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mariacallous · 2 years

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We were told that abortion would not be a major issue in the midterm elections. Over the past weeks, pundits and political strategists alike suggested that the outrage over the Dobbs decision had been momentary, capricious; that by election day, women would forget. They insisted that the surge in new voter registrations among women was a fluke, or irrelevant.

Ahead of the election, it became conventional wisdom among a kind of self-serious, mostly male political commentator to insist that not only were the Democrats doomed, they had doomed themselves, specifically, by talking about abortion too much. The party had dragged itself down with a social issue that was ultimately not very important, we were told. The Democrats were going to lose, and it was going to be because they had spent too much time catering to the flighty and unserious demands of feminists.

Instead, abortion rights proved a hugely motivating force for voters in Tuesday’s midterms. A still-potent anger at the Dobbs decision drove women and young people to the polls, propelled the most vocally pro-choice Democratic candidates to victory, delivered decisive wins for abortion-rights advocates in every state referendum on the issue, and helped to dramatically improve the Democrats’ performance in what was supposed to be a “bloodbath” election favoring Republicans.

We now head into 2023 with Democrats holding onto a chance to keep the Senate; if they lose the House, they will only lose it by a handful of seats. There was no bloodbath; there was barely a paper cut. Abortion rights, and the women voters who wanted to defend them, are a big part of why.

None of this was what was supposed to happen. To hear the Republicans tell it, they didn’t think that the Dobbs decision would cost them at all in this year’s midterms. As recently as last week, party strategists and rightwing pundits were projecting wild confidence, assuring writers like the New Yorker’s Benjamin Wallace-Wells that the post-Dobbs moment of anger and energy that animated Democratic voters had passed – and that it had not dimmed Republican prospects.

“In the end, Republicans didn’t find a way through the political fact that many of the voters they wanted to win were against them on abortion so much as wait it out,” Wallace-Wells wrote last Friday, channeling the shrugging attitude toward the abortion issue that had been conveyed to him by Republican insiders. “They simply absorbed the political hit and moved on.”

Even the polling, which throughout the summer and early fall suggested that abortion remained a motivating issue for voters, was explained away, dismissed as a mere “blue mirage”. One Republican strategist hypothesized that Democrats, consumed with emotionalism, were answering their telephones more often, in the hope of being polled. “Answering a political poll itself became a kind of expression of political identity.”

Others, like the Washington Examiner’s David Keene, claimed that the large numbers of women voters claiming that abortion would affect their vote were in fact women who were anti-abortion, who would enthusiastically vote to support abortion bans. In retrospect, of course, this seems like risible wishful thinking by Republicans, the kind of thing one can only believe if you live in a deep Republican partisan bubble, and don’t often talk to women. Or maybe it was the kind of bluster that’s meant to intimidate political opponents into thinking that the Republicans were more confident ahead of Tuesday’s elections than they really were.

But if Republicans were just bluffing when they said that they didn’t think abortion rights would impact the midterms, many prominent Democrats seem to have believed them. In the weeks ahead of the vote, a series of highly visible party insiders and off-the record insider sources were preemptively blaming the Democrats’ anticipated loss on their supposed overfocus on abortion.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders wrote a column entitled “Democrats shouldn’t focus only on abortion in the midterms. That’s a mistake”. Sanders’ piece denounced the party’s supposed overfocus on abortion as both politically unwise and morally treacherous. “While the abortion issue must remain on the front burner, it would be political malpractice for Democrats to ignore the state of the economy.”

This sentiment was not confined to Sanders and his ilk on the left. On the other side of the party’s political spectrum, the centrist Democratic strategist and PR executive Hilary Rosen appeared on television to lambast the party for paying too much attention to so-called social issues. “I think we’re going to have a bad night,” Rosen said on CNN. “When voters tell you over and over and over again that they care mostly about the economy, listen to them.”

In predicting a so-called “red tsunami,” in late October Josh Kraushaar, of Axios, appealed to the data. “Biden delivered a speech Tuesday pledging to codify Roe as his first act if Democrats elect more senators and keep the House,” he wrote. “But there’s worry in Democratic circles that abortion-centric messaging is keeping candidates from talking about the economy. A new Monmouth poll found 63% of respondents wish Biden would give more attention to ‘issues that are important to your family’ – including 36% of Democrats.”

It seems almost insultingly remedial to have to explain why this framing – the notion that somehow the midterms could either be about the economy or they could be about abortion – is so wrongheaded. Because, of course, abortion access is central to the economic prospects of working people. But to acknowledge this, you have to acknowledge something that still seems incomprehensible and out of reach for many of our most esteemed shapers of political opinion: that when we think and speak of economic and political subjects, we are speaking of women.

It is women whose prospects shape the economy, women who are workers and consumers; it is women who dream to advance economically, to retire or finish school or buy a house; it is women whose economic prospects, along with their health, dignity and freedom, have been curtailed by Dobbs.

The stigma surrounding abortion helps to marginalize the issue in the American political imagination; the silence surrounding it conceals just how common abortion is, and how central abortion access is to women’s lives. One in four American women will have an abortion by age 45; many, many more of them know what it is to fear the upheaval of an unplanned pregnancy, to pee on a stick in the loneliness of a bathroom stall as your dreams hang in the balance.

To say that this experience of hope, aspiration, anticipation, fear is somehow not as serious as the dreams and aspirations of men – to say that it is somehow not an “issue that is important to your family” – is at best to misunderstand the problem and at worst to suggest that women’s lives are not of political concern at all. If the midterm results are any indication, American women voters disagree.

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creativecourse · 10 months

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writerofblocks · 3 years

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tagged by @honeysides to post my character’s MBTI types lets go

tagging @gatmora, @the-wizard-ell, @chyrstis, @vicekings

Bridget Summers: ENFP-A (The Campaigner)

Campaigners (ENFPs) are true free spirits – outgoing, openhearted, and open-minded. With their lively, upbeat approach to life, they stand out in any crowd. But even though they can be the life of the party, Campaigners don’t just care about having a good time. These personality types run deep – as does their longing for meaningful, emotional connections with other people.

Lucia Lieberman: INFJ-T (The Advocate)

Advocates are the rarest personality types of all. Still, Advocates leave their mark on the world. They have a deep sense of idealism and integrity, but they aren’t idle dreamers – they take concrete steps to realize their goals and make a lasting impact.

Advocates’ unique combination of personality traits makes them complex and quite versatile. For example, Advocates can speak with great passion and conviction, especially when standing up for their ideals. At other times, however, they may choose to be soft-spoken and understated, preferring to keep the peace rather than challenge others.

Ahkasa Sohloni INTJ-A (The Architect)

These personalities can be both the boldest of dreamers and the bitterest of pessimists. Architects believe that, through willpower and intelligence, they can achieve even the most challenging of goals. But they may be cynical about human nature more generally, assuming that most people are lazy, unimaginative, or simply doomed to mediocrity.

Architects derive much of their self-esteem from their knowledge and mental acuity. In school, people with this personality type may have been called “bookworms” or “nerds.” But rather than taking these labels as insults, many Architects embrace them. They are confident in their ability to teach themselves about – and master – any topic that interests them, whether that’s coding or capoeira or classical music.

Architects can be single-minded, with little patience for frivolity, distractions, or idle gossip. That said, it would be a mistake to stereotype these personalities as dull or humorless. Many Architects are known for their irreverent wit, and beneath their serious exteriors, they often have a sharp, delightfully sarcastic sense of humor.

Benjamin Anderson: INTJ-T (The Architect)

Architects question everything. Many personality types trust the status quo, relying on conventional wisdom and other people’s expertise as they go about their lives. But ever-skeptical Architects prefer to make their own discoveries. In their quest to find better ways of doing things, they aren’t afraid to break the rules or risk disapproval – in fact, they rather enjoy it.

But as anyone with this personality type would tell you, a new idea isn’t worth anything unless it actually works. Architects want to be successful, not just inventive. They bring a single-minded drive to their passion projects, applying the full force of their insight, logic, and willpower. And heaven help anyone who tries to slow them down by enforcing pointless rules or offering poorly thought-out criticism.

#some interesting results #oc: bridget summers #oc: lucia Lieberman #oc: Ahkasa sohloni #oc: benjamin anderson

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futurebodies · 3 years

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Afrofuturism Reading List (starting point)

Patternmaster by Octavia E. Butler: The first of Octavia Butler’s Patternist series to be published, Patternmaster places readers to a distant future where the world is ruled by oppressive telepaths. The result of generations of selective breeding, the clairvoyant tyrants use their power to enslave those who lack psychic abilities. Throughout the pages of Butler’s narrative, the telepaths simultaneously make the lives of “mutes” and “clayarks” (those who lack telepathy) difficult and cause dissension amongst the Housemasters, the government officials who rule the world with greedy hearts and iron fists. A tale of political and familial division, human cruelty, and resilience, Patternmaster is a haunting critique of capitalism, colonization, and exploitation. (link to purchase: https://bookshop.org/books/patternmaster/9781538751466)

This Planet is Doomed: The Science Fiction Poetry of Sun Ra by Sun Ra: The poetry of Afrofuturist and jazz legend Sun Ra is undeniably cosmic. Comprised of galactic visions and futuristic musings, the luminescence of each stanza is infused with stardust and an ancient wisdom that examines the complexity of the cosmos and humanity. Much like his musical compositions, Sun Ra’s poems thread together mythology, mysticism, and sci-fi, offering his audience a unique glimpse into the mind of a visionary. This Planet is Doomed volleys between retrospection, humor, and joy. The prophetic urgency of his work transcends time. The worlds that his poems conjure will leave you in awe.(link to purchase: https://www.abebooks.com/Planet-Doomed-Ra-Sun-Kicks-Books/30856847716/bd?cm_mmc=ggl-_-US_Shopp_Trade-_-product_id=COM9780965977715USED-_-keyword=&gclid=Cj0KCQjwna2FBhDPARIsACAEc_X0OSj9D4DQwMnk169bLJI45HG4Y5k_Z2OzMBAAvqELjWOvy1e5mHIaAlcCEALw_wcB)

Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction by Andre M. Carrington: André M. Carrington’s Speculative Blackness surveys the way race is depicted in fantasy, sci-fi, and dystopian narratives and how fictive imaginings of Black identity impact contemporary culture and communities. Throughout this inarguably timely book, Carrington grapples with what these genres mean to Black Americans and their ability to shape the future in an empowering way. Whether analyzing the way race is handled in Marvel comics or the implications of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s Benjamin Sisko, Speculative Blackness is an accessible and academic meditation on the limitless potential of Black storytelling.(link to purchase: https://bookshop.org/books/speculative-blackness-the-future-of-race-in-science-fiction-9780816678969/9780816678969)

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon: In this debut, Solomon takes the classic “generation ship” trope in a new direction, and does it with skill and verve. Aster, the primary narrator, is a self-taught healer onboard the enormous spaceship Matilda, which has been traveling in search of a new home planet for many generations. Instead of creating a new society and culture, humanity has fallen back on its worst history. The upper decks are landscaped, lush, beautiful, and populated entirely by white people, while the lower decks are populated by the darker-skinned inhabitants of the ship: enslaved, rationed, and patrolled and abused by armed guards. Ruthless violence keeps them working for the upper-deckers, and a religious dictatorship enforces class and race order across levels. Aster, a lower-decker, doesn’t have any plans to be a revolutionary. But when her friend Giselle points out a coded message in Aster’s dead mother’s diaries, everything begins to shift. (link to purchase: https://sistahscifi.com/collections/litbooks/products/unkindness-of-ghosts-book-by-rivers-solomon)

Some Black-Owned Bookstores to support (all of the links above are black-owned with the exception of abebooks):

https://sistahscifi.com/

https://www.missreadbooks.org/

https://aalbc.com/

http://www.thelitbar.com/

#afrofuturism #texts

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misterfantastic · 4 years

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Exactly six months into my journey of reading comics my favorite characters are:

Reed Richards

Doctor Doom

Emma Frost

Benjamin Grimm

Tony Stark

Kristoff Vernard

HERBIE

Bobby Drake

Pete Wisdom

Bucky Barnes

Johnny Storm

#i dont take criticism #i do take comic recs #ngl this list is heavily influenced by ppl i rp with #ooc

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a-darla-ble · 5 years

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Music, Maestro!

You, Darla fans, remember that one publication I made about the non-orchestral songs for the film Shazam!, right? Well, here are now the full orchestral songs of that same film, conducted by Londoner Benjamin Wallfisch. But first, here is his bio:

Born August 7, 1979 as Benjamin Mark Lasker Wallfisch, the son of Elizabeth Wallfisch (née Hunt), an Australian Baroque violinist, and Raphael Wallfisch, a British cellist. He is the eldest of their three children. His paternal grandparents are pianist Peter Wallfisch and cellist Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, who was a member of the Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz. They were Jewish emigrants from Breslau, Poland.

He has composed and contributed to music for over 60 feature films since the mid-2000s. Asides Shazam!, his compositions include original scores for A Cure For Wellness, Hidden Figures, Lights Out, Desert Dancer, It (2017 version) and Blade Runner 2049. In 2017, he was jointly nominated with Pharrell Williams and Hans Zimmer for Best Original Score at the 74th Golden Globe Awards for his work on Hidden Figures, and a BAFTA Award and Grammy Award for Blade Runner 2049.

In 2014, Wallfisch was appointed an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music, London. He is also a member of Remote Control Productions, a company by Hans Zimmer.

Wallfisch resides in Los Angeles, California with his wife Missy and daughter Lola.

Here is the YouTube link to the soundtrack available to hear: https://www.youtube.com/playlist…

Music 1 - The Shazam! theme is played during the end credits, right after the mid-credits scene.

Music 2 - In a flashback scene from 1974, young Thaddeus Sivana (Ethan Pugiotto), while riding with his father and older brother in Upstate New York on Christmas Eve to his grand-parents' mansion, got suddenly transported, alone, to a place called the Rock of Eternity where he would meet this mysterious wizard as this latter was looking for a pure-hearted champion to replace him. However, after being tempted by the Seven Deadly Sins, trapped in statues, to take the Eye of Sin for power, the wizard reconsidered and sends him back to 1974. This piece was heard during that scene.

Music 3 - This score was played while the Shazam! Wizard, growing weaker, uses his seeking spell to continue looking for a champion, no matter how long it takes. It would finally pay-off in the year 2019 in Philadelphia - to a street boy named Billy Batson.

Music 4 - Billy Batson, age 14, kept on searching for his long lost mother since a decade ago from place to place, until he found one hoping this would be it, This piece was heard while he reminisced about how he lost his mother at a carnival. We see little Billy, age 4 (David Kohlsmith), with his mother (Caroline Palmer) as she was trying to pop the balloons with darts to win a prize for her son.

Music 5 - The once young Thaddeus Sivana has eventually grown up and becomes Dr. Sivana, who had never forgotten his encountering in 1974 and vowed to return to the Rock of Eternity and gain power from the Eye of Sin. While we hear this score, Sivana figured out, through interviewed witnesses from around the world, that there were seven symbols needed being written seven times. A skeptical Dr. Lynn Crosby (Lotta Losten) didn't believe it until the door in Sivana's office activated the passage to the cave - and in the process reducing Dr. Crosby to dust, but her glasses.

Music 6 - Returning at last to the Rock of Eternity after all these years, Dr. Sivana confronts the Shazam! Wizard (Djimon Hounsou) to take the Eye and gain power, which he finally did and got the best over the wizard while this score is playing along.

Music 7 - Billy Batson (Asher Angel) is being chased by the Breyer twins (Carson MacCormac & Evan Marsh), in the background, from Fawcett Central School to the nearest subway station after rescuing his foster brother Freddy from their bullying. This incident was perhaps fate as the following event will occur, changing his life forever. This music was played throughout.

Music 8 - While this music is played, Billy meets the wizard choosing him as the new champion. By saying the magic word and touching his staff, the wizard can at last transfer his powers to the new champion, Shazam!, giving him: - The Wisdom of Solomon - The Strength of Hercules - The Stamina of Atlas - The Power of Zeus - The Courage of Achilles - And the Speed of Mercury The wizard then vanishes into dust, leaving Billy with his new adult body and super-strength.

Music 9 - Knowing that his new brother, superhero fanboy Freddy (Jack Dylan Grazer), might help him with his new identity, Shazam! (Zachary Levi) lets him in on his secret. Together, they found that he was indeed "stacked" with super-powers.

Music 10 - Revenge can be sweet, whether for good or bad, as we see Dr. Sivana, after killing his brother Sid along with the other members of a board meeting at Sivana Industries, confronting his father (John Glover) to make him see that he gained power, with the help of his allies, the Seven Deadly Sins - and killing him as well afterwards.

Music 11 - While showing off his new lightning powers to the people outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Shazam! accidentally struck a bus's front tire, driving it to the edge. After his awkward attempt to use an old mattress in hoping it would soften the fall, our new hero had to catch the enormous vehicle - with a satisfying result, saving everyone inside it.

Music 12 - Dr. Sivana finally meets this new champion and demands him to hand his powers over to him immediately. This battle with a super-villain was Billy's ultimate test. Sivana however got the best of him, as our new hero couldn't fly yet, by grabbing him and bringing him up high in the atmosphere and lets him go to a dooming fall.

Music 13 - After his dooming fall, Billy halted to a close shave as he could finally fly and had to deal with this new foe in black in a new definition of street-brawling, all under the watchful eye of Freddy.

Music 14 - The brawl between Shazam! and Dr. Sivana went on as they ended up in the mall and in a toy store. After being slammed by Sivana through the store window, Shazam! had to get away from him by flying inside the mall before being struck by Sivana. Having no choice, Shazam! transformed back to Billy in order to blend in with the panicking crowd.

Music 15 - Seeing that Freddy was looking for Billy, and realizing the latter would supposedly be the new hero according to the bus rescue news report on the TVs at the mall, Sivana forced the crippled fanboy to tell him where he lives, which would put the other kids in danger as well.

Music 16 - At long last! Billy, thanks to Eugene's search online, has finally found his long-lost mother, Marilyn, who has moved on and remarried while his real father, C.C., was in prison in Florida for ten years. Billy found out that she has abandoned him on purpose because she couldn't afford to keep him since she was too young. Billy then tells her that he too had to move on to his new family.

Music 17 - After his reunion with his real mother, Billy received a call from Freddy's phone by Dr. Sivana, letting him know that he holds his foster siblings hostage and demands that he comes home immediately.

Music 18 - Forcing to return home to save the others, Billy was ordered by Dr. Sivana to relinquish his powers to him after their arrival to the Rock of Eternity and will let them go, or else they will die. In tears, Darla (Faithe Herman) pleaded Billy not to go and stay with them, but Billy tells our bespectacled beauty that that's what good big brothers would do.

Music 19 - Following Billy and Dr. Sivana to the Rock of Eternity, Darla, Eugene (Ian Chen), Freddy, Pedro (Jovan Armand) and Mary (Grace Fulton) found whatever they salvaged from home and decided to take head on against Sivana and his "big fat ugly-eyed head, " as Darla would put it bravely, until he lets Billy go.

Music 20 - Here, we see Mary being such a great big sister watching over Darla as they watched Dr. Sivana blasting out through the roof of The Booty Trap strip club. The kids have no time to waste and ran to the nearby carnival in hoping to lose themselves inside the crowd. Protect our little Darla, Mary. We love her so much.

Music 21 - In a divide and conquer method, Mary would hope that Sivana would not be able to follow all of them. However, the dangerous doctor sends his Seven Deadly Sins after them, and succeeded.

Music 22 - Billy managed to escape from the clutches of Dr. Sivana, but the latter has the others hostage, yet again, inside the big tent. When he threatened of having Darla killed by Greed (YOU MONSTER!!!), Billy had no choice but to give in.

Music 23 - While Billy had to relinquish his super-powers to Dr. Sivana, he remembered what the wizard told him about sharing his power with the others by simply touching the staff. Not giving up yet, he managed to defeat Sivana and taking the staff away from him, with enough time to share his powers with his new family, becoming superheroes themselves.

Music 24 - It is done - the kids, thanks to Billy, have now become superheroes with their own unique abilities, including Freddy who can now fly as Super Hero Freddy (Adam Brody, in blue) with full joy.

