Sunday message

Oh Lord my God
When I in awesome wonder
Consider all the worlds
Thy hands have made
I see the stars
I hear the rolling thunder
Thy power throughout
The universe displayed

Then sings my soul
My Savior, God, to Thee
How great thou art
How great thou art

This hymn came to mind as I went through a week of verses whose main connection was the power of Almighty God.  It is really amazing to consider all the things, seemingly beyond control, that are safe within the hands of our God.  We see the signs occasionally- "Relax, God has it under control"- but what does that mean?

I began this week in Joel 2, an apocolyptic book of prophecy.  This chapter looks at the what-will-be for the enemies of God, and the what might be for those who

“return to me with all your heart,
with fasting and weeping and mourning.”

¹³ Rend your heart
and not your garments. (Joel 2:12-13.)

 

But see, the help is not contingent on our repentance, for it says just a few verses later:

 

Who knows if He shall turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind Him... (Joel 2:14)

 

And that is the core theme of this week, the things that God does on His own initiative.  In this chapter, He goes on to spell out the first of these things.

 

So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten,
The crawling locust,
The consuming locust,
And the chewing locust,^[e]
My great army which I sent among you. (Joel 2:25)

 

He promises to "restore the years"; the sorrows collected on earth will be "repaid" in heaven.

 

Tuesday was Genesis 25, and the death of Abraham.  Abraham was the man on which God's promises to future Israel were founded, promises of a land, a future, "descendants more than the sands of the seashore.  He died, but following that, the chapter says:

 

And it came to pass, after the death of Abraham, that God blessed his son Isaac. (Gen 25:11)

 

As Paul would say centuries later, Abraham believed the promise, but did not receive it.  But unlike human promises, we see in this verse that the promise passed after Abraham's death to Isaac.  The promise didn't die with Abraham, as a human promise might, because God made Himself the guarantor of the promise rather than any man.  The promise lasts forever because God made it to Himself.

 

Wednesday brought us to Isaiah 45, and its talk of God building His city.  This is a future city, after the nations have been subjected to Him.  And it is to be a symbol of His glory:

 

¹⁵ Truly You are God, who hide Yourself,
O God of Israel, the Savior!
¹⁶ They shall be ashamed
And also disgraced, all of them;
They shall go in confusion together,
Who are makers of idols.
¹⁷ But Israel shall be saved by the Lord
With an everlasting salvation;
You shall not be ashamed or disgraced
Forever and ever. (Isa. 45:15-17)

 

But more than that, the reason is Himself, something that man fails to comprehend:

 

¹³ I have raised him up in righteousness,
And I will direct all his ways;
He shall build My city
And let My exiles go free,
Not for price nor reward,”
Says the Lord of hosts.

 

 

In many ways, this is tied to the concept of "My ways are not your ways".  Restoration, everlasting promises, and a heavenly future, all done for us- but for His Name's sake.  Thursday took me to I Samuel 16 and the choice of David by God as king over Israel.  Even Samuel, the holiest man of the day, had trouble seeing as God saw.  Just as Israel had accepted Saul as king for his tall, handsome, heroic looks, Samuel looked at the sons of Jesse and thought surely the eldest son, Eliah, was God's choice for that same reason.  But God said:

 

⁷ But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look at his appearance or at his physical stature, because I have refused him. For the Lord does not see as man sees;^[a] for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”

 

Seven son in order of age passed before Samuel before the youngest, David, was chosen by God- Just as God had chosen younger sons Abel, Jacob, and Joseph.  Symbolically for us, this is how God chooses for our good in our day-to-day life- often in ways we won't understand until much later.

 

Friday's verse (and thank God I do these the night before, since I couldn't have comprehended a comic book Friday) found us in the penultimate chapeter of the book of Job.  Here, God spends a long time describing the mightiest creature of the day, a monstrous entity Job knew as Leviathan.  Far more press has been given trying to say that this beast was a mere crocodile or whale, but the fact was, this was something beyond today's experience, roughly on the scale of a giant Plesiosaur.  The point, though, is it was beyond anything that anyone of Job's day could have coped with.  Even the thought of trying to bring him to bay was frightening:

 

Can you fill his skin with harpoons,
Or his head with fishing spears?
⁸ Lay your hand on him;
Remember the battle—
Never do it again!
⁹ Indeed, any hope of overcoming him is false;
Shall one not be overwhelmed at the sight of him?
¹⁰ No one is so fierce that he would dare stir him up. (Job 41:7-10)

 

 

And having put it into terms which Job could easily understand, God got to His point:

 

Who then is able to stand against Me?
¹¹ Who has preceded Me, that I should pay him?
Everything under heaven is Mine.

