Queen of the drips...

I have some mad, mad DIY home repair/renovation skills.  Painting furniture is not one of them.  When it comes to painting furniture, I am Queen of the Drips.  SIGH.

Even with drips, though, this is going to be a wonderful bit of awesomeness on my back porch!

I was going to do three coats, but I have decided that I will paint two and see how it holds up.  I confess that as much as I love, love, love Valspar's Bonding Primer, I am a tad worried that I did not sand the rocking chair enough before I started working on it.  So, 72 hours from now, I shall be rocking away in the chair ... even if my porch is still a work in progress.

It's suppose to be raining Monday.  SIGH.

Here are all the framing boards for holding up the vinyl lattice beneath the lower porch.  Today, I got two coats of paint on them.

I moved them from the garage to the back yard because I was thinking of my tendency to drip.  I really didn't want crimson red splots on my garage floor.  Then, I started painting.

Look at the color of all the wood trim.  The clearest view is the small windows on the left side of the photos.

Now, does that look like the same color??????

I had the original paint can, but it is old ... older even than the Flipper.  Last year, when I thought that I was going to be a responsible homeowners and scrap, sand, and repaint the cracked and peeling screen door to the basement entrance, I went to Lowe's with the can and asked them to match the paint.  At that time, I also asked them to put the original can in their paint shaker.

Today, I painted the first coat from the new paint can.  The color was quite concerning.  So, I painted the second coat from the old paint can.  To me, this is nothing like the house paint.  Since Lowe's tells you the best way to match a color using the special machine is to have it painted on white paper, I painted the back of a notecard.  I figured that I did not actually have the original can of paint.  That or the translation of the formula code on the side of the original paint can was off.

These are two paint chips from the front porch set atop the swatch I made from the original paint can.  To my very, very, very unskilled color eye, they are a perfect match.  Just look at that color on the swatch notecard.

Does that look like the color on the chips or the swatch?  Because the same brush that painted the swatch notecard painted these boards.   SIGH.

Tomorrow, which is also supposed to be dry, I plan to turn them all over and paint the other side.  I just wish they were a better match to the house.  But I am not going to spend money on paint when I have a nearly full new gallon and a half full old gallon.

Maybe the sight of that awesome GREEN rocking chair on the back porch will distract others from noticing the differences in the paint color.

I was going to try and start crushing and bagging the dried herbs ... if they are actually dried ... but even taking three naps with Amos today, the painting exhausted me.  That or the giddiness of having a GREEN rocking chair exhausted me.  Or both.  Either way, I am exhausted.

I re-read the introduction Michael Card's commentary on Matthew.  And then I read the first chapter.  I am not sure that I want to type out as much as I did with Mark, but, then again, if I do not, I will have no record that I read this.  If not here, who will remember for me?

Yesterday, I told Firewood Man I would see him tomorrow when he came to mow.  He told me that he was not coming until Thursday, because that is his mowing day.

Me:  "I know, tomorrow is Thursday."
Tim:  "Tomorrow is Thursday only for you, Myrtle.  For the rest of us, it is Wednesday."

Today is my Thursday, only I actually thought it was Tuesday, for most of the day,  Convinced, actually, about it being Tuesday, counting out how long I have left to brave opening the encrypted CD from the SSA so that I can print off the neuropsych and cognitive functioning test results from the disability assessments for the neurologist.  A month past, I still cannot bring myself to try the key given to me with the CD of medical records.

Anyway, Micheal Card's introduction is teeming with information on Galilee, all of which I did not know.  It is also filled with the historical setting regarding the impending split of the followers of Christ from the Jewish faith with which many still identified themselves.

In fact, Michael Card's approach to the Gospel of Matthew is that it is about the question of identity.  The entire Gospel might be summed up in the plea, "Jesus, tell me who you are, so I can know who I am."  In this light the question "Who am I? is transformed into the penultimate question as it becomes servant to the ultimate question, "Who is Jesus?"

Again, the instruction Michael Card gives time and time again is to listen to what Matthew has to say, to hear as those who were receiving his letter and to hear about Jesus.

Michael Card writes again about the factions of Judaism, as I learned about in his commentary on Mark.  To many, those who followed Jesus were just another group, to go along with the Sadducees, Pharisees, Scribes, etc.  Following the destruction of the temple at Jerusalem, Jews had to figure out their own identity, redefine the face of Judaism.  The result was a shift from sacrifices at the temple to prayers guiding the minutes, hours, and days.  Those "Jews" who had found their Messiah were soon to be cast out of Judiasm, severed from the community of their faith.

