[I was a bit hesitant to post the following article, but did because the overall message is good and pertinent. 

Most, perhaps all, of those of us who are Christians at The QTree have some doctrinal differences between us, but we can’t let minor doctrinal differences divide us. 

In the essentials – Unity;
in the non-essentials – Liberty;
and in all things – Charity (agapé love).

The difficulty lies in the specifics of what a person considers to be the essentials and non-essentials of the Christian faith.  I’ll certainly not even attempt to resolve that issue here, although I believe that a true statement of faith can be quite brief.

In the following article, this issue would be addressed in the specific definition of a “fellow with a pure heart,” a definition that is not provided.]

A Christian brother was upset with me. So upset that he was considering rescinding his invitation for me to speak to his group. Seems he’d heard I was pretty open about who I have fellowship with. He’d read the words I wrote: “If God calls a person his child, shouldn’t I call him my brother?” And, “If God accepts others with their errors and misinterpretations, shouldn’t we?”

He didn’t like that. “Carrying it a bit too far,” he told me. “Fences are necessary,” he explained. “Scriptures are clear on such matters.” He read me a few and then urged me to be careful to whom I give grace.

“I don’t give it,” I assured. “I only spotlight where God already has.”

I hope to see him today. If the subject resurfaces, I’ll give him a thought that came to me. But in case it doesn’t, I’ll say it to you. (It’s too good to waste.) Just one sentence:

I’ve never been surprised by God’s judgment,
but I’m still stunned by his grace.

God’s judgment has never been a problem for me. In fact, it always seemed right. Lightning bolts on Sodom. Fire on Gomorrah. Good job, God. Egyptians swallowed in the Red Sea. They had it coming. Forty years of wandering to loosen the stiff necks of the Israelites? Would’ve done it myself. Ananias and Sapphira? You bet.

Discipline is easy for me to swallow. Logical to assimilate. Manageable and appropriate. But God’s grace? Anything but. Examples? How much time do you have?

David the psalmist becomes David the voyeur [and adulterer and murderer], but by God’s grace becomes David the psalmist again.

Peter denied Christ before he preached Christ.

Zacchaeus, the crook. The cleanest part of his life was the money he’d laundered. But Jesus still had time for him.

The thief on the cross: hellbent and hung-out-to-die one minute, heaven-bound and smiling the next.

Story after story. Prayer after prayer. Surprise after surprise.

Seems that God is looking more for ways to get us home than for ways to keep us out. I challenge you to find one soul who came to God seeking grace and did not find it. Search the pages [of the Bible]. Read the stories. Envision the encounters. Find one person who came seeking a second chance and left with a stern lecture. I dare you. Search. You won’t find it.

You will find a strayed sheep on the other side of the creek. He’s lost. He knows it. He’s stuck and embarrassed. What will the other sheep say? What will the shepherd say?

You will find a shepherd who finds him. (Luke 15:3-7)

Oh boy. Duck down. Put hooves over the eyes. The belt is about to fly. But the belt is never felt. Just hands. Large, open hands reaching under his body and lifting the sheep up, up, up until he’s placed upon the shepherd’s shoulders. He’s carried back to the flock and given a party! “Cut the grass and comb the wool,” he announces. “We are going to have a celebration!”

The other sheep shake their heads in disbelief. Just like we will. At our party. When we get home. When we watch the Shepherd shoulder into our midst one unlikely soul after another.

Seems to me God gives a lot more grace than we’d ever imagine. We could do the same.

I’m not for watering down the truth or compromising the gospel. But if a fellow with a pure heart calls God Father, can’t I call that same man Brother? If God doesn’t make doctrinal perfection a requirement for family membership, should I?

And if we never agree, can’t we agree to disagree? If God can tolerate my mistakes, can’t I tolerate the mistakes of others? If God can overlook my errors, can’t I overlook the errors of others? If God allows me with my foibles and failures to call him Father, shouldn’t I extend the same grace to others?

One thing’s for sure. When we get to heaven, we’ll be surprised at some of the folks we see. And some of them will be surprised to see us.

Adapted from:
*https://www.crosswalk.com/devotionals/upwords/behind-the-shower-curtain-upwords-week-of-july-23-29-11634931.html

The Post Convention High

By all accounts (I’ve watched very little of it) the Republican National Convention administered an ass kicking to the Democrat party. So, no way I can top it or even capture it. And since I’m perilously close to my data limit (and it doesn’t renew until two Mondays from now)…I’m not going to try. I might not be around too much, either.

But I remain as convinced as ever that the Dems cannot win without massive fraud. I’m slightly less convinced that the good guys have anticipated and blocked enough of it. (We think we know what they plan to do, but the name of the game is to hit the opponent with something unexpected, and we’d be fools to assume that we know everything that they’ve got up their sleeves.)

