May 2011
May 16, 2011
May 13, 2011
One of the ways the Word of God operates in our lives is through memory. When you've shared the Lord's Supper every Sunday for years, and you read this passage from the Book of Acts 27, you're reminded of something: 33 As day was about to dawn, Paul urged them all to take some food, saying, "Today is the fourteenth day that you have continued in suspense and without food, having taken nothing. 34 Therefore I urge you to take some food. For it will give you strength, for not a hair is to perish from the head of any of you." 35 And when he had said these things, he took bread, and giving thanks to God in the presence of all he broke it and began to eat. 36 Then they all were encouraged and ate some food themselves. 37 (We were in all 276 persons in the ship.)
A poem by, of all people, Thomas Hardy, well known novelist and atheist, reminded me of this:
Under the Waterfall
'Whenever I plunge my arm, like this,In a basin of water, I never missThe sweet sharp sense of a fugitive dayFetched back from its thickening shroud of gray.Hence the only primeAnd real love-rhymeThat I know by heart,And that leaves no smart,Is the purl of a little valley fallAbout three spans wide and two spans tallOver a table of solid rock,And into a scoop of the self-same block;The purl of a runlet that never ceasesIn stir of kingdoms, in wars, in peaces;With a hollow boiling voice it speaksAnd has spoken since hills were turfless peaks.''And why gives this the only primeIdea to you of a real love-rhyme?And why does plunging your arm in a bowlFull of spring water, bring throbs to your soul?''Well, under the fall, in a crease of the stone,Though where precisely none ever has known,Jammed darkly, nothing to show how prized,And by now with its smoothness opalized,Is a drinking-glass:For, down that passMy lover and IWalked under a skyOf blue with a leaf-wove awning of green,In the burn of August, to paint the scene,And we placed our basket of fruit and winethe runlet's rim, where we sat to dine;And when we had drunk from the glass together,Arched by the oak-copse from the weather,I held the vessel to rinse in the fall,Where it slipped, and sank, and was past recall,Though we stooped and plumbed the little abyssWith long bared arms. There the glass still is.And, as said, if I thrust my arm belowCold water in basin or bowl, a throeFrom the past awakens a sense of that time,And the glass both used, and the cascade's rhyme.The basin seems the pool, and its edgeThe hard smooth face of the brook-side ledge,And the leafy pattern of china-wareThe hanging plants that were bathing there.'By night, by day, when it shines or lours,There lies intact that chalice of ours,And its presence adds to the rhyme of lovePersistently sung by the fall above.No lip has touched it since his and mineIn turns therefrom sipped lovers' wine.'
May 11, 2011
Central Christian Church announces its Summer Lectures beginning June 6, How the Early Church Read the Bible: What Can We Learn?
Modern readers of the Bible ask, "Is it true?" By which question they mean, are the events, the facts, the ideas, the way of life referred to in the text accurate, historical, i.e., did they really happen? Did the whale swallow Jonah, did the Israelites really cross the Red Sea dry shod, did Jesus really still the wind and the waves? This referential theory of Biblical meaning, asking about the accuracy of that to which the Bible "refers," is relatively new in Christian history (300 years), and not at all the way the Bible was received, understood and read by the apostles or by other early Christian writers.
Instead, these writers, those who first spelled out our doctrinal and creedal understanding of the faith, began with an interpretive principle and several methods that can help us not only understand how and why they read the Bible the way that they did, but presents a viable, credible way out of the literal/liberal conundrum, the fundamentalist/ modernist split in interpreting the Bible for today.
June 6-27, on successive Mondays, the Rev. Steve Odom, BA, Mdiv., Dmin. will give four lectures from 10-11:30 AM, at Central Christian Church, 404 E. Main St. , entitled,How the Early Church Read the Bible: What Can We Learn? The lectures are free and open to the public. Bins will be available for non-perishable donations to the Rutherford County Food Bank.
May 11, 2011
WHEN God at first made man,
Having a glasse of blessings standing by ;
Let us (said he) poure on him all we can :
Let the worlds riches, which dispersed lie,
Contract into a span.
So strength first made a way ;
Then beautie flow’d, then wisdome, honour, pleasure :
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that alone, of all his treasure,
Rest in the bottome lay.
For if I should (said he)
Bestow this jewell also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts in stead of me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature :
So both should losers be.
Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlesnesse :
Let him be rich and wearie, that at least,
If goodnesse leade him not, yet wearinesse
May tosse him to my breast.
May 9, 2011
I'll never forget a family I knew in my church in Washington, whose adult son, about my age, had struggled with schizophrenia since adolescence. I thought of them when I read this tremendously moving story at this website, about a young man who has struggled for years.
I used my cane to hit the handicapped door opener. My hands shook and shadows danced on the wall. In the back of my mind, I saw train tracks. My head lay on the rail. A whistle blew, and I closed my eyes. It blew again and again. My eyes were shut tight. I was anxious and scared. Do suicides go to heaven?
I signed my name on a white paper. No one could make it out, but they knew my face.
"David Weiss."
"Yes," I stammered.
"Doctor Stanley will be with you shortly."
I sat in a comfortable leather chair. I thought of the life I could have lived. The life I lost. Read more:
May 3, 2011
If you've been to the grocery store lately, you've seen the climb in prices since January in all categories of groceries. Jennifer Richardson attended a coupon workshop that was very helpful and has arranged for the presenter to lead a workshop at our church on Saturday, June 4 at 10 AM. The morning workshop is free, and the after lunch section is $10. I need reservations if you want to attend. Write me at snodom at yahoo.com if you'd like to reserve a spot. Visit Ann Haney's website at www.livinginabundancecouponing.com for more information.