God a Day

Clocks

My sister gave me a “page-a-day” calendar for Christmas. Michele’s not as fond of them, because of all the paper I think she says. For me, it seems the perfect item: you tear one off, and bam! you’re done. Though it is a lot of paper …

But mine is Bible verses, and it’s a great jolt to the morning. And to handle the paper, I toss the scraps every week or so ; ) and I’ve taken to pasting a few in my “at-a-glance” planner, then tossing the scraps left over from that.

(Yes, I possess both of these paper relics.)

So yesterday’s was Psalm 62:1

My soul finds rest in God alone;
my salvation comes from Him.

The ESV link adds that this resting is “in silence” and it’s said that’s often the hardest part, but I think it’s the resting.

We’re silent when we have to be: breathing, listening, at the movies.

But silence? It’s golden because it’s so rare.

It was a good reminder for the day — heck for the next minute and a half after I plucked it from the cardboard calendar body, before the morning at home began to sizzle and pop like the Canadian bacon in the frying pan. Then the eggs, nectarines, strawberries, juice, bagel, cream cheese, and the vitamins.

(No, not every breakfast is like this.)

But nearly every day with this calendar is.

I know, I know —

proof-text alert! …
one verse a day is not a memorization program! …
context, context, context! …

I still like it for what it does, which is remind me of Him.

And today’s is Philippians 4:8.

How could you go wrong?

Recent

Can We Tawk?

Comedienne Joan Rivers’ catchphrase was, ‘Can we talk?’ with all that that entails — its rhetorical nature, the Jewish thing, an implication that at least one of the parties will be better off for having done so … Like God. T’other day a priest spoke of ontological remembrance, the immediate and ongoing memory of past-present-future

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Hide and See

Something lost, Dallas Willard said once, might yet be very valuable. One’s car keys for instance. He was speaking somewhat in the context of salvation, if I recall … the general point was calling something lost doesn’t mean it’s not wanted — quite the opposite. Yet it remains … until finding its way out or being found

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Greater Love Blah Blah Blah

Do we doubt locals thanked them for their service? I’m not equating the two. They were wrong; glad we crushed them. Only noting it’s likely they thought as much about such things as we do, which is to say not much. German citizens who believed their leaders, loved their country, watched their sons get on

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Dark Eyed Life

According to @CitizenScreen, doing yeoman’s* work daily on Twitter* relative to the Golden Age of film, today is the birth date of Mabel Normand, Hedy Lamarr, and Dorothy Dandridge — Normand: New York, 1892 Lamarr: Vienna, 1914 Dandridge: Cleveland, 1922 — which makes for coupla at least interesting, if not compelling or fascinating at the

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Random

I See That Hand

We imagine Thomas even doubted himself. When the other disciples said Christ had risen, this earnest empiricist first said, “unless I see” … then he realized it wasn’t enough. So he demanded to “thrust my hands into His side.” For Thomas, seeing wasn’t believing. But touch … that he had hopes for. * Seeing isn’t

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Ensamples

Among the worst things about The Slap is how it has fed self-righteousness in all but the two participants, and they already had it or it wldn’t have happened. But there is Solzhenitsyn, again, with the line between good and evil that cuts through every human heart, and there is Dostoevsky, always, reminding us via

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Battalions Book

This is the second book in the duology, with IRS Agents and Crack Whores. Where the first goes after the Church for its sins, this one asks those outside of faith into the discussion.

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Trilemma

Bear no malice nor ill-will to any man living, for either the man is good, or naught: if he be good, and I hate him, then am I naught; if he be naught, either he shall amend, and die good, and go to God; or abide naught, and die naught, and so be lost.  

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Related

Duo

… More then says because he’s in prison and only has a coal with which to write he can’t respond fully to the view that one ought harm an evil man lest he cause even greater harm to such as are innocent and good. But He counsels us that even if it be our formal office to punish an evil

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Burning and Bleeding

Of mercy’s fire and blood Mercy burns, wrote Mary Flannery O’Connor, by which she meant … well, let’s think on it for a minute or so, before we say. For we have ideas of mercy, several actually, and we must discard them all the time, and destroy them if can, as quickly as supernaturally possible.  One

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All You Can Eat Adultery

I get all the adultery I want. It’s true. Ask Michele. Thing is, I don’t want any. You may have guessed this, but others may have thought Wha — ? Aye, and there is the (naked back) rub. I don’t want any adultery because I love my wife. This is true, and it’s the main,

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Plough Lines

“For sale: baby shoes” is a classified ad. “For sale: baby shoes; never worn” is a story. It’s Hemingway’s, in fact. * “The king is dead” is a news bulletin. “The king died, and the queen died of grief” is a story. Better yet, “The king died, and the queen and her lover died in

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