These are my kids petting the stingrays. The exhibit is here only for the summer and it's very cool.
This is me petting the stingray. Tom took the photo and got a little close...it was fun, though.
This is Tom feeding the stingray. These fish are actually very gentle and have a sensitive mouth (and no teeth like we have).
This is Manda feeding the stingray - I wasn't quite ready and the fish came along so quickly that the photo is a little blurred.
I like it that even though my kids are (mostly) grown they still like to do things like this.
The zoo has a cage full of budgies that you can walk through (you can see that there's a lot of them) and (for a fee) feed them with seeds stuck on a popsicle stick (Tom and Manda did)
Our zoo's komodo dragon.
If you all were in a church service and saw a "prophet" lay hands on a woman and say these words...what kind of church (denomination wise) would you think you were in? (this is an exact transcript)
"I believe that there is going to be a mentoring relationship with the prophetic. But I want to ignite you, I want to provoke you, I want to inspire you to speak the prophetic word of the Lord even as you see me doing it this morning because you see things and you know things you don’t know how to get how to get it across. So in the name of Jesus, amen, I impart to you - amen! - the empowerment of the Holy Ghost and the gifting that is upon your life to speak prophetically. I call it forth, I call forth the prophetic utterance, the prophetic gift, again, the prophetic anointing with boldness right now in the name of Jesus that she will speak those words that will change lives, that will bring deliverance and I declare Father God that this is that day that you anoint Lord God that this is that day that that impartation take place and Father God that she will not be able to rest until she obeys that call Lord and that you will give her skills you will provide the training you will provide the understanding so that there will be no fear but that there will be the boldness Lord to walk in the calling of the anointing that is upon her live…in Jesus name."
A few weeks ago, I wrote about a premie, Alicia.
Here is a link to her blog with a video of her and Mom (Alicia is smiling)
Margaret Clarkson, who was born in 1915, was a teacher in a gold-mining camp in northern Ontario, Canada. It was a lonely life for this woman, but she also knew that this is where God wanted her to serve Him. She had a great desire to be a missionary on a foreign field but because of her health was unable to go. One day she was reading again the verse John 20:21, "Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you." While meditating on this verse she wrote the words to a hymn that has become a favorite during missionary conferences, "So Send I You." Maybe after reading the words to this hymn a person would fear the call to missions. But, what a person must understand is that when God calls, He gives such a great desire that all else is unsatisfying and empty.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So send I you to labor unrewarded,
To serve unpaided, unloved, unsought, unknown,
To bear rebuke, to suffer scorn and scoffing-
So send I you to toil for me alone.
So send I you to bind the bruised and broken,
O'er wand'ring souls to work, to weep, to wake,
To bear the burdens of a world aweary-
So send I you to suffer for My sake.
So send I you to loneliness and longing,
With heart ahung'ring for the loved and known,
Forsaking home and kindred, friend and dear one-
So send I you to know My love alone.
So send I you to leave your life's ambition,
To die to dear desire, self-will resign,
To labor long, and love where men revile you-
So send I you to love your life in Mine.
So send I you to hearts made hard by hatred,
To eyes made blind because they will not see,
To spend, tho' it be blood, to spend and spare not-
So send I you to taste of Calvary.
How many blogs do I read regularly?
A lot. I use firefox and read them in tabs so I have them in categories. Most of them I just take a look at and see if there's anything new.
How many are written by women? By men? I think about half and half.
Are they all Christian? How about the same denomination? No and no.
I have a number of blogs by "special needs" families, educational, political blogs, diets/recipes. And 24.
Of the blogs that are Christian, the blogs by men are primarily reformed, the blogs by women are a real mixed bag.
What kind of posts do you like best? Posts that make me think. Iron sharpens iron and if I have to think to defend my belief, I either come away solid or changed.
What kinds of posts are you most likely to comment on? about 1/3 each encouragement, informational and controversial (although I've been trying real hard to not go to another person's blog and join in a controversy on the opposite side of the host - unless they invite it. I love debates, but have been trying to enter on the host's side)
What makes you add a blog to your favorites list/bloglines? Or conversely, what drives you away from a blog?
