🙂
Good morning. This morning I was reflecting on Chas’ question about heaven, whether we would know each other, and the related question as to why there was no marriage in heaven. I think it is about relationship and our desire to be known for who we truly are. On earth, only a few people ever can know us well and none of them really know everything about us. Charles Dickens in his narration of ‘A Tale of Two Cities’, makes this keen observation on the loneliness of life:
‘A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this. No more can I turn the leaves of this dear book that I loved, and vainly hope in time to read it all. No more can I look into the depths of this unfathomable water, wherein, as momentary lights glanced into it, I have had glimpses of buried treasure and other things submerged. It was appointed that the book should shut with a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read but a page. It was appointed that the water should be locked in an eternal frost, when the light was playing on its surface, and I stood in ignorance on the shore. My friend is dead, my neighbour is dead, my love, the darling of my soul, is dead; it is the inexorable consolidation and perpetuation of the secret that was always in that individuality, and which I shall carry in mine to my life’s end. In any of the burial-places of this city through which I pass, is there a sleeper more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in their innermost personality, to me, or than I am to them?’
That profound solitude of human existence, where sin even taints the intimate relationship of marriage with misunderstanding means that on earth even those who are married may feel alone. My mother always has told me that before she was married, there was always a slight ache of loneliness which she thought would be alleviated by marriage – she married later in life than most of her generation, and so had a taste of singleness. But, she said, when she got married, as happy as she was and as much as she loved my father, that ache was still there. She said she realized the ache would never be satisfied in this life, that the longing was for the Lord. Paul, in his wonderful chapter on love in I Corinthians 13, concludes:
“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
We will know and be known so completely in heaven, that we will never be lonely.
interesting thoughts. I have now been single for 25 years, longer than the 22 I was married. I am content, but there is still that search for companionship. Someone to know me and be known. A friend to travel with. and to share with. Not sure I even know how to share my thoughts.
Good morning all. It’s a fine day, cloudy and chilly, for a visit by Biden and Harris. They are flying in to the small airport in the neighborhood where I grew up which I passed by on Monday going to buy my ajuga groundcover at Lowe’s. They are going to visit the CDC. Michelle saw both of these locations. We sat outside dining on a patio by the runway of that airport.
Jo, I understand. I have never been married, but the longing for companionship grows ever stronger. As I said to my mother, I have seen and done so much and yet there is no one to share it all with. One thing that I had to learn to accept when I returned from West Africa was that life had gone on in my absence, and my siblings and friends could not listen long enough to hear all that I had to tell. I had to make my reminiscences brief, my anecdotes short, in order to communicate just a slight segment of all that I wanted to. My experiences I will, as Dickens observed, take to the grave without another human knowing what I know.
Morning! The sun has not made it’s appearance yet but it is sure to come! That is such a lovely photo up there! And your trip sounds like a fun one AJ….enjoy!
They are telling us we are in for a week of snow next week…but today will be 50 degrees and tomorrow 60…I plan to get out and enjoy it while I can!
So much going on to comment on everything.
However, I now feel like an expert on lonely. She was, during her last days, only sitting in her chair, not able to relate to anyone.
But she was there. Surprising how much that meant.
I have recently become the expert on “lonely”. I don’t recommend it, but realize that everyone has to experience it sometime.
I pray a lot. But I suspect God is getting tired of hearing about the same thing day in and day out.
But it’s up to Him to do something about it. I can’t
But I’m not complaining. I have been immensely blessed, by kin and friends.
Someone, a Wandeerer, has sent me a bunch of cookies. I’m still munching on them.
Roscuro, that quote is so profound, and I often think something along the same line when I look around and see faces of strangers and I know each one has many stories and much grief and much joy.
This fall I will see ten years of marriage, and ten years ago I was in a very quickly moving courtship. I had 44 years of singleness before entering marriage. And even before we married, my husband astonished me at how well he knew me–more than any woman ever had, and that amazed me, because I didn’t think of men as being able to “read” women well enough for any man to know a woman so thoroughly, especially before marriage. (And for the record, ten years in, nine and a half years of being together 24/7, I still say my husband knows me as I never expected to be known.)
But my first several months of marriage, we would go to bed together, cuddle for a few minutes, pray together, and then roll over to go to sleep. He’d drop off to sleep almost immediately then, and I would lie awake another hour, sometimes even getting up for an hour or two and lying down again later. But I’d lie beside my husband, as I had waited to do for so many years, and find that hour of lying awake while he slept incredibly lonely. Eventually I was able to get past that sense of loneliness if he was asleep, but I experienced it for several months. But yes, even in a good marriage, there remain moments of loneliness. For me, some of those moments come on the days my husband has very little energy, and I have to limit any conversation so as not to wear him out.
I saw my mother bury two husbands, including burying my father before my 17th birthday. I saw my favorite brother bury a wife who was younger than I am now, and my sister bury a husband who was just seven weeks older than I was, and having had many older friends, I also have more friends in heaven than on earth. Marrying older in life, and marrying a man with chronic health issues, also means understanding that each day together is a gift, that the number of days is unknown but finite, and that my trust cannot rest in a mortal being no matter how good he is. (Besides, that even a “good” mortal being is still sinful and will sometimes disappoint.)
Roscuro, I understand. How can anyone else understand a life we have lived or are living. This world is too different to even explain and yours was much closer to the people.
Roscuro, your 8:55: I am so sorry that you don’t have someone with whom you can share those reminisces fully. If you write them in a book, I would imagine your nieces and nephews might someday be interested in reading them.
When I was in my mid-thirties, nearly all my acquaintances were single women 12 to 20 years older than I was. (My workplace tended to be married men and single women, I presume because the married women were mostly stay-at-home moms. My church also had an amazingly large percentage of singles.) One day I commented to a single friend who was 19 years older than I was that I was the only one in my circle who seemed actually content with singleness. She told me something that caught my attention and stuck with me: “It gets harder as you get older.”
In my twenties I looked around and noticed that I didn’t know any women who married for the first time after age 30, with one single exception. In one church we attended when I was a pre-teen, a couple attended who were well into their seventies, and I knew that the wife had married her husband, who was a widower, when she was in her sixties. But I had never met anyone who married for the first time in her thirties to fifties. I decided that if I was still single at thirty, I would accept that I was single for life, since it seemed the best way to avoid being a pathetic old maid, always thinking love might be just around the corner. (Not dating even in my teens and twenties made the chance of later love seem even less likely. I’d never ever had a date that didn’t have the man clarifying we were going out just as friends.)
