Sunday, April 26, 2015

Sunday--John Piper--A Lab On How God Helps Us Overcome Anxiety

REFLECTION: HOW DO WE KNOW WE'RE TRULY REPENTANT?

Pssst....Ever See A Pregnant Crayfish? Here She Is---Ripe With Her New Brood and Very Pro-Life

NOTWITHSTANDING DIRE, AND INCORRECT, WEATHER FORECASTS FOR SATURDAY, a fortunate group of us nature lovers forged ahead and had a fabulous day/field trip on Short Mountain, touring fields, streams and caves in Cannon County with biologist David Withers Tennessee's go-to guy for all things crayfish and stream ecology. He's with TDEC's Division of Natural Areas. Was a terrific day of walking, touring and talking to new friends and old....and of course seeing some of natures most adorable species.

Thanks David, Mark,  Brian, Bill, Neal etc. for making it a terrific day of learning and fun.
BELOW, this little female crayfish was promptly put back to finish her great gestation watch in peace and safety in her little creek, under a big rock.

She wanted me to tell everyone that knows from experience that life begins with conception....Case closed.

Thursday, April 23, 2015

Friday: Metro Nashville Chancery Court


ALMOST A YEAR AFTER OUR LAWSUIT WAS FILED AND MANY DELAYS, I will make my first visit to Nashville Chancery Court, as a spectator to an ongoing spectacle, orchestrated mostly by lawyers. It will be good to be there after all this time.....with Gino, the only lawyer in hundreds of others I'd go down this long and winding road with.

 No matter what happens Friday, it won't be over.
But enough about me....

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

More On Hillary and Bill's Cash Cow and My New Favorite GOP Candidate

UPDATE:  TAMNY SAYS TO REDISTRIBUTE MASTERS WINNER JORDAN SPIETH'S WEALTH MOST EFFICIENTLY, LET HIM KEEP IT 

THE SUN IS SHINING TODAY, ALL DAY. I am rushing out to do business, then spend time in the great outdoors!

 Here is a good piece from the NYPost on how wealthy foreign donors have made the Clintons over the years, especially since Hillary became SOS, from the new and greatly anticipated by Peter Schweitzer.  I think it's important to actually read the authors documentation of the Clintons' shady dealings;  however whether they do or don't bear up under scrutiny,  I cannot see how the people of this country could ever elect this woman to be president.

Below, I would like to see this candidate run for president and win.  I want him to run with a woman, Hispanic conservative.  Now who would that be?

Monday, April 20, 2015

Deadly Clever---NC Man Leaves Last Political Wish In Obit, Gets Laughs and Support: 'Don't Vote For Hillary!'

Hillary Rodham Clinton is pictured. | AP
AN AP STORY  BY CATHERINE BORGERDINE TELLS HOW ONE MAN VOICED HIS VOTE FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE:
A North Carolina man's family made his last political stand in his recent obituary, asking mourners to not vote for Hillary Clinton, NBC12 in central North Carolina reported.

The obituary for 81-year-old Larry Darrell Upright ran in the Concord-Kannapolis Independent Tribune on Friday and listed many of his accomplishments, work and involvement. However, his family requested that, in lieu of flowers, Upright be memorialized at the ballot box.

“In lieu of flowers, memorials may be sent to Shriners Hospital for Children,” the obituary stated. “Also, the family respectfully asks that you do not vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016. R.I.P. Granddaddy.”

Upright’s political wish — or perhaps that of the family members who placed the obituary — has been met with much support from friends and the online community, saying that they appreciate his sense of humor. Many have left comments on NBC12 online or the website of Whitley’s Funeral Home on Dale Earnhardt Boulevard in Kannapolis promising to vote for someone other than Clinton for president in 2016.

One comment pledged: “We would not vote for Hillary if she was the only one running.”

READ MORE @ Politico

Sunday, April 19, 2015

4 Things Imprecatory Psalms---the So-Called 'Hate Psalms'---Teach Us If We Dare

SEVERAL YEARS AGO,  I BEGAN TO LEARN A LITTLE about those 'terrifying' imprecatory psalms and why they would ever be in the Bible.  Take, for instance Psalm 137:
PSALM 137

 1 By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. 2 There on the poplars we hung our harps, 3 for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” 4 How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land? 5 If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill. 6 May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy. 7 Remember, Lord, what the Edomites did on the day Jerusalem fell. “Tear it down,” they cried, “tear it down to its foundations!” 8 Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is the one who repays you according to what you have done to us. 9 Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.