I add a blog to my favorites list if it engages my brain.
If all I read is "fluff", I take it off.
What's your favorite kind of post to write?
The theological things that are pertaining to me, or a friend, right now (or what I'm reading right now) are the posts that I enjoy sinking my teeth into.
What do you think is your biggest strength blogwise? Biggest weakness?
I don't know. I think my biggest strength is that I seem to have about 50/50 men and women, so it's a broader audience (so to speak)
Maybe my biggest weakness is trying to make a big post when I don't have big stuff to say.
What do you want to change, if anything, about the way you blog?
I think I'd like to not care about the numbers. I've never been "nominated" and have only been "invited" a couple of times. My readership is very small.
Or, I'd like to big. Either one.
How many times a day do you say the word blog? Quite a lot, actually. I'm constantly referring people at work to this blog or that, especially political and special needs.
How many bloggers have you met in real life - not counting the ones you knew before they started blogging? One.
Were they what you expected from reading their blogs? Got any interesting stories? Yes.
Is there anything you'd like to see change here at Blestwithsons? Nope.
Blogger doesn't support trackback. I installed a special "thingie" that comes from a different place (haloscan) that does support trackbacks for Blogger, but I have never attempted to use it.
So it's very ironic that (for the first time), a comment to Thinklings got lost in their spam filter. I seem to be disorganizationally challenged today and the address that I used to email De/Bill came back to me as undeliverable.
The irony is that the post I was commenting on was on posting etiquette and was politely asking folks to use trackbacks...I was telling them that Blogger doesn't support trackbacks...
Anyway, this is a very long way of saying that this is a post that I'm posting for the express purpose of finally figuring out how to use that pesky little trackback thingie. Or for the alternate express purpose of hoping a Thinkling happens to stop by and help me...
😉
(note: I tried to do the trackback thing (and haloscan said the ping went through) but it doesn't show up on Thinklings...NEED GEEK HELP!)
Several years ago I was working with first graders trying to "get" math. One young lady really struggled with the concepts and one day she huffed and puffed and finally rolled her eyes and said, "I am so happy that Jesus invented erasers!"
Jesus is like that.
Psalm 103:12
as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
Isaiah 43:25
"I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.
It is people that have the eraser problem.
In another place, we're rehasing divorce and remarriage...Here is a quote from Mark Driscoll's church's position paper.
"...The consequence of sexual sin is grave and not resolvable for the offending spouse, outside the mercy and grace of the other spouse. Hardness of heart will demand punishment. Mercy and grace will work toward authentic repentance and restoration."
There are a couple of problems with this position.
1) This entire position leaves out GOD! Forgiveness and restoration depends not on God, but on people.
2) This position assumes that if the "offended" spouse refuses to forgive, it must be because the "offending" spouse is not authentically forgiven. It is dangerous to assume that.
3) Nothing is said of the sin of having a hard heart. If (generic) you refuse to forgive a repentant person, that is one of the things that should make you question whether or not you are even a Christian.
In this position, restoration depends entirely on another human being. A sinner can stand repentant before God and it just wouldn't matter.
Another place our human erasers have problems is with the false separation of forgiveness and restoration.
When we are forgiven by God, He does not hold our sins against us.
Often, when we are "forgiven" by people, we hear, "I forgive you, but I just can't..."
One (now departed) woman I knew said, "I forgive him, but I don't have to like him and I don't have to talk to him and I don't have to accept him." Is that forgiveness? It sure certainly isn't restoration.
And it is the opposite of 2 Cor 2:7-8 7 "...so you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. So I beg you to reaffirm your love for him."
There are three things needed for a sinner to be restored to the body. Forgiveness, comfort, reaffirming love.