 

So now we see that God has under his control the restoration of time, the promise everlasting, the future, the here-and-know, the powers that man cannot hope to best himself.

 

I finished out the week in Acts 7- the end of Stephen's final sermon.  And of all the things packed into this powerful chapter, I sought the one that would most clearly reflect the theme of this week- the power of God, and the inability of man to comprehend, affect, or understand it:

 

 ⁴⁷ But Solomon built Him a house.

 

Huh? You might be saying.  But consider:  Stephen had spent the last several minutes retracing the history of Israel, the promise from Abraham, the power He exhibited as Moses lead them to the Promised Land.  And at the end of all that, this almost stand-alone statement.  Consider it now in light of the next few verses:

 

⁴⁸ “However, the Most High does not dwell in temples made with hands, as the prophet says:

⁴⁹ ‘Heaven is My throne,
And earth is My footstool.
What house will you build for Me? says the Lord,
Or what is the place of My rest?
⁵⁰ Has My hand not made all these things?'

 

 

So here we have the single wisest human of all time- and he thinks to build Almighty God a home of mud and rock.  and thus, in that one statement we have the three things God wants us to see today:

1.  God is great beyond our imaginings.
2. We are not now, not ever, going to understand the counsels of God, for that very reason.
And three, just like I mentioned at the beginning, God has it under control.  So, relax!

Back on the grid...

...from which I fell off yesterday.  When I got to work at six, I put the stiffness in my legs and my slowness of step off to it being Friday.  But between 7:30 and 8 I went from okay to WTH and came home at 9.  A large bout of chills, several ibuprofin and two draughts of Ny-Quil later, I'm almost myself other than recouping my strength and working out the stiffness of a day in bed.

Anybody else getting ths annoying "An error occured in trying to publish your post" when you're not trying to publish yet?  Blogger can be SOOOO annoying...

Speaking of which, I came on here to update the playoffs real quick.

On Thursday Kevin Dallman had two scores and Victor Tikhanov had a goal and an assist as St. Pete blasted the Polar Bears 7-0 to take a 2-0 series lead.  Like the rest of the western conference they were off yesterday and will play today.

Red Army also went up 2-0 with another OT win over the Lions, 3-2.  This time Yegor Rylov got the tying goal with 2 and 2 (as Chuck Woolery used to say) to go, and Igor Grigorenko won it halfway through the second OT.

Dynamo had a much harder time with the Sky-Blues of Bratislava second time around, but won in OT 3-2 to also take a 2-0 lead.  Alexi Sopin tied the game at 2-2 early in the second, and it stayed that way for almost 49 minutes of playing time until he scored again 11:46 into OT.

Lokomotiv returned the favor to the Steelers Thursday, getting goals from Daniil Apal'kov and Staffan Kronwall for a 2-1 win and a 1-1 series tie.

The eastern teams played Thursday and Friday.  Canadian goalie Matt Dalton got hammered for 5 goals on 26 shots as the Russian Snow Leopards blasted the Petrochemists 5-1 in game one;  The second game was all about RSL goalie Konstantin Barulin, who posted a 30-save 3-0 shutout to put the Russian cats up 2-0.  The east has their next games on Monday.

Kari Ramo had a 25-save shutout and Alexander Popov had a goal and two assists as the Vanguard pasted Siberia 5-0 in their first game; but it was Jeff Glass, another Canadian goalie in his fourth season in the KHL, returning the favor with a 1-0 blanking for Siberia in game two to even things at a game apiece.

The Meteor guys struggled down the stretch, and things aren't looking better in the playoffs.  The Kazakh Snow Leopards won game one 4-3 when Roman Starchenko (who already had two assists) scored 15 minutes into OT; in game 2, Nigel Dawes, a veteran of 212 NHL games with the Rangers and others, scored a hat trick to lead the Kazakhs to a 5-3 win and a surprising 2-0 lead in that series.

