Distracting myself...

Darned rain.  It looks like finishing the back porch is not going to recommence on the morrow.  SIGH.

I got the last two boards painted, the treated ones Firewood Man thought might could take the paint.  I also marked all the drippy side of the other boards with a sharpie and tried to focus only on the good side.

I got a free wine crate today, so I sealed it.  I thought it will make a fine side table for the steamer lounger up on the airing porch.  "Free" is such a beautiful word, eh??

Then I started thinking about this really old, small, round table from India that was from when my parents were first married.  I think it dates back to college days for them.  The top is removable and the bottom folds flat.  It's been up in my attic since I moved, and it was up in my attic from Alexandria.  I never gave it away because it was from a time in their lives when things were good, not bad.

I really don't have family in my life, but I sure do have many bits of family furniture about the house, from three generations.  Odd, I know.

One of the panels is very loose and has to be fitted back in place every time you move it.  And one of the hinges has a safety pin stuck in it to keep it functional.  However, I lugged this down from the attic and have been staring at it for a while.  I did so because I think it would work as a side table to the rocking chair on the back porch.

It is sitting on my miniature painting drop cloth.  This rather thick piece of plastic that was a sleeve around something I received eons ago.  Whenever I have a tiny painting or sealing job, I use it instead of getting out my regular drop cloth.  It folds up nicely, and I store it inside one of the roller pans.  Most folk would have merely tossed out this piece of plastic, but I saw its great, enduring potential and kept it.

What do you think?  Odd??  I sort of think so.

I "borrowed" this from the basement living space, since the idea of it just popped into my head.  I think it looks better.  Do you??  Really, I just need to find another free wine crate since I wouldn't want this box ruined by weather ... not that I am enjoying it daily myself, being that it is ensconced down in the basement.

I do think that I should find a home for the India table.  It really shouldn't languish up in an attic.

That's probably enough musical furniture for the day.
Wait, one more thought!
The piece of wood in the utility closet....


There was this blackened piece of wood in the utility closet that I never got rid of because the back is braced like a barn door.  It was disgusting, but it was wood.  I just popped down to the basement and scrubbed it and scrubbed it and scrubbed it to see what it looks without decades of grime.

[I really should have taken a before photo.]

Okay, so this could work as a little table for the back porch.  All I would need to do is seal it and figure out some legs for it.  Some free legs ... or at least some extremely economical ones.  In the meanwhile, I do have a significant supply of old bricks.

I wonder how long it will take to dry from my frenetic attack of scrubbing....

Other than pondering how I could have a small table next to the rocking chair, which I tried out today (along with Amos), I spent the afternoon making four of my dweeby birthday cards for the family birthdays in October and November.  Being crafty—even the worst crafter on the planter—is exhausting.  I've had trouble writing by hand for a long while now.  Today, I struggled with the word "birthday" repeatedly.  On one card, I wrote "birthag."  Given that it was for my mother, I had to start that one again.

What I did not do is harvest the rest of the herbs or make some more rosemary butter or even make the roasted garlic butter I planned.  Nor did I pop the current batches of rosemary butter out of their cubes and wrap them up in wax paper.

I am still disheartened by Friday's appointment, even though I know that he did not actually perform an assessment.  A friend emailed the standard dementia assessment from the national Alzheimer's association (or something like that). I printed it out to take to my GP on Friday.  I am curious as to what she will say, you know, since I am perfectly healthy and all.  SIGH.

My skipping of theophylline out of pique left me fainting when I got out of bed today.
Stupid Myrtle.

I read another chapter of the Matthew Commentary:

• I found it interesting that just as Joseph received his instruction in a dream, so did the magi.
• I had no idea that Herod's patron was Mark Antony and that Shakespeare's play "Julius Caesar" was set in Herod's time.
• While there were three gifts, no where does it say there were only three magi.
• Jesus wasn't a baby when they arrived, but a toddler.
• The whole fleeing of Herod's rage was actually a 300 mile journey!!
• Chapter 2 has several of the fulfillment formula (Matthew's "device").
• The magi, who are Gentiles, are the first to recognize the dignity of Jesus and to worship him—a common theme in Matthew that Jesus came for all, not just the Jews.

