“Whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.”
If you remember the context of today’s quote, the “right thing” James is writing about means prefacing our public declarations about plans for the future with the words “if the Lord wills”. Anything else is presumption.
“Do the right thing,” he says. “The future is not ours to boast about.”
“… the power of the Most High will overshadow you.”
“So this is Christmas, and what have you done?”
So sing the children in John Lennon’s wretched ditty. I really don’t know why he bothered himself about Christmas when he also wanted to “imagine there’s no heaven”. But each to his own. I’m sure he’s thought better of that since.
At Christmas time, I can’t imagine a more dismal question. Another year over, Lennon accuses, and you haven’t done anything. The poor are still starving, the world is still at war. When are you going to get off your haunches and be worth something?
Ah, there’s nothing like Christmas pudding and the sounds of self-flagellation to improve the seasonal mood.
Back in the seventies and eighties, when Marvel Comics had yet to become a cesspool of woke craziness and child propaganda (though parents at the time would probably argue it had other sinister aspects), the imprint published a semi-regular comic entitled What If?
Like the Apocrypha, What If? was non-canonical. Its readers understood its stories were even more imaginary than usual, in the sense that they were not intended to be part of any character’s regular ongoing narrative arc. A What If? story was the Butterfly Effect dramatized. Take a famous comic storyline and make one small change in the circumstances or choices of the characters, then see how it plays out differently with all its unexpected consequences.
Like the multiverse before anyone came up with that nonsensical idea.
Our family’s Shih Tzu wore a harness 24/7 during his younger years. We had originally gone with the traditional dog collar until one sunny summer afternoon in the backyard when he blithely shucked off his cute, leather pet store circlet with a single energetic twist of his muscular little neck. He disappeared through an impossibly tiny gap between the boards of the fence faster than a speeding bullet on the heels of a terrified squirrel.
My daughter, who was probably nine at the time, wept her way through the neighborhood looking for him until some observant elderly gent pointed to her pup sitting in a nearby yard basking in his newfound freedom.
I’ve been to a few churches lately. And I’ve got some questions. Maybe you do too.
Two weeks ago I visited a tiny congregation. Everything about them — the building, the furniture and the people — was redolent of a past generation.
Not near past. Long past.
This was no “blast from the ’60s”, unless you meant the 1860s. True, there had been some updates. The carpet was relatively recent, the chairs (formerly wooden butt-punishers) had been replaced with modern, padded units, and the walls had been given a coat of fresh, white paint to brighten up the former cream-to-caramel tones of the main room. The formerly-towering platform had been supplanted by a more understated, low one, with a decorous little stand replacing the older-style, bulging pulpit. Even the ancient light fixtures had some of those new soft-white bulbs.
It’s been a good winter for walking.
There’s hardly been any ice on the sidewalks, for one thing. For another, you could go out in February and march about in a thin jacket.
My little terrier has been ecstatic, actually. He loves a good walk. Dogs need a couple every day; and unlike in other winters, there have been plenty of smells around for him to get into. He stops everywhere, and he finds everything delightful. My dog trainer would never approve, but I can’t resist indulging him a little bit, and so our peregrinations contain frequent pauses to let him sniff about. Sometimes I actually think we walk his nose more than we walk my legs. But who could begrudge him a winter like this?
“If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.”
Most of the time I enjoy writing these posts.
Sometimes, not so much.
Like today.
Today, I feel the truth of what I heard a preacher say once: “When you point your finger at somebody else, there’s always three pointing back at you.” Or, as the scriptures would put it, “Not many of you should become teachers ... for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.”
True faith is an expression of submission and obedience.
When a person believes on Jesus Christ, he believes on the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s who Jesus is. A believer receives a Lord who saves and a Savior who lords. The person who expresses faith in this way may never understand all that involves. They simply know they are lost, they realize they need salvation, they cry out for mercy and they put their trust in a Lord who saves, with the emphasis (in their minds) on being saved.
However, once they have come to him, they realize they have come to one who not only saves but also rules. He is Lord.
“The ruler of this world is coming. He has no claim on me, but I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father.”
What was the Lord talking about here? It is true that he always did what the Father commanded, but I suspect in this time and place he was talking specifically about what might motivate him to go to the cross. He prefaced his declaration by noting that the “ruler of this world” was making his move.
Nevertheless, for all his apparent power, Satan had no claim on him.
Have you ever heard of a mondegreen?
That’s the technical word they give it when you listen to something, but you hear something different.
Apparently, people do it all the time when they’re listening to song lyrics, for example. There is some phrase that is sung, but their ear picks up something different, often with irrational results.
Want to see if you’ve ever mondegreened? Okay, if you have even a passing familiarity with popular music, you might be able to guess what famous songs produced the following mondegreens. (I’m guessing most of us are in middle age somewhere, so I’ll keep the examples a bit retro.)
