I first heard this song a few days ago when Mark Shields linked it in his post The Unseen is Eternal.
και ελεγον προς εαυτας τις αποκυλισει ημιν τον λιθον εκ της θυρας του μνημειου
Mark 16:3 Textus Receptus with various translations
Update on learning Hebrew: I have found the Alef with Bet channel very helpful. The audio lessons are at the beginner level. Beth clearly enunciates the words and there is a helpful transcript of the video.
Within a year the waters laid down sediments with waves.
Today the fossils found display the opening of graves.
Engagement with a rainbow ring seals the covenant that saves.
Eugenia offers the prompt “rainbows” for this week’s Thursday prompt.
For a biblical account of how our ancestors survived the global flood and the covenant afterwards, see Genesis 6-9. For an introduction to the evidence that this cataclysmic event actually happened, see The Flood.
Although we often see only a small arc of rainbows, from certain perspectives these rainbows can be seen as rings.
את קשׁתי נתתי בענן והיתה לאות ברית ביני ובין הארץ
Genesis 9:13 Masoretic Text with various translations
The email filter kept Rafael’s messages, rare though they be from this bouncer and saint, assuming proper discernment, at the top of Bill’s inbox until read. What Rafael sent today was “pedophile traffic second tunnel east” which was all Helen needed to dispatch agents.
Helen never met Rafael, but Bill often did when passing the revival tent where Rafael worked the streets explaining once to Rafael that he was suffering from the lingering side-effects of a flu. Hearing this as a call for help rather than a lame excuse not to go into the tent, Rafael gripped Bill’s shoulder with a hand that could have dropped a terrorist praying that, through Jesus, “this illness leave my brother”.
That was twenty years ago. Bill had since relocated, but Rafael kept in contact through messages uncanny in their accuracy, and that pesky flu didn’t dare return.
Denise offers the prompt word “filter” for this week’s Six Sentence Stories. This story continues from Journey – Six Sentence Story. Next: Service – Six Sentence Story. Or perhaps Effervescent – Six Sentence Story.
If you want to know more about revival tent meetings, well, I’ve never been to one, but I just read Mario Murillo’s post Why Modesto is going to be so different. My thoughts for revival take off from there.
I don’t know why he waited there
with eyes all worried sizing me.
He’d run I knew eventually
off to his family, friends, some where
my camera couldn’t reach. We stare.
He’s wishing for a shady rock,
some plants or weeds, a builder’s block,
a hole that only good guys know.
Abruptly it was time to go.
I’m innocent, but triggered shock.
Ronovan Hestor offers the rhyme word “shock” to be used in a C line of a décima having rhyme pattern ABBAACCDDC for this week’s challenge.
Dale offers the theme “against the wind” for this week’s Cosmic Photo Challenge.
I found this song on Dianne Marshall’s blog The Marshall Report. It makes me think of being born again in expectation of the end times.
I have been watching videos to better understand the Epistle of Jude. I wanted to know who those false teachers were that Jude warned the believers about and what was their message. While reading through John Gideon Hartnett’s post Bridge to Babylon and following his links things started to make sense even though Hartnett did not mention Jude at all.
Here is the bottom line as I currently see it. The false teachers used gnostic philosophy to discredit Jesus as our Lord and that conceptual error led to moral depravity.
There’s got to be more to it than that, but that’s how I see it at the moment.
η γαρ αποκαραδοκια της κτισεως την αποκαλυψιν των υιων του θεου απεκδεχεται
Romans 8:19 Textus Receptus with various translations
Does an extraordinary claim require extraordinary evidence? If one thinks of ordinary as natural, something one can see, touch or measure, and one thinks of extra as super, then it might make sense to transform extraordinary into supernatural just to help us see what’s at stake. From that new perspective, a supernatural claim would seem to require supernatural evidence.
True, some proudly deny the supernatural entirely. They might as well deny the extraordinary itself, but such a denial would itself be an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary or supernatural evidence to justify it.
Pause for a moment.
Without the supernatural there would be no words to describe the ordinary if the ordinary could exist at all. That we take words for granted does not mean they are ordinary or can be completely reduced to something natural. We are just used to the extraordinary, the supernatural, pervading our lives in spite of our denials.
Furthermore, we use these words that are extraordinary to form presuppositions, or believed assumptions that cannot be reduced to the ordinary, in order to rationalize those very denials.
Those presuppositions are part of our spiritual environment. Can we change our minds? From this environment do we produce wholesome fruit worth offering to our loved ones? Can we repent if that fruit is rotten? Can we be forgiven?
We sink into the waters aware of those presuppositions, those mundane, questionable, unwholesome, but extraordinary claims. As we are brought back up, having repented, having changed our minds, the Lord renews in us a right spirit and creates in us a clean heart.
Now that’s extraordinary.
My thoughts expressed here were motivated from reading Michael Wilson’s post Do Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence? which led me to Frank Turek’s podcast. When Eugenia offered the word “extraordinary” for this week’s prompt I figured the coincidence was significant.
לב טהור ברא לי אלהים ורוח נכון חדשׁ בקרבי
Psalm 51:10 Masoretic Text with various translations
Lost angels chained in darkness spit,
“Witchcraft, pitchcraft, scortune, tortune,
Lucifer, push up proud fortune!”
Repentance? Nothing came of it.
They praised once. So? They now have quit.
Deep darkness takes all space away
with thoughts and sounds to mark the day
or separate dark day from night.
“Oh, God, why did we leave the light?”
Of course, they know, but now can’t say.
Ronovan Hester offers the rhyme word “fortune” to be used in a B line of a décima having rhyme pattern ABBAACCDDC for this week’s challenge. I was thinking of Jude 1:6.
As expected the corrupt judge released the assassins back onto the streets. Their attorney filed a complaint against the officers who made the arrests, but no one at the station knew who those officers were. Not even the medics in the ambulance who received the assassins with all the paperwork neatly printed out could identify them.
Since the surgeon who removed the bullets from their arms didn’t notice the tracking devices that the shots were intended to deliver, once the assassins were released Helen began logging their journey.
Pointing to her monitor, Helen said, “The way these guys wander about the city I wonder if they took the blue pill or the red pill.”
“They’re dumb enough to take both.”
Denise offers the prompt word “journey” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Story. This is a continuation from Theory – Six Sentence Story. The next part is Filter – Six Sentence Story.
Dale offers the prompt “before the leaves” for this week’s Cosmic Photo Challenge.
Poetry, Short Prose and Walking 