Impossible

So when the rich young ruler comes to Jesus and then goes away sad (Mt 19, Mk 10, Lk 18) and the disciples ask, "Well, who then can be saved?" Jesus answers, "With men it is impossible, but with God all things are possible."

Interesting how that's so much like what Gabriel told Mary.  "How can this be, since I do not know a man?"  "With God nothing will be impossible."

Forget "easy" things like Elizabeth's getting pregnant.

With God,
not even the salvation of arrogant sinners
is impossible.

"You shall call His name JESUS 

for He shall save His people from their sins."

Words That Are Often Confused

During the recent election I kept hearing a radio ad for a certain politician.  The ads contrasted the status quo of one candidate with the new ideals and energy of the opponent.  The candidate talked about the "10th-century ideals" of the other party. Would the electorate accept or reject liberal ideals in the aftermath of the recession?

Do they mean ideals?  Were they saying what they meant?  Or were they confusing "ideal" with "idea"?  After all, there are similarities between the words.  An ideal is, after all, one kind of idea.  But somehow I think somebody thought "idea" is sometimes spelled with a silent-L.  (Pssst.  It's not.)





When people are in a coma, they do not lose "conscienceness."  Your conscience is your moral compass.  It pricks when you've done wrong.  "Conscious" means you're aware; it's what you are once you've come out of that coma.  Besides, one is a noun and the other is an adjective.



There also seems to be confusion out there in the big wide world about losing things.  I understand why: when something is loose (like the screw that holds your eyeglasses together) you may lose the item.  When you're talking about clothing or the twist-tie on the bread or how your car tire is attached to the axle, loose is the opposite of tight.  When you're talking about freedom versus captivity, loose is the opposite of bound.  (See, it's not that different from the opposite of "tight.")  But lose is the opposite of win, or the opposite of find.  "Loose" rhymes with "goose," but "lose" rhymes with "ooze."  Yes, the single-O or double-O doesn't change the vowel sound in those words; the number of O's changes the S-sound from ssss to zzzzz.




Shall we all recite the quote together?
"I do not think that word means what you think it means."

 And thus concludes my current rant about spelling.

Reading Challenge

"A Little Help from My Friends"
Reading Challenge

Get a list of book suggestions from your friends.  From those suggestions choose between five and ten books that you will read in 2013.  Make a list of the books that you will read and a few alternates.
And the other instructions can be found on Jane's site.

My list:
Anne of Green Gables   by L. M. Montgomery  
Anne of Avonlea   (these two with Maggie)
Mara, Daughter of the Nile   by Eloise Jarvis McGraw
Love Divine   by Alan Kornacki
Mitford's Out to Canaan    by Jan Karon
Christ Have Mercy   by Matt Harrison


The list that someone else made for me:
Lutheran Catechesis   by Bender
Old Testament Catechesis   by Bender
New Testament Catechesis    by Bender
Bible Stories for Daily Prayer    by Fabrizius



Alternates:
Kristin Lavransdatter  by Sigrid Undset
To Kill a Mockingbird   by  Harper Lee
Luther, the Reformer   by James Kittelson
The Right to Be Wrong   by Seamus Hasson
On Being a Theologian of the Cross   by Forde
Luther on Vocation   by Wingren



Well, I've never before set up a reading challenge for myself.  Many of my friends do so annually.  I am jealous.  But Jane has devised a teeny-tiny reading challenge (possibly just to encourage me, because she loves me).  I may not be up to the challenge; I may fail.  BUT I have a shot at it -- unlike most reading challenges which are entirely out of the realm of possibility.  Unless I want to quit homeschooling, quit cooking, quit cleaning, quit choir, quit gardening, and quit editing.  And I don't wanna quit those things.  So Mini Reading Challenge, here I come!

Gorgeously Appareled

1.  The color of our purple paraments is rich and beautiful!  

2.  When John the Baptist was in prison, he sent some of his disciples to question Jesus about whether He was the Messiah promised in the Scriptures.  Jesus responded, and then talked to the crowds about John.  "What did you go out to see?"  He said, “Indeed those who are gorgeously appareled and live in luxury are in kings’ courts” (Luke 7). 

1+2 =  The guy reading that Gospel to us on Sunday was "gorgeously appareled" in a purple chasuble.  

Given the context of what Jesus was talking about, the gorgeous apparel kind of shook me up there for a moment.  But I guess when we are in the Divine Service, we are living in luxury; we are in the King's court.

Sunday School Program

Another Marilla Thing

Having recently been on the receiving end of some good-natured teasing about "being bipolar," I'm pondering this section of what Maggie and I read today.  How does a person moderate herself?  And what does it do when we try to change someone's nature, another's or our own?


From chapter 22 of Anne of Green Gables:

For Anne to take things calmly would have been to change her nature.  All "spirit and fire and dew," as she was, the pleasures and pains of life came to her with trebled intensity.  Marilla felt this and was vaguely troubled over it, realizing that the ups and downs of existence would probably bear hardly on this impulsive soul, and not sufficiently understanding that the equally great capacity for delight might more than compensate.  Therefore Marilla conceived it to be her duty to drill Anne into a tranquil uniformity of disposition as impossible and alien to her as to a dancing sunbeam in one of the brook shallows.  She did not make much headway, as she sorrowfully admitted to herself.  The downfall of some dear hope or plan plunged Anne into "deeps of affliction."  The fulfillment thereof exalted her to dizzy realms of delight.  Marilla had almost begun to despair of ever fashioning this waif of the world into her model little girl of demure manners and prim deportment.  Neither would she have believed that she really liked Anne much better as she was. 



And...
does this have anything to do with what Paul said in 2 Corinthians 12 about the thorn in his flesh and being "exalted beyond measure by the abundance of the revelations"?

Make-Up

Not like I wear make-up very often.  But I did want to look a little special for Gary's Christmas party at work on Saturday.  I might've spent a whole minute-and-a-half applying make-up that day.  Maybe even two minutes!

So Sunday afternoon my eyes started itching.  By bedtime they were beginning to be goopy.  This morning I headed off to work looking as if I'd been crying for hours.  After many trips to the bathroom to wash my eyes today, the redness has subsided and the itchiness is nearly gone.

Good-bye make-up.

I can't wear earrings anymore.
Pretty shoes are impossible.
My hair is thinning.
And now make-up is off-limits too.
I guess it's time for any remnants of vanity to be destroyed, eh?
Time to embrace the aging frumpiness....