There’s nothing that’s been left untold. Our Shepherd’s voice we loved to hear. Our hope replaced our urge to fear. We followed calmly in the fold.
Obeying never will get old. You’ve led us on the lasting way where praise became our urge to pray. Your joy now fully fills our hearts and overflows. What’s sad departs. We watch the sunrise of Your day.
Ronovan Hester offers the rhyme word “day” to be used in a D-line of a décima having rhyme pattern ABBAACCDDC for this week’s challenge. Eugenia offers the prompt word “untold” for this week’s challenge.
Jeff looked at the cracked mug he found among his father’s possessions after the funeral. He recalled how its glaze brought to his mind calm waters under a blue sky when he saw his father drinking from it.
Wondering why his father had not thrown it away as useless junk long ago Jeff took the mug home and set it on his desk to hold pens. Decades later that’s more or less where it still sat charged with the duty of caring for odds and ends.
As Jeff reached his own last days he explicitly put the mug on a list of items that his son would inherit with an explanation that although the mug no longer served its original purpose it was something his grandfather drank from. Besides, it still made a great place to put pens and it had a beautiful glaze like calm waters under a blue sky.
When I think of junk I think of the junkyard of Gehenna and the yearning that we, broken as we are, should all have to be saved, salvaged, born again, so we may be found useful once more.
Dale offers the prompt “’tis the season” for this week’s Cosmic Photo Challenge. I can safely wish for snow in Florida for the Christmas season since I know it won’t snow. I included two snowy scenes from northern Illinois that remind me of what the season should look like at Christmas-time.
Eugenia offers the word “summit” for this week’s Thursday Prompt. Below are two photos from lookout points on the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina.
To tie these two together, I’m thinking ’tis the season of Christmas wherever we may be. May we realize that Jesus is the summit of our lives.
Cosmic Photo Challenge
Eugenia’s Prompt Image
On a summit at the Pisgah National Forest overlooking the Blue Ridge Mountains
From a lookout point over the Blue Ridge Mountains
The Institute for Creation Research finished an eight year project some years ago countering claims that the Earth is billions of years old based on radioisotope dating. Articles by John Baumgardner on carbon-14 dating and Andrew Snelling on radioisotope dating of the Grand Canyon and radiohalos provide an introduction to what they discovered.
Ian Juby’s recent video linked below also summarizes some of this.
For over a hundred years naturalists have attempted to undermine Genesis as history. Christians who accept the naturalist’s worldview think they can add God to deep time, abiogenesis or evolution leaving their Christianity unharmed. What they do, however, is undermine Christianity from within making a similar mistake the Trojans did when they accepted that horse given to them by the Greeks.
Weekly Bible Reading:Zechariah and Malachi Commentaries: David Pawson, Zechariah, Part 58 and Malachi, Part 59, Unlocking the Bible Bible Project, Zechariah and Malachi Weekly Torah Readings 14 Tevet, 5782, Vayechi: ParashatExodus 47:28-50:26; HaftaratI Kings 2:1-12
As a popular guide Steve told his clientele what they wanted to hear about the history of the island, its famous sandy beaches, its monarchy (or rather dictatorship), and the concentration camps. Things went well for him until he himself stopped believing the narratives he told others.
His doubts began when construction workers discovered mass graves followed by the leaked results of forensic analyses. His suspicions were confirmed when the graves suddenly disappeared and every major news outlet reported over and over again that the graves never existed nor had any “forensic analysis” ever, ever, been conducted implicating the royal house.
Since he was merely a tourist guide Steve felt safe including his suspicions, albeit in a hushed tone, during the narrations he gave of the island figuring he ought to slip the truth through the cracks if he could. When he lost clientele he suspected he must have crossed someone’s line in the shifty island sand, but that no longer bothered him.
Denise offers the prompt word “guide” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.
Dale offers the theme “a cold start” for this week’s Cosmic Photo Challenge. Since I’m in Florida at the moment these are photos of Lake Michigan from past winters.
When I was about ten years old, I recall reading how chickens evolved from dinosaurs in some publication for children telling me about “science” to help improve my reading skills. At a party I told my aunt all I knew about it which wasn’t much. She thought I was funny, but played along. My uncle with more concern over what I was reading corrected me, but he didn’t have the authority in my child’s mind that the publication I could now read did.