The series everyone is watching out east, though, is SYU and the Metallurgists.  These are the perennial titans of the conference, and their series is reflecting that.  In game one, Metallurg got two quick goals in the first part of period one, but Sergei Zinovyev scored twice in just over three minutes to tie.  They went to OT tied at 3-3 until Alexander Svitov scored just 1:22 into the extra period to give SYU a 4-3 win in game one.  The score was just a crossing pass in front of the goalmouth that bounced off the skate of defenseman Fillip Metlyuk and went in.  The second game former Lokomotiv goalie Georgei Gelashvilli didn't give SYU a chance to be lucky, stopping all 23 chances in a 2-0 win.  Sergei Mozyakin, the league's leading scorer, got one of the two as Metallurg evens things at a game apiece.

Okay, time for me to try to give all your blogs a half-assed perusal before I run out of what's left of my morning energy.  Or I might do it later.   8:44 and I'm ready for a nap already!

Time Machine week 56

Today is February 22nd, 1971- and not a good time to live in the south.  Yesterday the great Mississippi Valley tornado outbreak began, and would continue today.  16 twisters struck on the 21st, with one F5 tearing through Louisiana and Misissippi killing 47, and an F4 claiming 58 lives in a swath fom Mississippi to Tennessee.  Only two of the 123 deaths occurred today, both from an F3 in Fayetteville, NC.  In all, 21 twisters struck in 9 states in the south and midwest. 

Welcome to another episode of Time Machine, and believe me, the features look like one of those tornadoes hit them!  If it wasn't for my natural charm and grace, this could get a little boring... except for the music.  Bear with me as I ad-lib us through another trip!

Before we start, I stupidly credited top 40 debut Jody's Got Your Girl And Gone to Joe Tex last week.  It was the late great Johnny Taylor, actually.  So sorry.

Out of 15 debuts on the hot 100, four of them rate a mention- but they are whoppers!  George Harrison's second solo single from All Things Must Pass, What Is Life, comes in all the way up at 46.  Santana comes in at 49 with Oye Como Va; Marvin Gaye's What's Going On enters at 66, and at 95, Alice Cooper with Eighteen.

The birthday list starts out with a pair of tunes that turn 30 this week- Thomas Dolby's She Blinded Me With Science, and The Clash's Should I Stay Or Should I Go.  Turning 35 this week, a long title from a long-named act, England Dan and John Ford Coley (26 letters) with We'll Never Have To Say Goodbye Again (32 letters); along with Sweet's Love Is Like Oxygen (bringing back fond memories of tuning into WLAP out of Nashville at night), and Earth Wind and Fire with Fantasy.  Newly 40 years old, we have Skylark- a Canadian outfit who were one of Ronnie Hawkins' backup bands, with a song discovered on their demo and promoted by Barry DeVorzon (of Nadia's Theme fame), Wildflower.  Also hitting the big 4-0 is a song I'd forgot about till Laurie and I found it a few days back- New York City with I'm Doing Fine Now.

Turning 50 are the Chiffons' He's So Fine and Andy Williams' Can't Get Used To Losing You; and hitting 55 this week are Buddy Holly's Crickets with Maybe Baby, Don Gibson's Oh Lonesome Me, and the Champs immortal party song Tequila.  Blow out the candles...

Doo-lang doo-lang doo-lang....

Our big dropper is Rare Earth's Born To Wander falling half the countdown- and a notch- to #69.  The big climber is on up at the top forty- where we'll be shortly.

And I have to have a talk with Ray Stevens about being greedy on the Where Are They Now feature.  Not only does he hit #50 with his single Bridget The Midget on the way up- but four weeks later, he hits it again on the way down!  That a week after Bobby Sherman tried to get another WATN shot himself.  Guys, you know you don't get PAID for this, right?


So I thought, why not fill it the space with a nice big lookback feature?  Tune in right after the top 40 debuts for why THAT didn't work out.

Four songs make it into the top 40 this week.  First up is our big mover of the week, Ike and Tina Turner's cover of CCRs' Proud Mary, leaping 23 spots to land at the #39 spot.  Janis Joplin's Me And Bobby McGee jumps 13 to #36; a 19-slot climb for that aforementioned Bobby Sherman song, Cried Like A Baby, landing at 31; and taking advantage of landing just OUTSIDE the countdown last week, The Temptations shoot from 41 to 19 with Just My Imagination. 

