Sunday, July 19, 2009

Update, Verse, and Quote of the Day

Not a whole lot has changed around here. I'm still looking for a job and have applied for customer service positions at a couple of companies in Deerfield. I've been reading various stuff and watching too much t.v. and the occasional movie. My small group is on a hiatus but we've been having a good time with the youth at 3-D on Wednesdays. The weather has been pleasantly cool and dry but not very sunny.

Verse of the Day:
"But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing." James 1:22-25 (ESV)
--I was struck by this when discussing it with the youth a couple of weeks ago. Someone who looks in a mirror and immediately forgets what he looks like is no better than a person who didn't look in the mirror at all. The action is of no benefit to him. Likewise, someone who reads scripture but does not put it into practice is not benefited by the act of reading. Scripture is good for many things, but is worthless for reading divorced from obedience.

Quote of the Day:
"There is an unbridgeable chasm between the book that tradition has declared a classic and the book (the same book) that we have made ours through instinct, emotion and understanding: suffered through it, rejoiced in it, translated it into our experience and (notwithstanding the layers of readings with which a book comes into our hands) essentially become its first discoverers, an experience as astonishing and unexpected as finding Friday's footprint on the sand.... To be the first to enter Circe's cave, the first to hear Ulysses call himself Nobody, is every reader's secret wish, granted over and over, generation after generation, to those who open the Odyssey for the first time. This modest jus primae noctis, or 'first night rights' assures for the books we call classics their only useful immortality." Alberto Manguel The Library at Night pp. 218-219

2 comments:

ann said...

One of my Sunday School teachers said she explained it to her boys like this. If you look in the mirror and see that you have chocolate chip cookie all over your face, but then don't wipe off the cookies, what's the point in looking in the mirror?

Burly said...

Two new positions like the one I'm in have opened up in Cleveland (the city you've always dreamed of moving to): http://jobview.usajobs.gov/getjob.aspx?JobID=82946103&lid=18206&sort=rv%2c-dtex&vw=d&paygrademin=9&paygrademax=11&re=134&FedEmp=N&FedPub=Y&caller=advanced.aspx&AVSDM=2009-08-21+00%3a03%3a00&rc=2&TabNum=3 ... takes awhile to apply online. It's a 4-year term position (but often permanent positions come up to which you may apply) and you need a Master's degree to apply. Starting pay is 48K.