As for the house and senate races, there the fraud is at the retail level, and I expect a lot of places will be “safe” for Dems. Certainly those places where the Republicans didn’t even bother fielding someone. And then there are the offices that aren’t even up this time. Will the Trump tide still be strong in 2022 when my state’s executive offices (as well as those of all counties) are up? I hope so, but lately even the Secretary of State office has been taken by the Dems, and that’s the one that runs elections.

A Reminder Of Today’s Big Issue.

Our movement is about replacing a failed and corrupt political establishment with a new government controlled by you, the American People...Our campaign represents a true existential threat, like they’ve never seen before.

Then-Candidate Donald J. Trump

Needs to happen, soon.

Lawyer Appeasement Section

OK now for the fine print.

Please note that our menu has changed, please listen to all of the options.

This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Political correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines,  here, with an addendum on 20191110.

We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.

And remember Wheatie’s Rules:

1. No food fights
2. No running with scissors.
3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone.
4. The first rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government take your guns.
5. The gun is always loaded.
5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty.
6. Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy.
7. Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire.
8. Be sure of your target and what is behind it.
9. Social Justice Warriors, ANTIFA pukes, BLM hypocrites, and other assorted varieties of Marxists can go copulate with themselves, or if insufficiently limber, may substitute a rusty wire brush suitable for cleaning the bore of a twelve or ten gauge.

(Hmm a few extras seem to have crept in.)

Coin of The Day

Unless I think of something later today that won’t chew up bandwidth doing an image search, there won’t be a coin of the day. If you’re reading this sentence, I didn’t think of anything.

But there is something related on my mind.

I belong to a couple of coin clubs and we finally held a Zoom meeting for the first time since the Covidiocy began. There’s one guy in the club who will jump on you if you refer to our lowly copper-plated zinc plasticky-feeling one cent piece (or any of its more honorable predecessors) as a “penny.”

Technically, he’s correct. A “penny” is a British denomination, originally in silver, that was one twelfth of a shilling, which in turn was one twentieth of a pound, so 240 pennies made up a pound. And “pound” of course is sometimes called “pound sterling” and it was, once, literally, one pound of sterling silver (that hasn’t been true for many centuries; it began to be debased around 1300). One troy pound of 12 troy ounces, or 5760 grains. (And sterling silver is 0.925 or 37/40ths pure.) A troy grain is the same as an avoirdupois grain, which is what you use to measure powder and bullets. 24 grains, by the way, makes up a “pennyweight” and is 1/240th of a troy pound. (Those 16 and 8 penny nails at Home Depot or Lowes are a reference to the weight, not the price. And if you ever wonder why they abbreviate it “16d” instead of “16p” it’s because the penny ultimately derived from the Roman denarius.)

Whereas our cent is 100th of our dollar, and our dollar was originally a silver coin with 371 1/4 grains of silver in it. (Our silver dollars continued to have this much silver in them through 1935, excepting, of course, the Trade Dollar of the 1870s and 1880s.)

By the time the US was founded, the pound had been debased to the point where it was worth roughly five dollars, so as it happens, a shilling was worth about the same as a quarter. Which means the penny was a bit over two cents. (The penny could be subdivided into half pennies and farthings, so a farthing was roughly equal to one of our half cents.)

So why do we call our one cent piece a “penny”? And why does it irritate my friend?

It’s not entirely because it’s an unofficial term. He has no problem with calling the five cent piece a “nickel” even though it’s not an official name. (“Dime” is official–look at the coin, it says “One Dime” on it, not “Ten Cents.” That name goes all the way back to the original Federal coinage act of 1792, though it did not begin to appear on coins consistently until the 1830s.)

He’s irritated because “penny” also has another meaning, referring to a different country’s coinage.

But he’s wasting his time fighting it, because unfortunately the word “penny” has a distinct use.

If someone says “fifty cents” to you, it means something distinctly different from “fifty pennies” even if you both understand you’re talking about US money. “Fifty cents” means an amount of money, and it could be made of two quarters, five dimes, ten nickels, some combination, or it could be fifty pennies. Whoops, I telegraphed it! “Fifty pennies” specifically means 50 of those little copper-coated pieces of zinc. And that’s the distinction between “cent” (which is an amount of money) and “penny” (as used in the US), which is the physical object that represents one cent. Technically, of course, you could describe that object as the “one cent piece” and talk about “50 one cent pieces” but people are lazy and that will be cut down in size to some more convenient phrase like “50 pennies.”