I moved to Nashville at 36, and in my eight years there, I tried to keep a bedroom rented out, but with little success. I got only young women not long out of college, 25 or so, and only kept them a few months until something better came along. (The bedroom was really too small; that house didn’t have a “master” bedroom.) And I looked down the road thirty years and saw myself in my seventies still renting out a bedroom to twenty-somethings, still having a year or so between housemates, and still interviewing several strangers before I finally found someone who was both a good match for me and interested in the house. And I thought back to my friend’s assessment that singleness gets harder as you get older. When we are young and many of our friends are still single, singleness is fine. But as friends and sisters marry, have children, and get busy with their own lives, it does get lonelier. And I learned that it also gets that much harder to get a housemate, since middle-aged single people have their own homes and their own stuff.
By God’s grace, in Nashville I also met two or three women who had married for the first time after age 30 or even 40, and I kept hearing stories of good marriages that had started through online dating. (I have actually now heard of a lot more people who tried online dating unsuccessfully, and I myself had more bad encounters than good ones that way. But I had one very good experience.)
The year before I married, I traveled to California for a brother’s wedding. (He didn’t live there, but his bride did, and so did one of our other brothers.) I spent some time with a niece who was at the time in her mid to late twenties. We got talking about whether or not we’d ever marry, and she was a bit dismissive for herself. She said she had a hard time imagining she’d find someone with her precise theological views (and I wanted to tell her don’t be too picky on precision!) and she also loves to travel and didn’t want to give that up. (She had a goal of 30 countries by her 30th birthday–and she made 40.) I wanted so badly to pass on what my friend told me, that singleness gets harder as you get older. I had the feeling that when she was 50 she might choose differently. But I also suspected she wouldn’t hear me, and so I didn’t say it. I also want to tell my 26-year-old daughter the same thing: Don’t assume you’ll always be so pretty and you can marry the second you decide to do so. Don’t assume that being “free” will always feel like freedom. But I don’t actually know whether she has any man in her orbit who’s a good prospect, and I also wouldn’t want to suggest that singleness is innately bad. But I do think that women who are contentedly single in their twenties, who want marriage and children but are content for it to be “someday,” often don’t know that that door does mostly close later, and that it actually is harder to be single in later life than in your twenties. That’s a thought that hadn’t occurred to me, and never would have occurred to me if I hadn’t had an older friend tell me so. In fact, I had several women tell me that they knew what it was like to be single since they’d been single before marriage themselves, and then I’d find out she’d married at 22 or 23. No, not the same thing, not at all. At 22 you’re not really “single,” especially if you’re dating someone; you’re “not married yet.” You haven’t really been “single” until you are 30 or 35 and your friends and sisters all have two or more children each.
Janice, my Zoom Bible study is also studying Genesis.
It just occurred to me that you have been saying that Biden and Harris are (both) coming to Georgia. Very interesting! Usually you hear little about the VP after the election; he (or she) is in place largely as a back-up. The president travels and gives speeches, though the VP may travel to a state funeral the president doesn’t want to attend. But they don’t travel together except during the campaign cycle. That seems like more evidence that Harris is really seen as the one who got elected, with Biden just around for a while for show.
Cheryl, my nieces and nephews currently living be me dearly, but I am already experiencing the same sort of loss with the eldest that I did with my siblings. Eldest Niece has a young man now, a very nice young man and a believer. But she doesn’t message me nearly so often to ask to talk anymore. He is becoming her chief confidant, and my role is diminishing. I am sure she will always love and care about me, but she will probably marry and have a family there in the US, and I will see and hear from her less and less as her own family takes up more of her time. The same thing will happen with all my nieces and nephews eventually.
When I came home from West Africa, that was the hardest experience of loss of close confidences withy siblings. Second and Youngest had spent a decade together after Eldest’s marriage, and we were very close. Just two months before I went to West Africa, Youngest got married, and just two weeks after I came home from West Africa, Second got engaged and married four months later. So I experienced the loss of closeness with both of them almost simultaneously, at a time when I was experiencing culture shock returning to North America, and processing the trauma of my illness while trying to heal from my illness. It was a terrible time of being alone. I was very happy for both of them, but it felt as if my life had stopped, while theirs kept going. When I was finally able to move on with my own life, after two and a half years of trying to pick up the pieces, I was like my siblings and closest friend no longer knew who I was. They misinterpreted my motives as I tried to survive a grueling program while still suffering ill health and made judgements about me (the term ‘selfish’ was often used) that were incredibly painful and damaging to my relationships with them. Those wounds have begun to mend due to my proximity to them now and the fact of my approaching operation which demonstrates how unwell I have been all these years. But I don’t think they realized that the emotional separation they felt from me when I went to school and could no longer be the sister who was there to help with their births and help with caring for their children, is what I had already felt from them when they got married.
Good morning. Lots of good stuff in Romans and Revelation and Genesis this morning. I was so delighted after finishing Revelation that I had to read through it again!
Our daytime temps are heading back into the 60s for the coming week — looks like we’ll even hit 70 one day. But I still have to stop and think about what month it is, something that’s been the case throughout the pandemic. Without the usual seasonal “markers” in our lives, one month just bleeds into the next sometimes. I’ve been stuck in February in my mind for the past week – while we’re now well on our way to April.
I need to check to see if I have to call in for jury duty tonight or if I can wait until the weekend — I guess it doesn’t matter, it’s all automated (if I remember right) where you just punch your juror # in and get a message whether you need to show up on the next day (Monday in this case) or not. I still need to do the online orientation (which allows you to show up an hour later on the first day).
It’ll be interesting to see how jury duty is handled while we’re still technically in the pandemic — usually they gather everyone in the common juror room to wait out the day as panels are called out to courtrooms. I’ll have to bring my iPad and a charger + a couple books.
I think last time I was so diligent that I actually brought my laptop and wrote a story for my then-demanding editor who was always grousing about people being “out” for trivial things like jury duty or illness. He’s much nicer now that he’s not my boss – he’s over some other regional investigative reporters in our chain. We g-chat through the week, commiserating on what in the world has happened to our profession these days. lol
How can this be Friday already? I’m not complaining but the weeks are just flying by.
