13; Thirteen; 16-3=13!!!!

For 12 years and 11 months and 29 days I have been anticipating the day you become a teenager. Parenting is such an indescribable experience. Being a part of your life brings me great pride and joy!!!

You inspire me when life is hard. I keep going, not just because you exist and that it is my reponsibility to provide for you, but because of the example of hard work I see you do every day in the gym and the positive attitude you have. You are so full of life and you rarely let the small stuff get you down.

I wonder what the next 13 years will bring...braces, high school, driving, college. I'm so excited to be a part of your life and to watch you discover the wonders of this magnificient planet we live on as well as guiding you to discover all the qualities you possess within your being. Your toughness and your tenderness. Your brilliant mind and your light-heartedness. Your persistent yet laid-back attitude.

I hope you have a great birthday and that as you grow into a young woman you will continue to bless my life and the lives of those around you with your beautiful smile and happy disposition. I love you more!!!!

Remembering Raven

It has been a year since Raven went to wait by the Rainbow Bridge. To see her go from a vibrant and sassy girl to a bag of bones in the matter of a day was heart wrenching. She was so weak her legs couldn't hold her body up and she had always been a heavy weight girl that I struggled to lift, now seemed to only weigh about 10 pounds. To end her suffering was a very hard decision.

Formally named Diana, That Spencer Girl after Princess Diana. The weekend we received Raven from her breeder was the same weekend Princess Diana passed away and I loved the descriptions of a princess with a sassy attitude that refused to give in to the rules of royalty and even though she became part of the royal family, continued to do things her own way.

I miss Ravens antics and Scottie-isms. The click of her paws on the wood floors. Her means of communication...if only she could talk. Her grunts, quarrels, nudges and stares and most of all her snuggles. I remember Bradley use to get so frustrated because Raven was MY dog. It didn't matter how much Bradley played with Raven or how much care she provided, I could walk in the room and it was over, my dog would come running to me.

After she was gone, Bradley and I found comfort in other scotties we found on the internet. We have met social Scotties: Angus Fala and Ainsley, Rebus and Isla, and Ruffles. There's also Harry and Lola, Boone and Kenzie, just recently we met Jett and Diesel, and of course, thanks to Ann at the Scottish Terrior News for keeping us all up today on any scottie news.

All of you have all been a tremendous comfort to Bradley and myself during this very lonely year in our life. Thank you for being open and sharing your Scottie lives with us. Soon we hope to have a new Scottie to share with you all.

Something to chew on....

Christians possess a divine privilege that the world cannot have: they have been given the mind of Christ (1 Cor 2:16) and are empowered by the Holy Spirit to know the Truth (1 John 2:20). But the church has deferred much of this gift to the popular scientific ideas of today, abandoning its divine right to the Truth.

…many churches are doctrinally and morally weak. Many, many people are thirsting for something stronger than ambiguous stories and unanswered questions on the origins of life, and they seek confirmation of the holy nature of a God who is often portrayed as cruel and untrustworthy.

How can the church impact the world for Christ if so many professing Christians mistrust their God and the revelation He gave to them? Why accommodate the secular and often blatantly atheistic world, when the biblical worldview answers the many questions that the world cannot? The Bible offers the power of the true gospel, and despite the protestations of the relativistic culture, people are hungry for Truth.

Reclaiming the Full Gospel Message (an exerpt from 5 Reasons to Believe in Recent Creation by Henry Morris III) p. 41

If the Lord Jesus Christ had not literally risen physically from the grave, we could never be certain that he had ever really finished the work...if he has died for our sins, we must not only be certain that he has died, but that he has finished dying, and that there is no longer death...when God raised his Son from the dead, he was proclaiming to the whole world...he has done everything. He has fulfilled every demand. Here he is risen-therefore I am satisfied with him...

The devil cannot hold him; death and hell cannot hold him. He has mastered them all, he has emerged on the other side. He is the Son of God, and he has completed the work which the Father had sent him to do....It is only in the light of the Resurrection that I finally have an assurance of my sins forgiven. It is only in the light of the Resurrection that I ultimately know that I stand in the presence of God absolved from guilt and shame and every condemnation.

If it is not a fact that Christ literally rose from the grave, then you are still guilty before God. Your punishment has not been borne, your sins have not been dealt with, you are yet in your sins. It matters that much: without the Resurrection you have no standing at all.

