Earlier in my life, I equated knowledge with maturity. And that is a valid position….but not spiritually. I have since come to realize that physical maturity comes with time. Soulish or Intellectual maturity comes through knowledge but spiritual maturity comes only by obedience. Which is why we have so many immature believers…..and frequently I consider myself the chief.
From: Di French (who insists she never said anything original)
Hi guys. Looks like I’m behind a bit on my links. I’ll probably share some tomorrow. Events have been happening.
Last week was rough for David. Right after his first birthday, he developed a fever that kept him out of day care, so we rotated keeping him home. I stayed with him Tuesday, and Valerie’s mom took off Wednesday. That was the day, giving him some fever medicine, that Valerie’s mom had the joy of watching her grandson have a seizure. So he went to the hospital, where they discovered that he had gotten dehydrated (which can apparently cause seizures). Thursday Valerie stayed home with him, and by Friday, he was fine.
At the same time, David’s illness was also floating around at work – at least 2-3 people were home sick on various days that week, with high fevers. And on Thursday evening, I had a bout myself. So I had to call in sick a second time in a week (and the first time ever that it was actually me who was sick).
Around noon on Friday, I got a call from my temp agency – don’t come in on Monday. Apparently my day off was also my last day at work. Not really unexpected – our office has been closing down for some time, and this is the way of temp jobs. But at the same time, in most books, to let a person go when they’re not even there is plain rude.
Nevertheless, God is gracious and we are not ungrateful. We’ve been watching with familiar admiration all through this. In the years since I moved out on my own, though I’ve never particularly had any steady work, I’ve never been too short-handed to pay a bill that was due. Since we’ve been out of college, we’ve never even missed a paycheck, and this was no exception. I kept my job in a closing department, rather inexplicably, until Valerie had gotten her first paycheck. Now I’m looking again, and I’m confident that he will be faithful to provide – right at the last minute. 🙂
In other news completely, I’ve been thinking about changing our web address. First, It’s finally beginning to dawn on me that there is a certain measure of hubris in naming your site “spiritual,” in Greek no less, as though announcing to the world that this is exactly the embodiment of what you are. Secondly, nobody can spell it.
I’m thinking about changing it to something revolving around God’s grace, and the phrase that keeps coming to mind is from Psalm 18:34 (also 2 Sam 22:35)
“He teaches my hands to make war,
So that my arms can bend a bow of bronze.”
So I’m thinking BronzeBow dot net or org or something. There’s already a weblog at BowOfBronze.com, but I’m sure there’s plenty of room for all.
The Bronze Bow, of course, is also the title of a delightful children’s book by Elizabeth George Speare, which, oddly, was read to me in fourth grade, but I never owned.
It’s useful sometimes to think of the Trinity in terms of the work that they do in the world, so:
Of course each one of those jobs is worthy of reams of discussion, and that wouldn’t even cover the more difficult items like how they relate to one another and how they can be “one” and “three” at the same time. But I think it’s interesting to see how the roles that each one does relates to the others. Election, Propitiation, and Conviction kind of go together under the heading “salvation.” Providence, Intercession, and Empowerment kind of go together under the heading “sanctification,” or possibly “building up the church.” At the same time, Election and Proivdence go together in a way that uniquely says “Fatherhood;” Propitiation and Intercession go together in a way that uniquely says “Sonship;” and Conviction and Empowerment go together in a way that uniquely says “Spiritual.”
Two final thoughts:
neumatikos 