The historical background of Herod the Great is horrid.  I keep forgetting that the Herod who beheaded John the Baptist is not the Herod who slaughtered all the children.  Of course, if you are a son of a mad man, literally and figuratively, then that latter murder is not so surprising.  Herod murdered his wife and her sister, three of his sons, and ordered the death of many prominent Jews upon his own death so there would be great mourning in Jerusalem then.  He was old, suffering mental illness from gonorrhea, and fought off wicked plots by the likes of Queen Cleopatra.  He was embattled, weakened, paranoid.  Not a good combination of states in which to receive the news of the magi.

The magi.
Wow.
Not what I thought.

The bearers of the message of the newborn king represented an even greater threat to Herod.  The magi were an elite political and spiritual force that had exercised authority since before the time of Daniel, who was appoint s one of their number (Dan 2:48; 5:11).  They were the interpreters of dreams (Dan 2:2; 4:7) and possessors of secrete knowledge of the plants and the stars (see Esther 1:13).  Owing to the presence of the exiled community in Babylon during the captivity, the Jewish Scriptures had become part of the magi's vast accumulation of knowledge.  Thought he passage is not quoted, the most likely reason for their journey was the prophecy of the wicked prophet Balaam in Number 24:17:

I see him, but not now;
I perceive him, but not near.
A star will come from Jacob,
and a scepter will arise from Israel.


[I had a very irreverent thought, upon reading this, wondering if the technomages in Babylon 5 were based on the magi.]

A bit later, Michael Card continues about the magi:

As they resumed their journey, the star reappears and guides the weary group to a house where the young child is waiting.  Their joy at seeing the familiar star once more and finding the goal of their long trek is difficult for us to imagine.  What, to me, is most significant about the magi occurs in Matthew 2:11.  There is a doubled statement: they fall to their knees and worship him.  When we take into consideration the vast knowledge base possessed by the magi, and the fact that they were willing to undertake such long journey, indicates one simple startling fact: in all their sacred wisdom, in all their vast learning, they had not yet found the wisdom their hearts were longing for.  Why else would they have take such an arduous trip if not for an aching need to satisfy a hunger that all of the world's wisdom had not yet satisfied?

We must rid ourselves of the notion that because their were three gifts, there must have been only three magi.  Perhaps there were dozens of them.  Gold is a gift for kings.  Frankincense was the only incense allowed on the altar in the temple (Ex 30:9; 34-38).  Myrrh was primarily used as a perfume but also in the process of embalming (Jn 19:39). They were the perfect gifts for a king who was also a priest who had come to die.

The simple fact that they worshiped the toddler king indicates that in him they apparently found all they had been looking for.  This wordless one, who was the Word, was at the same time the wisdom of God.  The wisest men in the wold recognize it and fall to their knees.

So, the two groups of advisors Herod called together (the Sadducees and the Pharisees) did not recognize Jesus for who He was.  But the magi did!  A foreshadowing of what was to come, eh, with the plot to end Jesus' life by those same sets of advisors??

I loved the explanation of the gifts:  They were the perfect gifts for a king who was also a priest who had come to die.

Michael Card also emphasized that the Gospels are not biographies, but testimonies:

At the opening of Matthew 2 we experience a gap of some two and a half years.  Now at the end of that chapter, we enter into a significantly longer "dark" period in the life of Jesus, lasting some thirty years.  Except for one small window in the book of Luke when Jesus was twelve years old, the entire space of his growing -up years is left untouched in the Gospels.  If they were meant simply to be biographies, this would be a serious failure.  But the Gospels aren't meant to be biographies; they are testimonies, perfect testimonies.

This ... comforted me.

