🇺🇸 It’s Presidents’ Day. 🇺🇸 A day in which we honor the men who lead the country through good times and bad. Even the dishonorable ones had some good qualities, though it’s hard to think of one for the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
So, enjoy the sales and no mail delivery. Otherwise, for most of us, it’s just another day.
Son in law was hoping to see the court clerk to clarify where he stands with no paperwork, and see a lawyer, until he realized it was one of those holidays.
Good morning, all. Another beautiful day here. Husband and son will try again to deliver the goods to son in law up in Spokane.
Prayers, Mumsee. Only God . . . in His timing . . . and His ways.
It’s a bright day here, going up to the 60s.
A high school football coach whose team has been in the top ranked in our state, and who also coached boy’s track and field, has turned himself in to the police in Maryland for strangling his girlfriend to death. What a horrid thing for all those in the school system to process. This is in a town south of Atlanta, maybe forty minutes straight down a highway from Art’s office.
Raining (again) here in SoCal, the brunt of this storm looks to be on the Central Coast but we’ll get a good couple inches and more mud complications over the next few days.
How awful for parents and students associated with those teams, Janice. My good friend’s brother and his family just relocated to GA in the past few years, somewhere near Atlanta, they’ve bought the cutest house. Kids are grown but I believe they and their grandchildren now also are in that area.
No regular port meeting today as government is shut down for the holiday.
But Peter’s right, beyond that, it’s pretty much another day for most of us.
I had a dream last night that I was taking lunch to a bunch of presidents, but I had trouble finding their addresses (!!)
The only one I located was President Obama, who was (apparently) staying nearby.
Dream ended before I saw him.
So curious.
Meanwhile, I’m over with Chad Bird this morning and am really struck by this thought–taken from the Hebrew word Smitten out of the OT:
Biblical plagues are not God kicking down the front door of Egypt, then marching in to chainsaw the couch in two, kick the dog, hammer a hole in the T.V., and spray-paint “Repent or Be Damned” on the drywall before he slams the door behind him on the way back to heaven.
I suppose such haphazard destruction would get the point across.
But, no. With plagues, something else is afoot.
Plagues are (1) the Creator undoing creation and (2) God’s declaration of war against idolatry.
1. Every plague is best understood against the backdrop of Genesis 1. There, everything is “good” and finally “very good.” Divinely ordered and arranged for the benefit of humanity. Plagues, then, are God unordering and unarranging creation into ungood to bring humanity to repentance.
2. Plagues are God warring with and defeating demons. The gods of the nations are the masks of demonic forces, who hide behind religion to deceive the world. So it was in Egypt, when, right before the tenth plague, the Lord said, “On all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments” (Exod. 12:12). The Egyptian gods took the forms of such things as the Nile, frogs, and Pharaoh himself—the very things plagued by the Lord.
Here is a news clip about that coach. He went to Georgia Southern Univrrsiyy, too, where I attended two years.
it seems to hit me hard because my former church and also my current church are heavily ivoolved in outreaches to high school footmall teams. The players are being drawn to participate in church and hopefully develop a relationship with Jesus. A close friend’s grandson is a quarterback. I know how devastating this would be in my community.
Justin Taylor on sanctification (via The Gospel Coalition):
~ Perhaps then you leap and bound, or walk steadily, or trudge, or crawl, or face with greater hope in the right direction.
We love gazelles. Graceful leaps make for great stories about God’s wonder-working power.
And we like steady and predictable. It seems to vindicate our efforts at making the Christian life work in a businesslike manner.
But, in fact, there’s no formula, no secret, no technique, no program, no schedule, and no truth that guarantees the speed, distance, or time frame. On the day you die, you’ll still be somewhere in the middle. But you will be further along.
When we lengthen the battle, we realize that our business is the direction. ~
I know there are (or were) some NCIS fans here. Did you catch tonight’s episode? It was a wonderful memorial to Ducky (David McCallum’s character) written by Brain Dietzen, who played Dr. Jimmy Palmer.
Peter, yes, I was watching. David McCallum was a cultural 1960s heartthrob in my young teen years (Man From U.N.C.L.E.) and I remember being so surprised and pleased when I started watching NCIS (belatedly) and spotted him. He still looked pretty much the same and had a long and very productive life to the end. He was also good in another one of my favorite films, “The Great Escape.”
Wandering Views 
🇺🇸 It’s Presidents’ Day. 🇺🇸 A day in which we honor the men who lead the country through good times and bad. Even the dishonorable ones had some good qualities, though it’s hard to think of one for the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
So, enjoy the sales and no mail delivery. Otherwise, for most of us, it’s just another day.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Son in law was hoping to see the court clerk to clarify where he stands with no paperwork, and see a lawyer, until he realized it was one of those holidays.