And that brings us to the lookback- and I am REALLLLY getting annoyed with what the "new plan" for this feature is bringing us.  To recap, the NP is go to this week in each proceeding year in the fifties (1950 in week one, 1951 in week two, yadda yadda) and pick the artist that had the biggest mover within the countdown.  This week in 1952, we hit a song called I Wanna Say Hello! credited to one Ellen Sutton.  I had to do a lot of digging for scant reward on this one, folks.  It seems she was actually the lead vocalist for the orchestra led by one Sir Hubert Pimm.  Here it becomes even dicier.  As late as June of 2010, BBC radio host Russell Davies, in trying to find out just who Sir Hubert was, thought he might have been the song's writer, one James McDonald.  "However, information on McDonald is scant", the BBC article stated. No fooling.   However, most sources agree that Sir Hubert was the serious non-de-guerre of one Bill Snyder, who like Sir Hubert and Ellen, had just one charting hit.  Apparently, "Sir Hubert" was for his more dignified recordings, while his more "relaxed" stuff he did under (what I assume to be) his own name.  Despite the 21 notch leap to #21, that's all the farther the song went on Billboard- and Cashbox.  It had peaked first at 29, fell to 42, returned to 21 this week in 1952, and then fell to 37 on its way off the chart.  Apparently Ellen was serious about saying hello being all she wanted to do.

We have three songs leaping a combined 40 spots into the top ten; and in karmic return we have three songs dropping a total of 53 spots out of the ten.  The droppers are Lonely Days (5 to 21), Remember Me (8 to 23), and Groove Me (10 to 32).

Gladys Knight and her merry men drop from 6 to 10 with If I Were Your Woman.

And at #9, our six degrees.

Dawn's Knock Three Times slips 6 to that #9 spot.  Now, this wasn't the "Dawn" we came to know and love, but Tony Orlando with a pair of hastily-assembled backup singers.  One of them was one Linda November, a future voice-over artist who would go on to fame with the Wing And A Prayer Fife And Drum Corps, singing Baby Face- and we've talked about her before.  The other singer was Toni Wine, who had a pretty good rep as a songwriter, her teaming with Carol Bayer-Sager creating among others, the Mindbenders' hit Groovy Kind Of Love.  This was after the eccentric Wayne Fontana quit the 'benders in mid-show, and the vocals were by Eric Stewart.  Stewart would join with a group of like-minded gentlemen afterwards to form both Hotlegs (Neanderthal Man) and 10cc.  In between they were the backing band for the first stage of Neil Sedaka's comback, the 1972 lp Solitaire.  The album was known for the #27 hit That's When The Music Takes Me, as well as the title tune, which the Carpenters took to #17 in 1975.

Record mogul Don Kirshner over Ron Dante and Toni Wine- the "voices" of the Archies.

Watching Scotty Grow is a slow proposition, and Bobby Goldsboro only goes from 9 to 8 this week.

Gordon has a light foot, leaping from 19 to 7 with If You Could Read My Mind.

CCR blasts its way up fro 24 to 6 with Have You Ever Seen The Rain.

And Wadsworth Mansion jumps those other ten notches, landing at 5 with Sweet Mary.

Dave Edmunds, who looks like me, holds at 4 with I Hear You Knockin'.

The J5 leap another 4 from 7 to 3 with Mama's Pearl.

Holding at #2, Lynn Anderson's Rose Garden.

And in a second week at #1.....

 

.....The Osmonds with One Bad Apple- a song which I recently saw on a FoxNews entertainment slide show credited to the Jackson Five.  The muck doing the show was trying to do a deal on "singers who were bigger solo than in a group".  Apparently he/she should stick to stuff they know, like rap groups and TMZ reports.  On the bright side, at least they weren't required to sign their work.

See, that wasn't so bad!  Tune in next week, when we'll see Bridget the Midget hold at #50, as I send off a rude e-mail to Ray Stevens.

It's playoff time in Russia

The KHL playoffs opened today, and I thought perhaps I could make this easier to follow by colloquializing some of these tongue-twisting names, since I am bound and determined to keep boring you with the results.