In Micheal Card's commentary on the Gospel of Mark, he repeatedly emphasized that Mark was the briefest of the Gospel writers and so every word mattered.  He repeatedly emphasized the need to listen closely to Mark's testimony about Jesus, to hear the Word of God.  Already, in Michael Card's commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, he emphasizes the need to listen to the testimony being given about Jesus.  Even though Mark's Gospel is short and Matthew's is long, what matters most is that both are the perfect testimony of Jesus Christ, for the first recipients of the letter all the way down to the last recipient of that testimony before Jesus' return.

Hear the Word.
The perfect Word.

Selah.

I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the greater depth of history I've just been given.  Such a narrow view I've had of the setting of when Jesus stepping into our time.  I mean ... Cleopatra???  Julius, Mark Antony, Cleopatra, Octavian ... Jesus birth came after the tumultuous birthing pains of the Roman Empire and before that empire would forever change Judaism with the destruction of the temple and the shift away from a sacrificial lifestyle and worship.

I mean, I remember that Paul was a Roman, but I think of that as an aside, rather than of great importance given the historical events swirling through the last BC century and the first AD century.  So many factions of Judaism.  So many political machinations.  So many common folk caught between a rock and a hard place, between the haves and the haves nots, both politically and religiously.  For me, learning the history of the story of the Gospels has greatly helped me to understand ever so much more of the why of the words and actions of the lay folk and the leaders woven into the Gospel testimony.  And underscore more the wisdom and discernment of Jesus as He weighed and measured the words He spoke and the Word He gave to the world ... to me.

Reading these commentaries, I've been caddywhompus, discombobulated, and stunned.  I've also been shown Jesus come for man, not man being here for Jesus.  The whole experience has been mind boggling, earth-shattering, and altogether life changing.

Michael Card ends his commentary on chapter two:

As the first hearers of Matthew's Gospel sat listening in the synagogue, once again the theme has been touched upon that the Gentiles have a stake in the ministry of Jesus from the very beginning.  The magi, who had come so far risking their very lives, are the first to recognize the dignity of Jesus and to offer him worship.  Though the priests and experts in the Law know the facts about where the Messiah would be born, they missed out on the reality of who he was.  Matthew's first hearers are being encouraged not to miss out on who Jesus is, even though they, as Jews, know all the facts as well.

I would extrapolate that further to posit that, today, even though we know all the facts about the Messiah, we, too, are encouraged not to miss out on who Jesus is.

A bit ... disappointed about the number of magi, I went to look up the lyrics of one of my very most favorite carols.  What surprised me was all the lyrics I've never seen due to the truncation that is so common these days.  As it turns out, the carol is more awesome than I thought, given what I've learned in Michael Card's commentary of the second chapter of Matthew:

We three kings of Orient are
Bearing gifts we traverse afar
Field and fountain, moor and mountain
Following yonder star

O Star of wonder, star of night
Star with royal beauty bright
Westward leading, still proceeding
Guide us to thy Perfect Light

Born a King on Bethlehem's plain
Gold I bring to crown Him again
King forever, ceasing never
Over us all to reign

O Star of wonder, star of night
Star with royal beauty bright
Westward leading, still proceeding
Guide us to Thy perfect light

Frankincense to offer have I
Incense owns a Deity nigh
Prayer and praising, all men raising
Worship Him, God most high

O Star of wonder, star of night
Star with royal beauty bright
Westward leading, still proceeding
Guide us to Thy perfect light

Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume
Breathes of life of gathering gloom
Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying
Sealed in the stone-cold tomb

O Star of wonder, star of night
Star with royal beauty bright
Westward leading, still proceeding
Guide us to Thy perfect light

Glorious now behold Him arise
King and God and Sacrifice
Alleluia, Alleluia
Earth to heav'n replies

O Star of wonder, star of night
Star with royal beauty bright
Westward leading, still proceeding
Guide us to Thy perfect light