“Freedom is living within God’s guidelines.” – Chet McCalley (from a message on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood – http://www.wordoftruth.net/subject.htm ) Wow, does that fly in the face of the world’s definition of freedom!
Romans 6:18 “and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.”
In essence, we believers are free slaves.
I’m at the stage in life where my friends seem to be having babies in bunches, and so the topic of baby names is quite in vogue. Today I checked a book out of the library called Bad Baby Names by Michael Sherrod and Matthew Rayback which details the highs and (mostly) lows of names found in the U.S. Census records. I’ve chosen some of my favorites as a sample. The following are all actual names of American citizens, dating back to the late 19th century.
Warren Peace
Ima Bumm (Is that better or worse than her fellow Ima, Ima Butt? I’m(a) not sure.)
Hades Fryher (surely a darling little girl)
Jump Jump
Doctor Love
Ura Scholar
God Brown (not a lot to live up to there)
Mahershalahashbaz Sturgeon
Good Dog
Hell Hess (who’s name is bad enough, but get this – her hubby’s first name was Christian. As the authors stated, “That’s marital irony for you”).
Parents, I implore you. Think twice before naming your child a cutsie name. They’ll thank you for it. Post Office, Cholera Peace, and White Bread would all agree with me. Really.
“Don’t let what you want steal the enjoyment of what you have.”
I recently came across this quote my mom sent me, and it was the kind of statement that is convicting and encouraging at the same time. Discontentment can indeed steal my joy, while contentment in the Lord and his abundant blessings (both now and for all eternity!) is the most joyous life there is.
Today I held a week old baby in my arms. She was beautiful – from her the top of her downy head to her miniature fingernails to her little feet that fit comfortably in the palm of my hand. I could have stared at this handiwork of God all day.
I love the fact that something as big as a star in the sky and something as small as a newborn point us to the same loving Creator. We need not look far to find God; atheists sure have a problem.
The following is an item I found in my stash of old letters. It was written several years ago from my three youngest siblings to our mother (who photocopied it and sent it to me), asking for permission to buy a fancy toy from a neighbor who was moving back to the States. I have done as little editing as possible.
Dear Mom,
These are the reasons we would like to buy the Lego ship:
1. It has a lot of gear – like a compass, a wheel that moves the rudder, sailors in uniform – etc.
2. The money we would like to spend on it is ours, so we feel we should be able to because it is our money after all.
3. J. is going to college and is trying to sell the ship. if we buy it, it might give him some money sort of like Pete was selling stuff for money.
4. If we do get it we will not argue over it, or at least we will try not to argue over it.
5. The ship would provide lots of fun for us, especially with how big and realistic, and good it is.
6. Because it is a complete set, it would be nice to have because it is whole and the parts are not missing. This would make it more fun because we don’t have to replace parts.
7. It would also be a nice replacement for our homemade, [illegible], multicolored, ships that do not have real equipment and are litterally [sic] shagalabagala [Swahili term for messy, chaotic, etc.]. We say this because our “ships” are not complete our men are mismatched, our things are different colors, and we don’t have all the supplies
8. The ship could also be fun to share with other kids who visit and love Legos like the Ks.
9. Lastly if we decided not to keep the ship any more when we grow older, we could sell it or give it away to somebody who could enjoy it.
Love,
Emily J. Morrison
Noah Morrison
Daniel
P.S. We are sure this is how we want to spend our money. We would really enjoy the ship even if it is 1000 shillings.
They got it.
9 years ago, my life plans were pretty set. I was going to be a doctor. I was going to pay off my loans somewhere in the rural U.S., far far away from any city. Then I was going to move back to Africa to live and die.
9 years ago today, I received my high school diploma.
Now, 9 years later, I am not a doctor; I’m a speech-language pathologist (which, by the by, is a profession I did not know existed 9 years ago). I don’t live in the boonies; I reside near downtown in the largest city in Wisconsin (which, by the by, is a state I probably couldn’t have even found on a map 9 years ago). And though I hope to visit on occasion, I very well may never live in Africa again (which, by the by, is not an easy thing for me to contemplate).
“The heart of man plans his way,
but the Lord establishes his steps.”
Wow – I’m living proof of Proverbs 16:9!
15 innings, four hours and fifty minutes of baseball. And I watched it all, into the wee hours of this morning, a luxury afforded to few others than the unemployed-until-next-month, I suppose.