Half of the league openned today, so let me set up the ones that did not first.

Russian Snow Leopards vs. Petrochemists
 Our first pairing is Ak Bars Kazan vs Neftekhimik Nizhnekamsk.  Kazan is the city for team one- a city so important financially that it is referred to as "Russia's third capital".  The "Ak Bars" name means "snow leopards"- one of two teams that have the cat as its symbol.  So we'll call them "the Russian snow leopards".  Nizhnykamsk is the second city, an oil-processing area that led to the nickname Neftekhimik, or "Petrochemists".  So series one will be the Russian snow leopards vs the petrochemists.  See, easy!

Vanguard vs. Siberia
Series two matches Avangard Omsk vs Sibir Novosibirsk.  Omsk used to be much easier when Jaromir Jagr played here.  We just called it Jagr's team.  But he's back in the NHL with Dallas, so that's out.  The name means "vanguard"  so I guess that's what we'll call them now.  Sibir is easy to figure out too- it's the largest city in Siberia, and third biggest in Russia.  So we'll call this vanguard vs Siberia.


Meteor Guys vs. Kazakh Snow Leopards
Series three has Traktor Cheyabinsk vs Barys Astana.  Chelyabinsk became much easier when that meteor decided to blow up all over them.  Astana has had about a million names in its history- Akmolinsk, Tselinograd, Akmola, and now Astana, which is kind of a generic name and most people expect (or at least one person expects) it will someday be called Nursultan after Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev (the parliament tried it just recently, but Nazarbayev "turned it down" for now).  Now the "Barys" part is Kazakhi for "snow leopards" so this matchup will be the meteor guys vs the Kazakh snow leopards.

Metallurgists vs. SYU
The final of the eastern conference matches pits Metullurg Magnitogorsk against Salavat Yulaev Ufa.  Since the other Metallurg team (Novokuznetsk) is making early golf plans, we can just stick with Metallurg for these guys.  Salawat Yulaev was a national hero of Bashkiristan who fought in Pugachev's rebellion and for his trouble was captured,  whipped in every major battle site, had his nostrils "pulled out", forehead and face branded, and then took a ten-city tour before being put in a prison in present-day Estonia, where he and his father finished their lives more or less.  Hmm, let's just call them SYU.


St. Pete vs. Polar Bears
That brings us to the series that started today.  First let's look at SKA St. Petersburg vs Atlant Mystichi.  SKA means "sports club of the Army,"  and thus they are like CSKA's little brothers.  But that wouldn't be a good name for the odds-on favorites, so let's just call them St. Pete.  Atlant, based in the Moscow suburb of Mystichi, has a polar bear for their symbol, so we'll call them the polar bears.  Today, they battled through a scoreless 63 1/2 minutes before Patrick Thoreson (the star of the team once again now that the lockouts are back home) put one in for a 1-0 OT win.  Atlant only managed 16 shots against Ilya Ezhov, none in the extra period.


Red Army vs. Lions
Series 2 features CSKA and Lev Prague.  CSKA is Moscow's Red Army team.  Lev is another of the six non-Russian teams (we've already met Barys Astana, from Kazakhstan), from Prague in the Czech Republic.  Lev means Lions, so this series is Red Army vs Lions.  And Red Army and the Lions went 74 1/2 minutes before Yakov Rylov scored to give the soldiers a 3-2 OT win.


Dynamo vs. Sky-Blues
Series three gives us Dynamo Moscow- think the New York Yankees of Russian hockey- vs Slovan Bratislava, hailing from the capital of Slovakia where they are known as the "Sky Blues".  Probably not much of a surprise that the Yankees- er, the Dynamo- blew out the Sky-Blues 5-1 behind a pair of goals and an assist by Jakub Petrusalek.


Railroaders vs. Steelers
And that leaves us our heroes, Lokomotiv Yaroslavl, vs Severstal Cherepovets.  Severstal is the name of the steel company that sponsors them, so we'll call them the Steelers.  Well, the Steelers beat the "railroadmen" 2-1 in game one.  Denis Kazionov of the Steelers got a 5+20 game misconduct, inside the first half-minute of the game, and Alexander Kalyuzhny scored on the power play to put us on top- but that was all we got, despite two other Steelers getting 10-minute misconducts along the way, and a 39-penalty minute first period.

