Reporting Valentine’s Day

After us kids were grown and out of the house, my parents had one of the best weird Valentine’s Day traditions. They would drive over to the Crestwood Mall, walk in to the Fannie May store, and purchase a huge heart-shaped box of chocolates.  They took them home and had chocolates for dinner.

The really weird part was that they actually liked the ones with coconut, pecans, cherries or chewy orange stuff.  Forrest Gump may have meant it negatively, but “you never know what you’re going to get” was an adventure for Mom and Dad – they liked all the options.  I have a bag of Snickers “bites” picked out for Diane; everything is edible and delicious in those lovely treats.

This year Valentine’s Day has competition.  Most of all, the Detroit Tigers pitchers and catchers are reporting to Spring Training, so all the important news feeds will be covering baseball.  Tune in to see whether Justin Verlander has recovered from off-season surgery, how the new manager will address the troops, and whether they any of them care that it is still only negative five degrees around here.

Valentine’s Day also has to compete with real National Holidays.  The Lansing Schools graciously provide a four day President’s Day weekend, which means the schools are closed on Friday, February 14.  Classroom parties were held on Thursday, the thirteenth.  If all the traditions continue, those poor kids won’t have a party on the real Valentine’s Day until 2017!

One good thing about schools being closed on Friday the 14th is that paychecks went out on the 13th. No complaints here.  We are very glad to have the teacher’s check direct-deposited – most likely the money will be available even if there was some huge ice / snow / wind chill / tornado / other act of God event on Thursday.

Dog Dreams

In honor of Spring Training starting this week…

 

Rover:  “Last night I dreamt I was chased by the Dog Catcher.”

Boy: “Did he catch you?”

Rover:  “He didn’t, but he threw to the Dog Third Baseman who tagged me out in a rundown.”

Take It to the LORD in Prayer

We used a well-known hymn to suggest prayer topics at our committee meeting the other night.  The Trinity Hymnal provides an appropriate Bible verse at the top of each hymn, so we added that to our mix.

“What a Friend We Have in Jesus”

By Joseph Scriven

What a Friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear!  What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer!

O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.

Have we trials and temptations?  Is there trouble anywhere?  We should never be discouraged: take it to the Lord in prayer!

Can we find a friend so faithful, who will all our sorrows share?  Jesus knows our every weakness – take it to the Lord in prayer!

Are we weak and heavy laden, cumbered with a load of care?  Precious Savior, still our refuge – take it to the Lord in prayer!

Do thy friends despise, forsake, thee?  Take it to the Lord in prayer!  In his arms he’ll take and shield thee; thou wilt find a solace there.

The active phrase in this hymn is “Take It to the Lord in Prayer,” so that is what we will do.

 Hear the echoes of Philippians 4.6-7:  “do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.  And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

 The instructions were simple: Reflect for a few minutes on

  • Reasons in the hymn for Thanking or Praising God  (our friend, comforter, encourager, defender, and more)
  • Confession to make if we have avoided or neglected God (distracted by depression, troubles, pride, etc)
  • Requests to bring before the Lord  (families, church matters, meeting issues. others)

Then, let’s pray.  The leader guided into the three areas: Thanksgiving, Confession, and Requests.

 

Valuable Pet

A man saw a pig with a wooden leg hobbling in a farmyard, More than a little curious, the man went over to the farmer, who was whittling away as he sat on the porch. The man asked the farmer to explain the pig’s wooden leg.

The Famer said, “That pig is something special.  Three weeks ago I was out in the field working my big reaper.  The darn thing hit a rock and tumbled over with me under it.  That pig saw what happened, ran back to fetch my wife and son, and saved my life.  A week ago, my wife slipped and fell into the well. That pig dragged me out of the barn and pushed me at the well.  I saved my wife just before she was going down for the third time.  Just the other day, the house caught on fire.  That pig dragged the baby out and saved her.”

“But why does he have one wooden leg?”

“Sir, you don’t eat a pig like that all at once!”

Sick SInners Need Mercy

There are three comparisons in rapid order in Matthew 9.12-13 that get to the heart of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  The story starts in verse 9, when Jesus calls the tax collector Matthew to follow him; now Jesus is eating with Matthew and his friends. 

The Pharisees are indignant with Jesus for several reasons.  Calling a tax collector to be a disciple was very bad form. Tax collectors were deemed to be traitors because they were partners with the Romans – they were considered “sinners” whether they were honest or not.  Eating and associating with a whole group of “sinners” would make Jesus one also.  And the Pharisees probably did not like it that Jesus rebuked their lifestyle.