Wendy Stringer at the Gospel Coalition begins to grapple with these angry psalms and has some deep insights into their purposes: 4 Things the Hate Psalms Teach Us:

My husband and I spent the first 15 years of our life together with a church that sang the psalms in corporate worship. They were set to old hymns and anthems, with language similar to a sonnet and sung a cappella. Opening burgundy psalters, waiting for four notes blown on the pitch pipe, we would break into harmony and sing our hearts to God.

It was a beautiful experience, but every once in a while we would come to an imprecatory psalm, and I couldn’t choke out the words. Singing Psalm 137, for example, felt offensive and unnecessary; Jesus is not explicitly present, so why sing as though he has not come and saved us?
Why these imprecatory psalms? Why Psalm 137? What do these psalms tell us?

1. These psalms remind us we are desperate.
I admit avoiding these songs because they collide with how I'd like to think about God. But I also admit that I am enraged when poorly written novels romanticize grooming, sexual predation, and abuse and are then immortalized on the big screen for a tidy profit. When Canada's Supreme Court unanimously rules to uphold a patient's right to suicide, I cry for justice. When 21 people of the cross are butchered on the shores of Tripoli, I want someone to pay
.
And while I’m not sure what kind of justice I want, I know I don’t want the justice spoken about in Psalm 137:9—“Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock.” To split the heads of our enemies' children on the foundations of a ruined city is unspeakable. I don’t like it, and I want to erase it from the book I love and rely on.
But what if that’s the point?

What if this psalm, and others like it, remind us we are in trouble? Could they help us move toward brokenness before God? Reading this psalm we enter a world quite different from our safe communities where we store up Bible knowledge and hoard the love and friendship of believers. Our anesthetized hearts are laid open so we might experience the desperate condition of the human race and this fallen world. What if singing these psalms could remind us what is good and what the Lord requires of us”? What if singing these songs could motivate us to “do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God” (Micah 6:8) before a desperate, aching, watching world?

2. These psalms remind us who is holy and who is not.
When we sing these psalms of wrath and judgment, we are forced to ask questions we might otherwise hide from: How could you, God? How can you be so unmerciful? So hateful?
But here, in these questions, we are immediately confronted with an infinite, unpackaged, untamed God who does not answer to us. We are before and under the King of heaven and earth, the rock whose “work is perfect, for all his ways are justice, a God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is he” (Deut. 32:4).

It is an incredible work of faith, born through grace, that leads us to trust a God we cannot understand. We do not know his ways, and we wonder at them, but we remember he is holy and we are not; he is infinite and we are not; he is mercy itself and we are not.

3. These psalms remind us we can tell our ugly thoughts to God.
Psalm 137 was written, in a sense, by Judah, a people group that had seen and known war and Babylonian captivity for 70 years and was also plundered by the Assyrians years earlier. They had become angry and desperate, believing the only road to peace, the only way home, was by the categorical, physical destruction of all their enemies, present and future.
I don’t understand this perspective because I am Canadian, and I live in undeserved peace with no fear of national enemies. I have never seen war on home soil. I have never sent loved ones off to war. I have never been a spoil of war.

Psalm 137, however, is written by people who have known the horrors of war for generations. Weary and wondering if they will ever be happy again, if their song will always remain dried up and stuck in their throats, they dream of living within the safe borders of their homeland, celebrating shabbat around the table, farming their land, laughing with neighbors.
What if the psalmist is not reflecting the heart of God back to God, but rather communicating his own complicated feelings and desires to God?

This psalmist and his people know only in part and see only dimly; they believe hope is the vengeance of God poured down on earthly enemies. Their ideas of deliverance are bathed in blood, and in one sense they were close to the truth.

4. These psalms remind us Christ has come to rescue us.
The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is all over the Bible, the ancient parts and those written shortly after his death. In Luke 24:27 we find Christ himself, “beginning with Moses and all the prophets, interpreting to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.” I want to read the Scriptures with a hermeneutic that understands this book is about the Father sending someone to rescue us. Jesus is here, I pray. Help me to see him.

We must look for him in unlikely and even terrifying places like Psalm 137.

We are weary of war, injustice, and anger that begets indifference and violence. But see how our life of peace was earned when the violence of the Father’s wrath was poured out upon his only Son, Jesus. He waged war, snuffing out the light of his progeny, so we can live in peace and advocate for it. Evil is ultimately defeated, destruction ultimately comes, and we are saved.
Deliverance is bathed in the blood of the Father's beloved son: “Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock.”

