Yesterday I decided to have a couple of fried eggs on an English muffin for breakfast. I got the eggs out of the fridge around half-an-hour before I was going to cook them. They sat on the kitchen sink for that time and when I went back to them to cook them, here was the condensation pattern:
A good egg with a smile, but looking a touch nervous over its fate.
This the third and final post in a short series looking at some interesting verses from the first thirteen chapters of the prophet Jeremiah. The first part considered aspects of chapters one through six whilst the second part covered chapters seven through twelve. This final part takes a look at chapter thirteen and focuses on one fairly extensive word picture that is painted or drawn in the first eleven verses. The extensive quote is from the New American Standard Bible.
Twelve months ago to the day I posted about the steps I’d undertaken to install the Debian linux distro and set up Openbox as the Window Manager.
Twelve months on and I’m ready to post about install Fedora and running Xfce as the Desktop Environment.
The primary reasons for Fedora are: It is an independent distro, it has a sizeable community, and packages are updated within a reasonable timeframe. And the primary reasons for the Xfce Desktop Environment are: Small footprint so it’s fast to load, has a ‘desktop’ where I can store files and display Conky monitors, and autostart programs and keyboard shortcuts are easy to configure.
Around a month ago I posted some thoughts from the first six chapters of Jeremiah.
I’ve now finished reading the first thirteen chapters (out of fifty-two) and have moved on to another book1 for the time being.
Like that previous post I’m intending to quote from the New American Standard Bible.
For I did not speak to your fathers, or command them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. But this is what I commanded them, saying, ‘Obey My voice, and I will be your God, and you will be My people; and you will walk in all the way which I command you, that it may be well with you.’ Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but walked in their own counsels and in the stubbornness of their evil heart, and went backward and not forward. (Jeremiah 7:22-24)
At the end of next month it appears that I will be retrenched from my current position. I say “it appears” because the date is not firmly fixed and there are plenty of things that I do (and those in the same roles in other parts of the state who are also being retrenched) that no one else knows how to do, or even knows that someone currently does.
It’s a little surreal, somewhat disappointing, not unexpected, and not entirely unwelcome!
Back in mid-2017 I wrote about the different Linux distributions I’ve used over the years. At that time I was using Ubuntu 16.04 running the Gnome desktop.
Not long after that I switched over to Fedora running release 25 - also with the Gnome desktop. I can’t recall why I switched because it’s a bit like swapping one SUV for another (they all look the same to me). Perhaps I thought Fedora was a more ‘pure’ form of Linux than that provided by Ubuntu? Speculation. At this time I also loaded Fedora 25 running the Xfce desktop onto a small 32 bit Mini computer I had.
Earlier this year I began reading in the book of the prophet Jeremiah as a part of my not-quite-daily “quiet time”/“devotional time”/“time with the Lord” 1.
I’ve read through Jeremiah several times in the past but not spending time to pause and ponder 2. These days I would read something like 10 or 15 verses - maybe a third to half a chapter at a time and make some notes as I go. Sometimes these notes are observations or questions on the text. Sometimes they are prayers that form in my mind as I read and ponder. Sometimes I ask the Lord a question directly and make a note of the impressions (answers) that come to me as a result.
I was looking through some notes I’d made a month-or-two ago whilst reading the book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Peter Scazzuro. In it he advocates that believers participate in the Daily Office which are set times of stillness, Bible reading and prayer each day. He suggests the components and indeed the times and frequency can vary and be flexible, but there is value in setting aside multiple parts of the day for spiritual input and reflection.
Lectio divina (‘divine reading’) is a Bible reading method that is more than a Bible reading method.
It has its origins in 6th century catholicism, but before you switch off, bear in mind that most historical Christian spiritual practices have their antecedents either in biblical times, the early church or catholicism since there were few alternatives until the reformation in the 16th century.
It was first practiced by Benedict of Nursia in the 6th century and further developed bu Guigo II, a Carthusian monk in the 12th century.
There is a saying amongst theology/seminary students that a little Greek is a dangerous thing. I’m not Greek so I can’t really comment. Oh, wait. Greek language, not Greek origin.
The meaning behind the phrase is that it can be unhelpful for untrained or unqualified people to attempt to read and/or understand and/or translate and/or interpret the Koine Greek that much of the New Testament is written in. I presume this points to the potential dangers of misunderstanding, misinterpreting and misapplying the text.