The EPA wants to monitor how long hotel guests spend in the shower with the aim toward curbing the length of their ablutions. There really are no words to respond to such a thing, save for the fact that I honestly believe that this one article represents all that is wrong with American Government. Sometimes, I honestly wonder why I bother reading the news anymore. I think I'd rather be an ostrich. SIGH.
Yesterday, I received the now BEST PRESENT EVER (again from Becky) that was quite a surprise.
She made me a weighted blanket to help with the neurological anxiety and made it out of the most MARVELOUS GREEN fabric. In the image squares, there are dragonflies and frogs. She likes dragonflies and I like frogs, so it is Becky-Myrtle friendship fabric!
I bawled like a baby for hours, thinking what a great mercy she showed me and how I am such a poor excuse for a friend.
Then I took my person, my puppy, and my weighted blanket on up to the airing porch to read.
We all stayed up there until the sun set. So beautiful, eh?
Before we went up on the airing porch, I had Amos tend to his business. Whilst he did so, I lay on the grass and admired the canopy of magnolia flowers above me.
Today, I have been battling overwhelming waves of pukiness all day. Three doses of Zofran and the battle continues. For a while, the first dose finally started working (and Becky's lovely long phone chat helped distract me), but it was as if something switched off the medication and I was knocked flat again with violent nausea. SIGH.
However, since I thawed out the flank steak...
I marinated it. It is a recipe with pounds of spices and gallons of lime juice.
For the record, I ate the Chili Spiced Steak on tacos tonight. After having both, I believe that I like flank steak better than skirt steak. Of course, I shall have to try both at least once more to know for sure. I do find it interesting that whilst I over cooked the skirt steak, I very nearly undercooked the flank steak at the same temperature, when the cooking instructions for both are similar. I do like steak rare, so I was fine. However, next time I shall try a total of 7 minutes instead of 6.
As far as flavor, I did enjoy the steak, despite the continued nausea. However, I believe that, between the two, I prefer the flavor of the Chipotle Steak that I had in March (and finally posted the recipe). I tried to make sauce out of the marinade as I did with the Chipotle Steak, but doing so was a dismal failure. When posting the Chipotle Steak recipe, I noted that it might serve you well to double the marinade ingredients to plan for a plentiful tasty steak sauce, instead of a small amount of tasty steak sauce.
Back to the beginning and speaking of reading ... John. Well. There are too many words in my head to talk about Michael Card's commentary on the first few chapters of John. Perhaps because it was the first commentary, perhaps because it is the most unique testimony, perhaps because John's first readers where those of a temple city, but one dedicated to false gods and goddesses, rather than our Triune God ... whatever the case, each segment of commentary on each passage of Scripture is chock full of information.
Here is but a small example, speaking of Jesus turning water in to wine, a small bit from the tale end of that section of commentary:
"This is how he revealed his glory"—this is Jesus' idea of a miraculous sign, one known only to the servants. There was no waiving of arms, no calling attention to himself. Jesus simply takes the water of the old orthodoxy and unassumingly transforms it into the wine of the new reality. His other miracles in John will fit the same patter, except for one:
- In chapter 4 he will head the official's son in absentia.
- In chapter 5 he will cause the lame to walk by simply saying "get up." This man does not even know Jesus' name.
- In chapter 6 he will feed five thousand by simply pronouncing the blessing over the meal.
- Aslo, in chapter 6 he will walk on the water. Mark observes that he was walking past them, his purpose simply to get to the other side of the lake (Mk 6:48).
- In chapter 9 he will heal the blind man, also in absentia.
The single exception of the rule in regard to Jesus' unmiraculous miracles is the raising of Lazarus in chapter 11. This he accomplishes by means of a loud shout.
Finally, we need to take into account John's first Ephesian readers. When they hear of Jesus' first miracle, their minds would immediately turn to the god Dionysius. (The Romans called him Bacchus.) on more than one occasion his myth includes stories of Dionysius turning water into wine. There was a large cult in Ephesus dedicated to Dionysius: his image is even found on the mosaic floor of one of the wealthy homes. In their minds they must have understood the story as proof that Jesus had power to take back from the pagan world the illusion of its power to transform. Dionysius was a myth. Jesus was a flesh and blood man known to John himself, who had witnessed in real life Jesus' power and glory.
Michael Card weaves in the culture and beliefs of John's first readers to demonstrate that, essentially, often his testimony is a double entendre of sorts, a spiritual one, debunking myths and false doctrine and/or delineating between false worship and the Good News of Christ Crucified.
One of the patterns of John Michael Card notes:
Whenever we come across a story in John that is unique (and 92 percent of his Gospel is unique!), it is always a good idea to check what is going on at roughly the same place in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Inevitably John is omitting material from the Synoptics and substituting fresh information we would have never known otherwise. It provides an opportunity to see his mind at work.
One of the most interesting (thus far) substitutions is that John does not include Jesus' temptation in the wilderness, but instead has the story of when Jesus first cleansed the temple of moneychangers and sacrifice sellers during Passover of his first year of ministry. I liked Michael Card's imagined commentary on the why of that substitution:
It is as if John wants us to be reminded that there are many different wilderness experiences. While some are literally in the desert, a deeper, lonelier wilderness can be experienced in a crowded place where worship should be offered but tragically is not.
To me, this has even deeper reflective meaning given that it was an old man writing this testimony. How many wildernesses did John himself traverse? Was he not, there in Ephesus, surrounded on all sides by false worshipers? Could the echoes of his life in Jerusalem be reverberating across the years as he lived in Ephesus?
As I read (and re-read) through the commentaries and the Gospels, something that I find myself pondering is the perfection of the testimonies and the blending of Scripture being the Word of God penned by man. Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John were all writing down the Word of God that God caused to be written. When they wrote it, where they wrote it, and the lives they lived all framed that Word. Just as Jesus stepped into the world in the fullness of time, each man wrote his testimony in the same, by and with and through the Holy Spirit. So many times and places melding together so that the Good News would be shared in myriad ways to reach all of mankind.
I feel as if I stumble and bumble trying to explain what goes through my mind, but the two phrases that I have come to admire the most about Michael Card's commentary is his emphasis on the absolute perfection of the Gospels and on how all that Jesus says and does is luminous ... lightens the world and our hearts, minds, bodies, and souls.
I will finish by one tiny verse that leapt off my Kindle screen and smacked me in the head: "But anyone who lives by the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be shown to be accomplished by God." John 3:21
BAM! How can anyone not see that as the most ginormous dis of works righteousness? I mean, gee, it's right there in plain sight, in black and white: Man's good works are accomplished by God.
Other than the first five verses of chapter one, what is my favorite verse thus far? I'll cheat. I have two:
John 2:18: "So the Jews replied to Him, "What sign of authority will You show us for doing these things?" As Michael Card pointed out, there was no outcry for Jesus' clearing of the temple, no charge that what He did was wrong. All they wanted to know was where Jesus got the authority to do the work that He did. It's a perfect example of how carefully we need to read the Scriptures for they were carefully written.
John 3:34 "For God sent Him, and He speaks God's words, since He gives the Spirit without measure." I am comforted by the fact that we are given the Holy Spirit without measure.
No comments:
Post a Comment