My oldest son, Jeremy, discovered an online interactive version of 20 Questions that you can play against the computer: you think of an item, it asks you questions, you click on the appropriate response, then it asks you more questions trying to guess what you’re thinking of. We played the “Classic” version last night and had a lot of fun with it, but it also has 20 Questions games based on movies, TV, and a few other categories.
Something fun
“Borrowed” from The Jungle Hut:
Psalm Sunday: Psalm 15
Psalm 15 (New King James Version)
A Psalm of David.
1 LORD, who may abide in Your tabernacle?
Who may dwell in Your holy hill?
2 He who walks uprightly,
And works righteousness,
And speaks the truth in his heart;
3 He who does not backbite with his tongue,
Nor does evil to his neighbor,
Nor does he take up a reproach against his friend;
4 In whose eyes a vile person is despised,
But he honors those who fear the LORD;
He who swears to his own hurt and does not change;
5 He who does not put out his money at usury,
Nor does he take a bribe against the innocent.
He who does these things shall never be moved.
I think most of us would nod our heads in agreement at the rightness or wrongness of the things listed here, but there is one I want to highlight that we tend to gloss over. Verse 4 speaks of one who “swears to his own hurt and does not change.” That is a really rare characteristic these days. Usually if one promises to do something, then finds it is going to cost more time or money or commitment than he planned, he gets out of it as soon as possible, even if it means breaking a contract or leaving someone else hanging. Someone who promises to do something and keeps his promise even when it hurts displays a high level of integrity and character.
This list of characteristics of who may abide or dwell in the Lord’s house reminds me somewhat of a similar one in Revelation 21 where it says “But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death” (verse 8 ) and “But there shall by no means enter it [the new Jerusalem] anything that defiles, or causes an abomination or a lie, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life” (verse 28).
It could almost make one despair, because all of us have faults and failures — sin — that would disqualify us.
Thank God for Psalm 130:4-5: “If thou, LORD, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared.”
And for I John 1:7-9: “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
I was reading in II Samuel 22 in my devotions earlier this week a passage that parallels Psalm 18 which David wrote after having been delivered out of the hands of Saul and all his enemies. In Samuel this is recorded near the end of David’s life just after some giants in Gath (Goliath’s relatives?) are taken care of. So I don’t know if this Psalm was written earlier and just recorded at this point or if it was written and recorded near the end of David’s life: if the latter, it is remarkable that he can talk of his blamelessness and cleanness in verses 21-25 after the sins involving Bathsheba and Uriah. That’s just a testimony to the saving, cleansing grace of God.
I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins: return unto me; for I have redeemed thee. (Psalm 44:22).
Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord. (Acts 3:19).
Then, as we’re cleansed, we can seek His grace and His power to live as He wants us to every day.
See Butterfly Kisses to read more on this Psalm or to link to your own thoughts about it.
A Passion For Thee
Set my heart, O dear Father,
On Thee, and Thee only,
Give me a thirst for Thy presence divine.
Lord, keep my focus on loving Thee wholly,
Purge me from earth; Turn my heart after Thine.
A passion for Thee;
O Lord, set a fire in my soul, and a thirst for my God.
Hear Thou my prayer, Lord, Thy power impart.
Not just to serve, but to love Thee with all of my heart.
Father fill with Thy Spirit, and fit me for service,
Let love for Christ every motive inspire,
Teach me to follow in selfless submission,
Be Thou my joy and my soul’s one desire.
A passion for Thee;
O Lord, set a fire in my soul, and a thirst for my God.
Hear Thou my prayer, Lord, Thy power impart.
Not just to serve, but to love Thee with all of my heart.
