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Side note: Today would have been my dad's 86th birthday and he's been in heaven a bit over four years, but many times I just want to pick up the phone and hear his voice.

Now...

Christian Reading Habits

Reading Out of Love For Others - Tim Challies - Good thoughts and as I'm thinking about books for the Reading Challenge, I'm thinking about this also.

Politics (The Corruption of President Biden)

Labor Pick Paid Biden-Linked Firm Tens of Thousands Prior to Nomination This is a bit confusing, but there's an end to that ball of string.

The Culture Wars

Biden's Culture War Aggression

"TLDR version": If Biden wanted "unity", he wouldn't have turned the "on a scale of 1 - 10" dial up to 12 on "the culture war" (that's in quotes because that's the term that Sullivan used)"

And another from the Heritage Foundation

Boys who identify as girls must be allowed to compete in the girls' athletic competitions, men who identify as women must be allowed in women-only spaces, healthcare plans must pay for gender-transition procedures, and doctors and hospitals must perform them.

Sounds unifying, right?

In reality, it spells the end of girls' and women's sports as we know them. And, of course, no child should be told the lie that they're "trapped in the wrong body", and adults should not pump them full of puberty-blocking drugs and cross-sex hormones.

What’s the real evidence for 2020 Election Fraud?

There are seven points, and this conclusion

This isn’t an exhaustive survey of fraud evidence in the 2020 presidential race. For example I didn’t even include affidavits from witnesses seeing fraud in Wisconsin or Nevada. Nor did I even go through the Navaro Report or many of the claims listed on HeresTheEvidence.com.

But what I’ve seen is more than enough to convince me that Biden will not be a legitimately elected president when sworn in this Wednesday.

NOTE:  I disagree with the statement that President Trump would have won...but I do believe that there were enough irregularities to raise an alarm and all irregularities should be investigated (whether or not it would have changed the outcome) in order to have fair and honest elections in the future.

And...Policy Changes

Biden Appears To Signal Shift On Israel After Claiming In Speech That He Would ‘Repair Our Alliances’

“The change in title marks a significant shift in policy toward Israel,” The Washington Free Beacon reported. “The United States has for decades declined to take a policy position on the West Bank and Gaza territories, maintaining the Israelis and the Palestinians must decide in negotiations how the areas will be split up for a future Palestinian state. By including Gaza and the West Bank in the ambassador’s portfolio, the Biden administration appears to be determining that neither area is part of Israel—a move that is certain to rile Israeli leaders,” the outlet continued. “The incoming administration’s move also signals that it will elevate the next ambassador’s role to include conducting direct diplomacy with Palestinian leaders, including in the Gaza Strip, where the Hamas terror group maintains control. This is the only ambassador tasked with conducting diplomacy in a region controlled by a U.S.-designated terror group.”

‘Incredibly Troubling,’ ‘Deeply Disturbed’: Canadian Lawmakers React To Biden Energy Policy

This is a gut punch for the Canadian and Alberta economies. Sadly, it is an insult directed at the United States' most important ally and trading partner," Kenny told a news conference, according to Reuters.

