Not much with me lately, I spent last Saturday writing and most of this week nursing a cold. Last night, I made some lentil soup that is simply fantastic. I am an unabashed canivore, but this was great. The whole house smelled good for hours.
Yes, our son is still quite adorable.
Things are getting better, though I have trouble sleeping. The C-PAP machine I use for my sleep apnea is great when you are not congested. When you are congested, well, the pressure gets intense, the lungs feel weird, lotsa coughing, in other words, a sinus headache with pnuemonia. Ugh.
By the way, did I happen to mention that our son is adorable?
Anyway, I wrote quite a bit, but most of it is spread across six or seven themes. Sometimes I publish unfinished stuff as ‘Semithoughts’, but I want to finish these, thus no posting. One is a study of the history of the Worldwide Church of God. The other involves the use of logic in order to be clear-minded. I’ve enjoyed studying the Gospel of John again, especially as this was prompted by the need for different material for the children’s ministry. There’s also a lot of stuff for Sycarion, but that will appear on that site.
As far as the children’s ministry the present unit was Revelation. Not a book for eight year olds, but the first two lessons were pretty accessible. Unfortunately, the kids got really bored and one parent got concerned. All her child learned was that Revelation was scary. So I went to skip ahead, but the lessons were for a NT review - okay except for the fact that the kids I have just matriculated into the third and fourth grade class. Nothing to review, really, except Revelation. So I skipped ahead to the last unit and that was unusable as well. The unit is entitled God’s Modern Movement.
I didn’t flip out, I promise. I talked to two deacons about how to handle it and we had some good ideas. It could be the history of the church I attend, it could be the history of the Restoration Movement, or it could be about unity. I wanted to do a RM unit, but I thought about crafts about Alexander Campbell and it felt just as weird as having a pre-class activity about the Gempel’s living room. My wife had a great idea for unity - the craft involved using three sticks to illustrate that a cord of three strands is not easily broken. Paint one stick bright pink and talk about what it means to think you’re better than someone else because you’re different.
I love my wife.
In any case, it just seemed easier to go through John. The concerned parent I mentioned earlier thought that was a great idea. She was concerned that the curriculum gets away from the stories of Jesus sometimes. (We agreed that adults do this a lot, too.) Whaddya know, happy kids and parents.
I decided not to write on YADA - yet another discipleship article - after a while it just becomes to tiresome. The ICC mindset still only allows for three solutions to problem: baptize more people, disciple people more effectively, extoll the virtues of leadership.
Rick Warren has said that most of the great changes in the Bible took place over 40 days. For us in the ICC subculture, it seems that we cycle every 40 days. Every 40 days, a theme seems to repeat itself. I wonder if any of us could go without studying discipleship, leadership, or evangelism for more than a month without feeling guilty about it. That’s why it’s no suprise to me that it appears as a sermon or article topic all over at least once a month.
Anyway, outside of some things coming together, the only other thing I can think of mentioning, besides the excessive adorability of our son, is that Monopoly has decided to stop using paper money. They have opted for a Visa(R) debit card, instead. Yes, it says Visa(R), not something that rhymes with Visa. Don’t worry, though, purists can simply print their own money if they want.
I’ll link to it when it appears, but my wife wrote a great poem about our son. It’s great.
Comments
4 Responses to “Good Eats and Other Things”
Recent Comments
- toeteaknow: well, since it was a post, the answer I guess is ‘yes’ and not ‘maybe’….. …maybe not? ttk
- pinakidion: what rock said
- Rock: “Is Pinakidion ever going to post again?”
- salguod: Is that an answer to a question that I missed?
- xray342: How’s this for cryptic? $ echo ‘pinakidion’ | md5 16da6556b9ba8a411a6f4251591eae2b
Yeah, some of taht curriculum stuff is a little wierd. I always told the teachers to follow their hearts and consciences before the curriculum and to feel free to modify it or scrap it.
I thought that article by Steve Staten was good until the practicals. He talked about our discipleship being formed by relationships, prayer, Bible study and the Holy Spirit, but the practicals were all discipling.
More often forty years than forty days I think. See Acts 7:30
(Moses), Num 14:33-34
, Jud 3:11
, Jud 5:31
, Jud 8:28
, Jud 13:1, 1
Sam 4:18, 1
Sam 13:1, 2
Sam 5:4, 1
King 11:42, Eze 29:11-12
(see also Dan 9:2
). Those examples include the 40 years after the exodus; multiple cycles from good judges/kings to bad judges/kings and back again; even Moses’ time of preparation prior to confronting Pharaoh.
The Babylonian captivity lasted seventy years. Jer 25:1-11
.
OTOH, Nebuchadnezzar only had to spend seven “times” (years) in the wilderness to learn his lesson (Dan 4:32
).
We’re not nearly as patient as God. For that matter, we’re not as patient as Moses, David, Daniel, etc.
One thing that seems evident from the examples cited: Sometimes change only comes (either good or bad change) when there is a change of leadership. Other times, the change only came when leadership learned the lessons God wanted to teach them. The people just had to wait. Remember, the Israelites had to wait as slaves in Egypt during the forty years while God prepared Moses to lead them out.
I don’t think God is less patient, or less thorough, than he was back then. So we may have to wait a lot longer than 40 days for some things!
Man that curriculum is a tad scary. Isn’t it somewhat alarming that the authors are so out of touch with how the laymen feel? Maybe they were written a long time ago?
Great thoughts. I appreciate how you write and relate.
BEG - I think he’s talking about the ICOC Kingdom Kids curriculum. Paul F. worked on illustrations for it back in San Diego I think. That ought to tell you how old it is. 8-10 years, I think.