Is He Real? Is Any of it Real?

Feast of the Holy Trinity

This Sunday, the second reading will be from Roman 8:14-17, but I highly recommend reading the rest of this week's readings, as this week's reflection really is on all three readings.

So… is God a figment of our imagination? I dare say he can’t be, and that our God is the only true God for this reason: Who would invent a God that was a sequence of mystery-wrapped-enigma-paradoxes?

The Baby Whisperer

So, we took a trip Easter weekend to visit one of Daniel’s cousins. His wife had their second little one about… a week before Easter? Something like that? (So… if we’ re being honest, we were really going to see the baby!)

Anyway, Pitter Patter, who talks up a storm, really, desperately wanted to communicate with the new baby - and with the best of intentions, she tried to meet him where he was and talk to him in his own language.

Artists Conception of Baby's response: "It's a monster!!!!"

After all, she still spoke “baby” fluently enough. Hasn’t been all that long since she was one. So she got down in the baby’s face, where he could see her, smiled congenially, and said, “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!”

{7 QT 11} - Tell Me Some Good News

I've had a bit of insomnia lately, and Pitter Patter brought home a bug from somewhere and we're all sick ... and we have a plumbing problem... and we were without power for over 3 hours yesterday when I wanted to be doing blog stuff... so... I'm in need of some good news.

So, here's my 7 quick takes of good news.

Different Gifts for Service

Pentecost Sunday

This Sunday, the second reading will be from 1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13. It would also be a good idea to read Acts of the Apostles 2:1-11 and John 20:19-23 (The lectionary gives a choice of readings for the 2nd reading and Gospel, I took the first one of each.)

In Baptism, we are brought into the Church, the body of Christ. And we are not all baptized into the Church so that we can be exactly alike.

In fact, it is necessary that we are different from each other. The Holy Spirit gives different kinds of spiritual gifts to each of us - and not only spiritual gifts, but all kinds of gifts. We have received different kinds of skills for different kinds of service - but these all come from God, and they are given to us for some benefit.

Two Things Love is Not

I’ve spent the last five weeks of reading reflections talking about love. What is it. How it animates our faith. How it should permeate everything that we do. Now it’s time to talk about what love is not.

It’s easy to assume that we know the full meaning of a word just because we can use it in a sentence. You can’t make that assumption with the word “love”.

And let’s exclude romantic love, and loving God, just to make the discussion simpler. Let’s just talk about loving someone as another human being.

There are two common fallacies about love that I think need addressing in light of John’s first epistle.

{7 QT 10} - NPR Dreams and Potty Fire Drills

 

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As promised on Monday, I spent some time trying to take pictures of the decorations we put up for Mother's Day, and here are a few of the good pictures:

These are the same decorations that I put up for Pitter Patter's birthday last year. I thought they were just too pretty to only see use the one time!

God Loved You First

7th Sunday of Easter

For the seventh Sunday of Easter, the second reading will be from 1 Jn 4:7-10.

So, we’ve been hitting John’s first epistle really hard this Easter season, and he wrote extensively in this letter about love. So far, since Easter, we’ve talked about:

• What it looks like when we love God back,
• how obedience of the laws of God factor into our relationship with him,
• how incredible is God’s love for us,
• the necessity of our act of trust in the context of our loving relationship with God,
• and the necessity of loving those who are not in Christ.

Mother's Day Godsend

There is one day out of the year that my house becomes a picture of order, beauty, and cleanliness:

That day is Mother's Day.

I deep-clean the kitchen, and the piles of clutter on the islands at the entrances to my dining room (and on the table) are air-lifted to another room.

I also clean up the living room and the play room.

I usually bake two bundt cakes for the event - usually a chocolate cake (because Daniel likes chocolate cake), and "something else" (because I don't).

Here's one I made for a previous occasion.

Love Even Those Who Are Not in Christ

6th Sunday of Easter

This Sunday, the second reading will be from 1 Jn 4:7-10. I strongly suggest that you read the other readings for this week. It’s Lectionary # 56, if you’re reading from a hard copy. I’d also recommend reading John 3:16-21.

We hear the words so often that their impact has almost become lost on us. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, that the world might be saved through him.”

Too often, we forget the stern warning that comes only two verses later: “Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”

Age of Ultron: Blemishes on an Otherwise Great Movie

We went to see Age of Ultron this weekend. I have to say, given my experience of Ultron in the recent Earth’s Mightiest Heroes cartoon, I was not excited about the movie. It’s easy to get Ultron and another character (won’t spoil who) in the movie wrong in such a way that they both seem lame, but they didn't! They did a good job of giving both just the right look and feel.

All told, they did an exceptional job with the Ultron story. The effects were amazing; the story was extremely well thought-out. I loved the way they brought in a lot of characters from other films. I enjoyed almost everything about it, but there were a couple of things in the film that left a bad taste in my mouth for what would otherwise have been a great movie-going experience.

(7QT 8} - What I (Evidently) do When I'm Stressed

 

So, I didn't write all of my quick takes all at once. I've been writing them, kind of one at a time.

I've realized as I've been putting them in order that I've been really stressed out over like the last week and a half or two, about a few things I can't really do anything about in the immediate sense. I've apparently been really working hard to keep my mind off things while still managing to be lazy about housework.

I had so many things to talk about, I think I have like nine or ten quick takes, but I numbered 1 to 7, honest!