December 3 2006
The feast of Christmas touches our hearts and makes us dreams because first of all, it's a celebration of God's homecoming. This is the wild wonderful message for Christmas: God abandons heaven and comes to us to be at home with us where life is never perfect where people are often hurting and fearful, where even the most cherished rituals become empty at times. God comes to us in the most unexpected ways, in the most unexpected people, in the most unexpected places… Robert Rimbo
God Is like DIAL SOAP Aren't you glad you have Him? Don't you wish everybody did?
"Red meat is NOT bad for you. Now blue-green meat... THAT'S bad for you!" - Tommy Smothers
"Pain is often the pathway to maturity. Unfortunately we want the product without the process." - Rick Warren
When Everything Becomes "Merely"
Virginia Owens in her book, And The Trees Clap Their Hands, suggests that we lose the wonder of it all, because along the way everything becomes "merely." Things are "merely" stars, sunset, rain, flowers, and mountains. Their connection with God's creation is lost. During this Advent season many things are just "merely." It becomes "merely" Bethlehem, a stable, a birth -- we have no feeling of wonder or mystery. That is what familiarity can do to us over the years.
Owens goes on to say that it is this "merely" quality of things that leads to crime. It is "merely" a thing -- I'll take it. It is "merely" an object -- I'll destroy it. It is this "merely" quality of things and life that leads to war. We shall lose "merely" a few thousand men, but it will be worth it. Within the Advent narrative nothing is "merely." Things are not "merely" things, but are part of God's grand design. Common things, such as motherhood, a birth, a child, now have new meaning. This is not "merely" the world, but a world that is charged with the beauty and grandeur of God's design. It is a world so loved by God that God gave his only Son. What is so great about the Advent season is that everything appears charged with the beauty and grandeur of God. God's Downward Mobility, John A. Stroman
Exchanging Our Eschatological Heritage
Neill Hamilton, who taught at Drew University for many years, once observed how people in our time lose hope for the future. It happens whenever we let our culture call the shots on how the world is going to end. At this stage of technological advancement, the only way the culture can make sense of the future is through the picture of everything blowing up in a nuclear holocaust. The world cannot know what we know, that everything has changed in the death and resurrection of Jesus, that the same Christ is coming to judge the world and give birth to a new creation. And so, people lose hope. As Hamilton puts it: This substitution of an image of nuclear holocaust for the coming of Christ is a parable of what happens to Christians when they cease to believe in their own eschatological heritage. The culture supplies its own images for the end when we default by ceasing to believe in biblical images of God's triumph at the end.
The good news of the gospel is this: when all is said and done, God is going to win.
No Box Seats in the Kingdom,
Sound Theology
In the Peanuts comic strip, Linus and Lucy are standing at the window looking out at the rain falling. Lucy says to Linus, "Boy, look at it rain...What if it floods the earth?" Linus, the resident biblical scholar for the Peanuts, answers, "It will never do that...in the ninth chapter of Genesis, God promised Noah that would never happen again, and the sign of the promise is the rainbow." With a smile on her face, Lucy replies, "Linus, you've taken a great load off my mind." To which Linus responds, "Sound theology has a way of doing that." Charles Schultz, Peanuts,
Second Coming and Faithfulness
During his 1960 presidential campaign, John F. Kennedy often closed his speeches with the story of Colonel Davenport, the Speaker of the Connecticut House of Representatives: On May 19th, 1780 the sky of Hartford darkened ominously, and some of the representatives, glancing out the windows, feared the end was at hand. Quelling a clamor for immediate adjournment, Davenport rose and said, "The Day of Judgment is either approaching or it is not. If it is not, there is no cause for adjournment. If it is, I choose to be found doing my duty. Therefore, I wish that candles be brought." Rather than fearing what is to come, we are to be faithful till Christ returns. Instead of fearing the dark, we're to be lights as we watch and wait. Harry Heintz.
Princeton preacher James F. Kay puts it this way, “If the Gospel is good news, it is not because it predicts a bright, shiny future based on our morality or piety. The Gospel is neither a cocoon that insulates us from the sufferings of this present age nor a pair of ear plugs that shuts out the groaning of creation....The Gospel is Good News, not because it predicts a future based on our good behavior or other present trends; the Gospel is Good News because it promises a future based on God’s faithfulness to Jesus Christ.” (The Seasons of Grace, Eerdmann, 1995, p. 7). James F. Kay, quoted by William Willimon, “Lo, He Comes With Clouds Descending”
Women will spend more than eight years of their lives shopping, says a study.
While keeping their families fed and clothed -and indulging in a little retail therapy - the average woman will shop for an astonishing 25,184 hours and 53 minutes over a period of 63 years.