Everybody plays again tomorrow, and the eastern teams play again on Friday.

In the meantime, Poland has started its playoffs, Italy has moved into the knock out rounds, while Austria still is mucking about in its "winners stage"  (basically a re-seeding of the playoff teams- which is what the regular season was for, I thought).  I'll update them as the move along.

Pictures!!!

It may have only been a tease.... and it was a lot of sun, then clouds, windy, then calm.... But here are some pics of what was a pretty nice day (once I got outta work):

Actually this one is last week at the far end of Stony Run.

Only way you can get one to sit still is spot him on the OTHER side of the river!

"Where the geese are..."

Listening to the ice clattering in thew waves, sounds like a wind chime...

CRACK!! Oops, crap!

One of those moments the sun was out- the colors were so cool...

This tree shed all its bark over the winter.

_________________________________________________


My friend over at Holly's hoots and hollers put up an "ABCs of me" thing.  I told her I'd try it, but she might regret it:

A- Age: 51 in 87 days.  Mind about 29, body closing on 76.

B- Bedsize: Queen, I guess.  For the chunk Scrappy lets me have, it might as well be a twin.

C- Chore you Hate: Is there one I like?

D- Drink of Choice: Pepsi Cola

E- Essential start to your day item : the toilet, beyond a doubt.

F- Favorite color: blue

G- Gold or Silver: in what event?

H- Height: 5’4” when gravity's low

I- Instruments I play(ed)- No self respecting instrument would let me near it.  The ones without self respect, like tubas and kazoos, I don't persue.

J- Job : After almost 10 years as a fabric cutter using primitive implements, I am now a fabric cutter using a computerized machine that's only about 5 years outdated.

K- Kids: No goats, just a dog.  Oh, you mean children.  Two of them, a girl and a drunk.

L- Living arrangement: an apartment, Townhouse style, with Laurie, who is the only woman who'd put up with me.

M- Mom’s name: Are you ready?  Ursula.  A name so difficult (apparently) that when she died, masses were said for her over the next couple months under at least three different misspellings, including Urusual.

N- Nicknames:  Keek (Niece couldn't pronounce Chris), Popper (another niece's years-later mutation from Keek) , Tonar (some guy at school who thought I was a space alien), Superman, Underdog, Batman (big into comic books), Monty (my last name somehow metamorphosized).

O- Overnight hospital stay: Couple of years back I had surgery on a calf vein that somehow developed a huge blood clot on the OUTSIDE of the vein.  Was off my feet (unassisted) from start of October till Christmas.  Still paying those bills.

P- Pet Peeve: Either I have so many I can't distinguish them, or I don't have any.

Q- Quote from a movie: From A Time To Kill: "Yeah, I'm glad I killed them, and I hope they burn in Hell!!"

R- Right or left handed: Right

S- Siblings: Four- brothers 71 and 68, sisters 65 and 61.  Yep, I was the youngest by ten years, and I've been an uncle since 5 months old.

T- Time I wake up: 5AM for work, 8-9 when it's up to me.

U- Underwear: clean at least 5 days of a week.

V- Vegetables I dislike: I like to think of myself as a friend of all vegetables.  As such, I generally don't eat them.

W- What makes you run late: refer to E.

X- X-rays I’ve had: Leg, lungs, wisdom teeth.  Sorry, no broken bones!

Y- Yummy food I make: Depends on whether it has to be yummy to anyone but me.

Z- Zoo favorite: Anyone who bothers to be awake when I'm there.

Sunday Message

One great way to know that the message is from God is when you can't figure it out without His help.  And boy was I there this week.

The topic, as I learned, were the things we need to practice before God's greater blessings can help us.  And we started out Monday in Genesis 41. This is the chapter were we find Joseph in jail after Potifer's wife lied about him, two years after he interpreted the dreams of his fellow prisoners, the royal cup taster and the royal baker.  Joseph was two-for-two on the dreams, and the cup guy promised to say something to Pharoah when he was released.  Two years later, Pharoah has his dreams about the lean cows and the scraggly corn, and cup guy says, "Oh, yeah, I forgot I was going to tell you about this guy in jail..."