It is interesting that the president/VP are traveling together. Biden’s latest slip-of-the-tongue this week (again) referred to the VP as “President Harris.”
Biden seems to be a ‘caretaker’ president; he certainly wasn’t the preferred choice of the far left, which now dominates the party. But due to his age and personality (and with a younger, more-leftward VP waiting very closely in the wings) he was seen as someone who’d be easy to influence and steer leftward.
That’s why it was so crucial that conservatives hang on to the Senate.
(I’m guessing it will also be available via video afterward — I can’t really listen to these on workdays but may try to catch up with some of it in my free time; I remember attending several of these conferences in the 1990s)
Info: Marking fifty years since the founding of Ligonier Ministries, our 2021 National Conference will consider the eternal significance of our everyday lives by equipping us today to better serve the Lord, love our neighbors, and make Christ known. With our glorious future in view, Christians do not have less of a stake in the present, but infinitely more. As Dr. R.C. Sproul so often reminded us, right now counts forever.
TODAY’S SESSIONS INCLUDE (all times ET):
9:00 a.m. – The Centrality of the Family by Joel Kim
10:00 a.m. – Questions & Answers with Godfrey, Kim, Lawson, and Thomas
11:30 a.m. – The Body of Christ by Burk Parsons
2:15 p.m. – A Conversation on Life and Ministry with Sinclair Ferguson
2:45 p.m. – Glorifying God in Our Bodies by W. Robert Godfrey
4:15 p.m. – The Providence of God by Derek Thomas
7:15 p.m. – The Word of the Lord Stands Forever by Steven Lawson
The conference will also be streaming in Spanish on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, and in Portuguese on Facebook.
We often forget that Satan is still alive and well and “roaming about the Earth seeking who he can devour.” I don’t believe Satan can read our thoughts but he might be able to “whisper in our ear” so that we think what he says is our thoughts. Am I making myself clear?
Satan is a liar who only prevaricates. Ask God to help you recognize the lies. Rest in Jesus.
Roscuro, I never had any nieces and nephews who lived in the same city, at least not past the age of four or five, so I never really had any I considered friends. Still, three married before I did, and three children had been born to them by the time I married.
When my sister and I were 19-21 (her) and 20-22 (me), we lived together, and she had a couple of boyfriends. That was when it began to occur to me it was possible one of us would marry and the other, not. I thought about it and decided it would be best if we both married, second best if we both stayed single. But I thought about it some more, and realized that if only one of us married, it should be her, because I thought I could accept singleness easier than she could. I knew she would probably marry, but I didn’t know if I would.
Throughout our twenties we were close–those two years we lived together in Phoenix, one year we both attended the same college at the same time, and into her marriage in her late twenties. In fact, we talked by phone three or even four hours most Saturdays, and sometimes had another brief call or two during the week.
A couple of Saturdays before she married, before I flew down to be with her for the last week, we talked by phone for three hours. I got off the phone thinking, “That’s the last really long phone conversation I’ll have with her.” To my surprise, we continued to be able to talk for two or three hours at a time most weeks, partly because her husband worked during some hours that she and I were both off of work.
A decade ago, when I was preparing to marry, she told me she “hadn’t felt close to me” since early in their marriage, when I wrote her a letter telling her that we needed to talk on the phone more or she “couldn’t be my sister anymore.” She thought it was disrespectful of her husband, and she told me recently he wanted her to cut off all contact with me, but she begged him to let her stay in touch with me. Of course I never wrote her a letter saying such a thing, nor was I ever displeased that we weren’t talking on the phone anymore–we were. I would have understood if we talked much less; in fact I expected that. And that was a time in my life when I was really thriving in my new career and with a good circle of friends.
I didn’t write her such a letter, and I don’t think I even said anything of that sort as a joke–if I had it would have been a dumb joke, but clearly a joke since we actually were still talking on the phone a lot. But if I did express some kind of sense of missing her, that seems natural enough. I have had weddings that I cried upon leaving, knowing that the friendship was now largely finished. (A bride moving out of state to get married.) A wedding is a new beginning, but it does bring loss with it, both for the bride and for her community.
I think in general in relationships, it’s helpful if we can cut each other some slack. Assume she didn’t mean to be unkind or that you misheard her, and accept that no relationship will be perfect this side of heaven. Oh, but I long for the day of no more goodbyes, no more misunderstanding, no more loneliness, no more sorrow! No more sin or grief.
Cheryl, Eldest Niece has lived all her life in the US, in two neighbouring states. She saw us only in person at Christmas and for a week or two in the spring/summer months (depending on how much of a holiday her father had from work). Yet, we became good friends in her teen years, aided by technology that allowed us to communicate ‘face-to-face’ in real time. But even before that close friendship sprang up, the Eldests’ children, for reasons unknown, really, really loved their mother’s sister’s, and coming to their grandparents home for visits was the highlight of their year. My mother had thought maybe as the children of Eldest got older, they would want to spend Christmas at home, but it was they who insisted on coming to see us. It was really difficult for them not to come this past year, as they had never not come for Christmas. One of my cousins once said to me that she wished her children could have the kind of bond with their aunts and uncles that my siblings and I had with our nieces and nephews – she said it was like the sun rose and sets on us. Eldest’s children called their grandparents’ house the Aunthill because of the three aunts who lived there. When Youngest got married, there were four Eldest children. The elder two wept as Youngest left for her honeymoon – the next sibling, being an irrepressible tease even at the age of six, said to his weeping siblings, “You’ll never see her again!” That made any of us adult inclined to feel sad laugh instead. When Second got married, that same irrepressible teade told me I couldn’t get married because then they wouldn’t have any aunts left, and he wasn’t wholly joking. I didn’t refrain from marriage on that account – my singleness is purely because I have never met anyone remotely eligible – but that is how important we always were to the Eldest children.
Correction: Eldest Niece did live with us for 6 months as a toddler when her parents had to come back to Canada for a brief period. Eldest in-law’s student visa ended after getting his Ph.D. and there was a brief waiting period before he got a job in his field with a multinational in the US.
Bummer, Chas, it had a unique rock and i made sure it had proper postage. I will see what i can rustle up to replace. I mailed the same time I sent packages to grands, which they received.
