We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.

You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.

I knew more than a year ago that the old blog ("Do What's Right") would be closing. I had the wrong impression of how that would happen, and the wrong impression on why. I thought it would be a move to censor my writing, but it's more a move to censor the kind of thinking behind my writing. To change the editor that drastically is meant to drive away the sort of people who organize their thoughts and express themselves with any kind of depth. It's aimed at attracting air-head "influencers" and those who write advertising. It restricts writers to that model.

But the net result is that the Lord wants me to remove my persona from the message. I need to work on the idea of being more anonymous. I can't allow the world to see the real me any more. I'm not quite sure why that is, but I trust the Lord that it will make sense later. Instead, I save that stuff for the more private blog ("Radix Fidem Blog") and here on the forum. In the future, if I feel the need to go back and address things in that fashion, I'll use some other service. For all the threats coming out of Google, their Blogger platform remains mostly hands-off. It's also more amenable to being anonymous. Who would have predicted that WordPress, of all projects, would seek to shut down thoughtful commentary on things?

I suppose some element of why I must cloak my personality online is a very broad and subtle shift in the prevailing culture. I've said many times that this is the end of the West, and something else is rising to replace it. The odd mixture of good and bad in Western Civilization is going to be eclipsed by another odd mixture that is even more bad than good. There's a place in the Hebrew consciousness for veiling yourself when in certain contexts. It's part of what Jesus said about "pearls before swine." Sometimes showing your true self only serves to arm the enemies of the truth.

What catches my attention here is that this signals something not yet fully seen: how the atmosphere will become exceedingly hostile to the gospel message. I've had no doubt about the fact itself for a long time, but I still don't have a clear vision of how it will be, of what it will be like. It's not that I fear such persecution, but seeing the particular approach the Enemy provokes does flavor the the sense of annoyance. I'm waiting to see how this plays out so I can build up others to face the flavor of persecution in our age.

So, I'm wading through a mixture of things I can see clearly, and a lot of things that are still pretty murky.

We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.

You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.

"I've been throwing horseshoes over my left shoulder

I've spent most all my life searching for that four-leaf clover
Yet you ran with me, chasing my rainbows
Honey, I love you too and that's the way love goes

[Chorus]
That's the way love goes, babe
That's the music God made
For all the world to sing
It's never old, it grows
Losing makes me sorry
You say "Honey, now don't worry"
Don't you know I love you too?
And that's the way love goes"
Chorus repeats.


That's the way love goes. Merle Haggard. 
No, I'm not posting a link....sheesh y'all it's Merle freakin' Haggard duck him and click on any song but, this one was my heart speaking to hers.
I like the classic country music and do solemnly declare that what passes for country music today is a blasphemous abomination from the sulphurous pits of Hell.

This is the thread where I'll share my experiences with this car we got. It's very nearly just like the wife's car: 2008 VW Jetta 2.5 liter engine. Except she has a sunroof, and mine is a manual transmission, no power steering, and she has alloy wheels. But we have a largely coherent fleet of two now.

So far, I know it needs a lower motor mount (mechanics call it the "dog bone" and you'll see why). The one in there now is missing a bolt, but I'm pretty sure it takes replacing the whole thing. Thus, the engine rocks in a cradle and bumps around a little when driving (it's not load bearing, just a stabilizer). I'm pretty sure the alternator is nearly dead, because the battery is almost certainly new and the thing kept dying on the way home, requiring a jump to restart. And it kept getting deader and deader. Once I get a new alternator in it, I'll be in a much better position to see which of those crazy warning lights actually mean anything. Also, the muffler isn't catching the exhaust; it's pretty loud, but that's not fully illegal in Oklahoma.

All I've done so far today is pull the top engine cover and the bottom engine pan. Both of those have to be moved to do much of anything at all. I need to get a couple of special tools, but it's hardly a waste because they'll work on both cars. I promise to shoot pictures of anything that's interesting, but there's nothing yet.

This week's Bible lesson will be going up late because I got stuck out in the country for a while. We decided that, instead of buying as much car as we could afford, we went cheap to get one with potential that needed work. It didn't get home on it's own. So we had to wait for a tow truck. We just got home 8:20PM Central Time.

BTW, I'm not upset about the car, but I feel bad that I couldn't get the lesson done.

When I was around 8 years old, my uncle gave my brother a box of 45's, mostly 60's British blues along with a bunch of "Chess" records. My song was "Born under a Bad Sign" by Albert King, I mean it spoke to me; what kind of shit is done to a child so that he relates to a song like that?! I know because, I remember. I want y'all to guess, just for giggles.

My beloved has never acted like that before. We were trying to negotiate with a dealer for a used car. I had performed my due diligence on the probabilities (consumer reports, complaints, etc.) and I felt like the price was okay. She did a test drive; things were okay. When we began haggling over the arrangements for paying, something in the whole scene spooked Veloyce and she walked away. They tried hard to keep the deal alive, and offered a significant discount, but she didn't want any more of it.

I wasn't the one with a strong reaction either way, but when she tells me something stinks, I would have to trust her on it. So we walked away, despite their desperate efforts to keep us engaged. Keep in mind that I could have easily ignored her and bought the car; she wouldn't nag me about it or anything. Just because I didn't get any alarm bells doesn't mean hers were wrong.

So pray with us. I still need a motor vehicle for my own use. It will be a while before my knee gets any better, and I need to be able to get around more than what I can do on the bike.

We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.

You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.

Suspicious0bservers

Looks a lot at what the sun is doing and how it affects earth's weather and general state. For sure, some of it feels a little dramatic, but it's an interesting way of looking at weather beyond local daily temperature and prospects of rain or snow.