My eldest son gave me another new watch. He has given me several over the years. This one has more dials on it than Carter has liver pills. (If you get that one, you have probably come to the right place.) But, I have not yet figured all of them out, therefore, I consulted the wall calendar, and it confirmed that today is
Thursday, April 25, 2013. Hello folks and welcome to my daily visit where I do my best to give you and others an opportunity to say out loud, "Huh?", scratch your head, or perhaps just throw up your hands in angst. It gets you going. Maybe my real calling is as an exercise guru. Joking only. I am well aware that many of you are inclined towards conservative thought, therefore, we end up on a lot of subjects being birds that do more or less flock together. However, there are areas where we likely don't see it the same. Throughout my working life I've been mostly on the business side of things and operated almost exclusively with a management perspective. You know, free market and all of that. Yet I've rubbed shoulders with folks who are wonderful people and they are connected at the hip to a labor union of one sort or another for their entire working life, therefore, they see my persuasion towards business as a bias and in many ways somewhat adversarial to their interests. We know that we hold different opinions about this subject, but we don't let that keep us from sharing together in our worship and in our serving of the Lord. That's just one difference I thought of and I am sure there are many others. My point is this. We don't have to agree on every little detail of every little item in order to function as brothers and sisters in Christ. Our Savior is, after all, the Common Denominator as it relates to our connection and our bond. I think I have arrived because this opening paragraph has me scratching my head. Go figure.
In a quotation attributed to Augustine, the challenge of Christian practice is well enunciated: "IN ESSENTIALS UNITY, IN NON-ESSENTIALS LIBERTY, IN ALL THINGS CHARITY." Essentials would be the God ordained clear precepts for life as found in His revelation to humanity, the Holy Bible. I mention this because I read an opinion piece this week where the writer tried to tie the bombers in Boston to those who stand against the social mores that have become accepted in our modern world. In other words, if you take a Biblical stand against a practice like abortion, then, that writer would say you are no different than those who, in the name of religion, detonated bombs that killed and maimed innocent people. His solution calls for the world to rid itself of all of the above, those that would blow up others as well as those who take a stand that goes against the will of the modern age. You might think that to be an isolated absurdity but I would suggest that we all pay attention because if those who embrace Biblical teachings don't go along to get along, one day this fellow's solution could very well become a reality. I am not fear mongering, I'm only giving you my thoughts on the matter.
We heard growing up after someone shared something to be mulled over, this little ditty, "Put that in your pipe and smoke it." I think the more often times I heard it was at the end of a lecture of sorts. It actually has been a colloquial saying that has been in use here in our country since the early 1800's. Some experts think that it tied meditation to pipe smoking where one might be told to "take that information and give it some serious thought." I think you get the gist and we also have a similar admonition attributed to Mickey Mouse where he advised, "Take that smoke and pipe it." I'm not attempting to be trite over serious matters but today's thoughts reflect a few of the gray cell machinations that percolated up as I was waiting on my Community to brew. Now that I know there's a quota, (2.8 billion cups per week), I have to do the proverbial get here early and stay here late just to keep up. I will tell you that we were out to eat one evening and I felt inclined to have a coffee after the meal and asked which coffee they served. They told me. I declined. Am I getting a little persnickety in my old age? Or what? Have a great rest of the day and may God add His blessings to it.
Amen. ....More later.
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