Photography. For a couple years in the late 1970s I worked for an advertising / P.R. firm, Cooper Associates, mainly taking pictures for press releases and writing feature stories for our clients. I enjoyed the photography -- with Pentax and Nikon SLRs -- and doing our black and white print developing. Retirement, at least at this stage, has allowed me to do more picture-taking. My current phone, a MotoG7, has very good capabilities as a camera. Many of these photos I'm posting on Instragram @bkyoung71. [Above, from yesterday morning at the CRC.]
Hymn Sunday is a collaboration with Getty Music. You will find a video of a favorite psalm along with downloadable sheet music.
"One such struggle [in reading the Psalms] is how we as Christians understand 'the righteous' in the Psalms. At first glance our encounters might actually be more disheartening than uplifting. We read glorious promises for the
righteous... But our first inclination as Christians is to say 'I’m not righteous. No one is.'” Read more about "the righteous" in the Psalms.
"Laws like the Equality Act fail to acknowledge the reasonableness of Christian belief, assuming that only irrational bigotry can animate those who hold traditional views on marriage and sexuality. This loss of reason and regression to emotion-based policy-making is at the heart of our civic mistrust and zero-sum policy prescriptions." Read "Is Billy Graham the New Jim Crow?"
Theological word of the day: "Impassibility". The Westminster Confession says that God is "without body, parts, or passions, immutable." The impassibility of God does not mean that God does not experience emotion or not empathize with our pain, but it does mean that he is unchanging and unmoved (immovable) as to his essence, nature, character, and purpose. Theologian Herman Bavinck notes, "Those who predicate any change whatsoever of God, whether with respect to his essence, knowledge, or will, diminish all his [other] attributes: independence, simplicity, eternity, omniscience, and omnipotence. This robs God of his divine nature, and religion of its firm foundation and assured comfort." (Reformed Dogmatics, 2:158) One summary is that "God is impassible but not unemotional." Or as another writer described this, it means we have a "God without mood swings." Comfort indeed!
101 Blessings. This deck of cards [above], a gift from a very good friend, does indeed pack a lot of blessings. I have not gotten to #101 yet, but there
are quite a few good encouraging words here so far! Great way to start the day.
Pen of the week. A Carter Pearltex Streamline, early 1930s. The Carter Co., mainly known for its ink, ventured into pen-making only for a few years -- it was during the depression -- but the pens were of high quality. This one I restored writes with the best of the vintage pens. Here's a little history on Carter.
Reading Reformed Ethics, Vol. 1, by Herman Bavinck (Baker Academic, 2019).
Listening to I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek (Crossway, 2004). This book (print or audio) is an excellent overview of the apologetic method of Norm Geisler.
In "this week" I post some of the things I'm reading and stuff I'm
thinking about, usually just once a week. To receive my posts by email you can subscribe above, just below my profile.
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| Image: New Yorker |
"God cannot change for the better, for he is perfect;
and being perfect, he cannot change for the worse." (A. W. Pink)
"Still restless nature dies and grows,
From change to change the creatures run:
Thy being no succession knows,
And all thy vast designs are one." (Isaac Watts)
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