November 29
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
If we had to tolerate in others all that we permit in ourselves, life would become completely unbearable. Georges Courteline
There should be a solemn pause before we rush to judgment. Thomas Erskine
Luther on Signs of Christ's Coming
I do not wish to force any one to believe as I do; neither will I permit anyone to deny me the right to believe that the last day is near at hand. These words and signs of Christ compel me to believe that such is the case. For the history of the centuries that have passed since the birth of Christ nowhere reveals conditions like those of the present. There has never been such building and planting in the world. There has never been such gluttonous and varied eating and drinking as now. Wearing apparel has reached its limit in costliness. Who has ever heard of such commerce as now encircles the earth? There have arisen all kinds of art and sculpture, embroidery and engraving, the like of which has not been seen during the whole Christian era.
In addition men are so delving into the mysteries of things that today a boy of twenty knows more than twenty doctors formerly knew. There is such a knowledge of languages and all manner of wisdom that it must be confessed, the world has reached such great heights in the things that pertain to the body, or as Christ calls them, "cares of life", eating, drinking, building, planting, buying, selling, marrying and giving in marriage, that every one must see and say either ruin or a change must come. It is hard to see how a change can come. Day after day dawns and the same conditions remain. There was never such keenness, understanding and judgment among Christians in bodily and temporal things as now - I forbear to speak of the new inventions, printing, fire-arms, and other implements of war...This compels me to believe that Christ will soon come to judgment...it must soon break in upon them. Martin Luther, Sermon on Luke 21:25-36: The Signs of the Day of Judgment
• Worst and Best States for Unemployment
Thirteen states and Washington, D.C., now have unemployment rates higher than the national rate of 10.2 percent. The 10 states with the highest unemployment rates, by percentage, are: Michigan (15.1), Nevada (13.0), Rhode Island (12.9), California (12.5), South Carolina (12.1), South Carolina (12.1), Oregon (11.3), Florida (11.2), Illinois (11.0) and North Carolina (11.0). The 10 states with the lowest unemployment rate, by percentage, are: North Dakota (4.2), Nebraska (4.9), South Dakota (5.0), Montana (6.4), Vermont (6.5), Utah (6.5), Virginia (6.6), Iowa (6.7), New Hampshire (6.8) and Kansas (6.8). [ABCNews.go.com]
The average American eats 17.6 pounds of turkey per year, more than double the figure for 1970, according to the National Turkey Federation. To feed the growing appetite, some 273 million turkeys will be raised in the United States in 2009, and a good number of them will be consumed on Thanksgiving
“The pastor’s calling is not to entertain the goats but to feed the sheep.” (Raymond Barber)
He who works the oars seldom rocks the boat.
No one ever graduates from Bible Study until he meets the Author face to face. (Everett T Harris)
I exercise seven times a week. I tie my shoes every day.
My wife is broad-minded. She thinks there are two sides to every story -- her’s and her mother’s.
Here is a version of the 23rd Psalm that ought to be mandatory reading each day of Advent, and a unison reading each Advent Sunday.
The lord is my pace setter . . . I shall not rush
He makes me stop for quiet intervals
He provides me with images of stillness which restore my serenity
He leads me in the way of efficiency through calmness of mind and his guidance is peace
Even though I have a great many things to accomplish each day, I will not fret, for his presence is here
His timelessness, his all importance will keep me in balance
He prepares refreshment and renewal in the midst of my activity by anointing my mind with his oils of tranquility
My cup of joyous energy overflows
Truly harmony and effectiveness shall be the fruits of my hours for I shall walk in the Pace of my Lord and dwell in his house for ever. --A version of Psalm 23 from Japan, as reprinted in Mother Teresa,
Fellow Passengers to the Grave
"I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come around, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys..." Charles Dickens
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
Pastor 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."
"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)
Americans spend six hours a week doing various types of shopping, and they go to shopping centers on average once a week - more often than they go to church or synagogue. Some 93 percent of American teenage girls surveyed in 1987 deemed shopping their favorite pastime. The 32,563 shopping centers in the country surpassed high schools in number in 1987. Just from 1986 to 1989, total retail space in these centers grew by 65 million square meters, or 20 percent. Shopping centers now garner 55 percent of retail sales in the United States, compared with 16 percent in France and 4 percent in Spain.
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.
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.