Today, decades later, I still have to trust authorities, but I am more skeptical realizing these authorities serve an underlying set of presuppositions. They explain observational data to support their presuppositions. That is really what “explanation” means. Given a set of presuppositions and some facts come up with some rationalization so that the presuppositions do not have to be falsified. Then try to convince others that those explanations are plausible.
If one’s presuppositions are true, there is nothing wrong with that. So one has to be careful not to throw out true presuppositions for false ones. One would be deceived in rejecting one’s original presuppositions if they were true.
For a Christian, the Bible should be the way to test one’s presuppositions and one understands the Bible through the Holy Spirit. Realizing this I am wary of any argument that attempts to undermine either the Holy Spirit or the Bible. As I’ve come to realize, they are more consistent, more coherent, and in line with more operational science than evolutionary alternatives.
So, what about those chickens that allegedly evolved from dinosaurs?
The evolutionist presupposition is that species evolved from non-living chemicals building up their genetic diversity over hundreds of millions of years. This allows them to either reject a creator God entirely or assign God a role of guiding this evolutionary story. They believe that mutations and adaptation, not creation, are the mechanisms allowing life to build up its genetic information.
The biblical creationist presupposition, based on Genesis, is that God created mature baramin. These baramin, or created kinds, can be seen as loaded with genetic diversity at the time of creation. Adaptation allows them to diversify into the various species we see today. These adaptive changes occurred within each baramin, not across baramins. In contrast to the evolutionist view, mutations drive a species to extinction by eroding away genetic information. They do not increase it.
To justify the speculation that the chicken evolved from the dinosaur, the evolutionist needs to find intermediate fossils showing creatures that look like both birds and dinosaurs. They have tried to describe some fossil data, such as Archaeopteryx, Scansoriopteryx, and Microraptor, as “feathered dinosaurs”. However, not even all evolutionists find those explanations plausible.
From a creationist perspective Jonathan Sarfati and Robert Carter remarked, “Scripture explicitly teaches that God made birds (and other air creatures) and sea creatures on Day 5 of Creation Week. He made land animals and man on Day 6. Since dinosaurs were land animals, they have a different origin from birds, and indeed came after birds. Therefore the Bible contradicts dino-to-bird evolution.” Any “feathered dinosaur” would be interpreted as a bird or a land animal, not some mixture of both.
As I see now my uncle was right. I regret I did not realize that when I was ten years old. I could try to excuse myself pointing out that I was still young, but I am tired of making excuses. Besides, it is repentance, rejection of the “wicked way”, that leads to the “way everlasting” of Psalm 139.
Weekly Bible Reading:Haggai and Zechariah Commentaries: David Pawson, Haggai, Part 56, and Zechariah, Part 57, Unlocking the Bible Bible Project, Haggai and Zechariah Weekly Torah Readings 30 Kislev, 5782, Mikeitz: ParashatGenesis 41:1-44:17; HaftaratI Kings 3:15-4:1
What’s notable, that I would find. I ditch the fake that thinks it’s rich, ignore the wizard with his witch, resist a compromising mind that fantasizes till it’s blind. Not one of us walks here alone. We see enough what’s dimly shown. With fruit maturing on the way we hear and follow so we may know fully as we’re fully known.
Pharaoh’s annoyance increased when his magicians, one after the other, and then his wise men could not come up with a satisfying interpretation of his dream where seven thin cattle ate seven fat cattle. After the chief butler remembered how Joseph, a foreigner and prisoner, once calmed his own anxieties with dream interpretations that later came true Pharaoh ordered that Joseph be brought to him.
Joseph told Pharaoh that his dream meant he should set a discerning man over Egypt to reserve a fifth of the produce from seven years of plenty, represented by the fat cattle, so the people would have food to eat during the later seven years of famine, represented by the thin cattle. The interpretation pleased Pharaoh as well as many of Pharaoh’s top courtiers who saw themselves being chosen to lead the project.
Joseph’s humility in crediting his own God rather than himself for any dream interpretation he gave impressed Pharaoh. Not trusting his own courtiers he set Joseph in charge.
Denise offers the prompt word “reserve” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories. This is a partial retelling of Genesis 40-41.
Dale offers the prompt “art for art’s sake” for this week’s Cosmic Photo Challenge. I’m unsure what art for art’s sake means, so I selected recent photos of fall foliage and thought of them in a picture frame.
Poetry, Short Prose and Walking 