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These are all books, sermons and shopping sites that I found helpful while figuring this all out.

The Very Best Starting Place

Books

  • Head Covering: A Forgotten Christian Practice for Modern Times
    • This is the first book you should read; it goes through the Scripture line by line, but misses an important piece (I think)
  • Because of the Angels: First Corinthians Eleven and Head Coverings in Divine Worship
    • The first book caught my brain, the second caught my heart. A note of caution, the author is Episcopal and that shows, but what he writes is good.

Shopping

  • Garlands of Grace
    • Far and away the best (so far) - one caution, if you're shopping by color, the website isn't all that accurate and the colors tend to be richer than shown, so if you're looking for brighter colors, it could be an issue.
  • Headbands of Hope
    • for wide headbands, these are very wide (like 18"). I cut them in half and they still covered what I wanted covered.

Sermons

  • Michael Barrett has a number of sermons that made an impact (I'm looking for a specific one and can't find it right now)

Head coverings? Really? That is so 1900's. Or 1700's, or maybe 100's. How did I get here?

My husband, Phil, and I attend a small group Bible study and we’ve been working through 1 Corinthians.  The men take turns leading and we thought head coverings would be a quick study with some invigorating conversations. Phil took that chapter to lead.

The process begins

I had read through 1 Corinthians 11:2-16, on my own as well as in a women’s group but this time it caught my attention.   There are books! The process of listening to sermons, reading websites, getting another book...or three began.  There are tangents and then the tangents found tangents.  Since I process better when I write, I began to type my notes and add the questions I asked myself.

About a week into all this I decided to wear a hat to church for the purpose of a head covering.  The next week I wore a wide headband with my hair in a bun. If it’s in the Bible, I have a duty to obey.  Phil told me that since I would be affected more than he would, he would stand back and let the study take its course and he would honor whatever conviction I came to.

Facebook started showing me memes that pointed me straight at Scripture and I was reminded of my own thoughts on Sola Scriptura.

What are we afraid of?

I shifted "if this is a command I have to do it" to "this is a symbol of my joyful submission to God's created order"

Moving from wide head bands to a more traditional cover, I discovered "Garlands of Grace"

The study of this passage took a couple of months, so I did due diligence. It's been a process for sure, and it's brought joy and frustration and tears of joy "because of the angels"

“Suppose one of you has a friend, and goes to him at midnight and says to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves, because a friend of mine has come to me from a journey and I have nothing to serve him’  and from inside he answers and says, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been shut and my children and I are in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, even if he will not get up and give him anything just because he is his friend, yet because of his shamelessness (importunity) he will get up and give him as much as he needs.

Luke 11:5-8

The four aspects of this parable (used by Jesus as an example of persevering prayer)

1 - your relationship to the one you're going(praying) to - friend

You are My friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, because all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. - John 15: 14-15

(yes, I know that we don't pray to Jesus, but to the Father...but if this parable means what it seems to say, the person we pray to is..."Friend")

2 - The difficult timing - midnight, that is when help is least to be found

3 - The nature of the request(prayer) - in this example, we are to order/prioritize our requests according to our greatest and immediate needs.

4 - The occasion of the request

What is Importunity?

im·por·tu·ni·ty/ˌimpôrˈt(y)o͞onədē/nounnoun: importunity; plural noun: importunities

  1. persistence, especially to the point of annoyance."you urged me on with untiring importunity"

Basically, we're supposed to be holy nags.

GotQuestions adds "urgent" - as in "urgent persistence."

Proverbs 6:3 says

Do this now, my son, and deliver thyself,
Seeing thou art come into the hand of thy neighbor:
Go, humble thyself, and importune thy neighbor;

It seems that importunity (urgent persistence) goes hand in hand with humility.

It's in the urgent times of great need that we come to the point where we are face to face with the reality that we cannot help ourselves.

We are in the hands of God.

After listening to an interview with Andrew Torba (Gab) I've decided to do a series on Free Speech platforms.

Check out "Freedom Forum Institute"

The First Amendment protects individuals from government censorship. Social media platforms are private companies, and can censor what people post on their websites as they see fit. But given their growing role in public discourse, it’s important to ask ourselves–what exactly are their censorship policies? How do they compare to each other, and to the First Amendment’s protections?

https://www.freedomforuminstitute.org/first-amendment-center/primers/free-expression-on-social-media/

What is Gab?

Theology

“Double” Predestination" by R.C. Sproul

This concept is one of the more difficult - did God preordain some for destruction, or does He just allow humans to damn themselves and He ordains a few for glory?

Politics

A Tsunami of Hate

We are suffering from a Tsunami of Hate emanating from the Democrat Party that seeks to demonize, criminalize and extinguish dissent from the 75 million supporters of Donald Trump. It is now official Washington dogma that to question an election result – something the congressional Democrats have done in the face of every Republican presidential victory since 2000 - is now “insurrection” and “domestic terrorism,” or the incitement thereto, and needs to be prosecuted and suppressed.

Fortress DC

(this one is a bit old)

According to Ken Cuccinelli, the former head of the Department of Homeland Security, Pelosi not only asked for those massive numbers of troops, but she also asked for the Guard to have crew-manned vehicle mounted machine guns. Now that’s absolutely crazy, was she really envisioning Guard members machine gunning down Americans? Remember these are the same folks who ignored violent riots precipitated by BLM/Antifa for months and chastised President Donald Trump for responding to them with federal agents.

