Wednesday Bible study: Thanksgiving

 

We take a week off from the finale to the add tos for a "brief topical message":

I was not in a Thanksgiving or Christmas mood.  There seemed to be a lot of reasons, but the whole season seemed like a dead lead weight on my chest.  So I finally girded myself to bring it to Jesus.  And the first thing He said was:

"It's not about you. It's about Me."

Now it was time to listen to what He had to say.  And it took me, surprisingly, to the story of Exodus:

Exo 5:1  And afterward Moses and Aaron went in, and told Pharaoh, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness. 

Exo 5:2  And Pharaoh said, Who is the LORD, that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I know not the LORD, neither will I let Israel go. 

Exo 5:3  And they said, The God of the Hebrews hath met with us: let us go, we pray thee, three days' journey into the desert, and sacrifice unto the LORD our God; lest he fall upon us with pestilence, or with the sword. 

And I thought to myself, "Thanksgiving is sacrifice?"  And I looked on:

Lev 7:11  And this is the law of the sacrifice of peace offerings, which he shall offer unto the LORD. 

Lev 7:12  If he offer it for a thanksgiving, then he shall offer with the sacrifice of thanksgiving unleavened cakes mingled with oil, and unleavened wafers anointed with oil, and cakes mingled with oil, of fine flour, fried. 

Okay, so then I thought about, what do You want me to sacrifice for Thanksgiving?  And Jesus, knowing about ONE thread that I was denying to myself, gave an answer.

"Sacrifice your politics, your opinions.  I know you fear the differences of opinion in your family.  How do you stay true to yourself and your well-meant convictions, when others are divergent, and in some cases even your opposite?  But you are to evangelize, and who are you bringing a Gospel of, Me, or yourself?  Strip it down.  Let it be about FAMILY, and family alone.  That is where I will shine."

And I thought, "Wow.  I was intending to be an idiot, wasn't I?"  We tend to wear our politics/opinions like a cloak, an identifier.  As a Christian, the only identifier I should be worried about is the one that connects me to Christ.  It wasn't a weight on my chest, it was a burden on my back, and I need to shuck it off.

But what about Christmas?  Again, it was becoming the "dread" of shopping for presents I can't afford, putting up decorations I didn't feel ready to be looking at... all the crap that made it 'about me' instead of 'about Him'.  So I took stock of what Jesus did- the sheer contrast between the Divinity He has, and the helplessness He entered- for Me.  Which made me grateful, and fed right back into Thanksgiving!

Now I cannot say, "Wow, I'm cured", and that my heart is about to grow three sizes...

...but at least I'm out of me, and heading a better direction....

M10 show week 142

 

Elvis:  What the heck're we doing here NOW?  It's Tuesday mornin'!

But the computer crash last week kept us off the air, and Friday is Black Friday, so we're doing the new show today!  A brand new chart, the songs of target year 1983, it'll be fun!'

Black Friday... say, that gets me ta thinkin' are we doin' a Christmas special?

I haven't really thought about it- it's been a struggle this year just to do a weekly show!  Best I can say is... I'm thinking on it.

Well, just don' stick it all on me like ya did last time!

No, at this point it'll have to be a group effort, for sure... but anyway, we have one debut...

Yup, it comes in at 7- here's the Black Keys, with Beck...

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Okay, so we are in 1983 this week, and Lionel Richie rules the Cashbox chart with All Night Long. It was also tops at some point for our friends in Canada and Australia.  In Australia, though, this only-there hit was at the top:

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That was differnt... not what I was expectin'...

Agreed there!  We move on to the big movers this week in 1983 here on Cashbox.  

4 (tie)- Barbra Streisand, The Way He Makes Me Feel.  I really don't know this one- given the singer, I probably won't be trying to find out.  It topped out 26 on CB (though only 40 on Billboard), 34 in Canada, while Australia was spared. It climbed to 35 this week, up 9.

