No Obsessions

Quote of the Day:

Christians need to stop obsessing over being right and having all of the answers and start focusing on following Christ’s example: sacrificially serving, helping, comforting, and loving everyone around us.
For Christians, it’s often easier to yell and scream instead of doing the very hard—and humble—work of loving others. Arguing is addictive because it feeds off of our need for self-glorification, self-righteousness, pride, power, and recognition.
- See more at: http://www.redletterchristians.org/six-things-wish-christians-stop/#sthash.MBqGMhGj.dpuf

 Christians need to stop obsessing over being right and having all of the answers and start focusing on following Christ's example: sacrificially serving, helping, comforting, and loving everyone around us.
For Christians, it's often easier to yell ans scream instead of doing the very hard—and humble—work of loving others. Arguing is addictive because it feeds of of our need for self-glorification, self-righteousness, pride, power, and recognition.
—Stephen Mattson in "Six Things I Wish Christians Would Stop Doing" at redletterchristians.org.

Discovery of the Day:
Paper, the new Facebook app for iPhone (and many other devices). I came across something on it on the web or somewhere and I decided to download it. I've played with it for only about 5 minutes, so that's what I'm going to do as soon as I make this post, while we watch the Olympics a little while before bedtime.

Thought of the Day:
Speaking of the Olympics, I am amazed each time I watch that human beings can make their bodies do what these Olympic athletes are doing. (This from a guy who can't walk on ice on a parking lot without falling and risking a concussion!)

Christians need to stop obsessing over being right and having all of the answers and start focusing on following Christ’s example: sacrificially serving, helping, comforting, and loving everyone around us.
For Christians, it’s often easier to yell and scream instead of doing the very hard—and humble—work of loving others. Arguing is addictive because it feeds off of our need for self-glorification, self-righteousness, pride, power, and recognition.
- See more at: http://www.redletterchristians.org/six-things-wish-christians-stop/#sthash.MBqGMhGj.dpuf

Christians need to stop obsessing over being right and having all of the answers and start focusing on following Christ’s example: sacrificially serving, helping, comforting, and loving everyone around us.
For Christians, it’s often easier to yell and scream instead of doing the very hard—and humble—work of loving others. Arguing is addictive because it feeds off of our need for self-glorification, self-righteousness, pride, power, and recognition.
- See more at: http://www.redletterchristians.org/six-things-wish-christians-stop/#sthash.MBqGMhGj.dpuf

Christians need to stop obsessing over being right and having all of the answers and start focusing on following Christ’s example: sacrificially serving, helping, comforting, and loving everyone around us.
For Christians, it’s often easier to yell and scream instead of doing the very hard—and humble—work of loving others. Arguing is addictive because it feeds off of our need for self-glorification, self-righteousness, pride, power, and recognition.
- See more at: http://www.redletterchristians.org/six-things-wish-christians-stop/#sthash.MBqGMhGj.dpuf

God Knew We'd Need Him

Quote of the Day:
God knew we'd need him, so he walked with Adam.
God knew that, in spite of all that He is, He is not all that we need.
So he made Eve.
And in making Eve, he made family.
And, the good became the very good.
And, lo, He is with us always, even to the end of the age.
—Tom Lawson, on Facebook this morning, reflecting on the sacrifices his family has made as he and his wife, Linda, have walked through her cancer diagnosis and treatments together.


Picture of the Day:
Shirley Temple Black died today, and I've been pleased and sort of surprised that all the glowing reviews of her life have not mentioned her anti-gay activism of some time ago. 
Maybe the gay activists think they've already won the argument. Snapped this picture at the Hallmark Valentine's display in Kroger's yesterday.

Things Will Work Out

Quote of the Day:
Many of the psalms are downright jubilant. They are brilliantly thankful–whether observing the weather, the crops, the state of the nation, or whatever–and this thankfulness is directly linked to God. Yes, they are confident, and that confidence comes because they know and believe that God is powerful and God is good.
 
But other psalms are extremely woeful. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (22:1) They just can’t believe that things have gone so bad. They scream protest. They cry out in misery. But here’s the thing: they protest because they believe that God is powerful and God is good. They are sure something is wrong. It’s not supposed to be this way! How can it be this way?

Thus, whether jubilant or woebegone, they believe that things should work out. In the short run, obviously they don’t. In the long run, they still believe. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t protest. They would just quit.
—Tim Stafford at http://timstafford.wordpress.com/2014/02/07/a-healing-world/

You'll be blessed by reading the whole post!

Picture of the Day:

The sun was an orange orb, floating in the sky as I drove to work this morning, but by the time I could stop to take a picture, the thick clouds had turned it into a gauzy, shapeless light. The sun shone all day, but the temp was only 20-something as I drove home. The radio this morning said our temps are about 20 degrees below normal. They're predicting below zero tonight.