[Now if you’re talking to a coin dealer and want to look at the one cent pieces in stock, you could say “Could I look over your cents” and that will be understood, but that’s a special case. But no one would do this, because the dealer will want you to be more specific before he hands you a box full of coins, for example whether you mean Indian head cents, Lincoln cents with the wheat ears (“wheaties,” no relation to Wheatietoo), and so on. And there is a big dividing line between large cents (pre 1857) and small cents (1857 to date), too, so someone might ask for “large cents.”]

So this turns out to be another chapter in the endless wrangle between prescriptivists (who describe what language ought to be) and the descriptivists (who describe what language actually is). And since “penny” is used in a way that makes a distinction from “cent,” it’s never going away, unless some celebrity comes up with an alternative and manages to popularize it. Personally, I’ve been known to call them “zinkys” but I’m no celebrity, and besides that can’t apply to the plentitude of pre-1982 pieces still circulating.)

PS: Even “nickel” is problematic. Because the first small cents that came out in 1857 were twelve percent nickel, they immediately got nicknamed “nicks.” Then in 1865 came the three cent nickel piece which lasted until 1889. This got named the “nickel” to distinguish it from the three cent silver piece which had disappeared from circulation thanks to the Civil War. And finally in 1866 came the five cent nickel piece we know today. When silver finally started trickling back into circulation, the half dime was simply discontinued because the (five cent) nickel had completely taken over the job. And (oh by the way) these “nickels” are only 25 percent nickel, the rest is copper.

Obligatory PSA/Reminder

Just one more thing, my standard Public Service Announcement. We don’t want to forget this!!!

Remember Hong Kong!!! And remember the tens of millions who died under the “Great Helmsman” Chairman Mao.

中国是个混蛋 !!!
Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!!
China is asshoe !!!

For my money the Great Helmsman is Hikaru Sulu (even if the actor is a dingbat).

“I took the deed of purchase — the sealed copy containing the terms and conditions, as well as the unsealed copy — and I gave this deed to Baruch son of Neriah, the son of Mahseiah, in the presence of my cousin Hanamel and of the witnesses who had signed the deed and of all the Jews sitting in the courtyard of the guard. In their presence I gave Baruch these instructions: This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Take these documents, both the sealed and unsealed copies of the deed of purchase, and put them in a clay jar so they will last a long time. For this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Houses, fields and vineyards will again be bought in this land.Jeremiah 32:11-15

What a ringing testimony to the power and greatness of God! God had said the land ultimately would be restored, and this deed would be valid. Therefore, it was to be put in a safe place. That is what Jeremiah did. He sent Baruch down to the title company and had him bring a deed to be signed. He acted before witnesses, and had the witnesses sign the deed and the copy — one to be sealed in a safe deposit box, the other to be kept by Jeremiah himself and passed on to his heirs, so that eventually they might claim title to this land. He worked in this normal way, and then clearly announced the purpose of it all: It is because God says there will be houses and fields and vineyards bought in this land again.

Faith takes no halfway measures. There is no hedging of Jeremiah’s bets here, no saying to these people, Well, I’m just buying this property on speculation, hoping it will all work out, but it’s just a gamble, a shot in the dark. No, he assures them that God has spoken, and that everything he is doing is consistent with the word of God.

Later in chapter 32, another quality of faith comes in. Beginning with verse 16 and continuing through verse 25, a remarkable prayer of Jeremiah is recorded. These are Jeremiah’s private thoughts about this deed. Before men this prophet is bold and resolute and confident. But before God he admits that he is not quite so sure this is all going to work out. He says to the Lord in verse 25, And though the city will be given into the hands of the Babylonians, you, Sovereign Lord, say to me, Buy the field with silver and have the transaction witnessed. I am glad this account is here, because this is what we might call the doubtings of faith.

Faith always has its doubts. I once had the impression that if you doubted, you could not have faith — that faith and doubt were contrary to one another. But I gradually began to understand that this is not true. Doubt is the proof of faith. Doubt is actually an attack upon the very faith we have. You cannot have doubts unless you have faith. Faith is the way God works, and so the enemy is bound to attack your faith immediately as he sees you beginning to act and live and walk by faith. Therefore doubts will begin to arise — as a result of Satan’s attempt to overthrow your faith. There is no faith without doubts.

Jesus himself, though he always lived by faith, and everything he did was by faith, nevertheless was subjected to times of severe doubt. Otherwise he was not one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sinning, (Hebrews 4:15 RSV). Doubt is part of the life of faith. If you are trying to walk by faith in a promise God has given you, and you are troubled by doubts, this is the proof you are really living by faith. Hang in there! Do not let your doubts overthrow you.

*https://www.raystedman.org/daily-devotions/jeremiah/faith-and-doubt