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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.

~~~

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

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

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Pushing back on the "sin" of anger

saw this image today on the "sin" of anger and need to push back:

I need to push back on the idea that anger (in and of itself) is sin.

That idea that anger is always sin..

- well, let me tell you about a Sunday School lesson we taught on propitiation. A student asked, "what is propitiation" - that's when God's anger is satisfied by the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.

"That can't be right, because anger is a sin and if God gets angry, He can't be God!"

Emotion (yes, even anger) is the catalyst for action

Do you get angry when you know that unborn babies are being slaughtered in the womb? (if not, why not?) If yes, that anger may spur you on to action, whether it be talking to a pregnant mom and talking her out of abortion, it may lead to being a foster parent, it may get you out of the sidewalk in front of an abortion clinic.Are you angry at injustice? Then get going and work for justice.The point is, it is not sinful to be angry at the things that God is angry at.If we're angry at things that God does not get angry at, the root sin may not be anger, it may be pride, selfishness, lust.

It is only when we examine ourselves through the lens of Scripture that we know if our anger is sinful.

"Feelings and Faith" is a helpful book on understanding emotions

"We are created in the image of God and that includes our emotions (which are marred by sin) - however, emotions are more than feelings; they are the expressions of our values and evaluations that affect motives and conduct"

Brian Borgman, "Feelings and Faith: Cultivating Godly Emotions in the Christian Life"

From the same book:

Although anger is a common and harmful sin, anger in and of itself is not sinful. In fact, our capacity to be angry is a reflection of the image of God in us.

Emotion (yes, even anger) is the catalyst for action.

Do you get angry when you know that unborn babies are being slaughtered in the womb? (if not, why not?) If yes, that anger may spur you on to action, whether it be talking to a pregnant mom and talking her out of abortion, it may lead to being a foster parent, it may get you out of the sidewalk in front of an abortion clinic.

Are you angry at injustice? Then get going and work for justice. The point is, it is not sinful to be angry at the things that God is angry at.

In my first marriage, there were things to be angry about. Those things spurred me action - boundaries, accountability, conditions. Because I was angry enough to *DO* something, my marriage got better.

If we're angry at things that God does not get angry at, the root sin may not be anger, it may be pride, selfishness, lust. It is only when we examine ourselves through the lens of Scripture that we know if our anger is sinful.

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I just finished "Things We Couldn't Say"  by Diet Eman, published in 1999.

The book, "Things We Couldn't Say" is simultaneously hopeful and fearful; the author can lament the situation while resting in the love of God.

Diet Eman and her fiance, Hein Sietsma, watched from the beginning on Nazi occupation in the Netherlands, wondering, "what is starting here?" to  "what can we do?" to "what *SHOULD* we do?"

Diet Eman is in the company of Corrie Ten Boom - in fact, at one point they were in the same prison camp.  If anything, Eman was more involved in the Resistance Network than Ten Boom was.

Why did she do what she did?

As a Reformed Christian, Eman's philosophy of the resistance was based in her faith in God and that faith spurred her into action.  At her most exhausted and in her moments of deepest fear, it was God that carried her.

She wrote: 

When I opened the book [the Bible] that night at the end of February 1945, it said, "Being exhausted, yet keeping up the pursuit" (Judges 8:4). Even after what I had said of wanting out, even after that humiliation, the physical exhaustion, the deep despair I felt, those words were my new marching orders. The next morning, I swung my rucksack over my shoulders and was off again.

 Most authors put the "why I wrote this book" at the beginning. 

 The author puts her reasons for writing in the postscript - she wanted to forget. When Corrie Ten Boom come to the town Eman was living in (Grand Rapids, MI) Eman began being convicted that 

...every time I opened the Bible something like "Tell the great things I have done" stared me in the face. Then a pastor who knew that I had been in the same prison as Corrie asked me to speak to his church. I wanted to scream, "No, I want to forget," but I didn't dare. So I went, but it was very difficult.  (Diet Eman;James Schaap. Things We Couldn't Say (Kindle Locations 3502-3504). Kindle Edition.)

Friends and family began to encourage her to write her story as a sort of therapy. She needed to write and the world needed to know.

All those years between WWII and when she told the story, she kept her diaries and letters and those of her fiance, Hein.  She shares those notes and fills in the blanks with her memories.

We read along as Diet goes from an innocent child, to a young woman in love with a young man, and then she becomes a confused Dutch woman unsure of what to do in the face of an invading force and then she launches into the Resistance.

Diet spent months in a Nazi prison camp, where she wrote:

And also, I forget to see that this all happens with God's permission. I keep on staring at the injustice which our country and people are suffering, but I forget that you bring your trials on this earth because you deem this necessary, otherwise it would not have happened. (location 412)

 Why does it matter?

As I write this review, I'm listening to the radio.  I am writing with the memory of last Wednesday, when a mob of people stormed the Capital Building. The President has been banned from a couple of social media platforms and an entire social media network (Parler) has been removed from app stores and has had their website taken down by their ISP.  Senator Ronis in "facebook jail" for unknown reasons.  

Reports of people who were merely present at the protest - on the fringes, *NOT* part of the mob who stormed the gates - being turned in by grandchildren and getting fired from their jobs.  For peaceful assembly!

Diet wrote:

What will this year bring us? Peace? Liberty? Reunion? Lord, you know it already! This time last year, when we were all together, we would never have thought that all this would happen! But you knew it. And we still have to give you thanks, for in some way this is necessary for the big plan you have for this world.

The Biden Administration is about to begin. I watch who is being "cancelled", who is being fired, and who is being silenced.

 My husband posted:"When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar. You're only telling the world that you fear what he might say."- George R.R. Martin

This book is a "must read"

 The book has a tragic story, but the way that's it's written catches at the heart.  Going back and forth from Hein to Diet, reading their diaries and letters, one can see how each person reacts to an event (the queen of the Netherlands escaping to England)

Reading the book, while watching our own current events unfold is unsettling.

Read it...think on it...and (I think) be prepared to ponder where your own "line in the sand" will be.

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Psalms 104

Bless the Lord, O my soul!

    O Lord my God, you are very great!

You are clothed with splendor and majesty,

2     covering yourself with light as with a garment,

    stretching out the heavens like a tent.

3 He lays the beams of his chambers on the waters;

he makes the clouds his chariot;

    he rides on the wings of the wind;

4 he makes his messengers winds,

    his ministers a flaming fire.

5 He set the earth on its foundations,

    so that it should never be moved.

6 You covered it with the deep as with a garment;

    the waters stood above the mountains.

7 At your rebuke they fled;

    at the sound of your thunder they took to flight.

8 The mountains rose, the valleys sank down

    to the place that you appointed for them.

9 You set a boundary that they may not pass,

    so that they might not again cover the earth. (read the whole thing)

My favorite hymn today - Before the Throne of God Above

1 Before the throne of God above
I have a strong and perfect plea,
A great High Priest whose name is Love,
Who ever lives and pleads for me.


My name is graven on his hands,
My name is written on his heart;
I know that while in heav'n he stands
No tongue can bid me thence depart,
No tongue can bid me thence depart.

2 When Satan tempts me to despair
And tells me of the guilt within,
Upward I look and see him there
Who made an end of all my sin.


Because the sinless Savior died
My sinful soul is counted free;
For God the Just is satisfied
To look on him and pardon me,
To look on him and pardon me.

3 Behold him there! The risen Lamb,
My perfect, spotless righteousness;
The great unchangeable "I AM,"
The King of glory and of grace!


One with himself I cannot die,
My soul is purchased by his blood;
My life is hid with Christ on high,
With Christ, my Savior and my God,
With Christ, my Savior and my God!

