"So sorry, sweetness, but I can't find anything to hold on to this time. This one is different. I'm somewhere else now. Uh-oh. So, so sorry but here it comes. l ain't making any promises this time. Oh, wow!"

Huge, luscious, seductively embracing wave. Swelling higher and higher, anticipating the crest and the sweet, sweet roaring slide down the face of it.

And just who the hell did you smile to find in the rush of goodbyes that you were dictating rapid-fire to your beloved just ahead of what you believed to be the Big Transition? By God, the Theophiles crew makes your final draft!

With apologies to The Pixies*, and with surprising affection for you lot...

cease to resist, giving my goodbye
drive my car into the ocean
you'll think i'm dead, but i sail away
on a wave of mutilation
a wave
wave

i've kissed mermaids, rode the el nino
walked the sand with the crustaceans
could find my way to mariana
on a wave of mutilation,
wave of mutilation
wave of mutilation
wave

wave of   mutilation

 wave 

From Huffington Post:

The America Association of Retired People (AARP) has about 38 million members and is one of the biggest most influential lobbies in Washington. It has done many good things for older Americans, but in some important ways it is just plain wrong -- selfish and guilty of intergenerational injustice. 

 

It may be that the reader is unsaved-what is the reason?

Do you think the way of salvation as laid down in the text to be dubious? How can that be when God has pledged His own word for its certainty?

Do you think it too easy? Why, then, do you not attend to it? Its ease leaves those without excuse who neglect it.

To believe is simply to trust, to depend, to rely upon Christ Jesus.

I think somebody needs to write a short story in which all the Bible commentaries in all the pastors' studies across the nation come to life in the same week (on sermon prep day), and start running around in those studies, scaring the bejeebers out of all the pastors, including those who might have a problem with my use of the word bejeebers. They might point out that bejeebers is a toned-down version of bejesus, which in its turn is an alteration of "by Jesus." Okay, for those guys, we can have the ravenous and foraging commentaries scare the bejeebers into them.

I am not interested in winning arguments about regeneration. I am interested in the fact of regeneration. I am not interested in having my views of regeneration show up in yet another high "achievement of the taxidermist's art." That would just give me a stuffed regeneration bird for my study. "Oooo," visitors might say. "Look at the bright colors. A tufted Warfieldian pheasant, I believe."

Can you bow before the Crucified in loving homage, and not wish to see your Monarch master of the world? Out on you if you can pretend to love your Prince, and desire not to see Him the universal ruler. Your piety is worthless unless it leads you to wish that the same mercy which has been extended to you may bless the whole world. 

Here in Indiana we still have some Sunday closing laws. Car dealers are closed by law on Sunday. There's no liquor or beer sold on Sunday here either.

What to Christians mean, when after some hardship they proclaim "God is faithful." ?

I assume they're proclaiming joy that God followed-through with some promise, even when they weren't certain He would.  But this is confusing to me, because often when I hear Christians proclaim God's faithfulness, they neglect to mention specifically how they determined that He was faithful in that circumstance. 

"Because Luther was generally insulting a specific person or group of people, the insults have been modified from their original context into second person singular or plural. Most gender specific words have been made gender neutral. Other modifications made if necessary to fit a general audience. Original wording maintained as much as possible."

This is part two of a three part essay from Martha of Ireland exploring how love, justice and mercy all tie in to our salvation. Let’s take a look at what some Church Fathers had to say on the topic, and if we remember that justice, as well as charity, is also the foundation of mercy, perhaps we will not be so shocked by any appearances of proto-Communism, crypto-Socialism, or being less than fervent Free Market Capitalists on their parts.