May it be so

Once it was I and not Christ; then it was I and Christ; perhaps now it is even Christ and I. But has it come yet to be Christ only, and not I at all?—Hannah Whitall Smith

<idle musing>
May it be so in my life and in yours!
</idle musing>

Security

It may be concluded that this period [Iron II] of an increased number of political crises that affected the ongoing existence of many households increased the perceived need for ritual objects that symbolized characteristics such as power, fertility, and plenty.—Family and Household Religion in Ancient Israel and the Levant, page 175

<idle musing>
The grab for security is nothing new, is it?

What are you grabbing for as security? It probably is an idol, isn't it?!
</idle musing>

Cry for help

Help! Anybody know where the lint filter on a Whirlpool washing machine, model LSR6332KQ1 is? The parts list doesn't list one, but there's got to be something holding the lint...

Cornbread

I love cornbread. How in the world did a northern boy come to love cornbread so much? Simple; I spent 1.5 years in Missouri while in first grade. We had it everyday at school lunch and I have loved it ever since. At least that's what my parents tell me : ) My dad was working on his doctorate, and we lived outside Columbia, Missouri while he did his classroom work. The school was rural and I don't remember much about the school lunches except the cornbread.

When we went whole-foods, plant-based, I went looking for a decent recipe that didn't use oil, eggs, and milk. I found one that was tolerable (see here), but not one that I liked enough to make real often. Then, about a month ago, it stopped turning out. Not sure why, but it might be because I changed from honey to unrefined sugar in the recipe. But, when I went back to honey, it still didn't turn out. So, I went looking again...

Not much out there...so, I thought about how in the 1800s, the pioneers would have done it. They usually didn't have eggs or milk, and—at least according to the Little House books—sugar wasn't exactly a common item. They must have done something.

I was mulling it over in my mind and asked the Lord for a bit of insight. I believe it was an answer to prayer, because what I did tastes even better than the original eggs, milk, and oil recipe. Here's what I did:

1 cup whole wheat flour (freshly ground, of course!)
1 cup cornmeal
1 cup water
1/4 cup applesauce (unsweetened and home canned from Jonathan apples—an oil replacement)
3/4 Tablespoon baking powder
1.5 Tablespoons unrefined sugar
1 teaspoon flax meal (freshly ground)
1 Tablespoon water

The flax meal and tablespoon of water are used as an egg replacer. Put them both in a small custard cup and microwave on high for 10-15 seconds, or until it boils. Our microwave takes 12 seconds, but yours might be different (this works well as an egg replacer for other recipes as well)

Turn the oven on to 350°F. Mix the remaining dry ingredients together. Once the oven is preheated, add the applesauce, cup of water, and the flax meal mixture. Mix everything together well, but not too much (you don't want to develop the gluten too much). Pour the batter into a 9x9 glass pan and bake 30 minutes (if you are using metal, increase the temperature to 375°).

For a variation, I sometimes add a small can of chili peppers. You should see the baking powder go nuts when I do that!

Serve warm or cool. We often make a tomato sauce to put over it—1 pint stewed tomatoes, half a small can of tomato paste. Then I take some dried green peppers, dried onions, dried garlic, oregano, basil, grind them all up in a coffee grinder and add it. Add enough water to make it the consistency you like. I add habanero sauce to mine...delicious!

The human project

Saw this on Peter Leithart's blog:

Mocking God, killing righteous men – that is the human project. When a teacher comes with the demand that we do justice and love our neighbors, we betray Him, mock Him, beat Him on the head and crown Him with thorns, before we pack Him off to death on a cross. Naked and bleeding on the cross, Jesus suffers the fate of Jerusalem, and of Troy and Babylon and Carthage and Dresden and of every city that has ever been razed to smoking rubble. The cross exposes us as specialists in destruction. History is a waste of ruins, toppled temples, smoldering cities, corpses heaped for burning. This is what we do. That is the human project.