~~~

Rest in those lyrics...

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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.

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Setting Intentions and Goals for 2021

I want to do some goal setting for 2021.

2020 was a hot mess! I cannot change the world in 2021, but I can change my little corner of it - meaning I can set goals that will improve me.

Oola goal setting looks interesting and I think I'll use that as a starting point. I am *NOT* going to set a bunch of goals for January 1 and get overwhelmed. I'll pick a goal or two, and create a habit a week...we'll see.

Oola has 7 life areas that keep us centered: family, faith, friends, field (career), fitness, finance, fun. I suppose that when I was typing these from memory that the one I couldn't remember is the one that I "scored" the lowest on!

One caution, if you're a stay-at-home wife - one of the field questions is whether or not your job could support you. I work part time so my answer is near the bottom, individually. I answered the finance questions as a family unit, since my husband and I are a team, but the "field" questions are rigged for independence.

Fitness is my first goal areas. Exercise 5x/week.

There! Easy Peasy!

I have a couple of BIG goals for this year.

  1. hike to the top of Job's Peak - it's not as bad as it looks; the trail head is on the back side of the range. It's a strenuous hike and it has amazing views. I can see this peak from my office window, so to see my house from the top would be amazing.
Job's Peak, taken with my iPhone, at the corner by my house.

2. Make my weight goal (about 50 pounds to lose). I have the tools, now I need to strength.

3. Start logging miles on the Tahoe Rim Trail, with the longer terms goal of backpacking part of the Pacific Crest Trail.

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About Deacon King Kong

James McBride wrote “Deacon King Kong” in third-person narration, hopping back and forth between characters.  Set in 1960’s New York City, the story begins with an act that makes so sense. The story ends about the same...making no sense.

As the book goes on, you do get the feel of the back story – living in Black New York City. You see the business of dealing or using drugs, getting “stuck” in this life with no way out. 

When I reached the halfway point in the book, I realized that I kept picking it up for no other reason other than I had committed to read it in a “reading challenge.”  After finishing the story, I still cannot discern the main message.  I can pick out several possibilities, but only one that has any sort of closure.

About the story

The basic story begins as the main character (Sportcoat) shoots a drug dealer and sets off a comical series of mishaps that ricochet throughout the book.  From undercover cops, to mob bosses, to drug distributors, to preacher’s wives…they all interact in some interesting and improbably ways.

This book received an astonishing number of outstanding reviews – including Oprah and Barack Obama. This does not leave me with much confidence in their tastes in books.  But so many recommendations leave me wondering if I wandered off into the twilight zone.

I read enough fiction books that keep me reading to find out where the characters end up and what their lives look like.  “Deacon King Kong” had so little character development that I had little or no interest in them.  What does Sportcoat like?  Other than King Kong (homemade adult beverage) I’m not sure what he wants.

Not Recommended

I did find that they book requires so little brain energy that if a reader wants “cotton candy for the brain” (not very filling with no nutritional value) – Deacon King Kong might fit those taste buds.

James McBride has written a number of other books (I have not read any of them so I can’t compare) and I don’t think I will read more of his works. 

Nor would I recommend Deacon King Kong. There’s just not enough character or plot development, no closure on the big story lines and too few interesting plots.