Music 25 - While our new family of superheroes fight against the Seven Deadly Sins, Shazam! and Dr. Sivana face-off for what may be a final showdown in the Philadelphia skyline.

Music 26 - Shazam and the rest of the Shazamily finally won against Sivana and saved the city from destruction. And at the same time, they gained fandom from the cheers and applause of Philadelphians, resembling very much of a big stage play.

Music 27 - Returning back to the Rock of Eternity and placing the Eye of Sin back to its rightful place, thus imprisoning the Seven Deadly Sins back in statues, they realize along the way that they have something else - a lair. They have their own lair - something Billy and Freddy were looking for during the film, even by asking a real estate agent about one.

Music 28 - The following Christmas morning, the whole family gathered for breakfast and Billy told them that he finally found a new family - them - and how much he is very grateful for that.

Music 29 - In a mid-credits scene, when we hear this musical score, an imprisoned Thaddeus Sivana, still looking for a magic formula by writing on the walls, is approached by this talking caterpillar, going by the name Mr. Mind, who proposes an alliance between the two and there are alternate ways in discovering magic.

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sapphirescalemate · 5 years

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music tag!

you can tell a lot about a person by the type of music they listen to. put your music on shuffle and list the first 10 songs, then tag 10 people. no skipping! (tagged by @pbrty2 )

1: Gravity’s Union - Coheed & Cambria

2: The Doomed - A Perfect Circle

3: Until The End - Breaking Benjamin

4: Transcendence - Lindsey Stirling

5: The Only One - Evanescense

6: Hard Out Here - Lily Allen

7: Disease - Hollywood Undead

8: Swag - Lindsey Stirling

9: The Broken - Coheed & Cambria

10: Toys - Coheed & Cambria

Just got my wisdom teeth taken sooo ay chill time, here’s some shuffled songs n stuff

I tag @dannidorina @bishieblues @eloquentspeeches @twixtandshout @insanelyadd @pedantricks @neophyte-redglare , not pressure tho lads!

#wow shuffle liked coheed today #i also very much enjoy silversun pickups #tag meme #thanks for the tag lad #music

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alternative-architecture · 2 years

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*First spotted on the cameras, the small clerk has given a second method to be found, a loud crashing sound. upon being spotted, one crate is missing, Beta-14 is on the floor next to broken wood chunks, and cottonfruit are EVERYWHERE.*

Hokma?

*that there's a short clerk alright.*

@beta-14-records

[Benjamin visibly cringes back.]

No - well. Sssssort of? [Wince.] He's... we're... it's complicated. Are you okay? You haven't gotten into anything, have you? Other than the fruit.

[How did this literal preteen get hired - ]

#ask #get well soon // beta14 #*#[benjamin] doomed wisdom #physical interaction

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dailyaudiobible · 5 years

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10/21/2019 DAB Transcript

Jeremiah 37:1-38:28, 1 Timothy 6:1-21, Psalms 89:38-52, Proverbs 25:28

Today is the 21st day of October. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian. It’s good to be here with you today as we move ourselves into our workweek and start living into this shiny, sparkly, new week that we have before us as we begin to make our decisions and choices and think about things. And we have come here to allow God's word to inform us on that and to transform our thoughts, that we might have the mind of Christ on things. And, so, we’re reading from the English Standard Version this week and we’re continuing our journey through the book of Jeremiah in the Old Testament. Today we’ll read chapters 37 and 38.

Commentary:

Okay. So, in the book of Jeremiah things…things are pretty dire in Jerusalem and life-threatening for Jeremiah. Like, there are people that want him dead now because he keeps prophesying surrender, right? And you understand that. It would be like a person prophesying in front of the White House in the United States of impending doom and that we should surrender to this country that is threatening. And that is actually what God was telling Jeremiah to say. That is actually what His will was. He was going to wipe the slate clean and a lot could have been spared, including the king's life and including the city of Jerusalem, but they would have to walk out and surrender to the Chaldeans. So, just putting ourselves in that position, especially from like a national perspective, we’re talking about the king here. We understand the complications involved in all of that. And, so, as the factions were developing inside the city and the starvation that was ensuing in the mayhem of the city being strangled to death by this blockade, we see how things are disintegrating. So, even when people were after Jeremiah's life, what did the king do? He said, “like, how am I going to be able to stand against you? He's in your hands”, right? Because at this point it's all falling apart. The only thing between the Babylonian army and the people inside Jerusalem was a wall. Like, that's the only thing. But inside those walls, as was the plan, like this is…this is the strategy of taking this city, society is falling apart, right? So, there's anarchy happening. So, there isn't any unity to fight and there’s a lack of food. So, they’re growing weaker and weaker and weaker to fight. And we remember back when we began this book and all of the events that were happening at that time from the beginning of the book, there were prophets, in fact all the prophets were saying, “the Babylonians will never get in the city. The Babylonians are going to go back. All the stuff that was taken from us is going to be returned. The Babylonians, the Babylonians will never defeat us.” And they were obviously wrong and we’re not hearing much from their voices anymore. And Jeremiah’s telling king Zedekiah, “like, look, this is this is going to happen because this is God's will and this is what he intends to do. There's no turning it back. Even if you were to destroy the whole army of Babylon, and there were just like some wounded soldiers left in tents, they would stagger out of their tents and burn this city to the ground.” So…so as things continued to deteriorate, fear and panic and an overwhelming sense of gloom and doom were like disintegrating, undermining the power structures. And for lots of people the message that Jeremiah was prophesying of surrender made him look like a traitor. And, so, he buys this field in Benjamin and it just looks like he's gonna defect. Everybody is paranoid and as Jeremiah's trying to leave the city he gets arrested and he ends up in a dungeon and then king Zedekiah frees him and then he's held under house arrest and then he's later thrown into an empty well where he’s supposed to die, but he was rescued from the pit. And then after that, the king comes to him again, secretly. And, so, we can see how much things have fallen apart inside the city. The Kings meeting secretly asking Jeremiah to give him like the straight truth, what God is actually saying about the predicament. And it’s not like Jeremiah hasn't said that. So, Jeremiah's freshly out of a well where he was thrown in to die. Now he’s out of the well standing before the king. The kings asking him to give him the straight truth and you can see Jeremiah's response, “if I told you the truth, you’d kill me and if I give you advice like every other time you won't listen to me anyway”, which is pretty much reflective of the prophetic journey, the life of a prophet as we see it in the Scriptures. So, you can read the stories, they're intriguing to be sure, they’re…they’re part of history and we can study the history or we can study the tragedy of exile and find it appalling, but we don't necessarily remember that none of this had to happen. Like, Jeremiah had been warning about this for two decades, but no one listened. So, it wasn't like they hadn't been told. And indeed, the Babylonians did break through the wall and the wall fell, and when the wall fell you can imagine the rush of metal and the soldiers and leather and sword and spear rushing into the city and the chaos of people trying to flee and the chaos of people trying to hide and the chaos as the city is being taken and devastated. And we can shake our heads and go, “wow, what an awful…what an awful time that would've been. It could've been avoided”, but we disassociate as if it might not really have anything to do with us. But it starts becoming very, personally, when you think about what we read in Proverbs today, “a man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls.” So, that snaps some things into place all of the sudden, doesn't it? The voice of wisdom is telling us that we have no defenses, we have no protection when we lose control of ourselves. So, if we needed a picture then we've got the picture from what we read in the book of Jeremiah, but we probably already know. Like, we’ve probably already experienced this in our lives. It just hasn't been put in these terms before - chaos and fear and panic and loss and all of the enemies that come rushing through a defenseless person with deadly intent when there is no self-control. So, it obviously looks different than the taking of Jerusalem, but it's not any less real. And, so, once again, the Scriptures are right here facing us honestly holding up a mirror and asking us to look into our own eyes because it's showing us the outcomes of the paths that we choose as…as we've seen in today's reading. And a lack of self-control is usually the choice between chaos and order. So, what path will you walk today?

Prayer:

Father, we invite You into that. We've seen and are seeing the destruction of Jerusalem and it's certainly overwhelming and it’s certainly a sad part of the story, but when it becomes applied to our own lives as the Proverbs tells us that a person without self-control is…is like a city with the walls torn down, well then we realize the chaos that was happening inside that city when it was being taken is the kind of stuff that happens to us when we lose control of ourselves. And the reality is, we can't…I mean…we like to think that we’re in control way more than we actually are, and what we need to do is give up and let go and surrender to You and Your will and Your ways, because we will never find self-control in any other way. So, come Holy Spirit into all of this we pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

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And, as always, if you have a prayer request or comment, you can press the Hotline button that’s at the top of the app screen. You can't miss it, the little Red button or you can dial these numbers on my sheet. 877-942-4253 is the number to dial if you are in the Americas. I mean, you can dial any of these numbers from anywhere that you are, that’s up to you but if you're in the UK or Europe, you can dial 44-20-3608-8078 or if you are in Australia you can dial 61-3-8820-5459.

And that's it for today. I'm Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

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charliechick117 · 5 years

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Want my D&D character’s playlist?

If not, too bad, here it is. For clarity: Mirra is a barbarian, oldest of many siblings. She grew up in a warrior clan and discovered her rage in the heat of her first battle, defending her home and watching her best friend die by her side. She is strong, protective, and loyal. She values honesty and hard work.

For Forever - from Dear Evan Hansen

Mirra and her best friend, Gareth, spent all their childhood together. They grew up training together, preparing to join the other warriors in protecting their home village. They’re competitive in everything and balance each other out near perfectly. Mirra’s hotheadedness balanced with Gareth’s calmness.

Warriors - Imagine Dragon

Growing up, Mirra knew that she was destined to be a warrior, just like her father. As the oldest of her family, she carries a lot of protective instinct - the need to watch out for the weak. She carries a legacy on her shoulders and she plans to live up to it.

Sons of Scotland - from Braveheart

First battle. Mirra and Gareth were called up to defend the homeland against invaders. Finally, she had the chance to prove herself, to live up to her father’s name, to show exactly what she was made of. If anyone wanted to lay waste to her home then they would have to get through her to do it.

Rip & Tear - from Doom

Rage. Blinding, furious, animal rage. In the front lines of battle, Mirra watched Gareth fall. The sight of her best friend, the one she grew up with, set off something in her and, with a primal scream, Mirra felt the first of many rages upon her as she single-handedly rallied her people to victory.