4 (tie)- Police, Synchronicity II.  Easily one of my favorite Police tunes, it was up 9 to 25 this week.  Peaked 15 here, 21 Canada, but again didn't hit Australia...

3- Yes, Owner Of A Lonely Heart.  A thundering #1 here, 2 in Canada, and 14 in Australia, it moved up 11 spots to 34.

And a first place tie...

1(tie)- The Romantics, Talking In Your Sleep.  Up 14 to 36, it peaked 4 here, topped the chart in Canada- and in Australia, another 14.

1(tie)- Duran Duran, Union Of The Snake.  Jumping to 14 this week, it would top CB, 2 in Canada, and 4 in Australia.

So whut's yer top song o' the week this time?

This is really hard right here.  It was only a few months ago that the 1,2,3,and 4 on my charts were 1,2,3,and 5 on Billboard.  Those songs have moved down now... the #1 (Total Eclipse Of The Heart by Bonnie Tyler) is at 7, the 2 (Air Supply's Making Love Out Of Nothing At All) is at 21, the 3 (Spandau Ballet's True) at 23, and the 4/5 (The Fixx and One Thing Leads To Another) at 8.  Of the songs actually climbing, I'd say Synchronicity II, closely followed by new top 40 member The Smile Has Left Your Eyes by Asia.

You ready to do the top ten?

Yup!  Here we go...

Phantogram holds at 10 with Come Alive...

Back down ta 9 fer The Tragically Hip an' Wait so Long...

Up one ta 8 fer Amira Elfeky an' Will You Love Me When I'm Dead...

Up one ta 6 with The Perfect Pair by Beabadoobee...

Down 2 ta 5 fer Linkin Park an' Heavy Is The Crown...

Up 2 ta 4 fer matt Berry an' I Gotta Limit...

Up one fer Nothing More at 3 with Jenny...

Down a spot ta 2 fer Leon Bridges an' That's What I Love....

An' the new number one,,,

...Lucinda Williams an' While My Guitar Gently Weeps!!!!

That's it for this week, see you here next Friday!

Newspage go!

 

Here's another feature I haven't done in a long time, where I go to various amusingly worded headlines to get the gist of the story.  Forgive me that I haven't done this in a while, and I hope you enjoy...

1. FoxNews

POPPING BALLOONS: Macy's turmoil ahead of Thanksgiving parade as worker faces insane accusations

What's actually insane is, "Why would you do this?" What, you ask?

After launching an investigation, Macy's found that "a single employee with responsibility for small package delivery expense accounting intentionally made erroneous accounting accrual entries to hide approximately $132 [million] to $154 million of cumulative delivery expenses from the fourth quarter of 2021 through fiscal quarter ended November 2, 2024," the company said in a press release.

Nobody's saying just why the former employee would do this, which was a mere 3% of the total of delivery expenses Macy's had over the time period.  I will deliberate in my head over this as I continue, and hopefully make up a definitive, if unreal, answer by end of post.

2. CNN

This is actually a subheadline under the breaking news headline about Jack Smith dropping the January 6th prosecutions against President-elect Trump:

Trump has said he would fire Smith, shattering previous norms around special counsel investigations

Shattering previous norms?  Apparently CNN staffers are all 50 or under with no interest in political history.  In 1973, Nixon fired Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor for Watergate- after accepting the resignations of Elliot Richardson and William Ruckelshaus for refusing to do the same.  Google "Saturday Night Massacre", young'uns.

3. Mirror UK

Things you should never put in the dishwasher as they can cause 'serious damage'

I was expecting a long list of extremely stupid items that "people unclear on the concept" might somehow decide to dishwash.  I was disappointed- there were only three, although they did meet, to me, the 'extremely stupid' qualification:

1- Tinfoil.  Dude, the stuff is disposable.  You're endangering your machine which costs $500 to $1200 to save 6 cents a foot.

2- 'Extremely cold items'.  This is kinda so stupid, I don't even have a good snark in response.

