My Heart Shall Rejoice

Today is Saturday, January 13, 2018. Day 21,856.

75 days until Opening Day.

Trevor Rabin (Yes), born on this date in 1955, said, “When you listen to a Yes album, you should listen to the whole thing through headphones with the lights off.”
BrainyQuote
I find myself to be in agreement with that statement. Yes is just one of those kinds of bands. Especially albums like Close To the Edge, or Tales From Topographic Oceans. Here is a live recording of Rabin and Yes performing “Changes.”

Today’s word of the day, from Dictionary.com, is pseud, a noun, meaning, “a person of fatuously earnest intellectual, artistic, or social pretensions.” What, you might ask, does “fatuously” mean? I’m glad you asked. I had to look it up. It means, “foolish or inane, especially in an unconscious, complacent manner; silly.”

It’s the weekend! We made our Kroger Click List order last night, and will be going to pick it up in about an hour. That’s my kind of grocery shopping!!

R & J are coming over later, for lunch, and so I can give her her license tag window sticker. I think we will go to Cotton Patch for lunch. Perhaps we will play some games after, or watch something on Netflix. Who knows?

There might be some football games this weekend. I’m not sure. 😀 Actually, out of curiosity, I looked it up. People who know me know that I don’t really follow football. So . . . today, the Falcons play the Eagles. Bird against bird. That’s fitting. I will pull for the Eagles. I like green. In the second game, the Titans play the Patriots. I will root for the Patriots. (Sorry, Mama.) Go ahead and hate Tom Brady if you want to. He’s one of the greatest that’s ever played the game. Plus, if you claim to love America, why wouldn’t you root for a team called “The Patriots?” Hmmmm?? I jest, of course. Tomorrow, first game, Jaguars vs. Steelers. That’s a tough one for me. I like Jaguars. The cats and the cars both. But I have a work associate that is a Steelers fan. I think I’ll still root for the Jags. Tomorrow, second game, Saints and Vikings. Another tough one. I’ve always been partial to the Saints, but I have also always liked the Vikings. Fran Tarkenton and all that, you know. I also have a couple of work associates who like the Saints. I’m not calling that one. I’ll root for both teams. And yes, I can, too, do that.

TODAY’S DEVOTIONAL AND PRAYERS
All Scriptures are from the ESV unless otherwise noted

To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David.
How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? 
How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? 
Consider and answer me, O LORD my God; light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death, 
lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him,” lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken. 
But I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. 
I will sing to the LORD, because he has dealt bountifully with me.
Psalm 13

I love how this Psalm begins with a kind of lament, but ends with the positive affirmation, “My heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the LORD, because he has dealt bountifully with me.”

Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.
1 Thessalonians 5:11

Relationships are important, especially in the body of Christ. We need one another, and we need to build up one another.

(From The Business of Heaven)
The Visible Church

“If He can be known it will be by self-revelation on His part, not by speculation on ours. We, therefore, look for Him where it is claimed that He has revealed Himself by miracle, by inspired teachers, by enjoined ritual. The traditions conflict, yet the longer and more sympathetically we study them the more we become aware of a common element in many of them: the theme of sacrifice, of mystical communion through the shed blood, of death and rebirth, of redemption, is too clear to escape notice. We are fully entitled to use moral and intellectual criticism. What we are not, in my opinion, entitled to do is simply to abstract the ethical element and set that up as a religion on its own. Rather in that tradition which is at once more completely ethical and most transcends mere ethics . . . we may still most reasonably believe that we have the consummation of all religion, the fullest message from the wholly other, the living creator, who, if He is at all, must be the God not only of the philosophers, but of mystics and savages, not only of the head and heart, but also of the primitive emotions and the spiritual heights beyond all emotion. We may . . . attach ourselves to the Church, to the only concrete organization which has preserved down to this present time the core of all the messages, pagan and perhaps pre-pagan, that have ever come from beyond the world, and begin to practise the only religion which rests not upon some selection of certain supposedly ‘higher’ elements in our nature, but on the shattering and rebuilding, the death and rebirth, of that nature in every part: neither Greek nor Jew nor barbarian, but a new creation.” (Religion Without Dogma?)

Father, as this weekend goes by, may we be more in tune with the need for the relationships of which we are part, both familial and spiritual. May our time with our children by exceptional today. May our worship gathering tomorrow focus as much on the relationships with the people who attend as it does on the sermon or the songs. May we find our most special inspiration from the taking of The Supper as a community of faith. You have loved us. Help us to love one another as you love us. And remind us that you love us just as you love your Son, our Savior.
Even so, come, Lord Jesus!

Let your steadfast love, O LORD, be upon us, even as we hope in you. Psalm 33:22

Grace and peace, friends.