In My Blood - Shawn Mendes

After the battle, after the rage, then what? Without Gareth, Mirra was alone and adrift in the world. Without her best friend, she was unbalanced and unsure of everything she stood for. Through her father’s guidance and wisdom, she was able to withstand the cloud of grief. She was Mirra, daughter of warriors, and it was not within her to give up.

Stronger - from Finding Neverland

If Mirra was to live on as a warrior, to continue to fight and see death at every turn, one thing was certain: she needed to be stronger. With the memory of Gareth pushing her forward, Mirra trained harder than ever to honor his sacrifice.

Hey Brother - Avicii

As far as Mirra travels, wherever the road takes her, one thing pushes her forward. The love and loyalty to her family. It is the thought of them, the thought of Gareth, that keeps her grounded.

Bonus tracks:

Warrior Inside by Leader

Indestructible by Disturbed

Wonder Woman Bagpipes by The Snake Charmer

Feed the Wolf by Breaking Benjamin (this was the first song I thought of when I created her)

#dungeons and dragons #MIRRA THE BARBARIAN #I adore her like so much #and her songs make me sad that I did this to her sometimes #playlist #HEY SISTERS LOOK

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blossoming-in-the-dell · 2 years

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alycia debnam carey . cis woman . she/her ➶ did you see them ?! they’re finally back as a spectator , and you know they’re one of my favourites ! it’s wisteria ramsdell , the twenty year old winner of the ninty-second hunger games! i’m just so excited to see them returning to the capitol all the way from district eleven! they won their games using making several alliances so their tributes will no doubt be desperate for their wisdom. the capitol just loved them for being so bold , even if they have been known to be reckless at times. they do have a tribute in this years games ( brother ) . ( character is part of the uprising )

Full name : Wisteria Ramsdell

Nickname(s) : Wis

Gender : Cis woman

Pronouns : She/Her

Birthday : September 28, seventy-three

Relationship Status : In a relationship

Family : Benjamin (brother, 9 years older), Kane (brother, 7 years older, deceased), McIntosh (brother, 4 years older), Johnathan (brother, 3 years older), Cortland (twin brother, deceased in 92nd Hunger Games), Crispin (brother, 8 years younger)

Pets : Pumpkin (a raccoon she raised from a baby)

Likes : Her friends, reading, sunsets

Dislikes : Mean people, the capitol, being in the spotlight

District : Eleven

Biography

When Wisteria was born into the Ramsdell family it was with four brothers already preceding her, and one whom she’d shared a womb with born just minutes before her. She never stood a chance of getting away with anything and no one stood a chance of ever picking on her and getting away with it. She was doomed to live an overprotected life from the very first breath she took. Even more so than the little brother who would follow eight years after her.

From the moment she began to develop a personality, everyone commented on how happy she was. On what a sweet baby she was. And this extended as she grew. She knew no stranger, she knew not how to be mean or rude. When she began helping her parents in the fields, it was always with a smile on her face and her favorite bright yellow ribbon in her hair. She made friends easily wherever she went.

That didn’t mean she didn’t get into her fair share of trouble. In fact that over protectiveness from her elder brothers often caused her to climb higher in the trees of the orchards or to follow through with her friends’ (and she had plenty of them) dares in search of approval and amusement from her friends. She broke an arm at five years old jumping from a tree because a boy from the orchard had dared her too. She didn’t see what all the fuss was about at home and she’d be back in that same exact tree the second her brothers turned their backs.

It was that same sense of acting out and rebelling that brought her her first pet at seven years old. She’d wanted one for years but her parents had told her no. However, when she found a baby raccoon laying with it’s mother’s cold body one late fall evening, she brought it home. Her parents insisted she take it to the district vet to be put down, but she didn’t and the raccoon soon became her pet. She nursed it until it was able to eat food, then she shared her food with it. It slept in her bed with her, nuzzling into the space behind her legs when she’d curl up on her side. She named him Pumpkin because his favorite treat was pumpkin seeds. The raccoon was possibly the second best friend she had, the first of course being Magnolia Ackerman.

Wisteria and Magnolia grew up together, just weeks apart, with parents who worked together, they’d be forever attached at the hip. Maggie was there to help raise Pumpkin. Wisteria was there to hold Magnolia’s hand and hug her close when Maggie’s older sister died in the Games, comforting her friend as she cried. And then when Wisteria’s brother Kane had an accident during the harvest season of Year 86 and died, Wisteria having seen it happen, Maggie was there to dry her best friend’s tears. Wisteria would continue to be the best friend she could, trying to keep her friends spirits up when Maggie was reaped, but oldest sister volunteered and went into the 88th Hunger Games, celebrating when she won. There was not a thing in the world Wisteria wouldn’t do for her best friend. And so when Magnolia’s name was called from the reaping bowl for the second time, the first time being when they were only twelve, Wisteria only hesitated a second before raising her hand to volunteer. And seconds after her, Cortland in an attempt to keep her safe.

When Maggie came out of the arena alive it was with one less brother, and a new found hatred for the Capitol. She couldn’t believe that her best friend’s name being called a second time was a coincidence. How many times could one family be reaped, how many times could one person be reaped? She didn’t believe it for a moment. And because they wouldn’t leave the Ackerman family alone, she had lost another brother.

She would return to Eleven. More somber than before. The happy-go-lucky girl she once was faded. She didn’t leave her house for months and when she did it was only because Maggie would no longer allow her to sit at home all by herself. So they’d disappear together to the fields, watch the sun rise and set. And when the days became too cold, they’d curl up at one house or the other before a fire in a fireplace.

Being away from Maggie for her victory tour and victory ball was probably the hardest couple of weeks since Wisteria’s games and she hated every moment of it. She tried to hide as much as possible during her ball. And was more than relieved to return home where she would stay for the rest of forever if she could control it. Home was safe. Home had family. And home had her best friend who at some point became her girlfriend after a confession one night from Wisteria.

However, her resolution to never return to the Capitol was dashed away when the ninety-fourth games came with a twist, that being tributes being reaped from those related to victors, and thus with Eleven’s small pool of victors and their small pool of reapable relatives- Wisteria’s younger brother was reaped, and she would follow him and Hyacinth to the Capitol for the first time since her victor’s ball.

#bio

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true-halloween-tales · 6 years

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2018: #9-QUESTION OF THE DAY 6

The Question of the Day was my hobby is the 1990’s while working for the Everyday is Halloween retail corporation. I started studying philosophy when I was eight years old, and I just have a whole lot of questions. Like, would you accept a million dollars a year if you personally had to remove a brontosaurus defecation that magically appeared every day in a random location in your home? If the Flash runs naked but really fast and you cannot see him, is he a Flasher? If a person puts a restraining order on themself, could they charge a fee to anyone who came within a hundred feet of them? Would you accept a deal for eternal life if only you were transformed into the body of Herve Villechaize? What would you do if a bat landed on your head and started drooling out a substance resembling mint jelly while singing, “Singin’ in the Rain?” What would you do if that bat had the head of Herve Villechaize? So many questions… below are actual questions with answers from the 1990s, sometimes with the name of the person who supplied the answer, maybe even you…

1-Who is your favorite supervillain?

The Riddler – 2

Venom – Gene (see 2018: #12-SUPERVILLAINS)

Boba Fett – John

Jack Nicholson in The Shining

The Master – Tony (see 2018: #2-GUIDE TO DOCTOR WHO)

Mad Hatter – Daina

Harvey Dent – Elizabeth

Poison Ivy

Dr. Doom – Craig

The Claw – Jessica

Cruella De Vil – Benjamin

The new world order

Newt Gingrich – Anita

Satan

Jesus Christ – Carlos

Kili (goddess of death and destruction)

Gargamel (evil Smurf wizard)

2-Any words of wisdom?

Everything in moderation.

Peace.

It’s better to burn bright than to fade away.

Listen to your wife.

Never pass on an opportunity until you’ve fully explored it.

Don’t blow out another’s candle to make yours shine brighter.

Deal with it.

It’s better to be alone than in bad company.

A good way to figure out when your mission on earth is done – if you’re alive, it isn’t.

Ambition: to work out insecurities through other people and get paid.

When insecure, see dude on mountain.

Don’t think too much about wisdom.

Wear a rubber.

Never bond with what you are going to kill.

Thunderbird – what’s the price – thirty twice – what’s the action – satisfaction.

Don’t get into a pissing match with a skunk.

3-Why did the chicken cross the road?

To get to the other side – 2, Danny the big cop

To get away from the wolf. – John

To get hit by a Big Mac truck. – Carlos

Because everyone told him he did.

Because I have cramps. – Sarah

Cause the road crossed him.

She was trying to go to Rock n Roll Roosters.

Because he wanted to see this other chicken that was waving at him. – Marco

To keep his pants up. – Mark

To give me good luck so I don’t wet the bed again. – Melia

Because he wanted to get laid.

Obviously there was a happening club across the street with a hash bash and bondage show, and he was sexually perverse.

To get the Chinese newspaper. – Gene

To get more cheese.

4-What historical figure would you rather be stuck in a vat of figgy pudding with?

Joan of Arc – 3 (Mary, Gene, Paul)

Plato – Ray

Madonna – Jessica

Cleopatra – Danny the large cop

The Virgin Mary

Mr. Rogers

Abe Lincoln

George Washington

Magellan

Henry VIII

Gloria Gainer – Elizabeth

Buddy Holly or Shakespeare

John Lennon

Napoleon

Mussolini

Attila the Hun – Zoe

Lead singer of INXS – James

Marquis de Sade

Godzilla (see 2014: #7-KAIJU)

The Spoon from the Hey Diddle Diddle rhyme – Nikki

Catherine the Great and the horse – Mark

5-What would look nice hanging from the Frankenstein monster's neck nodules?

Fuzzy dice – 2 (Anita & Zoe)

Beaded earrings – Ray

Long chains with cool earrings

Pearls – Nikki

Clip on hair wraps. – Mike

Mistletoe – Paul

Little happy hearts

Rubber bands or a corsage – Scott

African beads with feathers

Picture of the Mac truck girl – Mary

Neon colored hair trolls – Troy

Track lighting – Benjamin

Christmas lights, blinking – Jessica

Shrunken heads – Amy

Chicken gizzards – Chris C.