If the average expedition lasted the length of a full working day - from 9am to 5pm - that would be 3,148 days trudging around the shops, or just over eight-and-a-half years.
The poll of 3,000 women, conducted by GE Money, revealed they make an average of 301 shopping trips per year, lasting a total of 399 hours and 46 minutes.
Food shopping can take more than an hour to complete each time. With an average of 84 trips to stock the pantry over a year, that is 94 hours and 55 minutes in the supermarket.
Women also dedicate 90 trips a year to keeping up their appearances - shopping for clothes 30 times, shoes 15 times, accessories 18 times and toiletries 27 times.
A total of 100 hours and 48 minutes is spent hunting for the latest clothing bargains and fashion statements. A further 40 hours and 30 minutes is spent shopping for footwear, and 29 hours and 31 minutes looking for accessories such as handbags, jewellery and scarves. Even shopping for more mundane items such as deodorant, shower gel and razors takes women around 17 hours and 33 minutes over one year. A further 19 trips, or 36 hours and 17 minutes, are used to buy gifts for friends and family.
The poll also showed women will go window shopping 51 times a year, spending 48 hours and 51 minutes just looking for their next purchase.
"No one gets an exemption from hardship on planet earth. How we receive it hinges on whether we believe in an alternate reality that transcends the one we know so well. The Bible never minimizes hardship or unfairness - witness books like Job, Psalms, and Lamentations. It simply asks us to withhold final judgment until all the evidence is in." - Phillip Yancey, Rumors of Another World (Zondervan, 2003)
TALKING
It is something one half of the population has long suspected - and the other half always vocally denied. Women really do talk more than men.
In fact, women talk almost three times as much as men, with the average woman chalking up 20,000 words in a day - 13,000 more than the average man.
Women also speak more quickly, devote more brainpower to chit-chat - and actually get a buzz out of hearing their own voices, a new book suggests.
The book - written by a female psychiatrist - says that inherent differences between the male and female brain explain why women are naturally more talkative than men. In The Female Mind, Dr Luan Brizendine says women devote more brain cells to talking than men. And, if that wasn't enough, the simple act of talking triggers a flood of brain chemicals which give women a rush similar to that felt by heroin addicts when they get a high. Dr Brizendine says the differences can be traced back to the womb, where the sex hormone testosterone moulds the developing male brain.
The areas responsible for communication, emotion and memory are all pared back the unborn baby boy. The result is that boys - and men - chat less than their female counterparts and struggle to express their emotions to the same extent.
"Women have an eight-lane superhighway for processing emotion, while men have a small country road," said Dr Brizendine, who runs a female "mood and hormone" clinic in San Francisco.
There are, however, advantages to being the strong, silent type. Testosterone also reduces the size of the section of the brain involved in hearing - allowing men to become "deaf" to the most logical of arguments put forward by their wives and girlfriends.
Picture it. Snow is falling and the fireplace is aglow. You're warm and comfy in your favorite easy chair sipping a cup of hot cider. The chords of a timeless tune begin to warm your heart:
I'm dreaming of a whatever Just like the ones I've come to know
Where officials chicken and lawyers quicken To file lawsuits for the dough
I'm dreaming of a whatever With every fuzzy card I write
May your days be neutral and vague And may all your whatevers be trite
Jesus is still the reason for the season - the gift that keeps on giving - the good tidings of great joy which will be to all people.
"We tell people that the cross means we are forgiven. Jesus has paid the penalty of our sins. And that Jesus' resurection means we will have life after death and be with God in Heaven. That has been our message. But it has retained only two dimensions: we have neglected the Good News about the Kingdom in the here and now. The powerful experience and explanation of the in breaking rule of God, in which people were being set free from sin, sickness, and spiritual oppression and even the spirit of a nation was being changed, has been largely lost. We've replaced it with a much more individualistic message about freedom from guilt and fire insurance after we die." - Rick Richardson, Reimagining Evangelism (InterVarsity, 2006)
"Truth is the consistency and agreement of our ideas with the ideas of God." - Jonathan Edwards
"It's real, it's changed my life, it's transformed my heart, I'm not who I was. No longer ... do I feel the pressure of, 'how fancy are my shoes? Or what kind of car am I driving? Or how much money do I make?' None of that matters to me anymore ... I'm having a daily experience with the spirit of God that's more priceless than anything I've experienced before." - Actor Stephen Baldwin discussing his Christian conversion with ABC News
Little Johnny was in church when the wine and wafers were passed out. His mother leaned over and told him that he was not old enough to partake in the Communion. When the basket was passed around, she leaned over once again to tell him to drop his money in, but Little Johnny held his dollar firmly in his hand, stating, "If I can't eat, I won't pay!"
