educating eric

Finally had a chance to catch the phone and figured out that 785-799-3567 was a call from what sounded like "Redmond Media Group" (though some Internet posts show it as "Red Media Group" -- hard to make out exactly what their name was.) Why are they calling several times a day? Turns out this firm has been repeatedly calling to offer... a "Redhat Enterprise Whitepaper." Wow. The cheerful pitch when I asked them to drop me from their call list was, "Even if you get one or two pieces of information from it, it's worth our time to send it to you for free!" No, thanks. Let's see if they really do remove me from their list.  

1 Chron 19:1-21:30 is a weird passage. Lots of potential for study there. That is all.

Something just struck me about the concept of accountability: I think it's very difficult for anyone – Christians included – to hold each other accountable to not doing something. Accountability to do something is much easier, because you can partner up and do it together – exercise, prayer, eating broccoli, etc. But accountability to not do something – typically something sinful, but perhaps something innocuous like "not over eating" – is much harder because you can't partner up to "not do something." Does that make sense? And, if so, how do we fix that?

I had an interesting conversation with my daughter today. She asked what three things I world change if I could go back in time. That led to a really interesting conversation about the fact that our past shapes what we are today. So, I could have done things differently, but I'm not sure if I could have done "better," and doing different things would have made me a different person than I am today. (For instance, I wish I had made the choice to use push sticks when I was woodworking with a router in 1997, but perhaps my fingertip loss has led me to be more cautious or to teach good lessons today. Can't change it; there's no use lamenting it.) Anyway, I realize that there was one thing I could declare authoritatively: God would never give us a "better" alternative that comes about as result of personal sin. Period. Yes, all sorts of good things come about as a result of sin – either our own personal sins that lead to growth, o

Was Apollos fervent in "spirit" as in "zeal and enthusiasm," or was he fervent in "The Spirit"? If it's the latter, it's another example of God's engaging and using people whose theology is far from perfect... https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts+18%3A24-25&version=ESV