Good morning, all. Another beautiful day here. Husband and son will try again to deliver the goods to son in law up in Spokane.
mumsee
LikeLiked by 1 person
Prayers, Mumsee. Only God . . . in His timing . . . and His ways.
It’s a bright day here, going up to the 60s.
A high school football coach whose team has been in the top ranked in our state, and who also coached boy’s track and field, has turned himself in to the police in Maryland for strangling his girlfriend to death. What a horrid thing for all those in the school system to process. This is in a town south of Atlanta, maybe forty minutes straight down a highway from Art’s office.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Raining (again) here in SoCal, the brunt of this storm looks to be on the Central Coast but we’ll get a good couple inches and more mud complications over the next few days.
How awful for parents and students associated with those teams, Janice. My good friend’s brother and his family just relocated to GA in the past few years, somewhere near Atlanta, they’ve bought the cutest house. Kids are grown but I believe they and their grandchildren now also are in that area.
No regular port meeting today as government is shut down for the holiday.
But Peter’s right, beyond that, it’s pretty much another day for most of us.
-dj
LikeLike
I had a dream last night that I was taking lunch to a bunch of presidents, but I had trouble finding their addresses (!!)
The only one I located was President Obama, who was (apparently) staying nearby.
Dream ended before I saw him.
So curious.
Meanwhile, I’m over with Chad Bird this morning and am really struck by this thought–taken from the Hebrew word Smitten out of the OT:
Biblical plagues are not God kicking down the front door of Egypt, then marching in to chainsaw the couch in two, kick the dog, hammer a hole in the T.V., and spray-paint “Repent or Be Damned” on the drywall before he slams the door behind him on the way back to heaven.
I suppose such haphazard destruction would get the point across.
But, no. With plagues, something else is afoot.
Plagues are (1) the Creator undoing creation and (2) God’s declaration of war against idolatry.
1. Every plague is best understood against the backdrop of Genesis 1. There, everything is “good” and finally “very good.” Divinely ordered and arranged for the benefit of humanity. Plagues, then, are God unordering and unarranging creation into ungood to bring humanity to repentance.
2. Plagues are God warring with and defeating demons. The gods of the nations are the masks of demonic forces, who hide behind religion to deceive the world. So it was in Egypt, when, right before the tenth plague, the Lord said, “On all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments” (Exod. 12:12). The Egyptian gods took the forms of such things as the Nile, frogs, and Pharaoh himself—the very things plagued by the Lord.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Here is a news clip about that coach. He went to Georgia Southern Univrrsiyy, too, where I attended two years.
it seems to hit me hard because my former church and also my current church are heavily ivoolved in outreaches to high school footmall teams. The players are being drawn to participate in church and hopefully develop a relationship with Jesus. A close friend’s grandson is a quarterback. I know how devastating this would be in my community.
https://www.wbtv.com/2024/02/19/high-school-football-coach-arrested-after-strangling-his-girlfriend-death-police-say/
LikeLiked by 1 person
Who was it — maybe someone here? — who said ‘that sin nature, it ruins everything’. -dj
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Justin Taylor on sanctification (via The Gospel Coalition):
~ Perhaps then you leap and bound, or walk steadily, or trudge, or crawl, or face with greater hope in the right direction.
We love gazelles. Graceful leaps make for great stories about God’s wonder-working power.
And we like steady and predictable. It seems to vindicate our efforts at making the Christian life work in a businesslike manner.
But, in fact, there’s no formula, no secret, no technique, no program, no schedule, and no truth that guarantees the speed, distance, or time frame. On the day you die, you’ll still be somewhere in the middle. But you will be further along.
When we lengthen the battle, we realize that our business is the direction. ~
-dj
LikeLiked by 1 person
I have not read all of this but thpught it might be of intetest.
https://www.baptistpress.com/resource-library/news/first-person-yes-he-gets-us-do-we-get-him/
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Good post.
mumsee
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I know there are (or were) some NCIS fans here. Did you catch tonight’s episode? It was a wonderful memorial to Ducky (David McCallum’s character) written by Brain Dietzen, who played Dr. Jimmy Palmer.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Peter, yes, I was watching. David McCallum was a cultural 1960s heartthrob in my young teen years (Man From U.N.C.L.E.) and I remember being so surprised and pleased when I started watching NCIS (belatedly) and spotted him. He still looked pretty much the same and had a long and very productive life to the end. He was also good in another one of my favorite films, “The Great Escape.”
-dj
LikeLiked by 1 person