3- And of course, items that say "Not dishwasher safe".  Just maybe, the manufacturer wasn't kidding?

4. Xinhua

Arabic version of Xi's discourses on Chinese modernization published

"Run, don't walk, to your neighborhood Beijing Barnes and Noble for this gripping read!" said no reviewer ever.

5. Japan Times

Startup transplants pig kidney into monkey for first time in Japan

They say they are trying to adapt pig organs to transplant into humans.  I say they're trying to grow... PIG KONG!

I was hoping against hope someone had come up with this; instead, I get a piggy dog toy...

6. BBC World

Sixteen missing after Red Sea tourist boat sinks

No, the story or headline isn't funny per se; but the first thought I had was, "Don't book that, 'Pharaoh's route against Moses' tour"...

7. Pravda

Lame duck Biden has his final meltdown as he wants World War Three to start now

My first thought was, "Final? He has until January 5th to have more of them!"  My second chuckle was in the article, where the author reveals the basis of the story was a tweet on X from Andrew Napolitano.  I don't know whether it is better to laugh at Pravda for taking Napolitano seriously, or laugh at the legacy media that even Pravda gets its news from X.

Finale

After long (at least a few seconds) of deliberation, I have finally decided the Macy's employee was doing some sort of high tech version of Johnny Cash's One Piece At A Time: sneaking items out of his workplace in order to build a...what?  I doubt he could have managed what Johnny did...

Uh, what model is it?

Well, it's a '49, '50, '51, '52, '53, '54, '55, '56, '57, '58, '59 automobile

It's a '60, '61, '62, '63, '64, '65, '66, '67, '68, '69, '70 automobile....

Maybe he was building the ultimate microwave/mixer that dresses well and smells good...

Pictures

 "Oh, honey... it's been such a long long time..."- Dorothy Moore, Misty Blue

Okay, we have to go back first clear to the 12th- 2 Tuesdays ago.  I hope I remember it...

So it was after work, can't even see Laurie getting in the car to go to work...

A sunset trip to the Duck Pond

I believe next up is the 15th, Friday, while waiting on news of the car...

Kinda gray... like most days lately

Last of the fall color...

"Hey, doggie!"

Water at last in Stony Run

Passed many doggies, including this one twice

Quite a crowd at the Alumni Center, we better go across Mushroom Ridge

Coming out of the woods, it was very...er, Misty

And then it rained...

Clever

I believe Saturday the 16th is next...

Front vehicle there is the rental

They must have had an event yesterday- lovely day for it, were you a frog

Water in the Swamp again!

"And in my drinking spot!"

I'm thinking Santa might skip that tree with Boris still up there...

And then came the great computer meltdown... so we skip ahead to today...

It rained most of last night... not exactly scenic

We did find this bag.  Concerned about what might lie inside, we retrieved it and found...just that ugly pink blanket.  We deposited it near a nearby trash can.

I might have to start collecting moving company names.  Yesterday, I saw "Hoover The Mover"; today, it's All My Sons.

I finally caught the elusive gray squirrel!  Mainly due to the fact he picked a short, skinny tree in a grouping of short, skinny trees

And with a quarter mile to go, it began to rain again.  Well, rain is a strong word; it was more like "Gravity-challenged fog", and only lasted about a minute.

What's yer excuse now?

 

It all started Sunday morning.

The computer- mind you, this was an 11-year-old Gateway- decided it needed to run CHKDSK.  Something wasn't jiving right, and every so often it asks me to run this.  Normally a long, drawn out affair, it seemed to finish quite quickly.  When it got done, it had me sign in with the same password I've used all this time.  Everything was fine, until... Norton (my AV) told me something wasn't QUITE right, and asked me to do a restart to hopefully fix it.  "I just restarted you!" I shouted at it but complied.  And it restarted, I typed in that same ol' password...

...and it told me it was WRONG.  Several times.

