After a night of drinking, this song
should be sung . . .
The Parting Glass by The High Kings
Tullamore Dew version – in Sligo, Ireland
Extended Tullamore Dew version
Sunday, July 5, 2015
Simple Gifts
A Thanksgiving song by Yo-Yo Ma and Alison Krauss
from his "Classic Yo-Yo" CD.
This Heavenly
Hymn “Simple Gifts” Will Bring You Peace Today
Lyrics to “Simple
Gifts”
‘Tis
the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free
‘Tis
the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And
when we find ourselves in the place just right,
‘Twill
be in the valley of love and delight.
When
true simplicity is gained,
To
bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed,
To
turn, turn will be our delight,
Till
by turning, turning we come ’round right.
An Ancient Chant Hidden In Your Favorite Movies
If you've seen The Exorcist, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, or
It's a Wonderful Life, you've heard this hymn – “Dies Irae” – Day of Wrath
about the Day of Final Judgment.
It used to be chanted at Catholic Requiem Masses and is also
called the Song of the Dead
The Ancient
Christian Chant Hiding In All Your Favorite Movies
Can you recognize it in these movies?
Police Story
A short
police story -
Are you irritated when people come down on our police officers, saying that they don't care about or respect others? Well, here is a story that clearly shows not all cops are in that category.
This story involves the police department in the small town of Columbus, Nebraska which reported finding a man's body early evening last Saturday in the Platte River near the State Highway - 30 bridge.
Are you irritated when people come down on our police officers, saying that they don't care about or respect others? Well, here is a story that clearly shows not all cops are in that category.
This story involves the police department in the small town of Columbus, Nebraska which reported finding a man's body early evening last Saturday in the Platte River near the State Highway - 30 bridge.
The dead man's name would not be
released until his family had been notified. The victim apparently
drowned due to excessive beer consumption while visiting "someone" in
Central City. He was wearing black fishnet stockings, 6 inch spiked
heels, a red garter belt, a pink G-string, purple lipstick dazzle dust on
his eyelids, 2 1/2 inch false eyelashes and an Obama T-shirt.
The Columbus police removed the Obama T-shirt to spare his family any unnecessary embarrassment.
So there, police do care………
The Columbus police removed the Obama T-shirt to spare his family any unnecessary embarrassment.
So there, police do care………
40 Questions For Those Now Waving The Rainbow Flag
If you consider yourself a Bible-believing Christian, a
follower of Jesus whose chief aim is to glorify God and enjoy him forever, there
are important questions I hope you will consider before picking up your flag
and cheering on the sexual revolution. These questions aren’t meant to be
snarky or merely rhetorical. They are sincere, if pointed, questions that I
hope will cause my brothers and sisters with the new rainbow themed avatars to
slow down and think about the flag you’re flying.
1. How long have you believed that gay marriage is
something to be celebrated?
2. What Bible verses led you to change your mind?
3. How would you make a positive case from Scripture that
sexual activity between two persons of the same sex is a blessing to be
celebrated?
4. What verses would you use to show that a marriage
between two persons of the same sex can adequately depict Christ and the
church?
5. Do you think Jesus would have been okay with
homosexual behavior between consenting adults in a committed relationship?
6. If so, why did he reassert the Genesis definition of
marriage as being one man and one woman?
7. When Jesus spoke against porneia what sins do
you think he was forbidding?
8. If some homosexual behavior is acceptable, how do you
understand the sinful “exchange” Paul highlights in Romans 1?
9. Do you believe that passages like 1 Corinthians
6:9 and Revelation 21:8 teach that sexual immorality can keep you out
of heaven?
10. What sexual sins do you think they were referring to?
11. As you think about the long history of the church and
the near universal disapproval of same-sex sexual activity, what do you think
you understand about the Bible that Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, and Luther
failed to grasp?
12. What arguments would you use to explain to Christians
in Africa, Asia, and South America that their understanding of homosexuality is
biblically incorrect and your new understanding of homosexuality is not
culturally conditioned?
13. Do you think Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were
motivated by personal animus and bigotry when they, for almost all of their
lives, defined marriage as a covenant relationship between one man and one
woman?
14. Do you think children do best with a mother and a
father?
15. If not, what research would you point to in support
of that conclusion?
16. If yes, does the church or the state have any role to
play in promoting or privileging the arrangement that puts children with a mom
and a dad?
17. Does the end and purpose of marriage point to
something more than an adult’s emotional and sexual fulfillment?
18. How would you define marriage?
19. Do you think close family members should be allowed
to get married?
20. Should marriage be limited to only two people?
21. On what basis, if any, would you prevent consenting
adults of any relation and of any number from getting married?
22. Should there be an age requirement in this country
for obtaining a marriage license?
23. Does equality entail that anyone wanting to be
married should be able to have any meaningful relationship defined as marriage?
24. If not, why not?
25. Should your brothers and sisters in Christ who
disagree with homosexual practice be allowed to exercise their religious
beliefs without fear of punishment, retribution, or coercion?
26. Will you speak up for your fellow Christians when
their jobs, their accreditation, their reputation, and their freedoms are
threatened because of this issue?
27. Will you speak out against shaming and bullying of
all kinds, whether against gays and lesbians or against Evangelicals and
Catholics?
28. Since the evangelical church has often failed to take
unbiblical divorces and other sexual sins seriously, what steps will you take
to ensure that gay marriages are healthy and accord with Scriptural principles?
29. Should gay couples in open relationships be subject
to church discipline?
30. Is it a sin for LGBT persons to engage in sexual
activity outside of marriage?
31. What will open and affirming churches do to speak
prophetically against divorce, fornication, pornography, and adultery wherever
they are found?
32. If “love wins,” how would you define love?
33. What verses would you use to establish that
definition?
