In My Daughter's Eyes

Saturday was the funeral for our oldest church member. Clara was 87 years old, her husband had died 16 months before, and her health had been especially declining in the last six months. She was the matriarch of the church, the treasurer and Sunday School secretary.

I had teared up at the hospital when I went with her son and grandsons in to see her in the recovery room where she had died, and to clear out the hospital room of her effects. I went through the visitation on Friday night with the family and friends with no trouble, and encouraged them to the best of my ability. It helped that Clara had written instructions that her funeral and visitation were to be closed casket. During the funeral, I was able to get the audience to chuckle a couple of times as I talked about Clara, and I also presented the Gospel.

I was fine at the grave side service too; the weather was breezy and rather cool, but not freezing. I read and spoke from 1 Thess. 4:13-18:

"13 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope. 14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. 15 For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord. 18 Therefore comfort one another with these words."

Fine that is, until I looked into the eyes of my daughter, SonnetJoy. Her Spiritual gift is compassion; she feels very deeply, and with great empathy, the suffering and emotion of others. SonnetJoy was leaning into the arms of her husband, ThePendragon, and weeping quietly. That's when I nearly lost it. My throat began to close, my eyes watered, and I momentarily lost my focused concentration, which is so necessary for preaching. I had to look away as quickly as I could, clear my throat, and press on. It worked. I have learned that I cannot look into my daughter's eyes when emotions, joy or sorrow, are running high.

Please comment

Somehow, I have no idea how many people actually read my blogspot. If you are reading, please leave a comment so I know you are there.

My daughter linked to one of my recent blogs and I got two comments, and my sister has commented twice. Other than that, I don't know if I am blogging to myself! I was encouraged by an old friend of our family this weekend, when they said that they read here every couple of weeks.

I wish I had a counter for my blogspot, but I haven't found one yet; so, I am counting on your comments until I get a widget to count for me!

8th Grade Math

So, I've been sitting in the hall as a security guard for a group of college classes, and I've been listening to the teacher as he lectures the students on how to do basic Algebra. Then my daughter can't do some math for herself, and takes an on-line 8th grade math test, 9/10! Pretty good.

How would I do?

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 10/10 correct!

Could You Pass 8th Grade Math?

Well I got 10/10! Wow, was I surprised!
How did you do?

My Library

I was recently "turned on" to a library web site called Library Thing (http://www.librarything.com/) by my son. Blogsopt.com won't accept their widget to display my books! LibraryThing is a pay-for-service site, but the lifetime fee is minimal, at $25. I guess they make their money from the fact that they have a link with Amazon.com, hoping that you will see the books in my library and purchase them through Amazon.

Well, okay, they have to make their money somehow, and it doesn't come out of my pocket, only yours if you see something you like and go to buy it from Amazon. Personally, I buy most of my books through Christianbook.com (CBD) because their prices are cheaper, and because I know that the CBD folks are not donating money to un-Godly causes that some other enterprises contribute to. I guess being used can work both ways!

I have entered ratings for most of the items already loaded into my library site, and I am adding my comments/ reviews about the volumes and book-sets after I get them entered. You will see that most of my stuff is theological in nature, but there are a few books that are fiction, primarily Tom Clancy, and John Gresham. I have read JK Rowling's Harry Potter books, but I borrowed them to read, and have not purchased them (yet).

The LibraryThing site will also sell you a barcode scanner (it looks like a cat!) that will automatically enter the data for the book for you. My problem is that the bar code thing is fairly new, and many of my books do not have the bar codes for the ISBN's and some of the older books don't even have an ISBN, and some don't even have Library of Congress codes! I had to do some research in the LoC site and used book sites to get the information for some of my books.

Take a look!

Deliberations with a JW

Wow, I just finished a four day on-line discussion of the Trinity with a person who will not admit that he is Jehovah's Witness, but wants to accuse me of dodging the issue when I tried to be friendly. He was not friendly, but tried to egg me into personal attacks. When I tried to engage in normal conversation with him, he wanted to bait me about "still dodging the question, are we?"

The 1,500 character limit, including spaces and paragraph returns, in yahoo's answers' email program was a major limitation to both of us, as it was hard to make a complete case with that severe of a space limit.

No amount of biblical reasoning, however, could change his ideas that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are not God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. He would not even capitalize the name of the Holy Spirit; instead calling the Spirit "it." He wanted to know "If Jesus was seated at the right hand of the Father, then where was the Holy Spirit?" He wanted the Holy Spirit to be a "force" of God in the world. I refused the idea of the Holy Spirit being merely a force, like something used in a Star Wars movie.

He would not answer the Bible facts I presented. E.g., that the Holy Spirit could be grieved (Eph 4:30) and lied to (Acts 5:3-4, where God and Holy Spirit are synonyms), is an attribute of a person; but that an impersonal force could neither be lied to nor offended. Or that only God can forgive sin, Mark 2:7 "Why does this man speak that way? He is blaspheming; who can forgive sins but God alone?" Jesus accepted their theology, but not their conclusion.

The Trinity being seen at Jesus' baptism (Matt 3:15-17) was meaningless to him, as was the Trinitarian formula in the Great Commission (Matt 28:18-20). He accused me of tri-theism and polytheism, because in Gen 1:1 God is "Elohim," a plural Hebrew pronoun, so I believe in plural Gods.

My affirmation of Deuteronomy 6:4 "Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one!" was useless to him. The English all caps "LORD" in the Hebrew is the tetragrammaton, the Holy Name of God, where the Hebrew YHWH is mixed with the vowels from Adonai "lord" to make it pronounceable; and, the "God" there is Elohim. This identifies the two words as synonyms for the same person, God; which he also refused.

My debater wanted to use the words of Matthew 28:18 "And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth," as meaning that Jesus is NOT God because He was "given the authority He had, and did not have it intrinsically."

I guess I did fail to bring in that the Septuagint (LXX) reading of Lord is the same as the Greek NT: Kurios, LORD. When Paul says Jesus is "Lord" throughout his Epistles, it is the same word the LXX used throughout the OT for God's personal name.

(Sigh)

Ah, well. I tried to end it on a friendly note, "Resistance is futile." LOL

The Red Cape

Today we delivered a cape to our youngest daughter to match the new dress she bought.

She bought the dress because her job requires all employees to dress up formally this Sunday for a "by invitation only" sale at Dillards. You get the invitation to the sale by spending $XX,000's of dollars there in the previous year. So, she found this cocktail dress for $195.00, that was marked down 50%, further reduced another 75%, with her employee discount, she paid $19.50 for a $195 dress. She has always looked so good in red, and with red sequins, it is a very nice dress.

The only problem is, the dress IS a cocktail dress; low cut in the front and no back until the waist. To make it modest, my wife made a red satin cape for her to wear over her shoulders. The colors match, and it looked good. However, when the girls saw it, they wanted it a little shorter so it would not get in the way while she works, and they wanted a fringe to dress it up. So, now the finished cape had to be modified, shortened and a fringe made of a white boa. So, trim four inches off the perimeter, and machine tack on two $10 boas to reach all the way around (thank God for inventing the sewing machine). The boa has shiny silver and effervescent feathers mixed into the white, making it shine in the light.

When she saw the finished cape, her eyes lit up and a big smile broke across her face. It was worth the trouble just to see her smile. The outfit will be beautiful. So is our daughter.