Just Words

They're evidence. Make them count for good!

I stared. 😯

I was incredulous at the email. It was bad as a personal email. But sent to a multi-recipient list?!

Wow! Somebody was having a bad day! 🙁

Not only had the email departed the sender’s mind ahead of any grace and tact, it projected itself as mind-bogglingly dumb. I don’t mean that unkindly or disrespectfully. I’m simply saying its cargo excluded basic common sense.

The person who sent it issued a follow-up email 38 minutes later. It was an apology.

Very good! God bless him for his honesty, humility, and integrity.

But guess which email is more likely to be remembered?

Yeah. Too bad.

Words. Just words. Not sticks and stones, you know. But what dismay they can cause.

Words. Just words. Too often I want to excuse mine. And attack the other guy’s (if I deem them ill-advised or outright bad).

Words. Just words. But God doesn’t see the matter so lightly.

He will judge me by my words.

And by how they line up with His Word.

So….

“Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart,
be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD,
my strength, and my redeemer.”
Psalm 19:14

Pleasant words are as an honeycomb.

Full of sweet, nourishing honey — not stinging bees!

This whole deal was one of those wretched teachable moments (can we come up with a different term already?).

The lesson above leaps forward as Number One (or more).

Other lessons?

  1. Be slow to react to email. Come to think of it. Don’t react.
  2. Be slow. There’s no rush. Especially if you’re having a trying day.
  3. Email is forwardable. How far will yours go? That may not matter to you now, but it likely will in a day or two. Or in a minute or two. Or less.
  4. Email lists have the added danger of being archived on the Web “forever”!

There. I don’t want to give them all. What other lessons do you see?

This was to post last evening…but I didn’t get back to my computer and the Internet in time.

“Cash For Codgers”

Caution: This is not breaking news. So don’t get mad. Or scared. Or hopeful. I repeat, this is not news.

But I ask you, Is it believable these days?

So, with a hat tip to World Magazine Blog’s Mickey McLean, I offer to you this:

Due to the extreme popularity of the “Cash for Clunkers” auto rebate program, whereby new car buyers may obtain up to $4500 in federal government rebates by turning in older, less efficient vehicles, the president has decided to announce a new wrinkle in his Universal Healthcare proposals.

During a Townhall Meeting in Ottumwa, Iowa, President Obama unveiled an innovative proposal to cut healthcare costs, to be called “Cash for Codgers**.” Young, uninsured Americans may receive up to a $5000 healthcare voucher for medical treatment, if they turn in for exchange an older, unhealthy relative.

😯

Those are the opening two paragraphs; read the rest here: The President Lays Out New Universal Healthcare Program.

So there you are.

A Great Western Heresy

Associated Baptist Press reports:

The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church called the evangelical notion that individuals can be right with God a “great Western heresy” that is behind many problems facing the church and the wider society.

Describing a United States church in crisis, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori told delegates to the group’s triennial meeting July 8 in Anaheim, Calif., that the overarching connection to problems facing Episcopalians has to do with “the great Western heresy — that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God.”

“It’s caricatured in some quarters by insisting that salvation depends on reciting a specific verbal formula about Jesus,” Jefferts Schori, the first woman to be elected as a primate in the worldwide Anglican Communion three years ago, said. “That individualist focus is a form of idolatry, for it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy, at the center of existence, as the ground of being.”

She’s wrong.

Doesn’t John 3:16 say so?

HT: The Berean Call

Update: Fathima Rifqa Bary

We start with the first paragraph of a post at Christianity Today’s blog:

Fathima Rifqa Bary’s story is quickly circulating on blogs and Christian media as proof of Islam’s violent roots and the cost of following Christ. While the latter is true no matter who’s doing the following, the former is disputable in the case of the Ohio teen who fled her home two weeks ago to meet up with Blake and Beverly Lorenz, Florida pastors she had met on Facebook.

If you want to read the full post, of course you’ll have to click the link above. (As I recall, the writer is not entirely sympathetic toward Rifqa.)

The above post is referenced over at Barth’s Notes:

A blog at Christianity Today sounds a note of caution over the case of Fathima Rifqa Bary, a Sir Lankan teenager living in Ohio who recently fled to Orlando claiming that her parents planned to kill her for converting to Christianity….

Frankly, I’ve been wondering about this whole deal, but not to the point of believing Rifqa is lying.

Whatever the case may be, this case raises (yet again) the issue of when the State may intervene in family affairs.

When??!! Did I just say that?

That accepts the premise that the State has such moral authority.

Better to substitute if for when.

If one of my children goes to CSD and says I’m being abusive, is that sufficient cause for the State to take all my children?

So, putting myself in Rifqa’s father’s shoes, well…never mind.

What do you have to say?

If the State comes for a conservative Anabaptist Mennonite’s children, that’s wrong?

But if the States takes a Muslim’s child, not only is that understandable, it’s also justifiable?

Oh, wait…here’s a piece from the Pakistan Daily:

A very disconcerting video is being shown by the Christan church. A minor Sri Lankan girl belonging to well to do parents has been kidnapped by a church in Ohio and being kept away from the legal guardians and parents of the girl. The family maintains that the girls was into drugs, promiscuous behaviour and raunchy messages on facebook. She was discussing sex with multiple older married men. When the parents tried to control her behaviour she refused to do so. On her return to the home she conjured up a story of conversion to Christianity. There are serious accusations against the church on holding a minor girl in custody against the will of her guardians and parents. How many more girls will the church kidnap?

Media reports indicate that the Muslim father denies his daughter’s charge that he plans to take her life in an “honor killing” because of her conversion to Christianity. And certainly he could have no intention of committing such a heinous act.

😯

Now what shall we believe?!

The Mystery of Life

Alternate post title: When Life Isn’t

First, the story:

The Charles Manson follower convicted of trying to assassinate President Gerald Ford was released Friday from a Texas prison hospital after more than three decades behind bars, a prison official said.

Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme was just 26 years old when she pointed a semiautomatic .45- caliber pistol at Ford in September 1975 in Sacramento, Calif. Secret Service agents grabbed her and Ford was unhurt.

[…]

Fromme, who got a life term, became the first person sentenced under a special federal law covering assaults on U.S. presidents, a statute enacted after the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

(I remember both Ford assassination attempts, by the way.)

Anyhow, so she was sentenced to a life term, served a few years over 30, and is now free.

For quite a while in America, life hasn’t meant what it’s supposed to mean. (When does life end?!)

Which begs a question with an entirely different point: What do you know about real life and real living?

Source: The Oregonian

Above all, love God!

since November 9, 2005
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