Happy Birthday, Nora!

Pictures of the Day:

We were pleased to be invited to Nora Weber's birthday dinner last night, hosted by her parents,
Donovan and Jocelyn, enthusiastically joined by her sister, Ruby, and also attended by grandparents Verna and Bill Weber, good friends who moved away to Indianapolis more than a year ago.
Jocelyn had a wonderful supper featuring a new recipe for vegetable soup with homemade croutons, and the birthday cake was a tower of mini cupcakes adorned with candles and topped with the number announcing Nora's age.
It was great to reconnect with the Webers. We hadn't talked with Donovan and Jocelyn since they brought the girls to our house for dinner and trick-or-treating 'way back in October. He was anticipating a new ministry then and is settling into that ministry nicely now. And Jocelyn is serving in a new position, a counseling job at Oak Hills High School as part of a program sponsored by Children's Hospital, where she's been employed for some time.
I can't even remember when we saw the senior Webers last--sometime last fall, before the holidays. Bill just returned from an extended trip to Myanmar, accompanied by his grandson Noel Brooks, and it was great to hear about the trip as well as just generally catch up in our fine evening together.

Ruby (right) was eager to help Nora blow out the candles on her pyramid-of-cupcakes birthday cake.

Every time Evelyn and I are around parents of preschoolers, she remarks, "Now I know why God gives children to young parents. Today I'd never have the energy to keep up!" And when I see the patience and consistency of good parents like Donovan and Jocelyn, I'm reminded of how tired it must make God when I whine or cry to get my own way or resist what he tells me, as if I know better than he what I ought to eat or how I ought to act or when I ought to go to bed!

Quote of the Day:
"God's first word in his command to Abram was 'go.' And Jesus' last word in his command to his followers was 'go.' "
—Trevor DeVage in this morning's sermon at Christ's Church at Mason 

Makes you think God wants us to GO, doesn't it?

What else? The snow!

Picture of the Day:
No, I didn't take this one. I found it at the WCPO-TV website. I chose it because it shows the shimmering layer of frozen rain on top of the snow that threatened to bury this fire hydrant. We didn't have that much snow overnight, but there was definitely a layer of frozen snow and ice atop the 4-6 inches we found on our driveway this morning.
Evelyn (bless her!) helped me shovel. With the ice, the snow was heavy enough and difficult enough to shovel that we concentrated on clearing only a path wide enough for the cars to travel. We didn't worry about getting edge to edge. We were done by 7:30, and I came in to take my shower.
I called work to discover we were on a "delay" (see the quote below), so I answered some e-mails and wrote my part of Christian Standard's weekly e-newsletter before braving the roads to head into work.
The worst part of the trip was the parking lot at work! They were still plowing it, and many of the parking spots were not cleared, because cars had started the rows of spaces before the plows got there. I had to park quite away from the building in a remaining spot that wasn't snow covered.
Management took pity on us and ordered LaRosa's pizzas for the whole office for lunch. That was nice!

Quote of the Day: "CFM corporate offices will be on a two-hour delay. The office will be open at 9 a.m."
—Message on the company's "weather closing" voice mail this morning. 
For those of us who usually get there at 8:00 or 8:15, it was a little difficult to interpret exactly what that announcement was saying.

Treats for a Birthday

Quote of the Day: Even when we choose wisely and well, we still must live in a world that dreads death, fears disease, and vainly tries to hide from disaster. Two bad decisions, Eve’s and Adam’s, have left us longing for Eden but trapped on a planet characterized by travail.
—"Living with the Lie," my column at christianstandard.com, posted today.

Picture of the Day:
Today was Sheryl Overstreet's birthday. We celebrated by taking her to her choice of lunch spots, which today was Cracker Barrel. I hope she enjoyed her french toast, because I thought the Tuesday lunch special meatloaf was great!
Sheryl decided to bring a wonderful assortment of her favorite snacks for her office birthday treat, and I persuaded her to pose by the spread after we got back from lunch.

Quite a Remedy

Pictures of the Day:
I was blessed to hear our choir sing and Brad Wilson preach in the 10:30 Classic service this morning.
The opening video set the stage for a message about God's creation, man's sin, and God's remedy. A powerful thought to realize that sin is behind all the grief and pain in the world, but God's story is the story of providing us the remedy. I've begun studying for our small group's study of Chapter One of The Story, and I'm even more looking forward to this study.

Quote of the Day: If we believe the remarkable truth stated in Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning God created the world," it's not hard to believe the rest of the Bible.
—Brad Wilson in this morning's sermon.