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A Sunday morning reflection on Sunday mornings

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  Eigenheim Mennonite Church, ca 1950 Exodus 20: 8-11: “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work. But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God, in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy …” I sometimes think about this on a Sunday morning when I’m all dressed and ready for church, sitting in my recliner with a hot coffee on one armrest and a bowl of oatmeal on the other and the sun streaming in across the carpet and the Post Office closed, Bigway closed although the Coop Gas Station will undoubtedly be open. And I know the Seventh Day Adventists hold Saturday to be that seventh day and so gathered for worship yesterday and observed in their way what they understand is meant by “the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord.” And I did some Spanish study preparatory to a month in Mexico and learned that Saturday in Spanish is Sabado . In German, the se
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  RAINBOWS DON’T COME EASILY  (copyright)          - A Good Friday Lament George G. Epp Rainbows don’t come easily. Mostimes a storm is wanted first with roiling, darking clouds, With hail and snow or sleet Or at the very least sharp rain.   Or, sinfulness of man: A flood, a storm-tossed ocean Drowning out a dross of Snoring, drunken men And laughing slatterns Lying in some gutter east of Eden;   A moaning wrings grief from out The sorrowing sky.   Much later, then, a dove A timid olive branch A patch of bluest sky That whispers hope, And paints a rainbow there.   On Golgotha, a waning moon threw Crosses rude in silhouette Beneath an angry sky. It’s not enough, the suffering servant said, To leave these moaning, weeping women thus, Tore loose an arm and with triumphant cry Painted a pallid rainbow ‘cross the sky, And died.   Rainbows never come easily: Mostimes a storm is wanted first with roiling, darking clouds, with
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Paul Becoming

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  ACTS 9: Paul Becoming ... some thoughts It’s hard to pick a single theme to pin to the story of Paul’s (Saul’s) conversion in Acts 9. That a zealous informer, agitator against people of “The Way” should become their most ardent advocate seems core, however. Conversions of people from the “wide road” to the “narrow” are common; the dramatic appearance of Jesus in a blazing light, the blindness, the three days of fasting and the recovery of strength are not common, at least not in my experience. Luke’s narrative seems necessary to establish Paul’s legitimacy as an apostle. Ananias’ first response when the Lord orders him to minister to the fasting Saul is skepticism; he’s aware of the man’s reputation of cruelty toward Christians; the knowledge of Saul’s treachery would have been common knowledge in the small circle of The Way. The story can serve as a study in conversion. A zealous anti-Christian has a born-again experience and exits as a zealous Christian … i.e. the zeal
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Do I dare eat a peach?

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  All the talk of Joe Biden’s unfitness for the position of president of the USA must have others of his age—80 plus—wondering about their own fitness. Most of us octogenarians are well aware of our physical limitations, I think, but mentally? How can I know, for instance, if the lines I’m writing are logically sound, or if they fall somewhere between inane and gibberish? How can I know if my diminished capacity can be trusted to make such a judgment? And what if my friends are too kind to tell me when to close my laptop? Hearing an aging loved one tell the same stories to the same people every day has the able-minded nodding knowingly and cluckingly (that’s a word, isn’t it?). We’re obviously too kind and too hip not to know that people experiencing obvious dementia deserve to be “handled with care,” and we’ve devised places and strategies to preserve for them whatever dignity is still possible. But it’s not dissimilar from the pain-relieving, ointment applying, chair-exercising, p
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A Meaning of Unity

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  Eigenheim Church, 1896 “ My prayer is not for [these disciples] alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me, and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me . ” (John 17: 20-21) Unity in the church is not “ a theme,” but rather “ the theme” in Jesus’ prayer as recorded in St. John’s gospel. A consistent witness to the world rides on the back of unity, of course; that Messianic message that Jesus instilled in his followers can only prosper in the world if Christians catch the theme and both preach and practice it “in unity.” (One can almost imagine a reticent former tax collector, Matthew, glancing over at loud-mouthed Peter and muttering, “Good Luck with that, Master. Such perfect unity is going to need lots and lots of prayer, I think!”) We know intuitively that human nature is as inclined to be competitive as it is to be cooperative. Our sur
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XX, XY and a guitar or two

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  Musik G.G.E. 20215 I just spent a bit of laid-back , feelin’-cranky-with-everything time, listening to Alison Kraus sing Goin’ to Carolina in my Mind. And I wondered, “Why would a pretty girl with a voice like hers long for that slop-hole of a state of red necked, bigoted politics …” (Yah, cranky! Please forgive me all you Carolinian brethren and sistern.) And then I had a stupid thought (an ungoverned mind tends to go down such rabbit holes occasionally) which was, “How is the girl who is Alison Kraus different from me, or vise versa. I'm thirty years older; there is that. But I could sing Teach Your Children Well and, of course, you’d find a dozen ways in which we sound different without half trying. But would the song mean the same thing in my mouth as it does in hers?” Assuming I’m a man … with a manly voice, of course, and a Canadian, and a lib., etc. More than enough has already been said about the difference between male and female, and Daily Wire will be all too happy
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You, me, God and Darwin

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  For many Christian believers, accepting the factuality of an evolutionary process   in the shaping of the human species has been “a bridge too far.” For them, too much depends on the creationist view of origins to allow for compromise on the Genesis account. They tend to say that if the Genesis creation account is untrustworthy, then how can the rest of the Old Testament/Bible be trusted?                A majority of Christians, I think, have settled on a kind of compromise: two accounts of the origins of living species, both with merit and both intriguing, but no urgency for them personally to pick one over the other. If this is you, you can probably sing with gusto, “This is my Father’s world, and to my listening ears, all nature sings and ‘round me rings the music of the spheres,” and then go back to work at carbon-dating and classifying fossils that pre-date Abrahamic religions’ creation accounts by millions of years.                Apologists for the Judeo-Christian creation
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