Been under the weather the latter half of this week. Did not get everything published I would like but have some notes that I will be working into posts soon, hopefully. Can’t say for sure if this post will be any good but I’d rather try than not try. Pray for my congregation as I still hope to preach in the morning.
What do you think of the MLB Players Weekend uniforms? I’m not saying they look like bags of garbage but some have gone there:
Others have suggested Spy vs. Spy:
The Players Weekend is meant to be a perk for the players but I can’t imagine wearing full black on the field in August feels like a perk. I do like the nicknames on the jerseys which players were allowed to choose. Braves closer Mike Melancon chose a pronunciation guide for his name: [meh-LAHN-son].
CTRL+ALT+DEL for your soul? The music channels on Sirius XM don’t play commercials and some have no DJ’s or on-air personalities at all. The Message, the Sirius XM praise & worship on channel 63, has sound bites that promotes shows such as Sunday Worship and that offer positive encouragement to keep listening. One I heard this week suggests that “Faith, hope and music are like CTRL+ALT+DEL for your soul.” Wow, I hope not. Using CTRL+ALT+DEL to end a process means something has gone terribly wrong. It could mean your computer has locked up completely and data not saved could be lost when you force a reboot. At some point every analogy breaks down but I’m not sure those things were every that analogous to begin with. It certainly doesn’t offer the same comfort as chicken soup for the soul.
What’s wrong with this picture?
I took this pic at our local Dollar Tree. We do a very child-friendly Halloween with pumpkins, cartoon characters, trick-or-treating but nothing gorey. Our “fall decorations” have colorful leaves and scarecrows and most of them stay out until Thanksgiving. But it’s that time of year for skeletons, bats and things that go bump in the night and all such things have taken the place of school supplies at your local retailer. While we’re not buying human skulls and skeletons of rats and bats at least those things do have skeletons. Spiders do not. Click here if you don’t believe me.
True story: when I came across that verse in my Facebook newsfeed I read it as “For I have no greater joy…” and actually thought to myself that John would not have used numbers in place of words. Then I realized that 4 is the verse number, not part of the verse. I asked my wife to read it outloud and she did the same thing so at least I’m not alone.
This week on The Master’s Table: Signs of the Times. Besides Happy Monday I’m afraid that was about it. I made an audio recording while I was driving Wednesday about pastoral expectations. It was in response to a question I was asked in real life but I will save it for the post. Should it get published today I will come back here with an update.
This Weekend: The Braves vs. Mets game doesn’t start until 7:10 pm. I am feeling a tiny bit better compared to yesterday but I will not be mowing grass or working on the car the way I spent last Saturday. I spent most of Friday in bed so today looks like sipping hot tea and browsing the internet for me. Wonder if anybody would notice if I skip the “wives and husbands” section of 1st Peter 3 in the morning? Anyway, if the spider skeleton disturbed you then let’s end with this string art Johannah did of an owl. I still have to find somewhere in our house to hang this on the wall. Peace and God bless blog friends.
I am not one of those guys that studies biblical prophecy while pointing to current events in the newspaper going “See, this is what God said would happen.” That can set a dangerous precedent and sometimes you end up looking foolish. I remember listening to a preacher back in the 80’s, and I remember his name but won’t use it here, that said that if Michel Gorbachev was not the antichrist then he was certainly paving the way for him. He had a poster made up of the birthmark on his head in the form of a dragon and the smaller marks in the shape of three 6’s. This was before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev later taught an economics course for the University of Georgia and made a tv commercial for Pizza Hut. He is still alive but at 88 has yet to reveal himself as the antichrist, the Beast or any other figure in Revelation. 
My first impression when the UPS driver handed me the box was that of a big heavy book. The dimensions are not particularly large but it is thick, a hardcover book coming in at over 1,500 pages. The cover is filled with illustrations and brightly colored to attract children’s attention and advertises over 750 images. 
Regulars at The Master’s Table have probably noticed a couple of things. In the left-hand sidebar, for several years now, Our Daily Bread links and the Verse-of-the-Day from Bible Gateway are updated daily. If you click “Read Now” under the ODB header you will be directed to the current day’s devotional. It only takes a couple of minutes to read or you can click to hear it instead. If you click the Bible Gateway header image you will be directed to the Bible Gateway website. If you click the highlighted scripture reference you will taken directly to those verses on Bible Gateway. I always post ESV but you can change the translation or do side-by-side comparisons at the touch of a button. 