Patty has just come home from the hospital, where her mammogram showed nothing untoward, nothing to be afraid of. So my blood pressure can start coming back down.
Thank you, Lord Jesus, and thanks to all of you out there who prayed for us.
It’s a dangerous world, and we all need God’s protection. It never hurts to ask Him for it.
Here’s a new cultural wrinkle. What do you think of it?
“Rage rooms.” A second one recently opened in New Jersey. It’s called “Break Stuff NJ,” because you go in there and break stuff (http://newjersey.news12.com/story/41226471/looking-to-let-off-some-steam-rage-room-venue-opens-in-new-jersey). You put on “protective gear” and smash plates and TV sets.
Anyone can fly into a rage. But to get in your car and drive out to “Break Stuff,” and suit up, and be given a hammer or a baseball bat, and only then let your rage run free–well, wouldn’t you have cooled down by then? If you’re normal, that is. Or maybe you’d find it fun to break stuff and not get in trouble for it.
I mean, wouldn’t a “Dagnabit!” or two suffice, and maybe slap the door frame hard enough to sting your palm? Or you could, uh, control yourself. I remember the time my father was using a power drill and he slipped and drove it right through the top of his foot and out the bottom. I heard him say “Oh, darn” just before I fainted. Well, okay, I didn’t really faint, but I wasn’t good for much, for a while.
I don’t know. Democrats have kept up their anti-Trump tantrum every day for three years now, and show no signs of cooling off. But I would hate to think they provide any kind of standard for behavior. They don’t need a rage room; they have a House of Representatives.
Is self-control getting engineered out of our culture?
I wonder.
Well, here we are again, first day of another year. We’ve got rack of lamb for dinner; and, as is our custom, we’ll watch The Time Machine this afternoon, the 1960 movie starring Rod Taylor and Yvette Mimieux.
Don’t get me wrong: the theology of this movie is totally off-base. A 19th-century inventor creates a time machine and travels some 800,000 years into the future. There he finds the human race split into two separate but unequal offshoots. The hideous Morlocks provide the childlike Eloi with everything they need–can you say “Universal Basic Income”?–and then… eat them. Both races have been debased by the evil system they’ve devised. Sound familiar?
The thing that makes this movie work is the fantastic sets, and special effects, by George Pal, altogether believable. You have to take the story with a boxcar-load of grains of salt, but the sets are awesome. I used to dream of finding Morlock-holes in Edgar woods. I’m rather glad I didn’t.
Anyway, this is one of those movies that totally succeeds in providing 90 minutes’ worth of pure escape.
Just don’t take it seriously. The only thing serious about it is its errors. But we’re hip to those, so we enjoy it.
This is Erlene’s hymn request that I was too tired to post last night–It’s Christmas Time All Over the World, by Carroll Roberson. Sorry, but after supper, I just folded. So here it is today.
Yes, we’re back–in one piece. There were only a few kamikazes on the Parkway today, and they weren’t able to get us. We had a nice time and a nice dinner with my brother and sister, and now we’re home: we thank the Lord for that.
And to all of you who showed up here today, while we were out, thank you very much, and Merry Christmas!
If all goes well with this post–and it hasn’t so far: not by a long shot!–you’ll be reading it as Patty and I zip down the Garden State Parkway for Christmas dinner at my sister’s house.
https://wordpress.com/post/leeduigon.com/35554
We’ll probably be back before dark, because I don’t like to drive on the Parkway at night and the local traffic’s even worse–all the nimrods cruising around with their high-beams on, trying to blind you.
I hope some of you are able to visit here today, and enjoy a carol or two.
The carol which I am attempting to post above is Charles Wesley’s Light of the World, sung by Maddy Prior and the Carnival Band. It’s one of my favorite hymns, and I’m bumbling around with it today. Let’s just see if I can get it posted, shall we?
That’s that, no more nooze today! A lot of wicked people are out there trying to stop Christmas, or at least taint it with their wickedness–but it’s here anyway: Christmas, 2019. There are stories I could report today, but they’ll just have to wait. Maybe they’ll go away–?
I’ve got to decorate our tree. We specialize in old ornaments handed down for generations. Our tree lights are older than I am, and they still work–inventory from Grandpa’s store that he had in the 1930s.
And I want my cigar, and my iced tea. I was so busy yesterday, I forgot to have my tea. Fap to that! Today I’m going to have my tea and revel in it.
And a lot of Christmas music, too. We can rejoice is the knowledge that we can’t run out of Christmas music.
Christ the Savior is born!
Once again, they couldn’t stop Him.
Whenever I went to see my aunts at Christmastime, I’d find them watching this man on TV–Andre Reiu, with his orchestra, with Christmas carols. Here, Silent Night.
I do find it hard to separate the music from my memories of loved ones who loved this music. But every good thing we have ever known is the gift of God, and Christmas is a good time to remember that.
Well, gee, I hope you all are loving it, ’cause I sure am!
Maybe it’s posting all the Christmas hymns and carols that makes it come alive for me. Maybe it’s all the Christmases I’ve known, renewing their acquaintance.
So are you loving this Christmas of 2019?
True: I miss the people whom I used to share it with. On around the age of 50, you start losing people. When you’re 20 it never occurs to you. But love ’em now, because you won’t have them forever. Not until we all get to Heaven.
But even that sense of loss is a reminder of that glorious restitution that the Lord Our God has promised us. The first down payment on that promise was the birth of God’s own Son, Jesus Christ Our Lord. We who believe in Him shall not die, but have everlasting life: it was for “the selfsame thing” that God created us in the first place (2 Corinthians 5:5).
So God has said.
OK, let’s get some of these hymns played. Requested by Heidi, a chorus from a Bach cantata, Wachet auf, ruft uns die stimme (“Wake, rise, the voices call us”).
This reminds me of a day when some of our family from the Old Country came to America to visit Grandpa. Everyone was sitting outside on the porch, conversing in German, when suddenly my cousin, Christopher, just a little boy at the time, started to cry.
“Why, what’s the matter?”
And he explained: “Everybody’s talkin’ Germany but me!”
One of my earliest memories: sitting on my Uncle Bernie’s lap while he reads to me out of a Christmas book; and this is playing in the background–It Came Upon a Midnight Clear. That’s a very nice thing to remember.
Requested by TheWhiteRabbit. Sung by the Mennonite Hour Singers. Background sets by God the Father.