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
If we had to tolerate in others all that we permit in ourselves, life would become completely unbearable. Georges Courteline
There should be a solemn pause before we rush to judgment. Thomas Erskine
Luther on Signs of Christ's Coming
I do not wish to force any one to believe as I do; neither will I permit anyone to deny me the right to believe that the last day is near at hand. These words and signs of Christ compel me to believe that such is the case. For the history of the centuries that have passed since the birth of Christ nowhere reveals conditions like those of the present. There has never been such building and planting in the world. There has never been such gluttonous and varied eating and drinking as now. Wearing apparel has reached its limit in costliness. Who has ever heard of such commerce as now encircles the earth? There have arisen all kinds of art and sculpture, embroidery and engraving, the like of which has not been seen during the whole Christian era.
In addition men are so delving into the mysteries of things that today a boy of twenty knows more than twenty doctors formerly knew. There is such a knowledge of languages and all manner of wisdom that it must be confessed, the world has reached such great heights in the things that pertain to the body, or as Christ calls them, "cares of life", eating, drinking, building, planting, buying, selling, marrying and giving in marriage, that every one must see and say either ruin or a change must come. It is hard to see how a change can come. Day after day dawns and the same conditions remain. There was never such keenness, understanding and judgment among Christians in bodily and temporal things as now - I forbear to speak of the new inventions, printing, fire-arms, and other implements of war...This compels me to believe that Christ will soon come to judgment...it must soon break in upon them. Martin Luther, Sermon on Luke 21:25-36: The Signs of the Day of Judgment
• Worst and Best States for Unemployment
Thirteen states and Washington, D.C., now have unemployment rates higher than the national rate of 10.2 percent. The 10 states with the highest unemployment rates, by percentage, are: Michigan (15.1), Nevada (13.0), Rhode Island (12.9), California (12.5), South Carolina (12.1), South Carolina (12.1), Oregon (11.3), Florida (11.2), Illinois (11.0) and North Carolina (11.0). The 10 states with the lowest unemployment rate, by percentage, are: North Dakota (4.2), Nebraska (4.9), South Dakota (5.0), Montana (6.4), Vermont (6.5), Utah (6.5), Virginia (6.6), Iowa (6.7), New Hampshire (6.8) and Kansas (6.8). [ABCNews.go.com]
The average American eats 17.6 pounds of turkey per year, more than double the figure for 1970, according to the National Turkey Federation. To feed the growing appetite, some 273 million turkeys will be raised in the United States in 2009, and a good number of them will be consumed on Thanksgiving
“The pastor’s calling is not to entertain the goats but to feed the sheep.” (Raymond Barber)
He who works the oars seldom rocks the boat.
No one ever graduates from Bible Study until he meets the Author face to face. (Everett T Harris)
I exercise seven times a week. I tie my shoes every day.
My wife is broad-minded. She thinks there are two sides to every story -- her’s and her mother’s.
Here is a version of the 23rd Psalm that ought to be mandatory reading each day of Advent, and a unison reading each Advent Sunday.
The lord is my pace setter . . . I shall not rush
He makes me stop for quiet intervals
He provides me with images of stillness which restore my serenity
He leads me in the way of efficiency through calmness of mind and his guidance is peace
Even though I have a great many things to accomplish each day, I will not fret, for his presence is here
His timelessness, his all importance will keep me in balance
He prepares refreshment and renewal in the midst of my activity by anointing my mind with his oils of tranquility
My cup of joyous energy overflows
Truly harmony and effectiveness shall be the fruits of my hours for I shall walk in the Pace of my Lord and dwell in his house for ever. --A version of Psalm 23 from Japan, as reprinted in Mother Teresa,
Fellow Passengers to the Grave
"I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come around, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys..." Charles Dickens
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
Pastor 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."
"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)
Americans spend six hours a week doing various types of shopping, and they go to shopping centers on average once a week - more often than they go to church or synagogue. Some 93 percent of American teenage girls surveyed in 1987 deemed shopping their favorite pastime. The 32,563 shopping centers in the country surpassed high schools in number in 1987. Just from 1986 to 1989, total retail space in these centers grew by 65 million square meters, or 20 percent. Shopping centers now garner 55 percent of retail sales in the United States, compared with 16 percent in France and 4 percent in Spain.
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.
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.
posted by joypastordon at 9:31 PM
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