So Pharoah brings Joseph out of jail, with a chance to stay that way if he can interpret the dream.  Now here's the point.  Joseph thought that intrepreting cup guy's dream was God's way of getting him out of jail.  But two years go by- he could have been sore at God, at cup guy, even at Pharoah since he was in jail for a crime he never had the pleasure of committing.  But his gentle answer speaks to the character of the man:

So Joseph answered Pharoah, saying, " It is not in me; God will give Pharoah an answer of peace." (Gen.41:16)

It was that peace and patience that God wanted from Joseph, and as a result, he became second in command of all Egypt.

Tuesday brought me to the unlikely spot of the last chapter of Ezekiel.  Here we find a dry going through of how the new earth (after judgement) will be divvied up amongst the twelve tribes.  But in verse 9 of Ezekiel 48 we find the story coming to the district set apart for the Lord, and the people who shall inhabit it:

In the center of it will be the sanctuary of the Lord. ¹¹ This will be for the consecrated priests, the Zadokites, who were faithful in serving me and did not go astray as the Levites did when the Israelites went astray. ¹² It will be a special gift to them from the sacred portion of the land, a most holy portion, bordering the territory of the Levites.
¹³ “Alongside the territory of the priests, the Levites will have an allotment 25,000 cubits long and 10,000 cubits wide. Its total length will be 25,000 cubits and its width 10,000 cubits. ¹⁴ They must not sell or exchange any of it. This is the best of the land and must not pass into other hands, because it is holy to the Lord.

So here we have the sons of Zadok being rewarded because they held their ground when everyone else- including their nominal bosses, the Levites- went astray.  Patience, then perserverence- and I would need both at the end of our tale.

Wednesday brought us to the first chapter of Esther.  And here I knew this was being led by God, because Laurie has been trying the random reading as well, and she had Esther the night before (when I had Ezekiel) and the same chapter in Ezekiel this time!  And from Esther we drew the story of Xerxes ( Ahasuerus if you prefer) having a party and sending servants to go fetch Queen Vashti to show her off- and she refused.  Now, mind you, this the Great King of all the lands of the earth who just got dissed by his wife, and 99% of the great kings of history would have probably sent her straight to the royal gallows.  Verse twelve does say "his anger burned within him."

But that's not what he did.  Since it was customary for the king to consult experts in matters of law and justice, he spoke with the wise men who understood the times ¹⁴ and were closest to the king—Karshena, Shethar, Admatha, Tarshish, Meres, Marsena and Memukan, the seven nobles of Persia and Media who had special access to the king and were highest in the kingdom.

Instead of giving reign to anger, he consulted the wise counsel of men "who understood the times".  Vashti got a new lease on life, though at the cost of her title, and Xerxes not only gained a better wife in Esther, but a fine advisor in her uncle Mordecai.  Patience, perseverance, seek wise counsel.

But Thursday became difficult.  After flipping to both Numbers and 2 Samuel without finding anything that fit the pattern, I fell upon Acts 2, where Peter was preaching at the first Pentecost.

³⁶ “Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.”³⁷ When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?”³⁸ Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. ³⁹ The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.”

⁴⁰ With many other words he warned them; and he pleaded with them, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” ⁴¹ Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.

Jesus talked about the Spirit's conviction in John 16.  Somewhere between the "covincing" of one definition and the "criminality" of another, this conviction means that the Spirit, as He did to these men, cuts through to our heart if we let Him, opening us to be truly repentant.  So we have patience, perserverance, counsel, and conviction/repentance.  But Friday I became stuck again- at least to myself- as I landed back at the same spot in 2 Samuel.  I looked at it, and the spot in Numbers, and wondered what I was missing.

The spot was chapter's three and four, with an emphasis on ch. 4 vv 9-12.  Herein we find David, shortly after Saul's death, but the civil war went on as Saul's son Ishbosheth carried on his father's kingdom with Abner as his general.  But Ish and Abner had a falling out, and Abner "suggested" Ish find a way to reunite with David.  Long story short, Abner got killed by the suspicious general Joab, and another group took matters into theit own hands and beheaded Ish.  See why I wasn't sure about where this was going?

