Should I be glad to know that I am not the only one disgusted with the current state of the world's affairs? Lilac Rose is also seeing a pervading spirit of selfishness and desire to control in our world. Of course, it isn't really a surprise. It's easy to say things are so much worse now than ever, but I wonder if that is really the case. Man's warped nature has always been in evidence.
At the same time, I still feel a sense of excitement and hope from a personal perspective. God has given me new sources of support and caused some good things to happen in my life, and I am learning to get out from under other's expectations and pressure. I am feeling a new strength and purpose. At the same time, my pessimist self is telling me not to hope at all, that things will just fall back to the way they were. I can't help but hold out a little hope, though. It's just better than falling into debilitating depression. Been there, done that.
I know things will get better for everyone who is down right now, because they always do. Good times and bad times are a fact of life. So I also hope that we can find something useful from this time when things seem bad.
8 comments:
Hey Barb, I'm here.
Maybe we should figure out how to link you on here:
http://pub14.bravenet.com/freelink/show.php?usernum=1162360851&cpv=1
That is how I found Anxious Contentment. In my own lazy way, I started with the A's...
As for the world's affairs, tell me about it. I learned a few things from my junior/high school Sunday School kids yesterday. I've been training them up on use of the Strong's Concordance to study Scriptural texts grammatically. With any luck, they'll be studying and teaching each other in the next couple Sundays. They're getting plenty of practice in testing each other to ensure that they're getting true expositions of the Scriptures from each other.
After their heads were full, we did some small talk yesterday. One girl's school has cameras in the hallways where smoochers get reprimanded. Is this Big Brother watching or what? Anyway, it's usually a boy and a girl. This last week, it was two eigth grade boys. yecch.
A couple of the girls play softball, so I had to ask them what the connection was between adult women's softball and large concentrations of lesbians. They shared that it's not just the adult leagues, it's in the high schools too. That's where the girls get to meet other girls. yecch part 2. Then it's happening on the soccer teams too. yecch part 3.
Is it just here in California?
My Sunday School kids are wonderful.
I gifted them each Books of Concord last year. We studied parts of them.
Very funny things when the kids wandered around church with Tapperts in hand... A couple young pastors were visiting and had to remark on what impact would be had for some of our good seminarians to see pretty young women meandering about with Tapperts in hand. Wow! What preciousness. Major infatuation problems would errupt.
Speaking of Tappert, and the new edition of the Book of Concord that came out last year...
Do you realize that Kieschnik put the clamps down to suspend publishing of the new Book of Concord? He and his cronies have "doctrinal concerns" regarding the substance in the Book of Concord.
Having pledged themselves to the Confessions, are they just now looking at it for their very first times?
Ah one more thing the kids taught me.
At one of their schools (public of course), several sports and other activities were cut so that the budgets could be vectored towards increasing the teachers' health benefits.
yikes.
Weren't the teachers' pay and benefits increased _so_that_ the kids could get better educations? Alas. Now they increase their own compensations at the expense of education.
wonderful.
Let this one hit the fan!
Hi Terence! They put cameras on my daughter's school bus, but didn't bother informing the parents. Nice, huh? Not a major reason I'm homeschooling them now, but nice to not have them on the bus. I heard about the Book of Concord recall; we already have a copy, I'm glad to say.
What exactly is that bravenet link for?
I agree that public schools are good at wasting money, but I almost wish they would take sports teams out of the public schools and tie them to cities anyway. That way, my homeschooled daughters could play more sports. Only the wealthy suburbs here have a plethora of rec league sports. My youngest daughter enjoys gymnastics, and if she decides to compete, she can at least compete with her gym, but she'll never be able to do it through school. Not to mention the powerhouse high school girls' gymnastic team around here is a Catholic high school, where I'd never send her.
Terence, when did your wife attend St. John Nottingham? I had family on the East Side, although they attended St. John South Euclid. But my parents also knew a lot of people who lived over there. My parents both attended Lutheran High, so they know a lot of the "older Lutherans" in Cleveland. Then I attended Lutheran West. Too bad I don't think my daughters will attend there. Anyway, I graduated from West in 1986. I'm getting old too! :O
interesting talk about crumbling schools...
My wife went to St John's Nottingham prior to her move to California in 1991. She graduated from high school in 1985. We're also not exactly young like Liz is...
My wife's parents tell me that Cleveland's Lutheran schools declined so long ago that they made sure that their kids didn't go to them.
Me, on the other hand...I went to a Jesuit high school in California. :-) Thanks to the Jesuits, my Lutheran catechesis actually going in the right direction. "You believe what? No. You're Lutheran. Your answer was supposed to be..." God works in mysterious ways.
Poor old Jesuits. Vatican 2 finally caught up to them. They gave up their doctrinal apologetics for secular humanism...
No. 1985 is not right.
She graduated in 1983.
Oh dear. The first thing that goes is your memory...
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