We do not remember days, we remember moments.
"I have wondered at times what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the US congress." ~ Ronald Reagan
God Is like DIAL SOAP Aren't you glad you have Him? Don't you wish everybody did?
"Red meat is NOT bad for you. Now blue-green meat... THAT'S bad for you!" - Tommy Smothers
"Pain is often the pathway to maturity. Unfortunately we want the product without the process." - Rick Warren
When Everything Becomes "Merely"
Virginia Owens in her book, And The Trees Clap Their Hands, suggests that we lose the wonder of it all, because along the way everything becomes "merely." Things are "merely" stars, sunset, rain, flowers, and mountains. Their connection with God's creation is lost. During this Advent season many things are just "merely." It becomes "merely" Bethlehem, a stable, a birth -- we have no feeling of wonder or mystery. That is what familiarity can do to us over the years.
Owens goes on to say that it is this "merely" quality of things that leads to crime. It is "merely" a thing -- I'll take it. It is "merely" an object -- I'll destroy it. It is this "merely" quality of things and life that leads to war. We shall lose "merely" a few thousand men, but it will be worth it. Within the Advent narrative nothing is "merely." Things are not "merely" things, but are part of God's grand design. Common things, such as motherhood, a birth, a child, now have new meaning. This is not "merely" the world, but a world that is charged with the beauty and grandeur of God's design. It is a world so loved by God that God gave his only Son. What is so great about the Advent season is that everything appears charged with the beauty and grandeur of God. God's Downward Mobility, John A. Stroman
Exchanging Our Eschatological Heritage
Neill Hamilton, who taught at Drew University for many years, once observed how people in our time lose hope for the future. It happens whenever we let our culture call the shots on how the world is going to end. At this stage of technological advancement, the only way the culture can make sense of the future is through the picture of everything blowing up in a nuclear holocaust. The world cannot know what we know, that everything has changed in the death and resurrection of Jesus, that the same Christ is coming to judge the world and give birth to a new creation. And so, people lose hope. As Hamilton puts it: This substitution of an image of nuclear holocaust for the coming of Christ is a parable of what happens to Christians when they cease to believe in their own eschatological heritage. The culture supplies its own images for the end when we default by ceasing to believe in biblical images of God's triumph at the end.
The good news of the gospel is this: when all is said and done, God is going to win.
No Box Seats in the Kingdom,
Sound Theology
In the Peanuts comic strip, Linus and Lucy are standing at the window looking out at the rain falling. Lucy says to Linus, "Boy, look at it rain...What if it floods the earth?" Linus, the resident biblical scholar for the Peanuts, answers, "It will never do that...in the ninth chapter of Genesis, God promised Noah that would never happen again, and the sign of the promise is the rainbow." With a smile on her face, Lucy replies, "Linus, you've taken a great load off my mind." To which Linus responds, "Sound theology has a way of doing that." Charles Schultz, Peanuts,
Second Coming and Faithfulness
During his 1960 presidential campaign, John F. Kennedy often closed his speeches with the story of Colonel Davenport, the Speaker of the Connecticut House of Representatives: On May 19th, 1780 the sky of Hartford darkened ominously, and some of the representatives, glancing out the windows, feared the end was at hand. Quelling a clamor for immediate adjournment, Davenport rose and said, "The Day of Judgment is either approaching or it is not. If it is not, there is no cause for adjournment. If it is, I choose to be found doing my duty. Therefore, I wish that candles be brought." Rather than fearing what is to come, we are to be faithful till Christ returns. Instead of fearing the dark, we're to be lights as we watch and wait. Harry Heintz.
Princeton preacher James F. Kay puts it this way, “If the Gospel is good news, it is not because it predicts a bright, shiny future based on our morality or piety. The Gospel is neither a cocoon that insulates us from the sufferings of this present age nor a pair of ear plugs that shuts out the groaning of creation....The Gospel is Good News, not because it predicts a future based on our good behavior or other present trends; the Gospel is Good News because it promises a future based on God’s faithfulness to Jesus Christ.” (The Seasons of Grace, Eerdmann, 1995, p. 7). James F. Kay, quoted by William Willimon, “Lo, He Comes With Clouds Descending”
Women will spend more than eight years of their lives shopping, says a study.
While keeping their families fed and clothed -and indulging in a little retail therapy - the average woman will shop for an astonishing 25,184 hours and 53 minutes over a period of 63 years.
If the average expedition lasted the length of a full working day - from 9am to 5pm - that would be 3,148 days trudging around the shops, or just over eight-and-a-half years.