The limitless God of heaven and earth takes on the broken mantle of human flesh in Jesus, that he might be dashed against the rocks of ruin so that his little ones never will be.

​Wendy Stringer lives in Toronto with her husband, Kiernan, and their seven kids. They both serve Grace Toronto Church, shaping, leading, and teaching in discipleship ministry.

There's much more to say about these psalms, but one of the most salient is that there are the words on Jesus himself as he takes on the world of our horrific sin as he goes to the Cross to redeem His people and overcome sin and death for all time.

On of the greatest misconceptions of all times about  the Good News is that Jesus Christ is all about sweetness and light.  But nothing could be further from the truth....more later. 


Saturday, April 18, 2015

Morning Delight From Where I Am---Country Edition

DUD BEN AFFLECK DEMANDS FAMILY TREE-CHANGE OPERATION FROM PBS--IT JUST DOESN'T FIT HIS SELF- NARRATIVE
 
THIS IS GOD'S GREAT APRIL BOUQUET SKY.  No concrete, no heavy equipment and deafening noise and no boundary disputes.  Just long views of the sun rising in the East with birds chirping and big trees all around.

This has been a majorly busy week, I'm sure for everyone.  Tax return filed, then needing to be amended, then needing to be amended yet again.  I'm one of those people who likes to file my taxes on time and never get an extension.  But it was down to the wire this year.

Sun is shining this morning though we've had a tremendous amount of rain, rain, rain. Needless to say,  I'll be outside as much as possible today.

Thursday, April 16, 2015

Welcome to the Corker Cave-In Or Things Are Never As They're Spun


KEITH KOFFLER TELLS IT LIKE IT REALLY IS WITH THE CORKER IRAN DEAL

I KEEP READING today that the White House folded, caved, threw up the white flag, rolled over on its sword and died a humiliating death by accepting legislation by Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., giving Congress “a role” in the Iran negotiations. 

In this case, that’s a bit of spin that both the White House and Republicans want you to buy. Because Republicans wants you to think they’ve etched out some kind of a victory over Obama, and finally stood up one of his power grabs. While the White House want to camouflage . . . its latest successful power grab. “The Unified States Senate just capitulated to Obama,” radio host and Constitutional scholar Mark Levin said Tuesday night. “The Unified States Senate just rewrote the Treaty Provision of the Constitution.” 

And he’s right. Because a treaty requires a two thirds vote by the Senate to be accepted as law. Corker’s bill turns that on its head, allowing Congress to vote down the treaty with Iran but giving Obama veto power, which must be overridden by a two thirds vote. MEANING THAT INSTEAD NEEDING TWO THIRDS OF THE SENATE FOR HIS TREATY, OBAMA ONLY NEEDS ONE THIRD OF THE SENATE PLUS ONE ADDITIONAL VOTE. 

And that’s a victory for Congress? 

What Corker has done is legitimize Obama’s power grab. Congress could have instead voted this treaty down on its own and then passed legislation withholding funding for its implementation. Obama could also veto the measure withholding funds, which would require the same two-thirds override. But at least the point would have been made that he was acting unconstitutionally, and he would be on record as defying the Congress. As a practical matter, this would have made it far easier for a future president to discard the Iran deal.

Bob's got a bad case of Potomac fever to our great detriment.Also to the detriment of checks and balances.

Sunday, April 12, 2015

Sunday---John Piper On The Fleeting Pleasures of Sin (From Hebrews 11 On How To Walk In Faith)

UPDATE: ED MORRISSEY'S SUNDAY REFLECTION ON ST.  THOMAS DOUBTING THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST

 THE LIFESTYLE OF FAITH

PASTOR JOHN PIPER TALKS ON MOSES CHOICE TO WAIT FOR GOD'S REWARD RATHER THAN INHERIT ALL THE RICHES OF EGYPT as the adopted grandson of Pharaoh.

Piper @ Desiring God: “Walking by faith means defeating sin’s pleasures with the promise of a superior pleasure in God.”

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Rand Paul Or Scott Walker?


IF I HAD TO VOTE RIGHT NOW, there would be no contest:  It would be Governor Scott Walker by a country mile. Rand Paul can never win and shouldn't in these treacherous times of Middle East and other global upheavals. On the other hand, Walker is already the object of President Obama's criticism on foreign policy. Which tells me he must be doing something right. Here's Walker's response to the president's latest 'empty suit' put downs:
“President Obama’s failed leadership has put him at odds with many across the country, including members of his own party, and key allies around the world. Americans would be better served by a president who spent more time working with governors and members of Congress rather than attacking them. Whether it is cutting a bad deal with Iran, calling ISIS the JV squad, or touting Yemen as a success story, Obama’s lack of leadership has hurt America’s safety and standing in the world.” – Governor Scott Walker:
I agree. Rand Paul will have some good points to the conversation,  on term limits, fiscal/ FED policies and federal debt reduction; however, that's about as far as I can go at this point.