Jay Adams says in "From Forgiven to Forgiving":
The word reaffirm is a specialized term...meaning to officially reinstate. When one repents and is readmitted into the church, he may not be accepted as a second-class citizen of the kingdom of God. God has no such citizens. The repentant one comes back with full rights and privileges of membership into the church...Now, in most reconciliation contexts, someone will not be reentering the church after having been disciplined out of it, but, in an unofficial way, the same thing holds. Neither you nor others should remain aloof from the brother or sister who is reinstated. Fu7ll fellowship must be restored. He should be restored with active, loving words and deeds by all..."
If you don't have this book, I strongly urge you to follow the link and get it (I don't get a cut, Baker is just my favorite Christian bookstore), read it and put it into practice. Putting the principles in this book into action has changed my relationship with my daughter. She knows that if she has repented for an action and I bring it up again, she can (and does) call me on it. I do the same with her. This recipricol accountability has changed things.
I know that it is impossible for a person to truly take a another at his or her word and forgive and not hold it against them. It is truly impossible. How can we comfort the person who sinned against us?!?
The answer is that we can't. Romans 7:18 says, "...For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. "
But there's hope, Philippians 4:13 says, "I can do all things through him who strengthens me."
A (then unsaved) friend of mine was once going through a very difficult situation and she said to me, "I'm not going to be able to do this without God, am I." Nope.
And no, forgiving God's way requires God. It keeps us humble and it keeps the forgiven one restored.
I think God planned it that way.
Read the story here.
The synopsis..."Mr Bush made this woman have an abortion she didn't want." Seriously (but not literally), that's what she believes.
A 42-year-old woman with two kids and her husband discovered themselves with some "rare couple time" and were "overcome with passion"...and she "forgot" to use her barrier method of birth control.
So...the next day she called her doctor to get a prescription for "plan B" (the "morning after pill).
Oh...like all contraceptive pills, you can only get this by prescription. There was a movement to make this contraceptive pill available "over the counter", but the FDA has major doubts about whether or not the product was safe for young women under 17. There is NO procedure in place at this time for making the same product, for the same indication, available for both prescription and over-the-counter sales, with age being the only factor involved. The "morning after pill" remains prescription only - "bad Republicans" (not)
So...she tried to get a prescription.
Oh...in Virginia, health-care practitioners are allowed to refuse to prescribe any drug that goes against their beliefs. This woman was "dumbfounded" to discover that physicians (first, do no harm...") are allowed to make decisions based on their ethics - "bad Republicans" (not)
So...she decided to take her chances and hope for the best...
Oh...nature wins. Now, this woman is "angry" - the morning after pill was supposed to be available (proposed to have been) OTC by now...and those "nasty Republicans" want to make sure that the product is safe for use by all who can legally purchase it.
So...the FDA and all of these doctors were "partly responsible for why I was stuck that Friday, and why I was ultimately forced to confront the decision to terminate my third pregnancy."
Oh...does she think that perhaps her "momentary lapse" (irresponsibility) might have had just a little bit to do with her accidental pregnancy? "Bad Republican" (not)
So...she had to find an abortion provider. Maybe she just isn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but she says, "trying to get information on how to abort a pregnancy in 2006 is an even more Byzantine experience."
Oh...Honey, one word. "GOOGLE". It took me 5 seconds (including backspacing through a typo) to find six abortion providers sin my area. Including one called "Abortion Clinic." This woman eventually discovered (drumroll....) "Planned Parenthood" - only about the most famous abortion provider in the country.
So...she didn't want to wait for 24 hours (her state has a mandatory waiting period) so she went to downtown DC...
Oh...but she feels that "this administration gave [her] practically no choice but to have an unwanted abortion"
Definitely...somebody else's fault.
NOTE: I have no objection to a couple's responsible - and informed - use of (non-abortificant) birth control. I have used birth control and I remain anti-abortion. I have had two accidental pregnancies (one was miscarried, the other is named "Amanda" and is almost 18).
It is the liberal mindset of "it's somebody else's fault" and playing the blame-game for one's one irresponsibility and choice to have an abortion that angers me.
This woman chose to have unprotected sex and then she chose to abort the child that was conceived as a result. She needs to own both of those choices.