Myself with each wrist on a nodule. – Gene

I do have a new Halloween Question of the Day for you. What does it mean that someone walked over your grave? “Someone just walked over my grave” is a creepy phrase applied to when a person feels a cool shiver down their neck or back. You know what that is. The creepy shiver, the feeling that cannot be attributed to anything specific. But it sure is real. The phrase originated in England and is meant to convey that the feeling is caused by someone physically walking over your grave. Now this meaning does not readily assail one with a tidal wave of logic. If you are not buried, you most likely do not have a grave. So does it mean, that in the future when one is dead as a door nail, that if someone walks over one’s grave, that this offense is temporally communicated back to one while still alive? I hope not, that isn’t fair! I mean, to have to take rudeness after death and feel it while still alive! I’m keeping away from those graves!

#true halloween tales #the question of the day

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xtruss · 3 years

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What Led Benjamin Franklin to Live Estranged From His Wife for Nearly Two Decades?

A stunning new theory suggests that a debate over the failed treatment of their son’s smallpox was the culprit

— By Stephen Coss | Smithsonian Magazine | September 2017

A painting of Franklin’s return to Philadelphia from Europe in 1785 shows him flanked by his son-in-law (in red), his daughter and Benjamin Bache (in blue), the grandson he’d taken to France as a sort of surrogate son. (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)

In October 1765, Deborah Franklin sent a gushing letter to her husband, who was in London on business for the Pennsylvania legislature. “I have been so happy as to receive several of your dear letters within these few days,” she began, adding that she had read one letter “over and over.” “I call it a husband’s Love letter,” she wrote, thrilled as though it were her first experience with anything of the kind.

Perhaps it was. Over 35 years of marriage, Benjamin Franklin had indirectly praised Deborah’s work ethic and common sense through “wife” characters in his Pennsylvania Gazette and Poor Richard’s Almanac. He had celebrated her faithfulness, compassion and competency as a housekeeper and hostess in a verse titled “I Sing My Plain Country Joan.” But he seems never to have written her an unabashed expression of romantic love. Whether the letter in question truly qualified as his first is unknown, since it has been lost. But it’s likely that Deborah exaggerated the letter’s romantic aspects because she wanted to believe her husband loved her and would return to her.

That February Franklin, newly arrived in London, had predicted that he would be home in “a few Months.” But now he had been gone for 11, with no word on when he would come back. Deborah could tell herself that a man who would write such a letter would not repeat his previous sojourn in England, which had begun in 1757 with a promise to be home soon and dragged on for five years, during which rumors filtered back to Philadelphia that he was enjoying the company of other women. (Franklin denied it, writing he would “do nothing unworthy the Character of an honest Man, and one that loves his Family.”) But as month after month passed with no word on Benjamin’s voyage home, it became clear that history was repeating itself.

This time Franklin would be gone for ten years, teasing his imminent return almost every spring or summer and then canceling at nearly the last minute and without explanation. Year after year Deborah stoically endured the snubbing, even after she had a stroke in early spring 1769. But as her health declined, she gave up her vow not to give him “one moment’s trouble.” “When will it be in your power to come home?” she asked in August 1770. A few months later she pressed him: “I hope you will not stay longer than this fall.”

He ignored her appeals until July 1771, when he wrote her: “I purpose it [his return] firmly after one Winter more here.” The following summer he canceled again. In March and April 1773 he wrote vaguely of coming home, and then in October he trotted out what had become his stock excuse, that winter passage was too dangerous. In February 1774, Benjamin wrote that he hoped to return home in May. In April and July he assured her he would sail shortly. But he never came. Deborah Franklin suffered another stroke on December 14, 1774, and died five days later.

We tend to idealize our founding fathers. So what should we make of Benjamin Franklin? One popular image is that he was a free and easy libertine—our founding playboy. But he was married for 44 years. Biographers and historians tend to shy away from his married life, perhaps because it defies idealization. John and Abigail Adams had a storybook union that spanned half a century. Benjamin and Deborah Franklin spent all but two of their final 17 years apart. Why?

The conventional wisdom is that their marriage was doomed from the beginning, by differences in intellect and ambition, and by its emphasis on practicality over love; Franklin was a genius and needed freedom from conventional constraints; Deborah’s fear of ocean travel kept her from joining her husband in England and made it inevitable that they would drift apart. Those things are true—up to a point. But staying away for a decade, dissembling year after year about his return, and then refusing to come home even when he knew his wife was declining and might soon die, suggests something beyond bored indifference.

Franklin was a great man—scientist, publisher, political theorist, diplomat. But we can’t understand him fully without considering why he treated his wife so shabbily at the end of her life. The answer isn’t simple. But a close reading of Franklin’s letters and published works, and a re-examination of events surrounding his marriage, suggests a new and eerily resonant explanation. It involves their only son, a lethal disease and a disagreement over inoculation.

**********

As every reader of Franklin’s Autobiography knows, Deborah Read first laid eyes on Benjamin Franklin the day he arrived in Philadelphia, in October 1723, after running away from a printer’s apprenticeship with his brother in Boston. Fifteen-year-old Deborah, standing at the door of her family’s house on Market Street, laughed at the “awkward ridiculous Appearance” of the bedraggled 17-year-old stranger trudging down the street with a loaf of bread under each arm and his pockets bulging with socks and shirts. But a few weeks later, the stranger became a boarder in the Read home. After six months, he and the young woman were in love.

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania’s governor, William Keith, happened upon a letter Franklin had written and decided he was “a young Man of promising Parts”—so promising that he offered to front the money for Franklin to set up his own printing house and promised to send plenty of work his way. Keith’s motives may have been more political than paternal, but with that, the couple “interchang’d some Promises,” in Franklin’s telling, and he set out for London. His intention was to buy a printing press and type and return as quickly as possible. It was November 1724.

Nothing went as planned. In London, Franklin discovered that the governor had lied to him. There was no money waiting, not for equipment, not even for his return passage. Stranded, he wrote Deborah a single letter, saying he would be away indefinitely. He would later admit that “by degrees” he forgot “my engagements with Miss Read.” In declaring this a “great Erratum” of his life, he took responsibility for Deborah’s ill-fated marriage to a potter named John Rogers.

But the facts are more complicated. Benjamin must have suspected that when Sarah Read, Deborah’s widowed mother, learned that he had neither a press nor guaranteed work, she would seek another suitor for her daughter. Mrs. Read did precisely that, later admitting to Franklin, as he wrote, that she had “persuaded the other Match in my Absence.” She had been quick about it, too; Franklin’s letter reached Deborah in late spring 1725, and she was married by late summer. Benjamin, too, had been jilted.

Just weeks into Deborah’s marriage, word reached Philadelphia that Rogers had another wife in England. Deborah left him and moved back in with her mother. Rogers squandered Deborah’s dowry and racked up big debts before disappearing. And yet she remained legally married to him; a woman could “self-divorce,” as Deborah had done in returning to her mother’s home, but she could not remarry with church sanction. At some point she was told that Rogers had died in the West Indies, but proving his death—which would have freed Deborah to remarry formally—was impractically expensive and a long shot besides.

Franklin returned to Philadelphia in October 1726. In the Autobiography he wrote that he “should have been...asham’d at seeing Miss Read, had not her Friends...persuaded her to marry another.” If he wasn’t ashamed, what was he? In classic Franklin fashion, he doesn’t say. Possibly he was relieved. But it seems likely, given his understanding that Deborah and her mother had quickly thrown him over, that he felt at least a tinge of resentment. At the same time, he also “pity’d” Deborah’s “unfortunate Situation.” He noted that she was “generally dejected, seldom cheerful, and avoided Company,” presumably including his. If he still had feelings for her, he also knew that her dowry was gone and she was, technically, unmarriageable.

He, meanwhile, became more eligible by the year. In June 1728, he launched a printing house with a partner, Hugh Meredith. A year later he bought the town’s second newspaper operation, renamed and reworked it, and began making a success of the Pennsylvania Gazette. In 1730 he and Meredith were named Pennsylvania’s official printers. It seemed that whenever he decided to settle down, Franklin would have his pick of a wife.

Then he had his own romantic calamity: He learned that a young woman of his acquaintance was pregnant with his child. Franklin agreed to take custody of the baby—a gesture as admirable as it was uncommon—but that decision made his need for a wife urgent and finding one problematic. (Who that woman was and why he couldn’t or wouldn’t marry her remain mysteries to this day.) No desirable young woman with a dowry would want to marry a man with a bastard infant son.

But Deborah Read Rogers would.

Thus, as Franklin later wrote, the former couple’s “mutual Affection was revived,” and they were joined in a common-law marriage on September 1, 1730. There was no ceremony. Deborah simply moved into Franklin’s home and printing house at what is now 139 Market Street. Soon she took in the infant son her new husband had fathered with another woman and began running a small stationery store on the first floor.

Benjamin accepted the form and function of married life—even writing about it (skeptically) in his newspaper—but kept his wife at arm’s length. His attitude was reflected in his “Rules and Maxims for Promoting Matrimonial Happiness,” which he published a month after he and Deborah began living together. “Avoid, both before and after marriage, all thoughts of managing your husband,” he advised wives. “Never endeavor to deceive or impose on his understanding: nor give him uneasiness (as some do very foolishly) to try his temper; but treat him always beforehand with sincerity, afterwards with affection and respect.”

Whether at this point he loved Deborah is difficult to say; despite his reputation as a flirt and a charmer, he seldom made himself emotionally available to anyone. Deborah’s famous temper might be traced to her frustration with him, as well as the general unfairness of her situation. (Franklin immortalized his wife’s fiery personality in various fictional counterparts, including Bridget Saunders, wife of Poor Richard. But there are plenty of real-life anecdotes as well. A visitor to the Franklin home in 1755 saw Deborah throw herself to the floor in a fit of pique; he later wrote that she could produce “invectives in the foulest terms I ever heard from a gentlewoman.”) But her correspondence leaves no doubt that she loved Benjamin and always would. “How I long to see you,” she wrote to him in 1770, after 40 years of marriage and five years into his second trip to London. “If you’re Having the gout...I wish I was near enough to rub it with a light hand.”

