Sorry, I’ve been so quiet lately. I have spent the last week at the hospital dealing with my Mom’s Triple Bypass Surgery. We are now 3 days post-op, and she isn’t really doing as well as I had hoped. But she may get out of the hospital in a few more days, and then we will have the remaining 5 weeks of post-op healing, before she will be able to live independently again.
I finished reading “Is God to Blame” by Gregory A. Boyd. And I really enjoyed it. It was like he somehow took all the things that I thought were wrong with Christianity, and showed me why. I was impressed enough that I am starting another book by him “Letters from a Sceptic”.
I am really intrigued by his concept of open theism.
For the first time Post-UPC, I feel like maybe something can be salvaged from Christianity after all.
Mr. Boyd’s Blog can be found at http://www.gregboyd.blogspot.com/
The Knowledge of Good & Evil. What does that mean? What the implications of the fruit?
Whatever they are, it is a curse that we have never gotten past. Humankind is still obssessed with judging the morality of each others behavior. We look at another’s actions, we hear their words and we think “They are a bad person”, or they are a “sinner”.
But only God knows our heart. He looks past our actions to our true motivations, and he hears the emotions that lie under the surface of the words we speak. So why do we continually try to sit in judgement on others, when we are so uninformed??
If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things. ~ Rene Descartes (1596 - 1650)
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd. ~ Voltaire (1694 - 1778)
It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers. ~ James Thurber (1894 - 1961)
Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes. ~ Mahatma Gandhi
Lately I been feeling somewhat melancholy. I’m often hit with a sense of nostalgia for the days when ‘God was in His heaven, and all was right with the world’.
Somedays I wonder if there is a middle ground. A place between the extremes of what I was and what I have become.
The problem, as always, is my brain! Back then, I thought too little, and now I think too much.
Well, I took the plunge.
First I got my hair cut.
It’s short.
Way short.
In the kind of “Where the hell did my hair go?????” kind of way!
For the most part though, I like it. Though it drives me crazy that I can’t put it up, and so I am having to have to get used to hair in my face.
This past weekend, I hennaed it. That was an experience! With a little help from Mom, I slathered my head with this concoction that looked like mud mixed with baby poo, and smelled like farm hay. Then I covered wrapped my head with saran wrap, and got to enjoy that feeling for the next 4 hours.
I prepared myself for the potential bright orange hair. And though it is definately a coppery-auburn, the brightness is only evident in the sun. When the sun catches on my hair, it’s like sunset flame.
I hate it when people think they have the right to pass judgement on me. When they think that they know me, or know about my life, and can truly understand why I make the decisions that I do.
Or when they think that they know everything about me, based on only my actions.
There is nothing in the world more frustrating!
So you would think that knowing that, I would someone be immune from doing the same thing to others.
It hit me today like a slap in the face.
I thought I knew someone. That I knew enough about them based on a few of their actions, and a couple things they said, to judgement their entire character.
This is the first time, in a long time, that I have been glad to learn a lesson the hard way. Maybe it will stick around in my thick head for longer than a day or two, and I will actually be less likely to do it again in the future.
One can hope anyway.
http://www.pentecostalfreedom.org/UPCI_catchism.html
I’ve never considered myself the type of person to have “enemies”, well, not since I was a teenager anyway. Oh sure, there are people that I don’t particularly care for, and even a few that I would go so far as to say I dislike, but enemies?
I was thinking about this recently, along with Jesus’ lovely little command to love our enemies. Something that I always thought I would be able to do. (It’s pretty easy to believe you can do something, when you don’t think you’ll ever need to!)
See, the problem is that I have this sister. She’s 4 years older than I am, and she has pretty much hated me from the moment my parents brought me home from the hospital.
For many years I have known that I dislike her. I don’t think she’s a good person, and she is not the type of person that I would have any interest in spending any time with. But it is only recently that I have begun to understand the true depth of my feelings towards her.
Despise….loath….abhor…..these are the words that come to mind when I think of my sister. She is the only person in the universe that I can think very very mean thoughts about, and feel absolutely no guilt.
I can understand that God being a God of absolute love, is capable of loving theives, and rapists, and even serial killers. But when I think of him loving my sister….I find myself thinking…how could He? She’s such a bitch!!!
So I realize that if my feelings for her are really that bad, that she must be the person I need to think of when the Bible talks about enemies. But pray for her (and all the times she spitefully used me??? ) Right there is where my spirituality fails!
Lately I just feel bored with life.
I got a $25 reward certificate from amazon (via my Amazon Visa) and was excited about ordering new music. But then it got here, and I was suddenly so blah about the whole thing.
I spent my weeks looking forward to the weekend. Then when the weekend comes I realize there is nothing but a huge yawning gap of time in which I need to find amusement.
I am sure that this is just an after-effect of the visit from the fam 2 weeks ago. Nothing to look forward to now but week after week of work, and then housework, and then yard work….
Blah….