I”m sorry too, RK. I, however, have no shortage or rocks. But I keep every one as a gift from a friend.
I won’t go into the reasoning now, it’s too much involved. And I partly feel that I shouldn’t mention it. But: two statements-questions- changed my life:
Bobby Murray, a friend since were were ten, said, “Let’s join the Air Force”. We did and a kid who just graduated from HS, who couldn’t get a job and had nothing to do left the Air Force as a S/Sgt who could lead men.
The other: I was walking across the campus at U. S. Carolina, when a friend, Al Tolley asked, “Charlie, are you a Christian?” I said, “Yes” he said,
“Swell, We have a group of boys & girls who meet together for prayer and fellowship on ???? .
That;s how I got involved with Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship. They started,the change in my life.
I remember a friend meeting with me in college to ask if I was a Christian. And after I was a believer I took the trip to Arrowhead Springs to attend the Rose Parade and talk to others about Christ. On the way home, on the bus, a friend asked if I believed in the Holy Spirit. I had never heard of the Holy Spirit so she showed me in the Bible where He is mentioned.
It still feels odd to me to be “single” again. (Nightingale says I’m not “single”, I am a widow. Well, yes, but I’m still single, even if I don’t fully feel that way.)
(Speaking of which, this past Monday, as I have said previously, “would have been” our 35th wedding anniversary. But it still feels like it really was our 35th anniversary, not only “would have been”, if that makes sense.)
It is true that I have Nightingale and Boy here, so I am not totally alone, but as much as I love them and they love me, our relationship does not fill in the huge gap left by Hubby. As I have said before, I miss us even more than I miss him. I explained to a friend that I had come to think of Hubby and I as having a “secret society of two”, as we were one flesh. I really, really miss that.
Nightingale and Coach continue to date at least once, and often twice, a week. She has said to me that she feels comfortable with him in a way she never felt with any other man she dated, not even the ones who talked of getting serious. So I suspect that he may be “the one” for her, and sometime in the not-too distant future, they may get married. I have thought about what that might entail for me, and I realize that our relationship would change, as it should. I will endeavor to be a supportive and loving mother to her and mother-in-law to him (or whomever she may one day marry), and not be demanding in any way. (Actually, that is what I do now anyway.)
Roscuro, that is very precious that the children had the ant-hill. I didn’t know my aunts and uncles at all. I met most of them either once or twice in my childhood. My “favorite aunt” was my favorite because the one time I ever saw her in my life, she came into the bedroom after my sister and I were in bed and chatted with me a couple of minutes. I didn’t think in such terms as a child, but later I realized she was childless and it was probably precious for her to meet her brother’s children. Since we traveled to or through Texas often growing up, I have no idea why we only went to see Dad’s siblings one time, but that is the case. (One of his brothers-in-law stayed with us a few times when we were children and he traveled to Phoenix on business. And a couple of Dad’s siblings came to his funeral. Otherwise that one trip was the only time I ever saw any of Dad’s side of the family, and I was no more than ten. I only saw Mom’s atheist brother once, too, possibly on that same trip, though I saw her Christian brother twice before I was an adult–and he it is whom I am in touch with today, the last of my aunts or uncles alive, now 91.)
I have gotten to know quite a few of my nieces and nephews as they have become adults. I’d see them at various times as children, but usually in large groups of people and not enough to really know them. But the eight years I spent in Nashville, and particularly the four years my Georgia sister-in-law was dying, allowed me to get to know that brother’s three children quite well as twenty-somethings into their thirties, and I heard that they thought I was cool. My sister’s children I was very deliberate about getting to know, traveling to see them, calling them for their birthdays and sending them Christmas gifts faithfully, and living near them for eight years (six of those years I saw them three to five times a year, the last year of my sister-in-law’s life and the year leading up to my marriage being the exceptions). Right now I’m on “pause” in relationship to me, but as of this week the youngest three are all teens and the oldest two in their twenties, and I suspect it’s only a matter of time before I’ll be able to continue a relationship with at least some of the younger ones. Our not knowing our aunts and uncles and cousins is a big part of the reason I’ve been so much more intentional with my nieces and nephews, especially my sister’s children.
I’m still flabbergasted, almost, at how so many continue to insist this was a hate crime against Asians with a specifically racial motive (even the church statement seemed to almost go there).
The shooter has said his motive was something else (which makes some kind of twisted sense considering his background). But no one, from the White House to every national news cast other than Fox, are denying that and pushing the “narrative” that this was racially motivated.
I find it all somewhat curious, this insistence on writing our own narrative about what happened, based only on unconfirmed and very circumstantial “evidence” — just based on the way it “looks” from the outside.
Bad sentence — “But everyone, from the White House to every national newscast other than Fox, is pushing a hard narrative that this was racially motivated”
It’s just odd, it’s so irrational and presumptuous. Everything now must be about race, there can be no other motive for wrongdoing or violence?
I think the church was forced into defending itself against that narrative so had to use that language or be targeted and dismantled. It is so easy to blame the church.
Wandering Views 
Good morning, all! Hope everyone has a pleasant day.
Debra
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Good morning AJ & fellow wanderers.
It’s raining, but the bad weather is over and everything is OK now (as far as I know).
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Good Morning. After Wednesday’s closing my car died. Just, sputtered and died. I got it started again and got home. I backed it into the driveway but it had given up. Thursday Mommy had to bring Little Miss and it was me and Clifford the Big Red Truck for the day. Mr.
P had someone come tow the car to a shop. They can’t do anything with it until next week, so today “Clifford” and I will go about our business. I will need to rent a car for next week.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_the_Big_Red_Dog
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Seems like half the world wants to come to America.
And half the people in America want it to be like the rest of the world.
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Good morning! Spring break is next week. After that, only 6 more weeks of school.
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Chas, did you ever get my card?
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We’re taking our first overnight trip since Covid hit.