“We throve together,” Franklin wrote of his wife (right) in his autobiography, which he began at age 65. But he did not mention the birth of their son, Francis (left). (Left: Art Collection / Alamy Stock Photo; Right: Public Domain)

Deborah Franklin wanted a real marriage. And when she became pregnant with their first child, near the beginning of 1732, she had reason to hope she might have one. Her husband was thrilled. “A ship under sail and a big-bellied Woman, / Are the handsomest two things that can be seen common,” Benjamin would write in June 1735. He had never been much interested in children, but after the birth of Francis Folger Franklin, on October 20, 1732, he wrote that they were “the most delightful Cares in the World.” The boy, whom he and Deborah nicknamed “Franky,” gave rise to a more ebullient version of Franklin than he had allowed the world to see. He also became more empathetic—it’s hard to imagine he would have written an essay like “On the Death of Infants,” which was inspired by the death of an acquaintance’s child, had he not been enraptured by his own son and fearful lest a similar fate should befall him.

By 1736, Franklin had entered the most fulfilling period of his life so far. His love for Franky had brought him closer to Deborah. Franklin had endured sadness—the death of his brother James, the man who had taught him printing and with whom he had only recently reconciled—and a serious health scare, his second serious attack of pleurisy. But he had survived, and at age 30 was, as his biographer J.A. Leo Lemay pointed out, better off financially and socially than any of his siblings “and almost all of Philadelphia’s artisans.” That fall, the Pennsylvania Assembly appointed him its clerk, which put him on the inside of the colony’s politics for the first time.

That September 29, a contingent of Indian chiefs representing the Six Nations was heading for Philadelphia to renegotiate a treaty when government officials halted them a few miles short of their destination and advised them to go no farther. The legislature’s minutes, delivered to Franklin for printing, spelled out the reason: Smallpox had broken out “in the heart or near the middle of the town.”

**********

Smallpox was the most feared “distemper” in Colonial America. No one yet understood that it spread when people inhaled an invisible virus. The disease was fatal in more than 30 percent of all cases and even more deadly to children. Survivors were often blind, physically or mentally disabled and horribly disfigured.

In 1730, Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette had reported extensively on an outbreak in Boston. But rather than focusing on the devastation caused by the disease, Franklin’s coverage dealt primarily with the success of smallpox inoculation.

The procedure was a precursor to modern-day vaccination. A doctor used a scalpel and a quill to take fluid from smallpox vesicles on the skin of a person in the throes of the disease. He deposited this material in a vial and brought it to the home of the person to be inoculated. There he made a shallow incision in the patient’s arm and deposited material from the vial. Usually, inoculated patients became slightly ill, broke out in a few, smallish pox, and recovered quickly, immune to the disease for the rest of their lives. Occasionally, however, they developed full-blown smallpox or other complications and died.

Franklin’s enthusiasm for smallpox inoculation dated to 1721, when he was a printer’s apprentice to James in Boston. An outbreak in the city that year led to the first widespread inoculation trial in Western medicine—and bitter controversy. Supporters claimed that inoculation was a blessing from God, opponents that it was a curse—reckless, impious and tantamount to attempted murder. Franklin had been obliged to help print attacks against it in his brother’s newspaper, but the procedure’s success won him over. In 1730, when Boston had another outbreak, he used his own newspaper to promote inoculation in Philadelphia because he suspected the disease would spread south.

The Gazette reported that of the “Several Hundreds” of people inoculated in the Boston area that year, “about four” had died. Even with those deaths—which doctors attributed to smallpox contracted before inoculation—the inoculation death rate was negligible compared with the fatality rate from naturally acquired smallpox. Two weeks after that report, the Gazette reprinted a detailed description of the procedure from the authoritative Chambers’s Cyclopaedia.

And when, in February 1731, Philadelphians began coming down with smallpox, Franklin’s backing became even more urgent. “The Practice of Inoculation for the Small-Pox, begins to grow among us,” he wrote the next month, adding that “the first Patient of Note,” a man named “J. Growdon, Esq,” had been inoculated without incident. He was reporting this, he said, “to show how groundless all those extravagant Reports are, that have been spread through the Province to the contrary.” In the next week’s Gazette he plugged inoculation again, excerpting a prominent English scientific journal. By the time the Philadelphia epidemic ended that July, 288 people were dead, but that total included only one of the approximately 50 people who had been inoculated.

Whether Franklin himself was inoculated or survived a case of naturally acquired smallpox at some point is unknown—there’s no evidence on record. But he emerged as one of the most outspoken inoculation advocates in the Colonies. When smallpox returned to Philadelphia in September 1736, he couldn’t resist lampooning the logic of the English minister Edmund Massey, who had famously declared inoculation the Devil’s work, citing Job 2:7: “So went Satan forth from the presence of the Lord and smote Job with sore boils from the sole of the foot unto his crown.” Near the front of the new Poor Richard’s Almanac, which he was preparing to print, Franklin countered:

God offer’d to the Jews salvation;

And ‘twas refus’d by half the nation:

Thus (tho ‘tis life’s great preservation),

Many oppose inoculation.

We’re told by one of the black robe,

The devil inoculated Job:

Suppose ‘tis true, what he does tell;

Pray, neighbours, did not Job do well?

Significantly, this verse was Franklin’s only comment on smallpox or inoculation through the first four months of the new outbreak. Not until December 30 did he break his silence, in a stunning 137-word note at the end of that week’s Gazette. “Understanding ’tis a current Report,” it began, “that my Son Francis, who died lately of the Small Pox, had it by Inoculation....”

Franky had died on November 21, a month after his 4th birthday, and his father sought to dispel the rumor that a smallpox inoculation was responsible. “Inasmuch as some People are...deter’d from having that Operation perform’d on their Children, I do hereby sincerely declare, that he was not inoculated, but receiv’d the Distemper in the common Way of Infection,” he wrote. He had “intended to have my Child inoculated, as soon as he should have recovered sufficient Strength from a Flux with which he had been long afflicted.”

Franklin would remember his son as “the DELIGHT of all that knew him.” (Tim O’Brien)

**********

Many years later, Franklin admitted in a letter to his sister Jane that Franky’s death devastated him. And we can imagine that for Deborah it was even worse. Perhaps out of compassion, few of Franklin’s contemporaries questioned his explanation for not inoculating Franky or asked why he had gone so quiet on the procedure in the months before his son died. Many biographers and historians have followed suit, accepting at face value that Franky was simply too sick for inoculation. Lemay, one of Franklin’s best biographers, is representative. He wrote that Franklin fully intended to inoculate the boy, but that Franky’s sickness dragged on and “smallpox took him before his recovery.” Indeed, Lemay went even further in providing cover for Franklin, describing Franky as a “sickly infant” and a “sickly child.” This, too, has become accepted wisdom. But Franklin himself hinted that something else delayed his action and perhaps cost Franky his life. Most likely, it was a disagreement with Deborah over inoculation.

The argument that Franky was sickly is based primarily on one fact: Nearly a year passed between his birth and his baptism. More substantive evidence suggests the delay was due to Franklin’s oft-expressed antipathy to organized religion. When Franky was finally baptized, his father just happened to be on an extended trip to New England. It appears that Deborah, tired of arguing with her husband over the need to baptize their son, had it done while he was out of town.

As to Franky’s general health, the best evidence is in Franklin’s 1733 piece in the Gazette celebrating a scolding wife. If Deborah was the model for this fictional wife, as she seems to have been, it’s worth noting the author’s rationale for preferring her type. Such women, he wrote, have “sound and healthy Constitutions, produce vigorous Offspring, are active in the Business of the Family, special good Housewives, and very Careful of their Husbands Interest.” It’s unlikely that he would have included “produce vigorous Offspring” if his son, then 9 months old, had been sickly.

So Franky probably wasn’t a particularly sickly child. But he might have had, as Franklin claimed, an unfortunately timed (and uncommonly drawn-out) case of dysentery throughout September, October and early November 1736. This was the “flux” that Franklin’s editor’s note referred to. Did it render the boy too sick to be inoculated?

From the outset, his father hinted otherwise. Franklin never said his son was sick, but that he “had not recovered sufficient Strength.” It’s possible that Franky had been ill, but was no longer showing symptoms of dysentery. This would mean that, contrary to what some biographers and historians have assumed, Franky’s inoculation was not out of the question. Franklin said as much many years later. Addressing Franky’s death in the Autobiography, he wrote: “I long regretted bitterly & still regret that I had not given it [smallpox] to him by Inoculation.” If he regretted not being able to give his son smallpox by inoculation, he would have said so. Clearly Franklin believed he had had a choice and had chosen wrong.

How did a man who understood better than most the relative safety and efficacy of inoculation choose wrong? Possibly he just lost his nerve. Other men had. In 1721 Cotton Mather—the man who had stumbled upon the idea of inoculation and then pushed it on the doctors of Boston, declaring it infallible—had stalled for two weeks before approving his teenage son’s inoculation, knowing all the while that Sammy Mather’s Harvard roommate was sick with smallpox.

It’s more likely, though, that Benjamin and Deborah disagreed over inoculation for their son. Franky was still Deborah’s only child (the Franklins’ daughter, Sarah, would not be born for seven more years) and the legitimizing force in her common-law marriage. Six years into that marriage, her husband was advancing so quickly in the world that she might have begun to worry he might one day outgrow his plain, poorly educated wife. If originally she had believed Franky would bring her closer to Benjamin, now she just hoped the boy would help her keep hold of him. By that logic, risking her son to inoculation was unacceptable.

That scenario—parents unable to agree on inoculation for their child—was precisely the one Ben Franklin fixed on two decades after his son’s death, when he wrote about impediments to the procedure’s public acceptance. If “one parent or near relation is against it,” he noted in 1759, “the other does not chuse to inoculate a child without free consent of all parties, lest in case of a disastrous event, perpetual blame should follow.” He raised that dilemma again in 1788. After expressing his regret over having failed to inoculate Franky, he added: “This I mention for the Sake of Parents, who omit that Operation on the Supposition that they should never forgive themselves if a Child died under it; my Example showing that the Regret may be the same either way, and that therefore the safer should be chosen.”

Franklin took the blame for not inoculating Franky, just as he took the blame for Deborah’s disastrous first marriage. But as in that earlier case, his public chivalry probably disguised his private beliefs. Whether he blamed Deborah, or blamed himself for listening to her, the hard feelings relating to the death of their beloved son—“the DELIGHT of all that knew him,” according to the epitaph on his gravestone—appear to have ravaged their relationship. What followed was nearly 40 years of what Franklin referred to as “perpetual blame.”