Adrian Warnock, Raised with Christ, Crossway, Wheaton, Il, 2010 quoting Martyn Lloyd-Jones, The Assurance of Our Salvation (Wheaton, Il, Crossway, 2000) 492

William Lane Craig quoting J.P. Moreland

Intellectual Neutral (excerpt)

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=6597#_edn9


...it is not just Christian scholars and pastors who need to be intellectually engaged if the Church is to make an impact in our culture. Christian laymen, too, must become intellectually engaged. Our churches are filled with Christians who are idling in intellectual neutral. As Christians, their minds are going to waste. J. P. Moreland in his challenging book Love Your God with All Your Mind has called them "empty selves." An empty self is inordinately individualistic, infantile, and narcissistic. It is passive, sensate, busy and hurried, incapable of developing an interior life. In what is perhaps the most devastating passage in his book, Moreland asks us to envision a church filled with such people. He asks,

What would be the theological understanding, . . .the evangelistic courage, the. . . cultural penetration of such a church?… If the interior life does not really matter all that much, why spend the time . . .trying to develop an . . . intellectual, spiritually mature life? If someone is basically passive, he or she will just not make the effort to read, preferring instead to be entertained. If a person is sensate in orientation, music, magazines filled with pictures, and visual media in general will be more important than mere words on a page or abstract thoughts. If one is hurried and distracted, one will have little patience for theoretical knowledge and too short . . . an attention span to stay with an idea while it is being carefully developed. . .
And if someone is overly individualistic, infantile, and narcissistic, what will that person read, if he or she reads at all? . . .Christian self-help books that are filled with self-serving content, . . . slogans, simplistic moralizing, a lot of stories and pictures, and inadequate diagnosis of issues that place no demand on the reader. Books about Christian celebrities. . . . what will not be read are books that equip people to . . . develop a well-reasoned, theological understanding of the Christian religion, and fill their role in the broader kingdom of God . . . [Such] a church . . . will become . . . impotent to stand against the powerful forces of secularism that threaten to bury Christian ideas under a veneer of soulless pluralism and misguided scientism. In such a context, the church will be tempted to measure her success largely in terms of numbers—numbers achieved by cultural accommodation to empty selves. In this way, . . . the church will become her own grave digger; her means of short-term "success" will turn out to be the very thing that marginalizes her in the long run.12
What makes this description so devastating is that we don't have to imagine such a church; rather this IS an apt description of far too many American evangelical churches today.

Sometimes people try to justify their lack of intellectual engagement by asserting that they prefer having a "simple faith." But here I think we must distinguish between a childlike faith and a childish faith. A childlike faith is a whole-souled trust in God as one's loving Heavenly Father, and Jesus commends such a faith to us. But a childish faith is an immature, unreflective faith, and such a faith is not commended to us. On the contrary, Paul says, "Do not be children in your thinking; be babes in evil, but in thinking be mature" (1 Cor. 14.20 RSV). If a "simple" faith means an unreflective, ignorant faith, then we should want none of it. In my own life, I can testify that, after many years of study, my worship of God is deeper precisely because of, and not in spite of, my philosophical and theological studies. In every area I have intensely researched—creation, the resurrection, divine omniscience, divine eternity, divine aseity—my appreciation of God's truth and my awe of His personhood have become more profound. I am excited about future study because of the deeper appreciation I am sure it will bring me of God's personhood and work. Christian faith is not an apathetic faith, a brain-dead faith, but a living, inquiring faith. As Anselm put it, ours is a faith that seeks understanding.

Furthermore, the results of being in intellectual neutral extend far beyond one's own self. If Christian laymen do not become intellectually engaged, then we are in serious danger of losing our youth. In high school and college, Christian teenagers are intellectually assaulted by every manner of non-Christian philosophy conjoined with an overwhelming relativism. As I speak in churches around the country, I constantly meet parents whose children have lost their faith because there was no one in the church to answer their questions. In fact, George Barna estimates that 40% of the youth in our churches, once they leave for college, will never darken the door of a church again.