We’re heading north to see CSU’s version of Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest.” Elizabeth is a crew member for the play. We’ll spend the night in a hotel near the school that opened right before the pandemic, so it’s hardly been used and they are only renting at 25% capacity max. It’s only one night, we’ll be back tomorrow. 🙂
See ya’s. 🙂
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Good morning. This morning I was reflecting on Chas’ question about heaven, whether we would know each other, and the related question as to why there was no marriage in heaven. I think it is about relationship and our desire to be known for who we truly are. On earth, only a few people ever can know us well and none of them really know everything about us. Charles Dickens in his narration of ‘A Tale of Two Cities’, makes this keen observation on the loneliness of life:
‘A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this. No more can I turn the leaves of this dear book that I loved, and vainly hope in time to read it all. No more can I look into the depths of this unfathomable water, wherein, as momentary lights glanced into it, I have had glimpses of buried treasure and other things submerged. It was appointed that the book should shut with a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read but a page. It was appointed that the water should be locked in an eternal frost, when the light was playing on its surface, and I stood in ignorance on the shore. My friend is dead, my neighbour is dead, my love, the darling of my soul, is dead; it is the inexorable consolidation and perpetuation of the secret that was always in that individuality, and which I shall carry in mine to my life’s end. In any of the burial-places of this city through which I pass, is there a sleeper more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in their innermost personality, to me, or than I am to them?’
That profound solitude of human existence, where sin even taints the intimate relationship of marriage with misunderstanding means that on earth even those who are married may feel alone. My mother always has told me that before she was married, there was always a slight ache of loneliness which she thought would be alleviated by marriage – she married later in life than most of her generation, and so had a taste of singleness. But, she said, when she got married, as happy as she was and as much as she loved my father, that ache was still there. She said she realized the ache would never be satisfied in this life, that the longing was for the Lord. Paul, in his wonderful chapter on love in I Corinthians 13, concludes:
“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
We will know and be known so completely in heaven, that we will never be lonely.
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interesting thoughts. I have now been single for 25 years, longer than the 22 I was married. I am content, but there is still that search for companionship. Someone to know me and be known. A friend to travel with. and to share with. Not sure I even know how to share my thoughts.
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Deep thinking on only one sip of coffee!
Good morning all. It’s a fine day, cloudy and chilly, for a visit by Biden and Harris. They are flying in to the small airport in the neighborhood where I grew up which I passed by on Monday going to buy my ajuga groundcover at Lowe’s. They are going to visit the CDC. Michelle saw both of these locations. We sat outside dining on a patio by the runway of that airport.
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I have get back into Genesis now with my online Bible study group.
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Jo, I understand. I have never been married, but the longing for companionship grows ever stronger. As I said to my mother, I have seen and done so much and yet there is no one to share it all with. One thing that I had to learn to accept when I returned from West Africa was that life had gone on in my absence, and my siblings and friends could not listen long enough to hear all that I had to tell. I had to make my reminiscences brief, my anecdotes short, in order to communicate just a slight segment of all that I wanted to. My experiences I will, as Dickens observed, take to the grave without another human knowing what I know.
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Busy week for me. But not too busy for the funnies.
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Morning! The sun has not made it’s appearance yet but it is sure to come! That is such a lovely photo up there! And your trip sounds like a fun one AJ….enjoy!
They are telling us we are in for a week of snow next week…but today will be 50 degrees and tomorrow 60…I plan to get out and enjoy it while I can!
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So much going on to comment on everything.
However, I now feel like an expert on lonely. She was, during her last days, only sitting in her chair, not able to relate to anyone.
But she was there. Surprising how much that meant.
I have recently become the expert on “lonely”. I don’t recommend it, but realize that everyone has to experience it sometime.
I pray a lot. But I suspect God is getting tired of hearing about the same thing day in and day out.
But it’s up to Him to do something about it. I can’t
But I’m not complaining. I have been immensely blessed, by kin and friends.
Someone, a Wandeerer, has sent me a bunch of cookies. I’m still munching on them.
But I miss her. I think she knows that, even now.
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Roscuro, that quote is so profound, and I often think something along the same line when I look around and see faces of strangers and I know each one has many stories and much grief and much joy.
This fall I will see ten years of marriage, and ten years ago I was in a very quickly moving courtship. I had 44 years of singleness before entering marriage. And even before we married, my husband astonished me at how well he knew me–more than any woman ever had, and that amazed me, because I didn’t think of men as being able to “read” women well enough for any man to know a woman so thoroughly, especially before marriage. (And for the record, ten years in, nine and a half years of being together 24/7, I still say my husband knows me as I never expected to be known.)
But my first several months of marriage, we would go to bed together, cuddle for a few minutes, pray together, and then roll over to go to sleep. He’d drop off to sleep almost immediately then, and I would lie awake another hour, sometimes even getting up for an hour or two and lying down again later. But I’d lie beside my husband, as I had waited to do for so many years, and find that hour of lying awake while he slept incredibly lonely. Eventually I was able to get past that sense of loneliness if he was asleep, but I experienced it for several months. But yes, even in a good marriage, there remain moments of loneliness. For me, some of those moments come on the days my husband has very little energy, and I have to limit any conversation so as not to wear him out.
I saw my mother bury two husbands, including burying my father before my 17th birthday. I saw my favorite brother bury a wife who was younger than I am now, and my sister bury a husband who was just seven weeks older than I was, and having had many older friends, I also have more friends in heaven than on earth. Marrying older in life, and marrying a man with chronic health issues, also means understanding that each day together is a gift, that the number of days is unknown but finite, and that my trust cannot rest in a mortal being no matter how good he is. (Besides, that even a “good” mortal being is still sinful and will sometimes disappoint.)
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Roscuro, I understand. How can anyone else understand a life we have lived or are living. This world is too different to even explain and yours was much closer to the people.
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Roscuro, your 8:55: I am so sorry that you don’t have someone with whom you can share those reminisces fully. If you write them in a book, I would imagine your nieces and nephews might someday be interested in reading them.
When I was in my mid-thirties, nearly all my acquaintances were single women 12 to 20 years older than I was. (My workplace tended to be married men and single women, I presume because the married women were mostly stay-at-home moms. My church also had an amazingly large percentage of singles.) One day I commented to a single friend who was 19 years older than I was that I was the only one in my circle who seemed actually content with singleness. She told me something that caught my attention and stuck with me: “It gets harder as you get older.”