In the past, I have often talked about how first century writings fascinated me because Christians had to figure out what being a Christian meant and looked like.  They did not have the liturgy or service books with hymns.  But I never thought about how the Jews were in the same position.  No longer was the Jerusalem temple complex the rhythm beat of their lives, their years, their faith.

The crisis in Galilee will strip the first followers of Jesus of their true identity.  Many of them will lose their jobs.  They will be betrayed by their families.  Their fundamental Jewish identities will be stripped away.  Eventually they will be banned from the synagogue, which means being excluded from Jewish life altogether (see Jn 9:22; 12:42).  The organizing principle of identity pulls together the unique threads of the life situation of the first recipients of the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of identity.

To those who were being stripped of their identity as children of Israel, Matthew's Gospel speaks repeatedly of the kingdom of God.  More than any other Gospel, it portrays the kingship of Jesus and the radical uniqueness of his kingdom.  Only in Matthew do we hear Jesus tell his followers that they are the light of the world and the salt of the earth (Mt 5:13-14; see Jn 8:12).

Jesus will redefine his followers, whose identities were rooted in the occupation of fishing, as fishers of people (Mt 4:19).  The Beatitudes of Matthew 5 will forever redefine the identities of the followers of Jesus; they are the pour, mourning, gentle, hungry, merciful peacemaking ones who, above all, are persecuted.  According to this radical new identity, they will possess the new kingdom of which Jesus is the king.  The unclean leper, the bleeding woman, the blind and the lame will all discover a new healed identity in Jesus.  The Twelve will be redefined as "Apostles" when they are sent out on mission, bearing Jesus' authority.

But most of all, it is Jesus' identity that is revealed in the Gospel of Matthew.  He is the king who is worshiped by the king-making magi in Matthew 2.  He is the one who identifies with sinners in need of a baptism of repentance in chapter 3.  He is the one who finds his identity with the Father in the face of the temptation in the wilderness in chapter 4.  He is the Lord of the Sabbath and God's chosen servant in chapter 12.  He is the new Moses, providing manna in the wilderness in chapters 14 and 15. He is defined by his friend Peter as the Christ in chapter 16.  His true, luminous identity is unveiled before the Three on the Mount of Transfiguration in chapter 17.  He is the returning Son of Man in chapter 24.  He is the wine and bread of chapter 26.  He is the suffering servant on the cross in chapter  27.  And finally, in chapter 28, he is the Risen One.

Who am I?  To answer that, you have to answer Who is Jesus?

As I said, Michael Card stresses the importance of listening.  In his preface, he points out that in the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-5) before we are told to love the Lord, we are told to listen.  To hear.  The introduction, then, in large part has to do with how to listen to Matthew.  Understanding how to listen is to understand the setting of Galilee and the setting of this time in history.  In listening, what you will hear is Jesus.

Some of the vast bits and pieces of new learning I acquired:

• Matthew's "device" is not a bookend, but a fulfillment formula, using the Old Testament to show how the life and work of Jesus is fulfilling what was written in Scriptures long ago.
• The women in Jesus' genealogy are non-Jews who all married Jewish men, thus showing in the genealogy that there is a place of the Gentiles in the future God has planned for His people.
• We know little of Joseph, but what we do know is what we need to know: Joseph was a righteous man.  For example, Joseph was planning, even before his dream, on not taking advantage of Mary's situation, even so far as to work to try to protect her reputation.  Joseph is also a dreamer, like his Old Testament namesake.
• If you listen, you will hear the birth of Jesus from Jospeh's point of view.  Mary is silent.  In Luke, Mary is the one who speaks.  I had not noticed that.  

I like how the commentary on the chapter ended:

Joseph would have been the first character in the Gospel with whom its first hearers in Matthew's community would resonate.  His predicament is a parable of theirs.  Like them, he faces a difficult decision:  to maintain the status quo of the old orthodoxy or to follow a new and wonderful dream from God at an enormous personal cost.  Joseph, the namesake of a deemer, clearly follows the dream.  Though is life is made vastly more difficult as a result, on every hand he is protected by God. Matthew's first hearers have reason to embrace the same hope.

A mere smattering of the preface, introduction, and first chapter of commentary.
A mere smattering of what I am learning.
Learning that I savor even knowing I will forget.