It was a long, double waterfall. Two geologists were arguing. One said it was over a hundred million years old. The other said with all that rushing water the entire formation would erode to sea level in less than ten million years.
Some bet their worldviews one way; some, the other.
I’ll admit I had an opinion, but so what, they might ask. I just hoped the waterfall would stick around until our vacation was over knowing eventually it, and quite a bit of everything else, would all wash away.
______
Rochelle Wisoff-Fields offers the photo by David Stewart below as the prompt for this week’s Friday Fictioneers.
The only thing Gerald wanted was that key dangling from the neck of the sorceress who said as she offered him an apple squishing the worm popping its head from the core: Take another bite.
He tried to recall what he was doing there as she charmed him explaining, But, Gerald, you know you’re addicted and it’s time for your medication. To prove her point she unlocked his chains with the key to show him just how pathetically weak he had become. Besides, she loved watching her victims go through the agony of deciding what they really wanted: freedom or wormy delights?
Thankfully for Gerald the fog cleared in time for him to remember why he entered this godforsaken kingdom of enchantment in the first place. Unchained he rushed off to resume rescuing his wife kidnapped by Snakindegras, a particularly ornery dragon he couldn’t wait to get his hands on, while the witch with the apple screamed in the distance: Run, Snaky, run!
______
Denise offers the prompt word “key” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.
And thou shalt keep the feast of weeks unto the Lord thy God with a tribute of a freewill offering of thine hand, which thou shalt give unto the Lord thy God, according as the Lord thy God hath blessed thee:
Last year I paid no attention to Shavuot. It didn’t even dawn on me that shavuot is the plural of shavua (week). This year I hope the roots have gone deeper.
After signing up for Michael Rood’s newsletter I began observing the crescent moon after sunset which marked the beginning of a lunar month. It is amazing how different these crescent moons look. The one last Tuesday evening marking the beginning of the third month was very slender and close to the horizon. I almost missed it before it set behind the trees.
Shavuot is 50 days after the First Fruits offering. Pentecost is 50 days after the first appearance of Yeshua (Jesus) to his disciples after His resurrection. After 50 days seven Shabbats would have passed and we would again be on the same day of the week. On Pentecost we remember the baptism of the Holy Spirit in Jerusalem mentioned in Acts 2. Shavuot recalls the giving and receiving of the Torah and making the covenant at Mount Sinai (Exodus 19 – 24:11).
Nehemia Gordon reports that during the first century there were three different calculations for when the First Fruits offering was to be made relative to the seven days of Unleavened Bread. The Pharisees said it was to occur on the second day of Unleavened Bread, or 16 Aviv, every year. The Essenes said it was to occur on the first day of the week after those seven days. The Sadducees said it was to occur on the day after the weekly Shabbat within the seven days of Unleavened Bread. After the fall of Jerusalem, the view of the Pharisees prevailed. Their calendar is what one sees on sites such as Chabad.org.
By next Shavuot, God willing, more of this story will make sense to me.
On one side of the path there was a perilous, downward sloping edge. He walked this mountain trail to reach home.
He crawled when winds blew to avoid being thrown into the abyss. When rainstorms poured he rested knowing those dark clouds would soon move on.
When grisly goats, demonic dragons or other ugly forms of monstrous nonsense blocked his way he told them where to go. Only the foolish hesitated to obey.
I picked three rural scenes. The first was on the way to Cripple Creek, Colorado. The second was along the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina. The third was a harvested corn field seen from a country road in northwestern Indiana.
Near Cripple Creek, ColoradoBlue Ridge Parkway, North CarolinaHarvested Corn Field, Northwestern Indiana
In the comments to my post last week on demons, Oneta Hayes reminded me that I missed a whole class of demonic activity. The demons I missed were those that appeared “beautiful and compelling”. I pointed out the obviously ugly ones, but I missed the attractively strong delusions of unbelief that could be described as humanistic righteousness.
That is sometimes called self-righteousness, because one’s righteousness is based on following what is good in one’s own eyes. Self-righteousness justifies the ethics of humanism because humanism acknowledges no other ground than man: our reasonings, our wants, what we experience with our senses or our emotions. It is what grounds the ethics of ideas like effective altruism where one optimizes the amount of “good” one can do on a monetary basis. See Peter Singer’s The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically.
No matter how good this appears to be if it is not what Yeshua (Jesus) wants us to do, it is not good. It can’t be, because there is nothing good outside of His will.
O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever.
No one tended the vegetable stand hidden in the hills. There was an open box where one could put coins and bills to pay for the vegetables all marked with prices. Customers made their own change from what was in the box.
Some took vegetables without paying. Some took some (and sometimes all) of the money in the box. Others put more money in the box than they were asked to. Others in repentance returned money or something as exchange for what they shouldn’t have taken.
At the end of the season enough remained to make the next year possible.
The heretic hunters smirked as the paralyzed man was slowly lowered through the roof to the Master’s feet. Their ever simmering fluid of righteousness popped its cork when they heard the Master declare, “Your sins are forgiven.”
Some thought, “Just who does he think he is?” They argued that only the demon possessed would say stuff like that.
The Master waited for the heretic hunters to catch their breaths. The paralyzed man waited also since he couldn’t do much of anything until he first heard words, spoken with the proper authority, like, “Arise, pick up your bed, and walk.”
Poetry, Short Prose and Walking 