In my twenties I looked around and noticed that I didn’t know any women who married for the first time after age 30, with one single exception. In one church we attended when I was a pre-teen, a couple attended who were well into their seventies, and I knew that the wife had married her husband, who was a widower, when she was in her sixties. But I had never met anyone who married for the first time in her thirties to fifties. I decided that if I was still single at thirty, I would accept that I was single for life, since it seemed the best way to avoid being a pathetic old maid, always thinking love might be just around the corner. (Not dating even in my teens and twenties made the chance of later love seem even less likely. I’d never ever had a date that didn’t have the man clarifying we were going out just as friends.)
I moved to Nashville at 36, and in my eight years there, I tried to keep a bedroom rented out, but with little success. I got only young women not long out of college, 25 or so, and only kept them a few months until something better came along. (The bedroom was really too small; that house didn’t have a “master” bedroom.) And I looked down the road thirty years and saw myself in my seventies still renting out a bedroom to twenty-somethings, still having a year or so between housemates, and still interviewing several strangers before I finally found someone who was both a good match for me and interested in the house. And I thought back to my friend’s assessment that singleness gets harder as you get older. When we are young and many of our friends are still single, singleness is fine. But as friends and sisters marry, have children, and get busy with their own lives, it does get lonelier. And I learned that it also gets that much harder to get a housemate, since middle-aged single people have their own homes and their own stuff.
By God’s grace, in Nashville I also met two or three women who had married for the first time after age 30 or even 40, and I kept hearing stories of good marriages that had started through online dating. (I have actually now heard of a lot more people who tried online dating unsuccessfully, and I myself had more bad encounters than good ones that way. But I had one very good experience.)
The year before I married, I traveled to California for a brother’s wedding. (He didn’t live there, but his bride did, and so did one of our other brothers.) I spent some time with a niece who was at the time in her mid to late twenties. We got talking about whether or not we’d ever marry, and she was a bit dismissive for herself. She said she had a hard time imagining she’d find someone with her precise theological views (and I wanted to tell her don’t be too picky on precision!) and she also loves to travel and didn’t want to give that up. (She had a goal of 30 countries by her 30th birthday–and she made 40.) I wanted so badly to pass on what my friend told me, that singleness gets harder as you get older. I had the feeling that when she was 50 she might choose differently. But I also suspected she wouldn’t hear me, and so I didn’t say it. I also want to tell my 26-year-old daughter the same thing: Don’t assume you’ll always be so pretty and you can marry the second you decide to do so. Don’t assume that being “free” will always feel like freedom. But I don’t actually know whether she has any man in her orbit who’s a good prospect, and I also wouldn’t want to suggest that singleness is innately bad. But I do think that women who are contentedly single in their twenties, who want marriage and children but are content for it to be “someday,” often don’t know that that door does mostly close later, and that it actually is harder to be single in later life than in your twenties. That’s a thought that hadn’t occurred to me, and never would have occurred to me if I hadn’t had an older friend tell me so. In fact, I had several women tell me that they knew what it was like to be single since they’d been single before marriage themselves, and then I’d find out she’d married at 22 or 23. No, not the same thing, not at all. At 22 you’re not really “single,” especially if you’re dating someone; you’re “not married yet.” You haven’t really been “single” until you are 30 or 35 and your friends and sisters all have two or more children each.
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RK @ 8:21
jI looked through my stuff again and can’t find anything from you.
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This Reformed pastor in California writes thoughtful posts: https://myonlycomfort.com/2021/03/18/penses-march-18/
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Janice, my Zoom Bible study is also studying Genesis.
It just occurred to me that you have been saying that Biden and Harris are (both) coming to Georgia. Very interesting! Usually you hear little about the VP after the election; he (or she) is in place largely as a back-up. The president travels and gives speeches, though the VP may travel to a state funeral the president doesn’t want to attend. But they don’t travel together except during the campaign cycle. That seems like more evidence that Harris is really seen as the one who got elected, with Biden just around for a while for show.
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Cheryl, my nieces and nephews currently living be me dearly, but I am already experiencing the same sort of loss with the eldest that I did with my siblings. Eldest Niece has a young man now, a very nice young man and a believer. But she doesn’t message me nearly so often to ask to talk anymore. He is becoming her chief confidant, and my role is diminishing. I am sure she will always love and care about me, but she will probably marry and have a family there in the US, and I will see and hear from her less and less as her own family takes up more of her time. The same thing will happen with all my nieces and nephews eventually.
When I came home from West Africa, that was the hardest experience of loss of close confidences withy siblings. Second and Youngest had spent a decade together after Eldest’s marriage, and we were very close. Just two months before I went to West Africa, Youngest got married, and just two weeks after I came home from West Africa, Second got engaged and married four months later. So I experienced the loss of closeness with both of them almost simultaneously, at a time when I was experiencing culture shock returning to North America, and processing the trauma of my illness while trying to heal from my illness. It was a terrible time of being alone. I was very happy for both of them, but it felt as if my life had stopped, while theirs kept going. When I was finally able to move on with my own life, after two and a half years of trying to pick up the pieces, I was like my siblings and closest friend no longer knew who I was. They misinterpreted my motives as I tried to survive a grueling program while still suffering ill health and made judgements about me (the term ‘selfish’ was often used) that were incredibly painful and damaging to my relationships with them. Those wounds have begun to mend due to my proximity to them now and the fact of my approaching operation which demonstrates how unwell I have been all these years. But I don’t think they realized that the emotional separation they felt from me when I went to school and could no longer be the sister who was there to help with their births and help with caring for their children, is what I had already felt from them when they got married.
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Yes, I heard president Harris was going there with her associate.
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Good morning. Lots of good stuff in Romans and Revelation and Genesis this morning. I was so delighted after finishing Revelation that I had to read through it again!
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The header reminds me of what we might see while hiking a trail at the Hilton Head/Sea Pines Nature Preserve. It makes me happy to see it.
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Our daytime temps are heading back into the 60s for the coming week — looks like we’ll even hit 70 one day. But I still have to stop and think about what month it is, something that’s been the case throughout the pandemic. Without the usual seasonal “markers” in our lives, one month just bleeds into the next sometimes. I’ve been stuck in February in my mind for the past week – while we’re now well on our way to April.
I need to check to see if I have to call in for jury duty tonight or if I can wait until the weekend — I guess it doesn’t matter, it’s all automated (if I remember right) where you just punch your juror # in and get a message whether you need to show up on the next day (Monday in this case) or not. I still need to do the online orientation (which allows you to show up an hour later on the first day).