34. How should obedience to God’s commands shape our
understanding of love?
35. Do you believe it is possible to love someone and
disagree with important decisions they make?
36. If supporting gay marriage is a change for you, has
anything else changed in your understanding of faith?
37. As an evangelical, how has your support for gay
marriage helped you become more passionate about traditional evangelical
distinctives like a focus on being born again, the substitutionary sacrifice of
Christ on the cross, the total trustworthiness of the Bible, and the urgent
need to evangelize the lost?
38. What open and affirming churches would you point to
where people are being converted to orthodox Christianity, sinners are being
warned of judgment and called to repentance, and missionaries are being sent
out to plant churches among unreached peoples?
39. Do you hope to be more committed to the church, more
committed to Christ, and more committed to the Scriptures in the years ahead?
40. When Paul at the end of Romans 1 rebukes “those who
practice such things” and those who “give approval to those who practice them,”
what sins do you think he has in mind?
Food
for thought, I hope. At the very least, something to chew on before swallowing
everything the world and Facebook put on our plate.
The Gospel Coalition
Kevin DeYoung
How One Gay Millionaire In Denver Drastically Transformed American Culture
once
again, fOLLOW THE MONEY. tAKE NOTE OF HIS STRATEGY – it’s all about
“love” as in “Love Wins” . . .
In 2007, Time Magazine identified
Tim Gill of Denver as “The Gay Mogul
Changing U.S. Politics.” Forbes estimated his
net worth at $425 million due to the sale of his software publishing company,
Quark, Inc. Openly gay, he founded the Gill Foundation and
ever since has turned his efforts (and money) to gay and LGBT rights in our
country.
His political career, albeit a stealth
one, began in 2004 when eleven states voted to ban gay marriage.
Devastated by the news, his thought response
was, “These people are in office. We can’t have that. How
do we go about undoing it?” And undoing it, he has. Joshua
Green of Bloomberg Politics wrote in April, “Over the
next two years [since 2004], [Gill] assembled strategists, recruited other gay
philanthropists, joined with activist groups, and became the nexus of an
aggressive new political force. They focused on state races, rather than
national ones, to maximize their effect.”
Green first met Gill in 2006.
“Gay marriage was legal only in
Massachusetts, and [Gill] and his allies were targeting a second state. They’d
just tipped the Iowa legislature to the Democrats, anticipating that Iowa’s
Supreme Court would legalize gay marriage (it did), and they were determined to
stop any legislation that would override the decision (they did). At the time,
the road to full marriage equality seemed to stretch far beyond the horizon.
Gill’s organizations, and most others in the movement, were hoping to grind out
a steady series of victories that could one day serve as the basis for the
Supreme Court to legalize same-sex marriage.”
They did. Opening an office in
Washington, D.C. in 2008, the Gill Foundation began watching
legislative activity by looking for cultural debates that could maximize their
money efforts in supporting gay-marriage.
But, it does not stop with last week’s
instituted law for same-sex marriage in all 50 states. Gill said he has
spent “$327 million already and will spend more.” Under
the new organization, Freedom For All Americans, he plans to launch
a campaign using the same principles the Gill Foundation used
to bring about today’s SCOTUS decision. The campaign focuses on
implementing “non-discrimination acts” in states that currently do not have
them. They plan to begin with Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Pennsylvania,
Texas, and then branch out from there. The end goal is “to halt or
unwind ‘religious freedom’ acts” in our country.
Their strategy begins with finding
Republicans in these states who will vote for what they want and then putting
those Republicans into office. Flipping the body of who warms a political
seat has become easy for Gill and his associates. Green tells us:
“They often operated by stealth, waiting
until the final weeks before an election (so Federal Election Commission
filings wouldn’t reveal them until afterward) and then flooding pro-gay
candidates with dozens of individual donations that could collectively tip a
race. This strategy allowed Gill to ‘punish the wicked,’ as he liked to say,
and establish more favorable conditions to advance gay rights.”
What is difficult is
finding Republicans who are for “non-discrimination acts” and against religious
liberty (and, might I add, the First Amendment to the Constitution). His
associates are currently learning how to “talk
Republican” in order to find them.
And, they think they can easily convince
the public in these States, once they find the right people to sit in
office. Gill said he
and his associates spent years advocating for same-sex marriage under the umbrella
of “equal rights and benefits”, such as those afforded straight couples.
Yet this strategy did not work. “The engineer in me,” [Gill
says]
“thinks you should think about a problem, decide what’s fair and equitable, and
that’s your solution. But people don’t do that. They make emotional judgments.”
What did work was playing off people’s emotion and selling
gay-marriage in “the context of love.”
Last week, that notion of “love” was
legalized; but Tim Gill, the heavily pocketed, engineer-minded man, and his
associates, are far from done. Their next campaign focuses on removing
religious liberty from our Constitution.
And hey, their strategy works – so why fix it?
Over the last decade, money started a
cultural movement, changed the public’s mindset, and last week it rewrote
law. So here is my question – where is the money for religious
liberty? Who has deep pockets and who supports maintaining
religious freedom in this country? It does not matter what the religion,
for all religion’s protection are filed under the same clause.
Wherever
you are and whatever your faith, it is time for you to step up to the plate.
Looks Like We Are Right On Schedule
Well, it appears that our despotic
SCOTUS has us right on schedule. . .
"All
democracies degenerate into despotisms."
~ Aristotle
Governor Greg Abbott
today released the following statement regarding the Supreme Court’s
same-sex marriage ruling:
“The Supreme Court has
abandoned its role as an impartial judicial arbiter and has become an unelected
nine-member legislature.
Five Justices on the
Supreme Court have imposed on the entire country their personal views on an
issue that the Constitution and the Court’s previous decisions reserve to
the people of the States.”
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