Friday Night Potpourri

Is it really Friday?

• Family Scott has attained basketball hoop.  A Facebook post by some friends resulted in the kids using the driveway for more than throwing or hitting rocks.  Score!
• It seems like Tuesday for whatever reason.  Working a continually changing schedule for the last three months makes it difficult to know what day it is.  I usually know the date because so much of the work I do is tied to it, but not the day.  I turned on the game and the Giants were wearing their orange jerseys which means Friday.
• There's no there there.  I'm working in a city I used to live in for a number of years.  Everything I did I had to drive over the hill to central county.  The downtown had been blighted for decades, and numerous attempts at redevelopment were unsuccessful.  But there are a few good places downtown that have come about in recent years.  Now I need to find out more.
• Hey, my car is dirty.  Maybe I can get my kids to wash it next week.  Playing in the soap and water?  Hmmm.
• Upon further review, I found a post from last month that says my kids washed their mother's car.  Life isn't fair, but I guess it can be next week.
• I just found two dictionaries in the computer armoir.  Two.  I haven't read a dictionary in book form in quite a few years.
• The summer sound...
  

Startup Mania

Work is very intense right now, and is the big reason for me not blogging much.  I worked 16 days straight (fifteen with overtime), had a day off, and then worked another seven overtime shifts.  But as much work as there is, it is very enjoyable.  A very complex plant trying to start up is very exciting and full of surprises.  Sometimes learning what shifts everybody will work is hour to hour and not day to day.  Unique problems arise, and problem solving is the order of the day.

Church is also in startup mode.  We've been occasionally meeting with a group that is "planting" a church, and the much desired fellowship is picking up.  There's a much greater emphasis on people than programs and we're enjoying that too.  I miss blogging and I believe my writing has suffered a good deal over the last year or so.  Even Friday Night Potpourri isn't regular anymore.  Until the startup at work is successful and things smooth out into normal routine, it looks like I'll be a working fool.  And that is welcome after so long without gainful productivity.  I'd love to drop some more theological posts here in the near future, but life things may be more the speed in the foreseeable future. 

Questions About The Sabbath

Eric Carpenter (who blogs at A Pilgrim's Progress) mowed his lawn this Sunday.  Eric asked some questions about the Sabbath and what it means to keep it and break it, as well as whether there is a Sunday Sabbath to begin with.  I left a comment, but at the time I typed this post it hadn't yet been approved by the blog owner, so I'll paste it here:

Eric,

In the book of Acts, there are 8 different references to the seventh day as being the Sabbath, and what the apostles did on that day (13:14, 27, 42, 44, 15:21, 16:13, 17:2 and 18:4). The church and its first day meeting had already been well established by the apostles.

Now, why, if Sunday were the "Christian" or "New Testament" Sabbath, does THE BIBLE ITSELF still recognize the seventh day as the Sabbath after the Sabbath had already supposedly changed to Sunday?

This is a question that Sabbatarians have never given a reasonable answer to for me.  Does anybody have any additional observations on the Sabbath question?

Friday Night Potpourri

Worked week:

• I had an encounter with a skunk at 5am today.  Still dark, and perfectly still out, the skunk was startled by me and crossed the street and headed down.  Whew.  I had to get my gear in the car, and it crossed back and headed up the sidewalk toward me.  I was stuck with the car open, so I shook my keys at it.  It swerved around into the front yard and past the side of the house.  Our skunks are regulars, as they cut through our property, under the fence, and out to wherever they go in the middle of the night.
• Well, we had plums and apricots already.  Now we get the fallout from our neighbor's fig tree.  Yummy, but a littered yard.
• I was thinking about grease monkeys recently and what they used to do.  A friend put a 327 small block into a Vega wagon.  The torque almost wrenched the frame for good.  You could feel it as the car picked up.  A roll to one side.  And 140mph was a huge deal when we were kids.
• It was very windy the last few days.  Out driving it was mostly garbage and pine needles flying around.
• I saw a Google Street car out driving around last year.  I still haven't seen the latest and greatest up on the internet.
• It's too late and I'm too tired to think about something to put on this 6th bullet point.  Some times I get not just writer's block...
• Hmmm, I think it's time for a haircut.

Theological Comfort

"My job is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." - Anon

Well, whether or not affliction is ever involved, I think there is the trap of becoming theologically comfortable.  This theological comfort is like other comforts.  We are at peace with our knowledge of God.  We understand him.  He becomes predictable.  My favorite show is on channel 40 at 7pm every night.  Sometimes it comes on at 4pm, but the schedule tells me so in advance.  His ways are routine.  I sit with a cold beverage in my easy chair and watch every night.  God comes home for dinner at the same time every night, takes His shoes off and relaxes.  We sit on the sofa across the room from Him.

When God becomes predictable to us, when He becomes comfortable to us, those who are not so comfortable can become predictably wrong.  Always.  Or at least as long as we ourselves are comfortable.  Those people are in the other room worrying about cooking and cleaning or maybe where their next meal will come from.  Why can't they relax like me?  Can't they see God in my living room?

Something I've come to realize in my own life is that each time I think I've got God - or the study of God - figured out, he changes it.  He throws a monkey wrench into my system.  Sometimes that wrench really messes things up.  Biblical theology messes with systematic theology.  There's that verse again.  Can I really get away with forcing an interpretation again?  Oh, well, I'm comfortable with doing so, so I'll do it again.  And tell you all about it.