over on msn.com this article appeared… about the most depressing day of the year… it has an interesting formula… but there are lots of factors that for me make today a GREAT day… like the weather closed school!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
soon to be
next month I am heading to the heart land… and over on vonLazo’s blog there has been a conversation about my favorite place to start my day in the heart land… Z Nagy… here is a pic I stole from von Lazo…
when I saw this before reading the caption, i was fearful… then i leaarned that they were only closed for the holidays… what a relief…
ahhhh… the pastries… the coffee… ahhhh I await the 11th of Feb when i will sit and enjoy whilst listening to the rumble of the 3-4 making its way back and forth into the centre of Szeged…
thank you von Lazo for the reminder
Filed under things Central European
Narnia
my dearest and I watched Narnia last night, it was awesome to see Lewis’ words come to life on the screen…
I have enjoyed it so much that I have begun a new light reading excercise: The Magician’s Nephew
Filed under Uncategorized
some great verses to start the year
But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind, . . . I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
“Father, I desire that they . . . whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me.”—I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that Day what has been entrusted to me.—He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
Do you not know that in a race all the runners compete, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable.—Let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus.
Phil. 3:13, 14; John 17:24; 2 Tim. 1:12; Phil. 1:6; 1 Cor. 9:24, 25; Heb. 12:1, 2 (Read full verses…)
these come from Bagster’s daily reading…
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a new day
my friend Arden posted about a clean out day and the New Year… it reminded me of a quote by Goethe I read last night in the bulletin of a wedding some of our family attended…
“Nothing is worth more that this day” – now, I’m sure some would read that and surmise that that quote meant yesterday, the wedding day of this great couple… but not me
I think that quote means today.
I don’t mean the day I am writing this, I mean the day — the moment — you are reading this…
serving Him means serving Him , where we are now! living for Him in this moment…
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the death of Saddam raises questions
My friend J.R. posted a thoughtful response to the execution of Saddam…
I commented this way…
“good thoughts man, i used to argue for capital punishment all the time… then i thought about it more deeply… i have felt and thought exactly the same kind of things that you are expressing… we should all ask ourselves is in regard to your closing thoughts, do we have all the answers? do we know enough? i know we think we do… but do we??? N.T.Wright has some interesting thoughts in his recent book _Evil and the Justice of God_… in Nov i heard him speak about the war in the context of this book and during the Q & A it was clear that many of the Americans (it was an all American audience in the DC area) really struggled with one of the concepts that he put forth: FORGIVENESS… now, that is not to say that there should be no consequences… but CAPITAL PUNISHMENT???? I dunno, man… thanks for getting the conversation going in my head and in the head of others… do we really know enough to kill? Oh, another study on this subject is the film ‘Capote’… but that’s another post and comment isn’t it?”
Here are some quotes from a page on which i have three flags in my copy of the book…
“Forgiveness doesn’t mean ‘I didn’t really mind’ or ‘it didn’t really matter.’ I did mind and it did matter, otherwise there wouldn’t be anything to forgive at all, merely something to adjust my attitudes about.”
“Nor is forgiveness the same as saying, ‘Let’s pretend it didn’t really happen.’ This is a little trickier because part of the point of forgiveness is that I am committing myself to work toward the point where I can behave as if it hadn’t happened. But it did happen, and forgiveness itself isn’t pretending that it didn’t; forgiveness is looking hard at the fact that it didn’t; forgiveness is looking hard at the fact that it did and making a conscious choice – a decision of the moral will – to set it aside so that it doesn’t came as a barrier between us. In other words, forgiveness presupposes that the thing which happened was indeed evil and cannot be simply set aside as irrelevant. Along that route lies suppressed anger and a steady distancing of people who no longer trust one another. A much better plan is to put things out on the table, as indeed the New Testament commands us to do, and deal with them.”
Okay, that’s too much quoting… this is too long a post… I need to think more… but the death of Saddam raises this question: is capital punishment okay? I’m not sure anymore…
Jesus died to forgive sin, which can enable us to be forgiving too… if we are willing…