–Words and music by Joe Zichterman
Saturday Photo Scavenger Hunt: Steps
Theme: Steps | Become a Photo Hunter | View Blogroll
This was taken several years ago at the same state park where some of my pictures from the “water” theme from a few weeks ago were taken. We had lived in this area for the first fourteen years we were married and frequently went to this state park to have a picnic, feed the ducks, etc. We moved to another state for four years and then moved back to SC, but father away from this place. Once or twice we’ve made treks back there since then. I don’t know quite what his structure was for — it was bigger than what was needed just to climb up and go down the pole, and I never saw it used as a stage. But I have pictures from different years with the boys at the top with their hands straight up, like in the picture below from several years earlier. It was one of those things they did every time we were there.
On the back of this picture I have written, “TA-DA!”
Nice, but still a rebel
Some weeks ago I finished Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis and started writing a review, but got distracted and busy and haven’t gotten back to it. I do intend to finish it soon: one difficulty is that there are a number of good quotes from the book I want to use, but if I use all of them it would make for an exceptionally long post.
One quote, however, has been on my mind, and I wanted to go ahead and post it separately. It’s from the chapter “Beyond Personality” in a section that discusses the dilemma of how you can sometimes have an unsaved person who is actually nicer than some Christians. Lewis goes into many reasons for that which I won’t reproduce here, but one reason has to do with general disposition. Person A may be a quieter, calmer person and generally nice and personable, yet unsaved. Person B may have a more excitable personality and a fiery temper which the Lord has been giving him grace to overcome, and he may be a lot better than he was, yet compared with Person A he doesn’t seem as nice. Lewis then goes on to say (emphasis mine):
If you have sound nerves and intelligence and health and popularity and a good upbringing, you are likely to be quite satisfied with your character as it is. “Why drag God into it?” you may ask. A certain level of good conduct comes fairly easily to you. You are not one of those wretched creatures who are always being tripped up by s*x, or dipsomania, or nervousness, or bad temper. Everyone says you are a nice chap and (between ourselves) you agree with them. You are quite likely to believe that all this niceness is your own doing: and you may easily not feel the need for any better kind of goodness. Often people who have all these natural kinds of goodness cannot be brought to recognize their need for Christ at all until, one day, the natural goodness lets them down and their self-satisfaction is shattered….
If you are a nice person — if virtue comes easily to you — beware! Much is expected from those to whom much is given. If you mistake for your own merits what are really God’s gifts to you through nature, and if you are contented with simply being nice, you are still a rebel: and all those gifts will only make your fall more terrible, your corruption more complicated, your bad example more disastrous. The Devil was an archangel once; his natural gifts were as far above yours as your are above those of a chimpanzee.
….We must not suppose that even if we succeeded in making everyone nice we should have saved their souls. A world of nice people, content in their own niceness, looking no further, turned away from God, would be just as desperately in need of salvation as a miserable world — and might even be more difficult to save.
For mere improvement is no redemption, though redemption always improves people even here and now and will, in the end, improve them to a degree we cannot yet imagine. God became man to turn creatures into sons: not simply to produce better men of the old kind but to produce a new kind of man.
If what you want is an argument against Christianity (and I well remember how eagerly I looked for such arguments when I began to be afraid it was true) you can easily find some stupid and unsatisfactory Christian and say, “So there’s your boasted new man! Give me the old kind.” But if you once have begun to see that Christianity is on other grounds probable, you will know in your heart that this is only evading the issue. What can you ever really know of other people’s souls — of their temptations, their opportunities, their struggles? One soul in the whole creation you do know: and it is the only one whose fate is placed in your hands. If there is a God, you are, in a sense, alone with Him. You cannot put Him off with speculations about your next door neighbors or memories of what you have read in books. What will all that chatter and hearsay count (will you even be able to remember it?) when the anesthetic fog which we call “nature” or “the real world” fades away and the Presence in which you have always stood becomes palpable, immediate, and unavoidable?
Bloglines hiccuped
Last night I fell asleep on the couch watching the news, and next thing I knew it was about 2 a.m. Everyone else was already in bed, so I got up to turn everything off and go on to bed. I had left my e-mail provider and Bloglines open earlier in the evening, and as I went to turn Bloglines off, I noticed it said there were over 11,000 new posts. I thought I was seeing things a little fuzzy from my sleepiness, so I squinted and looked closer, then saw that every blog I am subscribed to through Bloglines was bolded, indicating new posts, and the parentheses beside each blog had numbers in the 70-200 range rather than 1 or 2.
