Author: Frank Hubeny

I enjoy walking, poetry and short prose as well as taking pictures with my phone.

Band – Six Sentence Story

Brian’s cold was a regular part of his seasonal doldrums starting about November and lasting till Spring. The liturgy minister in the church he attended, knowing Brian’s talent with a guitar, wondered if he would like to join the Sunday worship band. Brian told him about his cold even though the cold didn’t stop him from doing anything he really wanted to do.

Without warning the minister put his hand on Brian’s shoulder and prayed out loud while everyone watched that Brian be healed. Embarrassed but courteous Brian accepted the prayer expecting nothing much from it. Three days later the cold was gone and it never returned.

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Denise offers the word “band” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

Sunrise with two birds
Sunrise with two or three birds

I am on vacation, but this story occurred to me and so I scheduled it for today without being able to participate in the link party.

Exploration 109 – Faulty Interpretations

The conclusions we draw from our interpretations of facts sometimes turn out to be wrong. When that happens we wonder: If we are rational human beings, how could we have strayed so far from the truth? Furthermore, accepting faulty interpretations may have resulted in more than some intellectual mistake. It may have negatively impacted our lives.

Having experienced the debilitating dead ends of faulty opinions and interpretations we look for ways to avoid such traps. However, the most we get from philosophy are reminders of the limits of reasoning and of science itself. For example, a mathematician may come up with a correctly reasoned proof, but that proof is only as good as the assumptions and the laws of inference he used. These are not proven. A real scientist (as opposed to a pseudo-scientist) knows enough not to even claim to “prove” something. The next experiment may falsify what he previously thought was true. The problem of uncertainty increases when one is trying to understand what happened in the past which cannot be repeated in an experiment.

Ultimately, the only ground we can reliably stand on is the Bible. That does require belief, but the belief is not arbitrary. It also provides a coherent explanation for why we are here faced with such problems as faulty opinions and interpretations.

Calvin Smith from Answers In Genesis Canada goes into these issues in more detail illustrating how negative the consequences can be for those accepting the faulty interpretations offered by evolutionists about our place in the world.

Forming Words – Six Sentence Story

Although impoverished Jeff found a ride out of Blislisnis to attend his mother’s funeral held in the rural town that he left decades ago teased by vanity that never bore fruit. A former classmate carrying an oxygen tank with nasal tubing who came to offer his condolences surprised Jeff with how old he himself must now look as did other former companions who proudly told him of their grandchildren.

The pastor asked him if he would care to say a few words in memory of his mother. Standing near the casket with nothing to say he tried to form words, but the only thing people remembered him saying was I’m sorry, momma.

Friends of his mother offered Jeff a place to stay with work to do giving this prodigal son an opportunity, which he accepted, to forget Blislisnis. At the gravesite he silently prayed for the privilege of a few years of usefulness, of blessing not burden to others, before finding a spot of his own somewhere in that churchyard, out of the way perhaps, but hopefully not too far away from his family.

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Denise offers the prompt word “form” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

Exploration 108 – Bible Maps

Two resources have helped me get a sense of the geography of the events recorded in the Bible.

The first is William Schlegel’s Satellite Bible Atlas. The second is the Bible Mapper Blog. Besides a blog with pre-made maps they offer software to help you build them yourself. As an example below is the map they created for their recent post Jehu Executes Judgment.

Source: Bible Mapper (permission granted for non-commercial purposes)

Beat – Six Sentence Story

Ever since Walter convinced the city to install electronic voting machines as the Governor recommended he beat all contenders by an overwhelming majority to become, and then stay, the Major of Blislisnis. Knowing that he never came close to winning anything before drove conspiracy theorists nuts.

However, the average citizen had other worries besides caring that Walter got richer and richer without explanation as the years went by. Although few admitted that they themselves voted for him they all assumed a large number of the electorate must have.

Talk went wild when Walter decided to run for Governor in a power-grab that would take out his former ally. One morning the local news reported that Walter had been arrested for voter fraud while computer technicians were busy reconfiguring the voting machines all of which convinced those nutty conspiracy theorists that the Governor would win re-election with more votes coming from Blislisnis than people living there (which he did).

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Denise offers the prompt word “beat” for this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

Exploration 107 – The Origin of Languages

And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.

Genesis 11:1 King James Version

How did we even get one language let alone the thousands that exist today?

An evolutionary answer might start with a cauldron of silent pond scum, but don’t ask where that pond scum came from. Stir the pot with the magic wand of a gazillion years of random motion until you get some noisy critters. Then keep stirring till the croaks, chirps and growling turn into men and women using language. How this happened, how this even could happen, is the hand-waving that seasons the stew.

What we learn from the Bible is something more reasonable in spite of it being more supernatural. Originally there was only one God-given language, but after God confounded communication at Babel because of disobedience there appeared many others. These were highly complex languages. They simplified over a few thousand years into what we have today.

The following commentary by E. Dane Rogers from the Tacoma Grace Bible Church on Genesis 11 goes into this biblical approach in more detail.

Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

Genesis 11:9 (KJV)