Get Her Words Out

A Revelation about a Revelation

I have always thought of the description of the various characteristics of love in First Corinthians 13 as an instruction book for the way that humans ought to behave, and it certainly is that.

But as we were reading it responsively as the call to worship Sunday morning, it struck me that it can be something else.

It’s revelation, in the sense that it tells us about who God is.  We say that “God is love” and if that’s the case then why can’t we take this list that describes what love is and say that it also describes God?  Basic algebra tells us that if A=B then we can substitute A for B wherever it occurs in an equation.  If we apply that to this pericope, we get:

God is patient
God is kind
God is not envious
God is not boastful
God is not arrogant
God is not rude
God does not insist on God’s own way
God is not irritable
God is not resentful
God does not rejoice in wrong doing, but
God rejoices in the truth
God bears all things
God believes all things
God hopes all things
God endures all things
God never ends.

Yep, that'll preach.

Good Things

In a tribute to my friend Whitney here are a couple of "Glimpses of Grace" of my own:

---I went and saw The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee at the Buell Theater in Denver last Saturday and I loved it.  I haven't laughed that much at a show or a movie for years.

---The driver's seat in my truck broke, it wouldn't sit up straight anymore.  My brother helped me figure out that one of the bolts that holds the seat back to the recliner mechanism sheared off.  We figured that we were going to have to drill out the old bolt and get a new one from Ford to replace it.  Before we started I called the local dealership to make sure we were going to be able to get the bolt we needed, and discovered that particular bolt has been recalled by Ford and that they will fix it for free!  I just have to drive it over there tomorrow morning and it will take them about an hour to take care of it.

Blog For Choice Day

I can think of many reasons to be pro-choice, but mainly it comes down to two things:

1.    Women have agency, and ownership over their bodies.

2.    I’m not God.

For most of the history of our culture, women have been seen as property.  They were born the property of their fathers and when they got married, their fathers would transfer ownership to their husbands. One of the reasons that great importance has been placed on women’s virginity at marriage is that if they’ve had sex, they’re “damaged goods” and not as valuable to their current “owner” or to their potential future “owners.”

In the context of abortion, this view of women as property leads some people to believe that there are no valid reasons for a woman to have an abortion.  1) She should only be having sex with her husband/owner 2) She should always feel honored to bear her husband’s children, however many of them he may want and 3) If she is having sex with someone who is not her husband, then she should have to carry the baby to term as punishment for being a slut.

Scene from a desk

You can see all kinds of important parts of my life in this shot (I'm still playing with my new camera phone).

There's the Diet Coke at the center of everything, of course.  Moving clockwise there's the empty Claritin wrapper, Feminist Theory and Christian Theology by Serene Jones, the cable remote, cinnamon Altoids,  my hairbrush, my  iPod, the faceplate from my car stereo and finally my iMac. 

In the immortal words of Navin R. Johnson "And that's it and that's the only thing I need . . . " 

Zeno's Paradox, Winter Edition

If we get one snowstorm a week and each storm brings half as much snow, how long before I don't have to shovel anymore?

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P.S. Note the higher quality of the pictures with my new phone.