<idle musing>
Do read the whole thing; he doesn't leave us there—Praise God!—because God doesn't leave us there
</idle musing>

A higher calling

You have brought to Him an enthusiasm of self-surrender that perhaps may disturb and distress the more prudent and moderate Christians around you. Your love makes necessary a separation from the world, which a lower love cannot even conceive of.—Hannah Whitall Smith

Open hands

If anyone is poor among your fellow Israelites in any of the towns of the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward them. Rather, be openhanded and freely lend them whatever they need. Give generously to them and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to. There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land. (Deuteronomy 15:7, 8, 10, 11 NIV)

<idle musing>
Maybe I haven't been paying attention, but this set of verses isn't among the ones the right-wingers quote...pity, that.
</idle musing>

Yield, would ya?

He is not asking thee, in thy poor weakness, to do it thyself; He only asks thee to yield thyself to Him, that He may work in thee to will and to do by His own mighty power.—Hannah Whitall Smith

Facedown

When Moses heard this, he fell facedown... But Moses and Aaron fell facedown and cried out, “O God, the God who gives breath to all living things, will you be angry with the entire assembly when only one man sins?...” “Get away from this assembly so I can put an end to them at once.” And they fell facedown... (Numbers 16:4, 22, 45 NIV)

<idle musing>
This is where Korah and company rebel; Moses' response to the initial accusation of lording it over the Israelites is to fall facedown in prayer. Eighteen verses later, when God wants to destroy the whole nation because of Korah, his (and Aaron's) response is to fall facedown in prayer. Finally, the next day, when the entire nation rebels, he (and Aaron) falls facedown in prayer.

That, my friends, is the sign of a leader. I was going to qualify that with something like "who loves his people" or "who discerns the heart of God" or "who has the heart of a prophet" or some such. But when I stopped to think about it, no qualification is needed...
</idle musing>

150 years ago

The standard of practical holy living has been so low among Christians that any good degree of real devotedness of life and walk is looked upon with surprise, and even often with disapprobation, by a large portion of the Church. And, for the most part, the professed followers of the Lord Jesus Christ are so little like Him in character or in action, that to an outside observer there would not seem to be much harmony between them.—Hannah Whitall Smith

The more things change...

The roles of women were of indisputable importance in family cults, but it must be stressed that women enacted these cults not only for themselves but also for their families; furthermore, in many cases, men as well as women participated in family rituals...—Family and Household Religion in Ancient Israel and the Levant, page 54

<idle musing>
Nothing really has changed in 3000 years—except now some want to exclude women and claim that's the way it used to be...
</idle musing>

What a misnomer

It seems strange that people, whose very name of Believers implies that their one chiefest characteristic is that they believe, should have to confess to such experiences. And yet it is such a universal habit that I feel if the majority of the Church were to be named over again, the only fitting and descriptive name that could be given them would be that of Doubters.—Hannah Whitall Smith

<idle musing>
Ain't that the truth! Lord, renew your church in our day! May we truly deserve the title of believer.
</idle musing>

Popular religion

...the dichotomous concept of official versus popular religion was not derived from ancient Near Eastern antiquity but, as noted by Vrijhof (1979: 674), from the “institutionalized and codified Christian religion in the western world.” Summarizing this view, Zevit (2003: 226–27) states that “the origin of the distinction lies in the relationship of the Western Church to the indigenous religions of Europe during and after the Middle Ages. Initially, the two were in competition; but when the Church grew in power and authority through its connections with the leading social groups of the emerging nation-states, indigenous religions were denigrated and held to be primitive superstitions.” Later, the division between official and popular religion or Volksfrömmigkeit was taken up by the Volkskunde of the 19th century C.E. and was developed to analyze customs of people in the Christian—mainly Catholic—societies of Europe (Vrijhof 1979: 1–6, 668–704; Ebertz and Schultheis 1986: 11–52). In this context, the term “popular religion” denotes a phenomenon in which laymen took elements of orthodox Catholic beliefs, rites, and symbols and redefined and reused them for their own religious purposes. For example, they erected crosses with the Corpus Christi in fields as apotropaic or fertility symbols. Thus, popular religion in this original sense is a degenerate subtype of official Christian religion. It presupposes the establishment of orthodoxy, a clear stratification between a priestly elite and an unprofessional laity, and a supposed priestly monopoly over all benefits of salvation.—Family and Household Religion in Ancient Israel and the Levant, page 50

<idle musing>
I'm wading through this book right now; it's a monster, but very interesting. Unfortunately, it doesn't lend itself to excerpts very well...

