Christmas Party

I didn't make it to Life Group this past Sunday. Thought my daughter, Katie, was going to come to church and then ended up not. When is the Christmas Party??? Thanks.

Hebrews: Pay More Careful Attention

I am much enjoying our study of Hebrews. The approach of the lesson writers, a series focusing on how things are better since Jesus came, is a novel approach. Let's see, we've had:

• Jesus is superior to angels
• Jesus is great than Moses
• Jesus is the better way of entering God's rest
• Jesus is the greater high priest
• The new covenant in Jesus is superior to the old covenant

Yet, this type of approach overlooks something else in the book that is also important: the commands the writer of Hebrews gives us. The book includes quite a few "Therefore, we must..." type commands. These typically alternate with the "better than" segments. Take the first one:

"We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away."

Those who first read Hebrews, or who couldn't read and only heard it read, were at a decided disadvantage to us. They have no New Testament to study. They had no televisions or tape recorders to allow them to hear things over and over again. In their fellowship times, an elder would read from the scriptures that they had--the Old Testament--and then expound on it. It's possible that they might have read from one of Paul's letters, depending on how widely these had been copied and distributed at an early date.

They didn't have commentaries to explain how Jesus fulfilled their scriptures. They didn't have many published books created to help them live the life God wanted for them. Just what they heard.

Perhaps, then, we have less excuse than they did for drifting away. How should we paraphrase the command of Hebrews 2:1 to make it more applicable to our modern era? Perhaps:

Since Jesus is superior to all ministering spirits, we must pay more careful attention to all the life-building information God has sent our way, so that we do not drift away.

Ah, It's Friday

Yes, the end of the work week. In twenty-five minutes I can pack my portfolio, put the computer on standby, and head home. Of course, I'll wait a little longer than that to let some traffic move on down the road ahead of me. Time to go home and relax.

Relax? We've got the kids coming in next Wednesday. The house needs cleaning. The Christmas decorations have to go up, since we won't see the kids at Christmas. No way are we going to have the house un-decorated when Ephraim arrives, toddling about, saying "I see..." to everything he sees. The outside lights went up last weekend, all but two strings I need to either fix or replace.

Most of the leaves are already moved to some place we want them to be. I'll have to clean up a few. Then there's the two maple trees that Carroll Electric decided to decapitate, which need shaping. That'll take an hour at least. Add trimming the crape myrtle to that and it'll be two hours.

Last Saturday saw the garage mostly organized, but not fully so. At least an hour there. Plus, the receipts and bills have been piling up downstairs, waiting to be sorted then filed. We have these new trays to keep them in, which should help, but which also feed procrastination.

I'd like to write some, maybe one article for Suite101.com in American colonial history, and maybe 1,000 pages in my novel in progress. Plus there's a couple of freelance writing gigs I need to evaluate more.

Help! I'm a prisoner of the weekend. Oh for Monday to come and the blissful slowness of the office.

hello there!

Is anybody home? I am not seeing many new posts! We could have some real neat conversations on this thing!

I think what Dan suggested about The Shack would be good to study. The women did that study on a Wednesday night and it was really awesome. I have read it twice and enjoyed it both times. But it doesn't really matter with me what we study. I do enjoy the books of the Bible.

New Lesson

I would suggest a lesson series on the book "The Shack". I have read it once and have downloaded it to my Ipod. Breiefly it is about a man whose daughter was murdured and became bitter to God. He is summoned to the shack where the murder occured in a strange way. He encounters God in three persons. What follows is a dialogue with the persons in the God Head about all the eternal questions.

I wouldn't mind selecting a book from the Bible and studying that. I would like us to look at Romans.

Next Life Group Lesson Series

Hey class:

It won't be that long before we will finish Hebrews (six more weeks, I think) and will have to find something else to study. Who has an idea of what to study? Anyone?

Marion and I have begun looking at C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity, but it's a tough read. I don't know that we could be ready with that without a lot of preparation--a really lot of preparation.

Here are some thoughts I've had. Anyone else please feel free to comment, shoot these down, add your own.

• Everyone names a favorite chapter of the Bible and we study that. This would last as many weeks as we have people name a chapter.
• A study of Jeremiah, probably lasting 15 or more weeks.
• A study of Mere Christianity. If we have to, we'll be ready.
• A study of the sacraments. What I'm thinking of is the seven sacraments celebrated in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches, and our Protestant interpretations of them.

Wonderful Life Group "Lesson" Today

I hadn't realized that it had been so long since I'd been to this blog and made a post. I'll try to be more active. During the second half of October the company moved its office, and I found my part in that to be all consuming. It was enough to keep up my blog and write a little bit here and there.

Wasn't that a great Life Group class today? Thank you Bob Black (a.k.a. Blackie) for sharing what was on your heart concerning church finances, and setting things going. Hebrews took a back seat for a week, but we'll be back into it next week.

Thanks to everyone who remembered to bring food for the Pantry. We totally forgot. Let's have a nice amount next week as well.

Penny, don't know if you are well enough to be at your computer and see this, but we miss you in class. Get better soon and come back to us.