I got in on "guest", which is basically like going to someone else's device because nothing you have built so meticulously is there.  I contacted a really quite good chatline helper, who told me that with an older model such as my doddering Gateway, the basic procedure involved pulling stuff out, putting it onto another machine (yeah, I have another desktop right here in my pocket), and somehow making a copy of EVERYTHING and then deleting my machine and putting in the copy...

"So I'm basically screwed," I said.  He disagreed.  "There are many ways to fix this."

"No easy ones, though..."

"That would be correct."

After thanking him and trying various other means- all of which required that password that no longer worked- I finally said, let's see if Best Buy can get the good stuff out of this electronic trash can and put it in a new one"

They could, and did a damn fine job.  It did, however, involve taking the old one in on Monday, and them working on it until Thursday.  But Thursday night, our new, momentarily state-of-the-art device was home, hooked up amazingly fast considering who was putting it together, and after an hour and a half of searching around, changing settings, verification codes on top of verification codes, an education in when and when not to pin something to the taskbar, I had things about 70% back where they were...

After work today, another hour or so of making sure I could open various things, reconnecting Norton, and making sure I plugged the speaker cord into the right hole- followed by updating 5 days of international hockey scores, standings, and scorers, I am down to "whatever else I haven't thought of yet".  It was a pleasant cap off to a week which started with a rousing game of, "Let's see how close we can come to surpassing your car's value in repairs", followed by stress to a level that we were at a point of leaving purchased items in the trunk, trying to open seat belts from the wrong end, wondering why I ever disconnected the cable from the modem when it wasn't necessary, and how about leaving the engine of the rental SUV on because it was just so darn quiet... oh, and let me throw in a Tuesday spent trapped in the most disorganized, incorrect inventory of all time...

But now, all is right with the world.  God is good once again, all the time.  And I'm ready to go buy some beer.

Wednesday Bible Study: The add-tos part 7

 

2Pe 1:7  and with godliness, brotherly kindness....

You would think that, as famous as these verses are, I wouldn't have had such a time tearing them down!  But if there are two things God is trying to get through our heads with them, they are 1) they are gifts from Him, and 2) we need to WORK at them- and apparently that applies to the research, as well.  So let's get right to the breakdown.

You may already know that "brotherly kindness" comes from the Greek words that give us "Philadelphia".  And that is where we start (no, not in Philly!). Philos works out to 'actively fond' of someone.  Adelphos is "a brother".  It is the same word used when John talks about the Brethren...

1Jn 3:16  Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. 

...and so we better realize that that word "active" covers a LOT of territory.  But what about the word brother?  One linkage I found was in Leviticus...

Lev 19:17  "You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him. 

Lev 19:18  You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD. 

Clearly drawn here is the link between 'brother' and 'neighbor'.  Interesting to look at the words used for each.  The word translated 'brother' is expressly noted as being 'in the widest possible sense'; That for 'neighbor' actually connects to the bond between a shepherd and his flock.  Thus, what God was expressing to Moses was, that EVERY man should be treated as your CLOSEST friend.

And that is HARD.  I got side-involved in an X discussion between a Christian friend and someone who took her to task over her stance on immigration.  This is highly charged politically, but we fail to see it from a SPIRITUAL side near as much.  The friend had a well-deserved blind spot: the weakness of border security has allowed "immigrants" to bring fentanyl into this country, and fentanyl killed a relative.  The other person was coming at it from another angle, one that shows Christian love even to our enemies.  Where I jumped in was trying to explain to her, if she disagreed with everything else the other person said, he was dead right on one thing: "Fentanyl kills the body; hate kills the soul".  Her response to me began with "This person is 100% infected with Marxism."

That is a reason to disagree; not to judge, name-call, or hate.  And the person's response, I hope, hit her dead center:

If you think it is your job to stop evil, you don't really believe Jesus saved the world

Jesus forgave all sins 

Your job is turn away from your own.

Now his theology is just slightly off, but the point is there: Brotherly kindness means we CANNOT hate our enemies.