NETBible: Proverbs 22:6

NETBible: Proverbs 22:6

Quote

The Nine
Jeffrey Toobin, 2007, 2008 p.66

" "A 'living Constitution' judge," Scalia once explained, is a "happy fellow who comes home at night to his wife and says, 'The Constitution means exactly what I think it ought to mean!' " "

Creed

Turner's Creed
An excerpt from Ravi Zacharias' book "Can Man Live Without God?" Steve Turner says "No!"...But we try all the time....

Creed
by Steve Turner

We believe in Marxfreudanddarwin
We believe everything is OK
as long as you don't hurt anyone
to the best of your definition of hurt,
and to the best of your knowledge.

We believe in sex before, during,
and after marriage.
We believe in the therapy of sin.
We believe that adultery is fun.
We believe that sodomy’s OK.
We believe that taboos are taboo.

We believe that everything's getting better
despite evidence to the contrary.
The evidence must be investigated
And you can prove anything with evidence.

We believe there's something in horoscopes
UFO's and bent spoons.
Jesus was a good man just like Buddha,
Mohammed, and ourselves.
He was a good moral teacher though we think
His good morals were bad.

We believe that all religions are basically the same-
at least the one that we read was.
They all believe in love and goodness.
They only differ on matters of creation,
sin, heaven, hell, God, and salvation.

We believe that after death comes the Nothing
Because when you ask the dead what happens
they say nothing.
If death is not the end, if the dead have lied, then its
compulsory heaven for all
excepting perhaps
Hitler, Stalin, and Genghis Kahn

We believe in Masters and Johnson
What's selected is average.
What's average is normal.
What's normal is good.

We believe in total disarmament.
We believe there are direct links between
warfare and bloodshed.
Americans should beat their guns into tractors.
And the Russians would be sure to follow.

We believe that man is essentially good.
It's only his behavior that lets him down.
This is the fault of society.
Society is the fault of conditions.
Conditions are the fault of society.

We believe that each man must find the truth that
is right for him.
Reality will adapt accordingly.
The universe will readjust.
History will alter.

We believe that there is no absolute truth
excepting the truth
that there is no absolute truth.

We believe in the rejection of creeds,
And the flowering of individual thought.

If chance be
the Father of all flesh,
disaster is his rainbow in the sky
and when you hear
State of Emergency!
Sniper Kills Ten!
Troops on Rampage!
Whites go Looting!
Bomb Blasts School!
It is but the sound of man
worshipping his maker.


Steve Turner, (English journalist), "Creed,"
his satirical poem on the modern mind.
Taken from Ravi Zacharias’ book
Can Man live Without God?
Pages 42-44

Quote

The trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.
C. S. Lewis

Worth Re-Stating Again

This is from a speech given by Nelson Mendella eons ago...
I actually have it as the title page for Bradley's Year 1 or 2 scrapbook. I am listening to Jonathon Roche's No Excuses Weight Loss podcast and he challenged a caller with this.

It is very powerful.
Read it several times, every day.
It's about the way God created us before the fall but he still wants us to know and believe in ourselves.


"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?'

Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world.

There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.

We are all meant to shine as children do.

We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.

It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.

As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

Marianne Williamson, quoted by Nelson Mandela
http://www.worldproutassembly.org/archives/2005/08/who_are_you_not.html

Common Sense 101

I just started reading Common Sense 101/Lessons From GK Chesteron by Dale Ahlquist.

I'll write summary as I go along. In the Preface, Ahlquist questions "How did the world forget such an unforgettable character?"

I agree, I had not heard of GK Chesterton until my apologetics class in graduate school. Our required reading was Baker's Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics which refers to Chesterton numerous times before "C". I was so impressed by the information about Chesterton that I decided to find out who this humerous, witty, intellectual, person that I had never heard of was. I have not been disappointed. I was only dismayed that I had not heard of him sooner and that more of my Christian friends did not know about him also.

Continuing with the summary...Chesterton was a journalist from the early 20th century who wrote hundreds of books and essays about everything, "penned epic poetry but also delighted in detective fiction, that he made everyone laugh, that every who knew him loved him, that he was happily married but unhappily had no children, that he took on all the leading thinkers of his time and challenged them not only on his clear ideas but with the example of his own life..."

Alquist states this book is a look at life through the eyes of Chesteron, a Chestertonian perspective. "Chesteron wrote about everything. An ocean of words poured out of his pen. It is deep, dangerous, it is delightful, it is refreshing, it is full of surprises, it is full of life."

Get ready to swim...