I clicked on the “Bloglines news,” and it said they had experienced a small hiccup during the night and they hoped it wouldn’t cause any problems.
That was some hiccup!
I clicked on a couple of blogs and saw that there were no new posts — a brief glance through what was listed showed they were all old posts.
I went ahead and closed everything down and figured this morning I would just mark everything read and then go back and check out the ones that do tend to have posts every day. Thankfully all was back to normal — I think there were 21 new posts from the 79 blogs I’m subscribed to.
I love you guys, but 11,000 posts would have been a bit much. 🙂
Helping, not hurting
This post by Yekwana Man is an excellent answer to those who think missionaries are having a negative impact on indigenous peoples.
I have known two missionaries, one in person and one through books, who ministered to primitive tribes who were killing each other off, the first by cannibalism and headhunting, the second because that tribe’s only way of dealing with any wrong was murder. This latter tribe was the Waodani, formerly known as the Aucas (an outside name given to them, not their name for themselves) of Ecuador. In the documentary Beyond the Gates of Splendor they told anthropologists that they had been almost down to two people before the missionaries came. Why would even any non-Christian want to see a whole people group extinguished due to infighting or disease? Especially these days when we clamor to save the spotted owl and other endangered species? Shouldn’t endangered people be at least equally as important as endangered animals?
Would anyone in their right minds really want such practices as burying a widow along with her husband or killing twins or deformed babies to continue? So many primitive tribes practice these kinds of things.
Why deny these people the choice of hearing that there are other ways? Why not allow them to hear the gospel and let them make their own choice? So many who bask in the multitudes of freedoms we have here in the US would rather keep people like this in darkness in the name of preserving their culture. Most missionaries I know of these days consciously and conscientiously try not to “Americanize” the native churches but rather try to respect their culture and form churches within that culture while introducing healthier ways of living and civil practices. Who could possibly have a problem with that?
Thursday Thirteen: Mixed Metaphors
OK, so there are more than thirteen, but I didn’t want to eliminate any more than I already did. 🙂 I received these in an e-mail some time ago and thought they were funny. Enjoy!
1. “I don’t want anybody stepping on anybody else’s thunder.”
2. “You can’t pull the sheep over my eyes!”
3. “That guy’s a bullhead in a china shop.”
4. “We don’t want this project to snowball into a can of worms.”
5. “We were up the creek in a hand bag.”
6. “It’s best not to open that can of wax.”
7. “Let’s pair up into threes.”
8. “I just thought myself into a corner.”
9. “We really need to hang on to our coattails to ride the waves of change.”
10. “Once you open a can of worms, they always come home to roost.”
11. “She grabbed the bull by the horns, and ran with it.”
12. “They were up a tree without a paddle.”
13. “He’s got too many oars in the fire.”
14. “We’ll tackle that bridge when we come to it.”
15. “I can see the carrot at the end of the tunnel.”
16. “You can beat a dead horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.”
17. “Those two get on like a horse on fire.”
18. “You’ve buttered your bread, now lie in it.”
19. “Grasping at the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
20. “Don’t burn your bridges till you come to them.”
21. “He’s been burning the midnight oil at both ends.”
22. “It’s as plain as the egg on your face.”
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Heather’s love offering
Don’t forget, today starts the love offering BooMama has set up for Heather at Especially Heather. Heather is the mother of the Emma Grace whose “Pray for Emma Grace” buttons you may have seen around. Heather just recently found out she has a brain tumor. She had appointments at the Mayo Clinic and M. D. Anderson for further opinions. This love offering is to help defray the costs of those trips and whatever other expenses they might incur as a result of this finding. Details for participating are here. But whatever you do, please pray.
Stray Thoughts 