In closing, I am brought to mind how many times a different commandment- "Honor your mother and father"- is the only one that comes with a promise.  But this one, adding brotherly kindness, comes with one as well, from Jesus's own lips:

Mat 10:41  The one who receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet's reward, and the one who receives a righteous person because he is a righteous person will receive a righteous person's reward. 

Mat 10:42  And whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward." 

M10 show week # 141

 

Elvis:  What're we doing up so early fer?

Well, the car had to be dropped at the shop today, so I took a day off, and Laurie's back-issuing Restoring Galveston, so there's no time like right now...

Yeah, ta sleep in...

But we have two weeks to let everyone know about!  Last week's lone debut was at #10, and it is somewhat new from Beabadoobee...

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And the rest of last week went like this:

For a third week at #9, The Tragically Hip and Wait So Long...

Dropping 3 to 8, Linkin Park and The Emptiness Machine...

Up one to 7, Matt Berry and I Gotta Limit....

Up 4 big to 6, Nothing More and Jenny...

Slipping one to 5, Geowulf and Nightmare...

Up 3 to #4, Lucinda Williams and While My Guitar Gently Weeps...

Out of the top spot, Linkin Park at 3 with Heavy Is The Crown...

Make that, Heavy WAS the crown, haw!

Honeycutters hold at 2 with Jukebox...

And a new #1- 

...Leon Bridges and That's What I Love!

Okay, so let's hit THIS week's first debut while I gather the feature year info!  I have been trying to shove this one into the top ten since the end of August, and I have finally succeeded!  Here is Phantogram at # 10....

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So this week we go to 1984, and our 5 biggest movers in the top 40 are- 

5 (tie)- 7 spots from 16 to 9 for Sheena Easton's Strut- peaking 4 here, 8 Canada, 13 Australia.

         - 7 spots from 31 to 24 for the Honeydrippers and Sea Of Love- At least one Canadian chart had it peak at 2, it hit 3 here, and 5 in Australia.

4- 8 spots to 34 for Duran Duran and The Wild Boys- a chart topper on Cashbox, 3 in Australia, 2 in Canada.

3- Up 10 to 22 for New Edition and Cool It Now- a #2 here, but only 38 in Canada (where they didn't need it any more cooled down, I guess), and non-existent in Australia.

2- 11 spots to 38 for Julian Lennon's Valotte- it topped off at 9 here and in Canada, 75 in Australia.  Unlike the last one, this is a song worth Australians to check out.

And our biggest mover this week:

Oops!  'Pat B' was pat Boone...

...Pat Benatar and We Belong, up 12 to 28!  5 here, 7 Australia, 8 Canada.  My favorite on the top 40 this week... Probably Huey Lewis and the News, Walking On A Thin Line at 32.  That was 23 here, 70 in Australia, 40 Canada (Not surprising it was bigger here, being a Vietnam song).

Um, better get yer other debut in...

Yep, and while I get that together, here's our other M10 debut- the lovely Ms Amira Elfecky....

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The #1s this week in '84- it was Prince and Purple Rain here...  a song that hit 3 in both Australia and Canada.  In Canada, it was Wham! and Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go, a #1 across the board; and in Australia this week, it was Stevie Wonder's I Just Called To Say I Love You, also an across the board #1.

And that leaves us this week's chart!

The Tragically Hip finally move, from 9 to 8 with Wait So Long...

Beabadoobee moves to 7 with The Perfect Pair...

Matt Berry up one with I Gotta Limit at 6...

5 is where the Honeycutters tumble to with Jukebox...

4 and up 2 for Nothing More and Jenny...

3 and holding for Linkin Park, Heavy Is The Crown...

2 and up 2 for Lucinda Williams and While My Guitar Gently Weeps...

And Leon Bridges holds the top spot with That's What I Love!

What, no new picture?

At this point, I'm afraid I'd post Lloyd Bridges....