But now reports are suggesting that Pelosi wants them there into March, during impeachment proceedings…

So she’s going to try to use them like her personal Army till mid-March? Welcome to the security state. Based on what? Notice how they’re very happy to use the Guard for themselves yet not so much for other citizens during the months of rioting.

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Biden Takes Heat For Killing Trump’s Opioid-Treatment Prescription Plan Praised By Doctors

President Joe Biden last week killed a plan from the Trump administration to allow more physicians to prescribe an opioid-treatment drug.

The move from the Trump administration was widely praised by both physicians and lawmakers, and came on the heels of another spike in opioid-related deaths during the pandemic. Criticizing the Biden administration on the reversal, Trump’s Assistant Secretary for Health Dr. Brett Giroir warned the move “will cost thousands of lives.”

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What I'm Reading

Biblical Imprecations: Christians’ Secret Weapon

Biblical Imprecations: Christians’ Secret Weapon demonstrates the unity of Biblical teaching regarding such imprecations, examining: (1) Christ and the Apostles endorsement of Old Testament imprecations; (2) imprecations spoken by Christ and the Apostles; and (3) imprecations spoken by God’s angels and by glorified martyrs in heaven.


Eight key Biblical-theological principles underlying the imprecatory Psalms are developed: (follow the link)

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Politics

Rush to judgement? Three crucial questions remain unanswered about Capitol siege

How could Trump incite an attack that had already been pre-planned and was in motion before his speech ended?

What did House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the other leaders in Congress know — and when did they know it — about the possibility for violence and the Pentagon's pre-attack offer to send National Guardsmen to reinforce the Capitol Police?

Were there facilitators inside the Capitol and outside it who instigated or enabled the attack to be carried out?

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Jim Jordan Blasts ‘Double Standards’ of Democrats: They ‘Objected to More States in 2017 than Republicans Did Last Week’

Jordan continued, reminding his colleagues that the individual managing impeachment for the Democrats, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), too, objected to electoral votes in 2017.

“Americans are tired of the double standards. They are so tired of it,” the Ohio Republican said. “Democrats objected to more states in 2017 than Republicans did last week, but somehow we’re wrong.”

“Democrats can raise bail for rioters and looters this summer but somehow when Republicans condemn all the violence, the violence this summer, the violence last week, somehow we’re wrong,” he said.

Gaslighting Last Summer's Riots and the Law Enforcement Response

Minneapolis: For the first few days of riots, Minneapolis police focused on defending their embattled 3rd Precinct building located at the center of the unrest. The mayor then ordered the police to stand down and abandon the building to the angry crowd that had surrounded it. The police withdrawal caused the situation to "spin[] out of control in the neighborhood around the precinct house"; the Precinct was burned to the ground, and "nearly every building around it [was] vandalized, looted or set on fire."

Seattle: For twenty-three days in June, armed leftists occupied six blocks of the city's Capitol Hill neighborhood, declaring the area a "police-free" zone they called the "Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone" ("CHAZ"), later changed to "Capitol Hill Occupied Protest" ("CHOP"). Bands of self-appointed, gun-toting "guards" set up encampments and patrolled the area, looted stores, smashed windows, and prevented residents from leaving or visitors from entering—in the process devastating businesses located in the occupied blocks.

Portland: Portland suffered three months of nightly riots. Daryl Turner, head of the Portland Police Association, alleged that Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler and Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt limited the city's response to riots in order to appease lawbreakers: "If it is acceptable for rioters to commit acts of violence against community members and to try and burn down occupied buildings, and if this conduct is allowed to continue," Turner said, "then Portland is lost."

Chicago: On a particularly violent weekend in early June, Mayor Lightfoot refused to deploy the National Guard beyond Chicago's central business district, drawing condemnations from officials representing districts on the south and west side of the city, which were left unprotected during Chicago's deadliest weekend in sixty years.

Louisville: Riots left the city's downtown "look[ing] like a war zone," according to a local paper. Louisville Police accused Mayor Greg Fischer of issuing stand-down orders to officers during riots, allowing lawlessness to run rampant.

(and more)

The Capitol Police were woefully understaffed and under-prepared for last Wednesday's riot. The reasons for that need to be thoroughly investigated. But the notion that right-wing mostly white rioters get special treatment while BLM-associated lawless behavior attracts violent, harsh, crackdown is at odds with what actually happened last summer.

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Joe Biden pledged on Friday "to defeat the [National Rifle Association" and end our epidemic of gun violence"

(MzEllen writes, ummm...that's us.)

Things We Couldn't Say

"Things We Couldn't Say" is the true story of Diet Eman and Hein Sietsma (her fiance) told through their journals leading up to, and through, the German occupation of Holland.

I'm part way through, but so far it's been a good read.

What I find interesting is the responses of the two people, one man and one woman, to different situations. They were separated when the queen took the entire government and escaped to England - his response was anger at the "desertion" and hers was despair at the "abandonment".

Her journal tells of her fear at the though to Hein being caught while in hiding from the Germans, and the caution that she had to take while moving him from home to home without being discovered.

His journal tells of his fear for her and his anger at not being able to protect her.

I'm getting value from the book and it's another story of Christians helping Jews escape persecution that we all should remember.