The poll of 3,000 women, conducted by GE Money, revealed they make an average of 301 shopping trips per year, lasting a total of 399 hours and 46 minutes.
Food shopping can take more than an hour to complete each time. With an average of 84 trips to stock the pantry over a year, that is 94 hours and 55 minutes in the supermarket.
Women also dedicate 90 trips a year to keeping up their appearances - shopping for clothes 30 times, shoes 15 times, accessories 18 times and toiletries 27 times.
A total of 100 hours and 48 minutes is spent hunting for the latest clothing bargains and fashion statements. A further 40 hours and 30 minutes is spent shopping for footwear, and 29 hours and 31 minutes looking for accessories such as handbags, jewellery and scarves. Even shopping for more mundane items such as deodorant, shower gel and razors takes women around 17 hours and 33 minutes over one year. A further 19 trips, or 36 hours and 17 minutes, are used to buy gifts for friends and family.
The poll also showed women will go window shopping 51 times a year, spending 48 hours and 51 minutes just looking for their next purchase.
"No one gets an exemption from hardship on planet earth. How we receive it hinges on whether we believe in an alternate reality that transcends the one we know so well. The Bible never minimizes hardship or unfairness - witness books like Job, Psalms, and Lamentations. It simply asks us to withhold final judgment until all the evidence is in." - Phillip Yancey, Rumors of Another World (Zondervan, 2003)
TALKING
It is something one half of the population has long suspected - and the other half always vocally denied. Women really do talk more than men.
In fact, women talk almost three times as much as men, with the average woman chalking up 20,000 words in a day - 13,000 more than the average man.
Women also speak more quickly, devote more brainpower to chit-chat - and actually get a buzz out of hearing their own voices, a new book suggests.
The book - written by a female psychiatrist - says that inherent differences between the male and female brain explain why women are naturally more talkative than men. In The Female Mind, Dr Luan Brizendine says women devote more brain cells to talking than men. And, if that wasn't enough, the simple act of talking triggers a flood of brain chemicals which give women a rush similar to that felt by heroin addicts when they get a high. Dr Brizendine says the differences can be traced back to the womb, where the sex hormone testosterone moulds the developing male brain.
The areas responsible for communication, emotion and memory are all pared back the unborn baby boy. The result is that boys - and men - chat less than their female counterparts and struggle to express their emotions to the same extent.
"Women have an eight-lane superhighway for processing emotion, while men have a small country road," said Dr Brizendine, who runs a female "mood and hormone" clinic in San Francisco.
There are, however, advantages to being the strong, silent type. Testosterone also reduces the size of the section of the brain involved in hearing - allowing men to become "deaf" to the most logical of arguments put forward by their wives and girlfriends.
Picture it. Snow is falling and the fireplace is aglow. You're warm and comfy in your favorite easy chair sipping a cup of hot cider. The chords of a timeless tune begin to warm your heart:
I'm dreaming of a whatever Just like the ones I've come to know
Where officials chicken and lawyers quicken To file lawsuits for the dough
I'm dreaming of a whatever With every fuzzy card I write
May your days be neutral and vague And may all your whatevers be trite
Jesus is still the reason for the season - the gift that keeps on giving - the good tidings of great joy which will be to all people.
"We tell people that the cross means we are forgiven. Jesus has paid the penalty of our sins. And that Jesus' resurection means we will have life after death and be with God in Heaven. That has been our message. But it has retained only two dimensions: we have neglected the Good News about the Kingdom in the here and now. The powerful experience and explanation of the in breaking rule of God, in which people were being set free from sin, sickness, and spiritual oppression and even the spirit of a nation was being changed, has been largely lost. We've replaced it with a much more individualistic message about freedom from guilt and fire insurance after we die." - Rick Richardson, Reimagining Evangelism (InterVarsity, 2006)
"Truth is the consistency and agreement of our ideas with the ideas of God." - Jonathan Edwards
"It's real, it's changed my life, it's transformed my heart, I'm not who I was. No longer ... do I feel the pressure of, 'how fancy are my shoes? Or what kind of car am I driving? Or how much money do I make?' None of that matters to me anymore ... I'm having a daily experience with the spirit of God that's more priceless than anything I've experienced before." - Actor Stephen Baldwin discussing his Christian conversion with ABC News
Little Johnny was in church when the wine and wafers were passed out. His mother leaned over and told him that he was not old enough to partake in the Communion. When the basket was passed around, she leaned over once again to tell him to drop his money in, but Little Johnny held his dollar firmly in his hand, stating, "If I can't eat, I won't pay!"
We do not remember days, we remember moments.
"I have wondered at times what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the US congress." ~ Ronald Reagan
posted by joypastordon at 2:52 PM
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