**********

It surfaced in various forms. A recurring theme was Benjamin’s belief that Deborah was irresponsible. In August 1737, less than a year after Franky’s death, he lashed out at her for mishandling a sale in their store. A customer had bought paper on credit, and Deborah had forgotten to note which paper he had bought. Theoretically, the customer could claim to have purchased a lesser grade and underpay what he owed. It was a small matter, but Benjamin was incensed. Deborah’s shocked indignation is apparent in the entry she subsequently made in the shop book, in the place where she should have entered the details about the paper stock. Paraphrasing her husband, she wrote: “A Quier of paper that my careless wife forgot to set down and now the careless thing don’t know the prices so I must trust you.”

Benjamin also conspicuously overlooked, or even denigrated, Deborah’s fitness as a mother. His 1742 ballad in praise of her, as Lemay points out, touched upon every aspect of her domestic skills except motherhood—even though she had mothered William Franklin since infancy and, shortly after Franky’s death, had taken in young James Franklin Jr., the son of Ben’s deceased brother. And when Franklin sailed for London in 1757 he made no secret of his ambivalence about leaving his 14-year-old daughter with Deborah. After insisting that he was leaving home “more cheerfully” for his confidence in Deborah’s ability to manage his affairs and Sarah’s education, he added: “And yet I cannot forbear once more recommending her to you with a Father’s tenderest Concern.”

Authors of a 1722 pamphlet on inoculation in Boston included a “reply to the Objections made against it” to counter the “Heats and Animosities” the procedure aroused. (Harvard College Library)

**********

At some point in the year after Franky died, Benjamin commissioned a portrait of the boy. Was it an attempt to lift Deborah out of debilitating grief? Given Franklin’s notorious frugality, the commission was an extraordinary indulgence—most tradesmen didn’t have portraits made of themselves, let alone their children. In a sense, though, this was Franklin’s portrait, too: With no likeness of Franky to work from, the artist had Benjamin sit for it.

The final product—which shows Franklin’s adult face atop a boy’s body—is disconcerting, but also moving. Deborah appears to have embraced it without qualm—and over time seems to have accepted it as a surrogate for her son. In 1758, near the start of Franklin’s first extended stay in London, she sent the portrait or a copy of it to him, perhaps hoping it would bind him to her in the same way she imagined its subject once had.

Returned to Philadelphia, the painting took on a nearly magical significance a decade later, when family members noticed an uncanny resemblance between Sarah Franklin’s 1-year-old son, Benjamin Franklin Bache, and the Franky of the portrait. In a June 1770 letter, an elated Deborah wrote to her husband that William Franklin believed Benny Bache “is like Frankey Folger. I thought so too.” “Everyone,” she wrote, “thinks as much as though it had been drawn for him.” For the better part of the next two years Deborah’s letters to Benjamin focused on the health, charm and virtues of the grandson who resembled her dead son. Either intentionally or accidentally, as a side effect of her stroke, she sometimes confused the two, referring to Franklin’s grandson as “your son” and “our child.”

Franklin’s initial reply, in June 1770, was detached, even dismissive: “I rejoice much in the Pleasure you appear to take in him. It must be of Use to your Health, the having such an Amusement.” At times he seemed impatient with Deborah: “I am glad your little Grandson recovered so soon of his Illness, as I see you are quite in Love with him, and your Happiness wrapt up in his; since your whole long Letter is made up of the History of his pretty Actions.” Did he resent the way she had anointed Benny the new Franky? Did he envy it?

Or did he fear that they would lose this new Franky, too? In May 1771, on a kinder note, he wrote: “I am much pleased with the little Histories you give me of your fine Boy....I hope he will be spared, and continue the same Pleasure and Comfort to you, and that I shall ere long partake with you in it.”

Over time, Benjamin, too, came to regard the grandson he had yet to lay eyes on as a kind of reincarnation of his dead son. In a January 1772 letter to his sister Jane, he shared the emotions the boy stirred in him—emotions he had hidden from his wife. “All, who have seen my Grandson, agree with you in their accounts of his being an uncommonly fine Boy,” he wrote, “which brings often afresh to my Mind the Idea of my son Franky, tho’ now dead 36 Years, whom I have seldom seen equal’d in every thing, and whom to this Day I cannot think of without a Sigh.”

Franklin finally left London for home three months after Deborah died. When he met his grandson he, too, became infatuated with the boy—so much so that he effectively claimed Benny for his own. In 1776 he insisted that the 7-year-old accompany him on his diplomatic mission to France. Franklin didn’t return Benny Bache to his parents for nine years.

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dfroza · 3 years

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Israel is the original branches of the Tree of faith.

and grace connects us to this sacred Tree and its roots of our Creator, the Maker of the heavens and the earth. and Israel is destined to see the True illumination of the Son as Messiah at some point, for even all of the Old Testament writing points to Him.

Today’s reading of the Scriptures from the New Testament is the 11th chapter of the Letter of Romans where Paul writes of this:

Now I ask you, has God rejected His people? Absolutely not! I’m living proof that God is faithful. I am an Israelite, Abraham’s my father, and Benjamin’s my tribe. God has not, and will not, abandon His covenant people; He always knew they would belong to Him. Don’t you remember the story of what happens when Elijah pleads with God to deal with Israel? The Scripture tells us his protest: “Lord, they have murdered Your prophets, they have demolished Your altars, and I alone am left faithful to You; now they are seeking to kill me.” How does God answer his pleas for help? He says, “I have held back 7,000 men who are faithful to Me; none have bowed a knee to worship Baal.” The same thing is happening now. God has preserved a remnant, elected by grace. Grace is central in God’s action here, and it has nothing to do with deeds prescribed by the law. If it did, grace would not be grace.

Now what does all this mean? Israel has chased an end it has never reached. Yet those chosen by God through grace have reached it while all others were made hard as stones. The Scriptures continue to say it best:

God has confounded them so they are not able to think,

given them eyes that do not see, and ears that do not hear,

Down to this very day.

David says it this way:

Let their table be turned into a snare and a trap,

an obstacle to peace and payback for their hostility.

Let their bright eyes become cloudy, darkened so they cannot see,

and bend their proud backs through it all.

So I ask: did God’s people stumble and fall off the deep end? Absolutely not! They are not lost forever; but through their misconduct, the door has been opened for salvation to extend even to the outsiders. This has been part of God’s plan all along, and so is the jealousy that comes when they realize the outsiders have been welcomed into God’s new covenant. So if their misconduct leads ultimately to God’s riches coming to the world and if their failure turns into the blessing of salvation to all people, then how much greater will be the riches and blessing when they are included fully?

But I have this to say to all of you who are not ethnic Jews: I am God’s emissary to you, and I honor this call by focusing on what God is doing with and through you. I do this so that somehow my own blood brothers and sisters will be made jealous; and that, I trust, will bring some to salvation. If the fact that they are currently set aside resolves the hostility between God and the rest of the world, what will their acceptance bring if not life from the dead? If the first and best of the dough you offer is sacred, the entire loaf will be as well. If the root of the tree is sacred, the branches will be also.

Imagine some branches are cut off of the cultivated olive tree and other branches of a wild olive (which represents all of you outsiders) are grafted in their place. You are nourished by the root of the cultivated olive tree. It doesn’t give you license to become proud and self-righteous about the fact that you’ve been grafted in. If you do boast, remember that the branches do not sustain the root—it is the system of roots that nourishes and supports you.

I can almost hear some of you saying, “Branches had to be pruned to make room for me.” Yes, they were. They were removed because they did not believe; and you will stay attached, be strong, and be productive only through faith. So don’t think too highly of yourselves; instead, stand in awe of God’s mercy. Besides we know that God did not spare the natural branches, so there is no reason to think He will spare you. Witness the simultaneous balance of the kindness and severity of our God. Severity is directed at the fallen branches withering without faith. Yet kindness is directed at you. So live in the kindness of God or else prepare to be cut off yourselves. If those branches that have been cut from the tree do not stay in unbelief, then God will carefully graft them back onto the tree because He has the power to do that. So if it is possible for you to be taken from a wild olive tree and become part of a cultivated olive tree, imagine how much easier it would be to reconnect branches that originally grew on that olive tree.

My brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be in the dark about this mystery—I am going to let you in on the plan so that you will not think too highly of yourselves. A part of Israel has been hardened to the good news until the full number of those outside the Jewish family have entered in. This is the way that all of Israel will be saved. As it was written, so it also stands:

The Deliverer will come from Zion;

He will drive away wickedness from Jacob.

And this is My covenant promise to them,

on the day when I take away their sins.

It may seem strange. When it comes to the work of the gospel, the fact that they oppose it is actually for your benefit. But when you factor in God’s election, they are truly loved because they descended from faithful forefathers. You see, when God gives a grace gift and issues a call to a people, He does not change His mind and take it back. There was a time when you outsiders were disobedient to God and at odds with His purpose, but now you have experienced mercy as a result of their disobedience. In the same way, their disobedience now will make a way for them to receive mercy as a result of the mercy shown to you. For God has assigned all of us together—Jews and non-Jews, insiders and outsiders—to disobedience so He can show His mercy to all.

We cannot wrap our minds around God’s wisdom and knowledge! Its depths can never be measured! We cannot understand His judgments or explain the mysterious ways that He works! For,

Who can fathom the mind of the Lord?

Or who can claim to be His advisor?

Or,

Who can give to God in advance

so that God must pay him back?

For all that exists originates in Him, comes through Him, and is moving toward Him; so give Him the glory forever. Amen.

The Letter of Romans, Chapter 11 (The Voice)

Today’s paired chapter of the Testaments is the 30th chapter of the book (scroll) of Isaiah that reveals the danger of following a path of lies:

“Doom, rebel children!”

God’s Decree.

“You make plans, but not mine.

You make deals, but not in my Spirit.

You pile sin on sin,

one sin on top of another,

Going off to Egypt

without so much as asking me,

Running off to Pharaoh for protection,

expecting to hide out in Egypt.

Well, some protection Pharaoh will be!

Some hideout, Egypt!