Thanksgiving - One of my favorite holidays

Proclamation of Thanksgiving
Washington, D.C.October 3, 1863

This is the proclamation which set the precedent for America's national day of Thanksgiving. During his administration, President Lincoln issued many orders like this. For example, on November 28, 1861, he ordered government departments closed for a local day of thanksgiving.
Sarah Josepha Hale, a prominent magazine editor, wrote a letter to Lincoln on 28, 1863, urging him to have the "day of our annual Thanksgiving made a National and fixed Union Festival." She wrote, "You may have observed that, for some years past, there has been an increasing interest felt in our land to have the Thanksgiving held on the same day, in all the States; it now needs National recognition and authoritive fixation, only, to become permanently, an American custom and institution." The document below sets apart the last Thursday of November "as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise."

According to an April 1, 1864, letter from John Nicolay, one of President Lincoln's secretaries, this document was written by Secretary of State William Seward, and the original was in his handwriting. On October 3, 1863, fellow Cabinet member Gideon Welles recorded in his diary that he complimented Seward on his work. A year later the manuscript was sold to benefit Union troops.

By the President of the United States of America.
A Proclamation.

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consiousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People.

I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the Unites States the Eighty-eighth.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln

William H. Seward,Secretary of State

http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/thanks.htm

Quote

John Mark Reynolds, PhD

...one reason most people aren't Christians is because most Chritians aren't Christians.

Hmmm...

Contending for the Christian Worldview
Biola University

GK Chesterton quote...gotta love this guy.

"It is terrible to contemplete how few politicians are hanged." - The Cleveland Press, 3/1/21

The Sun'll Come Up Tomorrow...

"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any." Alice Walker

A dreadful thing happened on November 2...we set our clocks back an hour. This really messes with my sleep but now, instead of going to work in the dark, I get see the sun rise on my way to work...and I have not been disappointed.

I have been looking for the silver lining with this dark cloud of election results...I have found it.

First of all, I am thankful to live in a country where I get the opportunity to select my leaders and representatives. I am also very thankful that "regime change" takes place in this awesome country without violence. There aren't many countries in the world this can happen!

The election results were reported, the sun rose, and I am able to voice my opinion about that! Again, an awesome freedom we enjoy and probably take for granted. We have the right to voice our opinion about our government.

But the silver lining is that this is a tremendous growth opportunity for me. I am challenged to become even more involved in this great Republic, to research more, to discern more, to discuss more, to be more accountable in my own opinions, and to even help others become more involved and almost with a sense of urgency. Perhaps many Christians who have sat complacently by in times past will now be challenged to step forward and take on the challenge of government and "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." (Lincoln)

Also posted on Del Tackett's blog Truth Observed (www.deltackett.com)

Now, what?

The election is over...

The results are final...

Now, what do I do?

Just Keep Praying!

1 Timothy 2:1-4 (New American Standard Bible)
A Call to Prayer
1First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men, 2 for kings and all who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity. 3 This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, 4who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

Quote

The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.

John F. Kennedy, speech at Vanderbilt University, May 18, 196335th president of US 1961-1963 (1917 - 1963)

Our Own Worst Enemies

Elections seasons are great for watching politicians defeat themselves. I have to say that Joe the Plumber is the greatest blooper that I've seen this year and the other party is using it to its advantage. Wisely so, this is a very serious issue.

I hope Joe gets a great position after the election...White House Plumber...The First Plumber!!

I work for Joe the Lawyer and my husband is Joe the Carpenter so I am very interested in what happens to Joe the Plumber.

I'm not into the idea of spreading the wealth and I certainly don't have any extra to spread so be careful with and don't vote yourself into poverty.

Book Review

Exerpt from How To Ruin The United States of America by Ben Stein and Phil DeMuth

America The Beautiful: Forgotten

With the eradication of history and its replacement with America-bashing sloganeering, elementary truths once taken for granted throughout our society are perilously close to being forgotten. Consider: How long has it been since citizens began being the arbiters of their own government rather than used a schattel however rulers saw fit? How long has it been since men and women gained the ability to get rid of their leaders through ballots instead of revolution? Perhaps a few hundred years out of tens of thousands.