Anyway, this is a classic example of taking modern, present day society and superimposing it on the past. It will inevitably lead to skewed results. This is a problem for ANE studies as much as it is for biblical studies...
</idle musing>

Direct word?

...Jewish tradition is also quite relaxed about whether the predominant idea is 'that prophecy is conditioned by the personality and the capacity of the prophet.' Indeed, prophets were understood to be free to translate the vision or words they heard, befitting their audience and their individual style.”— The Bible and the Believer, page 55

Thought for a Friday

We are not preaching a state, but a walk. The highway of holiness is not a place, but a way. Sanctification is not a thing to be picked up at a certain stage of our experience, and forever after possessed, but it is a life to be lived day by day, and hour by hour.—Hannah Whitall Smith

Thought for today

Our one great motto is throughout, “We are nothing, Christ is all.” And always and everywhere we have started out to stand, and walk, and overcome, and live by faith. We have discovered our own utter helplessness, and know that we cannot do anything for ourselves.—Hannah Whitall Smith

Freedom of expression?

But how and when one presents archaeological discoveries to the public is virtually unregulated. Who gets to tell the story about a site’s importance is a critical step that often leaves out the excavators and the historians and brings other individuals into the picture; and often those other individuals have a very different agenda altogether from that of the excavation team and thus a very different story to tell. Indeed, that story sometimes comes as a complete surprise to the excavators. How projects are funded—that is, where the funding comes from—often has a profound impact on how the story is told.—Archaeology, Bible, Politics, and the Media page 202

Stating the obvious

If Satan prefaced each temptation with the words, “I am Satan, your relentless enemy; I have come to make you sin,” I suppose we would hardly feel any desire at all to yield to his suggestions. He has to hide himself in order to make his baits attractive.—Hannah Whitall Smith

<idle musing>
This is one of my favorite quotations from her book. Wouldn't it be easier if he did it that way? Of course, then we wouldn't need to rely on the Lord, would we?
</idle musing>

But that is so backwards...

True humility can bear to see its own utter weakness and foolishness revealed, because it never expected anything from itself, and knows that its only hope and expectation must be in God. Therefore, instead of discouraging the soul from trusting, it drives it to a deeper and more utter trust.—Hannah Whitall Smith

Pretty straight forward, really

If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads. (Leviticus 20:13 NIV)

<idle musing>
Can't get more obvious than that, can it? Jesus said he didn't come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it, so don't claim it no longer applies.

So, does that mean I think that gays should be killed? No more than I think people who commit adultery should be! They are in need of the saving grace of Jesus just as much as anyone else—no more and no less. But, just as Jesus said to the woman caught in adultery in John 8, “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.” (Yes, I believe John 7:53-8:11 is an authentic event in Jesus' life—I just don't believe it is Johannine.)

And, because I believe that we are new creations in Christ, I believe they can leave their life of sin. I also believe that the sexually addicted, chemically dependent, etc., are called—and enabled by the presence of the Holy Spirit—to live a life free from sin.

A good summary of the sexual life of a Christian should be celibacy in singleness and faithfulness in a monogamous, heterosexual, lifelong marriage. Anything else is a compromise and sub-Christian. That goes for adultery, divorce, and homosexuality. There is no distinction between them; they are all less than God's ideal.

Yes, there is forgiveness and restoration, so don't think I am being judgmental here. I know there are situations where divorce is the least of a set of evils, but it is still not God's ideal. I believe that is what Jesus was saying when he said Moses allowed divorce; both parties need to be willing to forgive, repent (that means transformation, not just feeling sorry), and live in love. That doesn't always happen...
</idle musing>