Jesus had three responses to the Pharisees questioning his choice of dinner companions.  First, the Great Physician says that the sick need a doctor, not those who are well.  The Pharisees considered that their good habits made them well and so missed their spiritual illness, here seen as their lack of love for their neighbors. 

Second, Jesus challenges them to understand what God meant when he proclaimed through the prophet Hosea (6.6). “I desire steadfast love (mercy) and not sacrifice.” Sacrifice summarizes the blind following of the law, whereas steadfast love focuses on heartfelt adoration of God.

And third, Jesus is clear that he came to call sinners rather than the “righteous.”  The Son of God’s ministry was to the broken-hearted, those who recognized their need for a savior, a physician, a heart-change.  Those Jesus called were willing to repent and believe.

Sparky Anderson Quotes

Sparky was manager of the Detroit Tigers baseball team

 On Willie Stargell batting in Tiger Stadium for an All-Star Game: “He’s such a big, strong guy, he should love that short field.  He’s got power enough to hit home runs in any park, including Yellowstone.”

I know what the guy in the other dugout is feeling because I’ve been there myself.  My God, what an awful feeling it is, I understand that.  But understanding is something you’ll never truly understand.

If you’ve got a group that wants to win, you’ve got to let them.

On the designated hitter:  “I’ve changed my mind about it.  Instead of being bad, it stinks.”

The only reason I’m coming out here tomorrow is the schedule says I have to – After losing 16-4 to Minnesota

There ain’t no way that no Jack Morris ain’t gonna win no 20 games – a quintuple negative

Encouraging Doxology

There is such a praise-filled set of verses at the end of Romans 11.  Verse 33 – “Oh the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” – is an echo of Psalm 139.6.  Then portions of Isaiah 40 and Job 35 and 41 are quoted:

                “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?

                Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?”

And the last verse is an often-used doxology: “For from him and through him and to him are all things.  To him be glory forever. Amen.”

Why this outpouring of acclaim right here?  Paul, the apostle to the gentiles, has been discussing a difficult matter – the ultimate destination of Jews who do not believe in Jesus.   In all his missionary stops he used the rejection of Jesus by the Jews as an appropriate transition point for concentrating his efforts on the Gentiles (see Acts 17.3). He uses the Jewish rejection as a warning to the Gentiles in verse 20: “so do not become proud, but fear.”

Paul sees the benefits to the Gentiles BECAUSE the Jews were unseeing and unhearing. But he loves his Jewish brothers and hopes the best for them.  He is not sure of their fate, calling it a mystery in verse 28.  But he IS sure of the goodness of his God, who is full of mercy and grace.  He ends a hard teaching with glorious wonder at the greatness of the Creator, providing encouragement to trust and obey, even if all is not understood.

 

Vacation Post

A man was leaving for vacation in Alaska and he promised to mail his friend a piece of glacier.

The friend said, “That’s crazy.  By the time it gets here, it’ll be gone.

The vacationer blurted, “YOU”RE crazy! Who’d want to steal a piece of glacier from an envelope?”

Blunked Out Eyes

People who favor Intelligent Design will point to the eyeball as a marvel of irreducible complexity.  The system for sight – biomechanics, function and linkage of the eye to the brain – is so complicated that there is no way for small-change evolution to end up with an eyeball; each piece is dependent on all the others.

People use their eyes to communicate in marvelous ways.  They Wink (see the movie I, Robot).  They Blink (see the Doctor Who episode by that name).  They Roll (see any teen movie). They Cross (don’t try this at home; if someone hits you in the back while your eyes are crossed, they will stay that way).  They Vibrate (Jesse does this to freak me out – his eyes jiggle rapidly back and forth). 

My most unique eye activity was during my hospital stay with Guillian-Barré syndrome.  My eyes could blunk out.  This is the phrase used in the Pogo comic strips to lampoon fellow comic Little Arf and Nonnie (Little Orphan Annie), whose characters famously had no pupils in their drawn eyes.

My face, like the rest of my body, was mostly paralyzed. I couldn’t hold my lips together to use a straw, I couldn’t move my eyebrows, and I couldn’t completely draw my eye lids together.  They tell me that when I thought I was closing my eyes I was really rolling them back into my head to duck under the bit of lid that came down.  Weird.

I would sleep with my eyes blunked out, on my back, and appear to be awake.  It made for some awkward moments. My friend Kirk came in one afternoon and had a long one-sided discussion with me until the guy in the neighboring bed said, “he doesn’t look like it but he’s asleep.” Sorry, Kirk.  Glad you stopped by.