How long has man been able to have hot baths on demand? A century. How long has he been able to have a safe, delicious food at any time? Maybe 80 or 100 years. How long has he been able to have an air-conditioned room in the desert? Fifty years. How long have Jews had completely equal rights with Christians in America? Perhaps 40 years at most, out of 5,800 years of Jewish life. How long have black men been in high political office in large numbers? Just 10 or 20 years. How long have women had completely equal rights?

In other words, America offers us a golden age on a silver platter - a life that's the envy of the world, a life of comfort, safety, health, and opportunity almost unimaginable to earlier generations.

Most of us have never been prisoners in a concentration camp. We've never been led into a gas chamber and gassed with Zylkon B. We've never been rounded up in a town in Romania and beaten to death by fascist thugs with iron rods. We've never been used for unanesthetized experiments by Dr. Mengele. We've never been on a death march in the Phillipines. We've never gone hungry, never been forced to work outside in the Polish winter in cotton clothing while suffering from typhus. We haven't lived through an economic depression lasting 11 years, where our store of treasure turned to dust an able-bodied members of our family went hungry for lack of work. Yet these were the fates of millions, even in our lifetimes.

We never had to charge against a massed cannon and musket fire in a Fredericksburg, be a prisoner in a gulag, or be shot at the Lubyanka (intelligence headquarters) because some OGPU officer had to make his quota of "wreckers and saboteurs" in order to placate Stalin. We've never had to charge against German machine guns at Ypres or the Somme. We've never suffocated in the hold of a Japanese prison ship. We've never had to charge against Japanese Nambu machine guns at Taraw, Peleliu, or Okinawa. We have never been torpedoed while making the Murmansk run, then thrown overboard and drowned in the icy water while our friends died all around us, or eaten by sharks because our ship was torpedoed in the Pacific by Japanese submarines.

How blessed most of us have been.

But the point of our thanks is that there are millions - tens of millions- who suffered and died to bring us the sunny pleasure that is America today. What's missing from our whole chocolatey-sweet culture is this realization fo just how amazingly thankful we have to be to the men who died so we could bitch and moan about traffic or bad cell-phone service. How will we ever be able to pay these people back? What can we do for the child without a grandfather because that man died assaulting Shuri Castle on Okinawa or defending Corregidor or breaking through to Bastogne or holding off the Chinese Communists at Chosin?

It seems as if the whole country is on the road to forgetting how we got to where we are. If we lose sight of just how precious our nation and our way of life are, we'll lose our purpose and meaning, and we'll be easy prey for our enemies.

This has to be taught. We have everything we do because brave men bled and their wifes, mothers, fathers, and children sobbed and were along. This is what should be on TV- shows that bind the nation together in gratitude. But where do we start when women like Paris Hilton's mother are considered role models?

We aren't worried about America's financial capital. There's plenty of money and plenty of trinkets. We are worried about our moral capital. It's as if it has been loaded onto ships and is sailing out of sight. When it is gone, what will we do?

"Ye are the salt of the earth, but if the salt lose its savor, wherewith shall it be salted?"

p. 79-82
New Beginnings Press, Carlsbad, CA, USA, 2008

Recommended Reading

God Won't Vote This Year
by Dave Zanotti

Exerpt:

In America, we each have the right to participate in the process of shaping the government. That right is a gift the Founders believed came from God the Creator. We have exactly the kind of elected officials we put into office by our actions. The Bible teaches God governs in the affairs of men. God can veto the results of an election anytime He wishes but there is little evidence in America history that God has ever chosen to do so. Granted, a few vetoes from the Almighty along the way might have saved the nation oa freat deal of grief. The people of americal have the God-ordained right to government based upon the consent of the governed. And like ancient Isreal, we the people are resonsible for the consequences of our collective decision.

Therefore, we cannot blame God if the candidates running ar not to our liking. we cannot blame God if the lesser or the greater of two evils is elected. Gos is not voting this year, next year, or in the years to come. He gave us the right to do that for our selves. In the long term and in the short term we get exactly the kind of government we choose. (pp 58-59)

www.godwontvote.com

My thought: God is not a citizen of the USA and therefore not eligible to register and vote. Cute play on words though. Those of us who are citizens ought to cherish the right and opportunity to vote for our representatives. Once elected, we need to continuously communicate with these representatives so they can do just that, REPRESENT. If they don't know what their constituents' thoughts, beliefs, wants, etc., are, how will they make decisions regarding legislation.