It’ll be interesting to see how jury duty is handled while we’re still technically in the pandemic — usually they gather everyone in the common juror room to wait out the day as panels are called out to courtrooms. I’ll have to bring my iPad and a charger + a couple books.
I think last time I was so diligent that I actually brought my laptop and wrote a story for my then-demanding editor who was always grousing about people being “out” for trivial things like jury duty or illness. He’s much nicer now that he’s not my boss – he’s over some other regional investigative reporters in our chain. We g-chat through the week, commiserating on what in the world has happened to our profession these days. lol
How can this be Friday already? I’m not complaining but the weeks are just flying by.
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It is interesting that the president/VP are traveling together. Biden’s latest slip-of-the-tongue this week (again) referred to the VP as “President Harris.”
Biden seems to be a ‘caretaker’ president; he certainly wasn’t the preferred choice of the far left, which now dominates the party. But due to his age and personality (and with a younger, more-leftward VP waiting very closely in the wings) he was seen as someone who’d be easy to influence and steer leftward.
That’s why it was so crucial that conservatives hang on to the Senate.
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The Ligonier national conference is being live-streamed today (not sure if it goes through Saturday or not, maybe through the morning) — on youtube.
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https://www.ligonier.org/blog/2021-national-conference/
(I’m guessing it will also be available via video afterward — I can’t really listen to these on workdays but may try to catch up with some of it in my free time; I remember attending several of these conferences in the 1990s)
Info: Marking fifty years since the founding of Ligonier Ministries, our 2021 National Conference will consider the eternal significance of our everyday lives by equipping us today to better serve the Lord, love our neighbors, and make Christ known. With our glorious future in view, Christians do not have less of a stake in the present, but infinitely more. As Dr. R.C. Sproul so often reminded us, right now counts forever.
TODAY’S SESSIONS INCLUDE (all times ET):
9:00 a.m. – The Centrality of the Family by Joel Kim
10:00 a.m. – Questions & Answers with Godfrey, Kim, Lawson, and Thomas
11:30 a.m. – The Body of Christ by Burk Parsons
2:15 p.m. – A Conversation on Life and Ministry with Sinclair Ferguson
2:45 p.m. – Glorifying God in Our Bodies by W. Robert Godfrey
4:15 p.m. – The Providence of God by Derek Thomas
7:15 p.m. – The Word of the Lord Stands Forever by Steven Lawson
The conference will also be streaming in Spanish on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, and in Portuguese on Facebook.
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We often forget that Satan is still alive and well and “roaming about the Earth seeking who he can devour.” I don’t believe Satan can read our thoughts but he might be able to “whisper in our ear” so that we think what he says is our thoughts. Am I making myself clear?
Satan is a liar who only prevaricates. Ask God to help you recognize the lies. Rest in Jesus.
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Amen, Bob, which is why we need to be in the Word and meditating on it.
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Roscuro, I never had any nieces and nephews who lived in the same city, at least not past the age of four or five, so I never really had any I considered friends. Still, three married before I did, and three children had been born to them by the time I married.
When my sister and I were 19-21 (her) and 20-22 (me), we lived together, and she had a couple of boyfriends. That was when it began to occur to me it was possible one of us would marry and the other, not. I thought about it and decided it would be best if we both married, second best if we both stayed single. But I thought about it some more, and realized that if only one of us married, it should be her, because I thought I could accept singleness easier than she could. I knew she would probably marry, but I didn’t know if I would.
Throughout our twenties we were close–those two years we lived together in Phoenix, one year we both attended the same college at the same time, and into her marriage in her late twenties. In fact, we talked by phone three or even four hours most Saturdays, and sometimes had another brief call or two during the week.
A couple of Saturdays before she married, before I flew down to be with her for the last week, we talked by phone for three hours. I got off the phone thinking, “That’s the last really long phone conversation I’ll have with her.” To my surprise, we continued to be able to talk for two or three hours at a time most weeks, partly because her husband worked during some hours that she and I were both off of work.
A decade ago, when I was preparing to marry, she told me she “hadn’t felt close to me” since early in their marriage, when I wrote her a letter telling her that we needed to talk on the phone more or she “couldn’t be my sister anymore.” She thought it was disrespectful of her husband, and she told me recently he wanted her to cut off all contact with me, but she begged him to let her stay in touch with me. Of course I never wrote her a letter saying such a thing, nor was I ever displeased that we weren’t talking on the phone anymore–we were. I would have understood if we talked much less; in fact I expected that. And that was a time in my life when I was really thriving in my new career and with a good circle of friends.
I didn’t write her such a letter, and I don’t think I even said anything of that sort as a joke–if I had it would have been a dumb joke, but clearly a joke since we actually were still talking on the phone a lot. But if I did express some kind of sense of missing her, that seems natural enough. I have had weddings that I cried upon leaving, knowing that the friendship was now largely finished. (A bride moving out of state to get married.) A wedding is a new beginning, but it does bring loss with it, both for the bride and for her community.
I think in general in relationships, it’s helpful if we can cut each other some slack. Assume she didn’t mean to be unkind or that you misheard her, and accept that no relationship will be perfect this side of heaven. Oh, but I long for the day of no more goodbyes, no more misunderstanding, no more loneliness, no more sorrow! No more sin or grief.
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Cheryl, Eldest Niece has lived all her life in the US, in two neighbouring states. She saw us only in person at Christmas and for a week or two in the spring/summer months (depending on how much of a holiday her father had from work). Yet, we became good friends in her teen years, aided by technology that allowed us to communicate ‘face-to-face’ in real time. But even before that close friendship sprang up, the Eldests’ children, for reasons unknown, really, really loved their mother’s sister’s, and coming to their grandparents home for visits was the highlight of their year. My mother had thought maybe as the children of Eldest got older, they would want to spend Christmas at home, but it was they who insisted on coming to see us. It was really difficult for them not to come this past year, as they had never not come for Christmas. One of my cousins once said to me that she wished her children could have the kind of bond with their aunts and uncles that my siblings and I had with our nieces and nephews – she said it was like the sun rose and sets on us. Eldest’s children called their grandparents’ house the Aunthill because of the three aunts who lived there. When Youngest got married, there were four Eldest children. The elder two wept as Youngest left for her honeymoon – the next sibling, being an irrepressible tease even at the age of six, said to his weeping siblings, “You’ll never see her again!” That made any of us adult inclined to feel sad laugh instead. When Second got married, that same irrepressible teade told me I couldn’t get married because then they wouldn’t have any aunts left, and he wasn’t wholly joking. I didn’t refrain from marriage on that account – my singleness is purely because I have never met anyone remotely eligible – but that is how important we always were to the Eldest children.