But what happens is, not only does David curse Joab and memorialize Abner, but check this reaction out:

⁸ They brought the head of Ish-Bosheth to David at Hebron and said to the king, “Here is the head of Ish-Bosheth son of Saul, your enemy, who tried to kill you. This day the Lord has avenged my lord the king against Saul and his offspring.”
⁹ David answered Rekab and his brother Baanah, the sons of Rimmon the Beerothite, “As surely as the Lord lives, who has delivered me out of every trouble, ¹⁰ when someone told me, ‘Saul is dead,’ and thought he was bringing good news, I seized him and put him to death in Ziklag. That was the reward I gave him for his news! ¹¹ How much more—when wicked men have killed an innocent man in his own house and on his own bed—should I not now demand his blood from your hand and rid the earth of you!”

¹² So David gave an order to his men, and they killed them.

David could have easily said, "these were evil things that worked out to my good."  But he refused to have his ministry (rule) tainted by evil deeds, no matter what the results- or intentions- were.  So we add to our list honor and not putting the ends before the means.

But something was still missing, and I couldn't figure out how to get there for the life of me.  I had to work Saturday morning (which I really couldn't see the point of), and I decided I would take advantage of wise counsel- listen to a message on the way in.  The Message was delivered by Tony Evans, a man I remembered well.  You see, on the night after Shenan was born, I took KC up to see his new little sister.  On the way home, we listened to a message from Tony, and it stuck with my little 4-year-old compatriot for a long time.  Not sure if he still remembers it, but I do.  Anyway, he brought up the concept that Church is like a mini heaven because we are to minister to God.  In other words, God is to be the AUDIENCE at church, not the other way around.  He went on to explain that to hear the Spirit's call for us, we need to be worshipping in church, not just listening, because "Worship is the antenna that we tune the Spirit in with!"  And I saw that I was having my problems this week because I was forgetting not one (the wise counsel), but TWO of the things God requires for us to gain His greater blessing, and that second is Worship.

Patience.  Perserverance.  Counsel. Conviction/repentance.  Honor.  And Worship makes six things God asks of us for His greater Blessing.  And Tony capped it off with a second wise counsel, one which is why I even do this.  "The Bible is not sufficient in and of itself.  Because it contains all the principles you need, but not the specific application to individual situations.  If it did, it would be as big as this room!"  It was when I applied the two things I'd been ignoring that this all came together.  And I walked into work telling my co-worker, "NOW I know why I'm here today!"

The meteor falls

I know you've heard the news by now, but let me flesh it in a bit.  Yesterday morning a 49 ft, 10 ton meteorite exploded some 18 miles or more above the earth over the Ural area of Russia.  Was it bright, you say?



You don't need the whole thing, just scroll up to about the forty-eight second mark.  Was it powerful?  Check this one out:






Was it fatal?  Apparently not, despite almost 50 square miles of window glass being shattered and the Chelyabinsk Zinc Plant being destroyed. 

Chelyabinsk news reports that 7200 territorial and another 1300 local police were dispatched to find fragments.  Despite over a thousand injuries, only around 500 required hospitalization, many of them for concussions. Later estimates of hospitalized people ran up to 725.  NASA reported a yield of 500 kilotons- or about 20 Hiroshimas.  And that from an object less than a third of the size of the smallish asteroid that just missed us.

A large hole was blown into the ice of a reservoir near Chebarkul, some fifty miles to the west, but divers were unable to locate any large surviving chunks.  The arena at Chelyabinsk, home to KHL hockey team Traktor, was damaged, but it was apparently limited (according to city officials) to non-load bearing walls and they expect the home playoff opener will be okayed when a final report on the damage is released Monday.

Speaking of which, we are closing in on the end of the KHL regular season, and Lokomotiv seems to be limping to the line after only Vitaly Vishnevsky (2) and Alexander Chernikov (9) scoring in a 5-2 home loss to the "other" Metallurg yesterday, with Vitaly Kolesnik managing only 18 saves.  Lev Prague grabbed the 7th playoff spot in the west, leaving Dinamo Minsk, Atlant, and Donbass fighting for the last spot tomorrow with Minsk holding a 71-70-70 lead and everybody playing different teams.  In the east, Neftekhimik took the last playoff spot yesterday with a 4-1 win over Vityaz.

Lokomotiv will finish second in their division as they faded just as Red Army came on.  But 24-17-10 ain't bad for a team that died in a flaming plane crash just a season ago.