Knowledge and prayer

Read my FMag editorial, "Who Are We, Really?" It will make some folk unhappy, but if I can shore up the faith of one or two, it'll be worth it.

Say amen to this short prayer, "To Touch a Soul." Might consider signing up, too (upper right column at link). Seems people aren't as interested in prayer as in other things. One man's impression, anyway. Would you agree?

(Comments are not yet functional on this service. Coming soon, we hope.)

Recent posts here and there

As of late, the links to posts around the virtual world haven't been updated here on randal.us. Today, a devotional on the old blog from 2Tm 2.2: "It Just Doesn't Work That Way." Yesterday, at the same spot, a thought about context and meaning in the structure of Bible books. A couple of new stories on BNc (giving you just the general link). And a short and sad post on TFR this morning, Full Circle, that has been simmering since yesterday. (Hmm, whole line got linked, can't fix that.)



Our distance from 1 Thessalonians

"Paul's recollections about the time he and Silvanus and Timothy spent in Thessalonica and the depth of emotions in those recollections might be instructive for a church that seems in danger of treating its ministers like disposable commodities."

—B.R. Gaventa, First and Second Thessalonians, Interpretation (Westminster John Knox Press, 1998): 9.

I wonder if those recollections of the apostle do not rather speak of the dedication that servants ought to have working with the holy communities, instead of seeing their work as jobs and themselves as salaried employees, preachers for churches (for such is the common language), rather than coworkers together with the saints.

First Thessalonians records a church planter who writes in relieved thanksgiving at the faithfulness of the converts under pressure and hopes to consolidate the faith of new Christians in a recently established community. Today's preachers are usually workers whose jobs are to maintain well-established churches and keep the wheels of activity turning. With that difference, it is often hard, it seems, to capture the spirit of deep feeling that Paul demonstrates in 1 Thessalonians.

Red tape just to get some exercise

Some time ago I was working out in a gym nearby and the owners had a deadline to present a doctor's release form in order to continue working out there. Some government regulation. This is socialism at work. You can't do anything without the government sticking its nose in it.

Anyway, I went to the family doc, but she wouldn't give me the release form, wanted me to see a cardiologist because of age (as if I were getting old, hrmph!), even gave me my money back which I had paid up front. (Here, you pay the doc before the appointment.) By that time, considering the long wait before getting appointments, we were heading to the US, so I just dropped out of the gym and thought I'd set things up after getting back.

A year later ...

Now I'm going to this new doc whom somebody recommended, since in The Missus's experience cardiologists have not had a good record.

But all I want is a release form so I can exercise or swim or something.

Confirming once again my prejudice against the medical field.

Is there a witch doctor nearby I can consult with? Maybe there I can get in and out quick, for a small fee. And advice just about as good.

(And the reason I wrote all this is to test the autopost from Posthaven to Twitter and Facebook, Yeah!)

Role models

On TFR yesterday, I plopped down, uncerimoniously, as usual, another Corollaries segment, that occasional hodge-podge of subjects both religious and no, to the sheerness and delight (hendiadys) of my screaming and fainting fans. Top billing was a link, but not just any link: a tribute to an old college professor. I recommend them both, as authors are wont to do.

After a hiatus of weeks, another Cloudburst poem got dropped on subscribers today, this time in blank verse, quite a departure from my run-of-the-mill rhyme. (Note: not free verse, but blank, iambic pentameter with no end rhymes.)

Yesterday, I reblogged a couple of friends' articles on Christian Hub. That's easier to do than starting a new post. I plan to do more of that.

(The prayers have been duly linked to from here.)

And there's more, but I don't remember it all just now. You'll have to be content with this.

Say amen

Seems like I'm using this secondary blog mainly, at the moment, to share my writings across the Internet. But we'll get it figured out in a bit. Just in time for when the full features come online.

So for now, here again, a link, to yet another prayer: "Put Us on Our Feet." Common meter, but I hope, uncommon words. Three short stanzas you can say amen to.