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Correction: Eldest Niece did live with us for 6 months as a toddler when her parents had to come back to Canada for a brief period. Eldest in-law’s student visa ended after getting his Ph.D. and there was a brief waiting period before he got a job in his field with a multinational in the US.
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So Bob, did something in particular prompt your 12:30 post?
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Along with Donna, I really appreciate Bob’s 12:30 and agree.
But I too, wonder if something is behind this.
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Bummer, Chas, it had a unique rock and i made sure it had proper postage. I will see what i can rustle up to replace. I mailed the same time I sent packages to grands, which they received.
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I”m sorry too, RK. I, however, have no shortage or rocks. But I keep every one as a gift from a friend.
I won’t go into the reasoning now, it’s too much involved. And I partly feel that I shouldn’t mention it. But: two statements-questions- changed my life:
Bobby Murray, a friend since were were ten, said, “Let’s join the Air Force”. We did and a kid who just graduated from HS, who couldn’t get a job and had nothing to do left the Air Force as a S/Sgt who could lead men.
The other: I was walking across the campus at U. S. Carolina, when a friend, Al Tolley asked, “Charlie, are you a Christian?” I said, “Yes” he said,
“Swell, We have a group of boys & girls who meet together for prayer and fellowship on ???? .
That;s how I got involved with Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship. They started,the change in my life.
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I remember a friend meeting with me in college to ask if I was a Christian. And after I was a believer I took the trip to Arrowhead Springs to attend the Rose Parade and talk to others about Christ. On the way home, on the bus, a friend asked if I believed in the Holy Spirit. I had never heard of the Holy Spirit so she showed me in the Bible where He is mentioned.
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Hey, I just checked my bank account and I already got my state tax refund. Amazing
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It still feels odd to me to be “single” again. (Nightingale says I’m not “single”, I am a widow. Well, yes, but I’m still single, even if I don’t fully feel that way.)
(Speaking of which, this past Monday, as I have said previously, “would have been” our 35th wedding anniversary. But it still feels like it really was our 35th anniversary, not only “would have been”, if that makes sense.)
It is true that I have Nightingale and Boy here, so I am not totally alone, but as much as I love them and they love me, our relationship does not fill in the huge gap left by Hubby. As I have said before, I miss us even more than I miss him. I explained to a friend that I had come to think of Hubby and I as having a “secret society of two”, as we were one flesh. I really, really miss that.
Nightingale and Coach continue to date at least once, and often twice, a week. She has said to me that she feels comfortable with him in a way she never felt with any other man she dated, not even the ones who talked of getting serious. So I suspect that he may be “the one” for her, and sometime in the not-too distant future, they may get married. I have thought about what that might entail for me, and I realize that our relationship would change, as it should. I will endeavor to be a supportive and loving mother to her and mother-in-law to him (or whomever she may one day marry), and not be demanding in any way. (Actually, that is what I do now anyway.)
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Roscuro, that is very precious that the children had the ant-hill. I didn’t know my aunts and uncles at all. I met most of them either once or twice in my childhood. My “favorite aunt” was my favorite because the one time I ever saw her in my life, she came into the bedroom after my sister and I were in bed and chatted with me a couple of minutes. I didn’t think in such terms as a child, but later I realized she was childless and it was probably precious for her to meet her brother’s children. Since we traveled to or through Texas often growing up, I have no idea why we only went to see Dad’s siblings one time, but that is the case. (One of his brothers-in-law stayed with us a few times when we were children and he traveled to Phoenix on business. And a couple of Dad’s siblings came to his funeral. Otherwise that one trip was the only time I ever saw any of Dad’s side of the family, and I was no more than ten. I only saw Mom’s atheist brother once, too, possibly on that same trip, though I saw her Christian brother twice before I was an adult–and he it is whom I am in touch with today, the last of my aunts or uncles alive, now 91.)
I have gotten to know quite a few of my nieces and nephews as they have become adults. I’d see them at various times as children, but usually in large groups of people and not enough to really know them. But the eight years I spent in Nashville, and particularly the four years my Georgia sister-in-law was dying, allowed me to get to know that brother’s three children quite well as twenty-somethings into their thirties, and I heard that they thought I was cool. My sister’s children I was very deliberate about getting to know, traveling to see them, calling them for their birthdays and sending them Christmas gifts faithfully, and living near them for eight years (six of those years I saw them three to five times a year, the last year of my sister-in-law’s life and the year leading up to my marriage being the exceptions). Right now I’m on “pause” in relationship to me, but as of this week the youngest three are all teens and the oldest two in their twenties, and I suspect it’s only a matter of time before I’ll be able to continue a relationship with at least some of the younger ones. Our not knowing our aunts and uncles and cousins is a big part of the reason I’ve been so much more intentional with my nieces and nephews, especially my sister’s children.
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https://www.baptistpress.com/resource-library/news/georgia-church-condemns-extreme-and-wicked-actions-of-member-initiates-church-discipline/
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I’m still flabbergasted, almost, at how so many continue to insist this was a hate crime against Asians with a specifically racial motive (even the church statement seemed to almost go there).
The shooter has said his motive was something else (which makes some kind of twisted sense considering his background). But no one, from the White House to every national news cast other than Fox, are denying that and pushing the “narrative” that this was racially motivated.
I find it all somewhat curious, this insistence on writing our own narrative about what happened, based only on unconfirmed and very circumstantial “evidence” — just based on the way it “looks” from the outside.
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Bad sentence — “But everyone, from the White House to every national newscast other than Fox, is pushing a hard narrative that this was racially motivated”
It’s just odd, it’s so irrational and presumptuous. Everything now must be about race, there can be no other motive for wrongdoing or violence?
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Exactly, DJ. By saying it is all about race they distract from the root cause of pure sin and the big problem our nation has with sexual addiction.
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I think the church was forced into defending itself against that narrative so had to use that language or be targeted and dismantled. It is so easy to blame the church.
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