It showed me again why I love the game, which started out slow and scoreless in last evening, but built up to an nail-biting, error-plagued, close-outs-at-the-plate, sleeplessness-inducing affair that stretched out til today.
I’m a National League girl, so the end result wasn’t what I could’ve wished for, especially with the Phillies‘ Brad Lidge giving up the go-ahead run when the Brewers‘ Corey Hart’s throw home was a tad late, but it was an epic as far as I’m concerned. It’s a good thing they’ve made the Game count, otherwise, it probably wouldn’t have gotten that far, and would most certainly have been less exciting. The American League will once again have World Series home field advantage. But don’t worry, NL fans. Say it with me now . . .
There’s always next year.
I told my friend, Emily, this weekend that sometimes I feel as if I live in the quotes of other people because their words say what I’m thinking so much better than I ever could. The following is an exception, however. It is thoroughly my quote.
You see, we were fooling around on Saturday night with those magnetic words (and random prefixes and suffixes) that you put on refrigerators. Basically, we turned them upside down and chose several without knowing what they were, then tried to make grammatical sentences out of them. My first effort was:
“As an entertainer, chapterly sit between each device.”
Profound, no? So profound, indeed, that I don’t even know what it means . . . but it is grammatical. This illustrates an interesting linguistic point – that a sentence can be absolutely correct in its grammar, while at the same time, it is absolutely meaningless. Ah, the joy and mystery of language.
On the original note, I think we can now agree that I should stick to other people’s quotes rather than creating my own, right?
“she spoke with lips that love to laugh” – Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, trans. Simon Armitage
I like that description. It makes me smile.
“I took a course in speed-waiting. Now I can wait an hour in only ten minutes.” – Steven Wright
Wish it were true, but in the meantime, I’ll delight in that for which I wait:
1 Thessalonians 1:9-10 “For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.”
I read the following quote in Steven Pinker’s The Stuff of Thought (which is one of those fascinating mind-benders that language nerds like me enjoy immensely) and thought I’d share. It’s from an actual high schooler’s paper. . . he should’ve gotten some points for creativity at least.
“He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.”
I think I might slip this little “gem” into a conversation someday.
Do I really believe the promises of God? When he promises to give “peace that passes understanding” (Philippians 4:9) as I bring my worries to him, to “supply all [my] needs according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19), or to “withhold no good thing from them who walk uprightly” (Psalm 84:11), do I rest in his Word?
Not enough. I tend to push aside the all-powerful, all-caring, all-sufficient God who “owns the cattle on a thousand hills” (Psalm 50:10), and carry the weight of the world on my shoulders and in my heart. The problem there is, this fading flower (Isaiah 40:6-7) of a human was never meant to lug so heavy a burden.
Oh, for grace to trust him more.
Actually, it is. According to http://hnn.us/articles/132.html,
“America’s independence was actually declared by the Continental Congress on July 2, 1776. The night of the second the Pennsylvania Evening Post published the statement: “This day the Continental Congress declared the United Colonies Free and Independent States.”
The announcement of said declaration was made on the Fourth, hence the date on the document.
By His grace, that’s 232 years of freedom. May God continue to bless these United States with his undeserved favor.
One of the “nice” things, I suppose, about unemployment is the freedom to do things spur of the moment. Take yesterday – I’m walking down the street and seen a sign – “Blood Drive – Walk Ins Welcome”.
So I walked in. And gave about 1/16 of my blood. I still find it amazing that even with that much taken out of me (and it sure looks like a LOT in that 700mL bag), I can still function normally, with no ill effects (save a bruised arm). I was told I could look away as the needle went in, but I never do. If some sharp metal object is going to be invading my body, I want to watch if at all possible. The tubes carrying the life giving stuff away from my veins rested gently on my forearm, and I felt the warmth on my skin, which struck me as strange for some reason. The blood itself was not red, of course, but a deep purple, untouched by oxygen. And weird as it may seem, I think it’s beautiful. Truly, the life is in the blood.
I was thinking about believers and our relationship to blood, particularly the blood of Jesus Christ. In many ways, it must seem odd to the world that this blood is so valued by us, that we sing songs about it and give thanks to the One who shed it. But when a person truly understands that “without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins”(Hebrews 9:22), and that Jesus didn’t just die, he died for me and you, the idea of blood really does take on a preciousness which is hard to describe in mere words.
Made for Eternity 