They look big and important, true,

with officials strategically established in

Zoan in the north and Hanes in the south,

but there’s nothing to them.

Anyone stupid enough to trust them

will end up looking stupid—

All show, no substance,

an embarrassing farce.”

And this note on the animals of the Negev

encountered on the road to Egypt:

A most dangerous, treacherous route,

menaced by lions and deadly snakes.

And you’re going to lug all your stuff down there,

your donkeys and camels loaded down with bribes,

Thinking you can buy protection

from that hollow farce of a nation?

Egypt is all show, no substance.

My name for her is Toothless Dragon.

So, go now and write all this down.

Put it in a book

So that the record will be there

to instruct the coming generations,

Because this is a rebel generation,

a people who lie,

A people unwilling to listen

to anything God tells them.

They tell their spiritual leaders,

“Don’t bother us with irrelevancies.”

They tell their preachers,

“Don’t waste our time on impracticalities.

Tell us what makes us feel better.

Don’t bore us with obsolete religion.

That stuff means nothing to us.

Quit hounding us with The Holy of Israel.”

Therefore, The Holy of Israel says this:

“Because you scorn this Message,

Preferring to live by injustice

and shape your lives on lies,

This perverse way of life

will be like a towering, badly built wall

That slowly, slowly tilts and shifts,

and then one day, without warning, collapses—

Smashed to bits like a piece of pottery,

smashed beyond recognition or repair,

Useless, a pile of debris

to be swept up and thrown in the trash.”

God, the Master, The Holy of Israel,

has this solemn counsel:

“Your salvation requires you to turn back to me

and stop your silly efforts to save yourselves.

Your strength will come from settling down

in complete dependence on me—

The very thing

you’ve been unwilling to do.

You’ve said, ‘No way! We’ll rush off on horseback!’

You’ll rush off, all right! Just not far enough!

You’ve said, ‘We’ll ride off on fast horses!’

Do you think your pursuers ride old nags?

Think again: A thousand of you will scatter before one attacker.

Before a mere five you’ll all run off.

There’ll be nothing left of you—

a flagpole on a hill with no flag,

a signpost on a roadside with the sign torn off.”

But God’s not finished. He’s waiting around to be gracious to you.

He’s gathering strength to show mercy to you.

God takes the time to do everything right—everything.

Those who wait around for him are the lucky ones.

Oh yes, people of Zion, citizens of Jerusalem, your time of tears is over. Cry for help and you’ll find it’s grace and more grace. The moment he hears, he’ll answer. Just as the Master kept you alive during the hard times, he’ll keep your teacher alive and present among you. Your teacher will be right there, local and on the job, urging you on whenever you wander left or right: “This is the right road. Walk down this road.” You’ll scrap your expensive and fashionable god-images. You’ll throw them in the trash as so much garbage, saying, “Good riddance!”

God will provide rain for the seeds you sow. The grain that grows will be abundant. Your cattle will range far and wide. Oblivious to war and earthquake, the oxen and donkeys you use for hauling and plowing will be fed well near running brooks that flow freely from mountains and hills. Better yet, on the Day God heals his people of the wounds and bruises from the time of punishment, moonlight will flare into sunlight, and sunlight, like a whole week of sunshine at once, will flood the land.

* * *

Look, God’s on his way,

and from a long way off!

Smoking with anger,

immense as he comes into view,

Words steaming from his mouth,

searing, indicting words!

A torrent of words, a flash flood of words

sweeping everyone into the vortex of his words.

He’ll shake down the nations in a sieve of destruction,

herd them into a dead end.

But you will sing,

sing through an all-night holy feast!

Your hearts will burst with song,

make music like the sound of flutes on parade,

En route to the mountain of God,

on the way to the Rock of Israel.

God will sound out in grandiose thunder,

display his hammering arm,

Furiously angry, showering sparks—

cloudburst, storm, hail!

Oh yes, at God’s thunder

Assyria will cower under the clubbing.

Every blow God lands on them with his club

is in time to the music of drums and pipes,

God in all-out, two-fisted battle,

fighting against them.

Topheth’s fierce fires are well prepared,

ready for the Assyrian king.

The Topheth furnace is deep and wide,

well stoked with hot-burning wood.

God’s breath, like a river of burning pitch,

starts the fire.

The Book (Scroll) of Isaiah, Chapter 30 (The Message)

A link to my personal reading of the Scriptures for Thursday, july 8 of 2021 with a paired chapter from each Testament of the Bible along with Today’s Proverbs and Psalms

A post by John Parsons that looks at “temptation”:

Where it is written, “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it” (1 Cor. 10:13), we note that the Greek text says that God will actively “make with the temptation the way of escape” (ποιήσει σὺν τῷ πειρασμῷ καὶ τὴν ἔκβασιν) so that you may be able to bear it.... When I was younger, I tended to think of temptation as the appeal to gratify my flesh, to impulsively seek hedonistic pleasure, and so on, but now I understand “temptation” (πειρασμό) to encompass far more than just that. For instance, whenever I am inclined to regard my experience in human or “natural” terms, apart from the consciousness of God’s all-pervading and sustaining presence, then I am surely under temptation. This encouraging verse, then, assures us of the Divine Presence in every moment, at every turn of our journey, and in every circumstance. God is always present to help you as you turn to him in faith. The sages state in this regard: “God creates the cure before the plague,” meaning that His love is the foundation of all things: עוֹלָם חֶסֶד יִבָּנֶה / olam chesed yibaneh: “steadfast love built the world” (Psalm 89:2). Just as God created mankind only after He created the pathway of repentance (i.e., the “Lamb slain from the foundation of the world”: Eph. 1:4, Heb. 4:4, Rev 13:8), so the escape from temptation was likewise foreseen and provided. In all things, then, may we humble ourselves and seek God’s face, understanding our radical dependence upon Him for our deliverance. Amen. [Hebrew for Christians]

7.6.21 • Facebook

and another post about True identity:

One of the great tragedies of life - perhaps the greatest tragedy of all - is to walk your days without knowing the truth about why you exist and who you really are. The Torah reveals that you are created "b'tzelem Elohim" (בצלם אלהים), in the very "image of God," for the purpose of knowing your Creator and understanding his love for you. Sin, however, has marred the divine image and therefore it needs to be recreated by means of the miracle of spiritual regeneration (1 Pet. 1:23). "This is the life of eternity: to know you, the only true God, and Yeshua the Messiah whom you have sent" (John 17:3).

Any "anthropology" or idea of man that is not grounded in this central reason for human existence debases the transcendent realm of the human to that of a "object" subject to impersonal forces... Naturalism reduces man to an animal that perishes and is no more (2 Pet. 2:12). The truth that our inmost existence is healed by regeneration restores us to the realm of the divine, reflecting the image of God anew, and therefore we are instructed to respect ourselves by honoring the gift of life that has been bestowed to us.

It is written: "A man is glorious, but if he does not understand, he is likened to a beast that perishes" (Psalm 49:20). Such a person is dehumanized and loses his connection with who he really is, for like an animal that is without "likeness" (דמה) to God, so he will be devoid of spiritual perspective, reasoning that all that is real concerns the immediacy of the present hour. He will be limited and bound to the dark "matrix" of this world wherein everything seems "natural" and everything happens as a result of material causes alone. The "natural man" can live his entire life without recognizing God's hand at work behind the scenes. His presuppositions and hardness of heart blind his eyes from apprehending spiritual reality. Those who have come alive and know God through the blessing of Yeshua the Messiah, however, shall also bear the image of the man of heaven, and "we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit" (2 Cor. 3:18). [Hebrew for Christians]

to be followed by a post about the significance of our words:

Yeshua said that as a tree is to its fruit, so is a person’s heart is to his speech. Our words arise from an underlying source and root: "I tell you, on the Day of Judgment people will give account for every careless word (πᾶν ῥῆμα ἀργὸν) they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned" (Matt. 12:36-37). First note that the phrase translated "every careless word" can be understood as "every 'workless' word," that is, every vain or empty word spoken, every broken promise, every insincere utterance, and so on. Second, note that there is a relationship between naming and being in Hebrew thought, and indeed the Hebrew word davar (דּבר), usually translated as “word,” can also mean "thing." This suggests that our words define reality - not in an absolute sense, of course - but in terms of our perspective and attitude, and for that we are held responsible before the LORD. Since our words express our thoughts, Yeshua wants us to make up our minds: “Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad, for the tree is known by its fruit” (Matt. 12:33)

The tongue expresses the condition of the heart, since "from the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks" (Luke 6:45). Therefore the root issue concerns the heart (לֵב), the “midst of the self” that wills, desires, and chooses how to interpret and describe the world. If we choose to see from a heart of fear, we will tend to use our words as a weapon; but if we see with a heart of faith, we will extend compassion and seek to build others up....

In the Book of Proverbs we read, "When words are many, transgression is not lacking, but whoever restrains his lips is wise" (10:19). The Chofetz Chaim comments: "When people are preparing a telegram, notice how carefully they consider each word before they put it down. That is how careful we must be when we speak." As James the Righteous admonishes us: "Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger" (James 1:19). [Hebrew for Christians]

7.7.21 • Facebook

Today’s message (Days of Praise) from the Institute for Creation Research

July 8, 2021

Submission

“Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.” (Ephesians 5:21)

Normally in today’s world we are told to strive for the top. Desire to be “Number 1” overshadows the biblical injunction of submission. But when we are truly in a right relationship with God, we will be submitting to one another. Christ taught that servanthood was of much greater value in the eyes of God than mastery.

We all know too many examples of churches that have been split by conflicts arising from selfishness among the believers or an unwillingness to serve. “From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?” (James 4:1). A Spirit-filled Christian (Ephesians 5:18) desires to submit and serve rather than to assert and rule.

The same thought is reflected throughout Scripture: “Yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble” (1 Peter 5:5). “Obey them [i.e., spiritual leaders] that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves: for they watch for your souls” (Hebrews 13:17). We must also submit to “every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake” (1 Peter 2:13).

The word “submit” is a translation of two Greek words meaning “to line up under.” It usually reflects a military hierarchy, “to rank lower than.” Our goal, therefore, should be to place others above ourselves and to be in submission to and in service of them.

This attitude, of course, was the attitude that Christ exhibited as He left heaven to come and serve, and die, who “took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:7-8). JDM

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