 MORE

WALKER'S MIDDLE CLASS ROOTS

Monday, April 6, 2015

John Tamny: Hillary Clinton Is 2016's Lane Kiffin and An Insult to Bill

THE POLITICAL APPLE DOES INDEED FALL FAR FROM THE TREE

JOHN TAMNY WRITES A BRILLIANT PIECE @ FORBES TODAY ON HILLARY CLINTON'S 'CANDIDACY.'  Though I'm not familiar with Lane Kiffin, I nevertheless get his prescient drift:
There's a human tendency to project skills, knowledge and ideology on people by virtue of their association with achievers whom they're attached to. George H.W. Bush was elected president for having served under Ronald Reagan, and then the success of Bill Belichick and Pete Carroll has gotten many of their assistants top jobs in college and the NFL. Nearly every one of them failed, as did Bush #41. Assuming Hillary Clinton runs at all, the projection of Bill's policy knowledge and political skills on her may be the biggest reach of all, and it's an insult to Bill.
Projection, reputation-by-association and wishful thinking all get us in deep trouble.

Sunday, April 5, 2015

Easter Sunday: The Triumph of Joy, Dawn of An Astounding New Day

 

HAPPY, BLESSED RESURRECTION DAY!  Here is a wonderful piece by David Mathius at Desiring God:
“Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him.” (Mark 16:6)
The word on the street that Sunday in the Holy City was almost too good to be true. This was so unexpected, so stupendous, such a dramatic reversal of the heartbreak and devastation of the previous three days. This would take days to sink it. Weeks even.

In some ways, it would take his disciples the rest of their lives to grasp the impact of this news. He has risen. Indeed, for all eternity his people still will stand in awe of the love of God on display in Christ’s death, and the power of God bursting forth in his resurrection.

Saturday, April 4, 2015

Ready to Celebrate the Universe's Greatest Ever Supernatural Event?

 

THIRD DAY.

Apres Moi, Le Deluge---Abe's Garden Mud Pit

 
SOME OF OUR DISPUTED SOIL (MUD) SWEPT DOWN THE HILL TO THE RICHLAND CREEK WATERSHED BELOW.

 The Abe's 'Garden' development is a huge imposition to the  local environment,  quality of life,  stable soil and water and to our entire neighborhood.

Thanks MLD for the great photo documentation.

Friday, April 3, 2015

What's the Good News of Good Friday?

IT IS SAID, BEFORE WE CAN EMBRACE THE GOOD NEWS OF CHRIST'S SACRIFICE ON THE CROSS AND RESURRECTION, we must first embrace the bad news which is we're all sinners who cannot save ourselves and we desperately need a Savior. Joyous repentance follows, then embracing Jesus's free gift of pardon and salvation in Him unto eternal life.

The Cross of Christ is God the Father's unimaginable grace to us. And it is all His doing.  So vast and wide and deep that we can only dimly fathom it.

Jesus Christ took the sin of the world and became the sin of the world, though he knew no sin, for us. He drinks the cup and breaks the curse of sin and death when on the third day, he  supernaturally rises from the depths of hell.

Conrad Mbewe is the speaker here @ Desiring God.

Utah Senator Mike Lee Writes Book On Our Lost Constitution, Talks His Ideal Presidential Candidate

FIORINA BLASTS APPLE CEO'S GAY HYPOCRISY OVER INDIANA LAW
UPDATE: BREATHING EASY AND ASTHMA-FREE WITH A PRIMAL LIFESTYLE SAYING HE'S NOT RUNNING, SENATOR LEE KEEPS THE PRESSURE ON CONSERVATIVES WITH NO NONSENSE SPEECHES AND NEW BOOK, OUR LOST CONSTITUTION:
The conservative constitutional expert blasts Congress, Supreme Court justices and the White House for treating the nation's founding document as a "nuisance" and subverting the document to create essentially illegal programs including Obamacare. In his new book, "Our Lost Constitution," Lee details many cases where all three branches have undermined the Constitution, sometimes on purpose and many times out of sheer laziness and stupidity.
I couldn't agree more. He's my kinda guy.

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