bierkergaard

Last night, as is my custom, I read a bit of the Bible before heading to sleep. When I say a bit, it was a bit....like two sentences. I reserve most of my in-depth Bible reading to the morning, where I then blog about what I have read. I find writing about what I have learned to be a good way to remember and apply what I have read. So, the evening reading is a nightcap as it were. One that norms my mind on spiritual things as I fall asleep. Never underestimate the power and effectiveness of even a little of God's word. Sometimes people get in the rut of thinking if they don't have a lot of time to read the Bible, they shouldn't do it all. A little in God's hands can be a lot. By providential action and my intent to head back towards the 4 Gospels, I went from Galatians 2 where Paul called out Peter because of his addiction for approval from the Judaizers at the expense of dissing the Gentile converts (shows that even Peter could fall back into the sin of ethnocentric fa...

This morning, as is usual, I was making breakfast for Lina and I. I have in general adopted my mom's breakfast menu planning....eggs one day, oatmeal the next. I might be more pro-egg than she was as research has determined the eggs are far from the devil (deviled eggs?) and are in fact nutritional powerhouses...so our diet might be 60% eggs and 40% oats. The oatmeal needs bananas, though, to please my customer! My mom did occasionally substitute Wheatina or Cream of Wheat for the oatmeal to delight our palates (OK, I am being a little snarky). I have followed her procedure on the eggs...scrambled every day, but eat oatmeal every other day like a horse. Making eggs sunny-side up just requires too much energy and execution for me. On the weekends, I might devote myself to cooking eggs that way. Eggs tend to be all weekend (hence the 60/40 split) Today was an egg day. I and Lina prefer toast with our eggs. As I fiddled with opening a fresh bag of bread, I encountered the crust. Usual...

Galatians 2:11 "But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed." Back when I was in college (no, my philosophy prof was not Aristotle...I am not that old), a foursome of Christian Fundies of the self-righteous sort came to campus to preach against the young drunken and fornicatin' collegiate heathen. The lead preacher's name was Brother Jed . There was one other guy and two women with no affect (the women had about the responsiveness of dolls, with strings to pull in their back, who would reply in pre-recorded one sentence answers). The evangelical "Gang of Four" set up stage and preached, seeing themselves as prophets inveighing against wickedness. It turned into a circus; the preachers were laughingstocks. It is one thing to be a fool for Christ. It is another thing to be a plain old idiot. It seemed even Brother Jed was getting a kick amusement-wise out of it all...for all of his invective, I could see him smi...

Me and this guy and the wine and food pairing were instant comrades because we were both Political Science majors in college. It is an odd fellowship. Almost no one who major in Poli Sci winds up becoming an actual Political Scientist. The closest career pairing is lawyer and I am afraid that we have more than enough of these in our contentious culture, who monetize grief, suffering, lawsuits, divorce, and a ton of other social and cultural maladies, so that they can pay off law school debt number one, and then compensate themselves monetarily for working such a negative and nasty job. I seriously flirted with the idea of going to Law School until a good and wise friend of mine asked me about a decade ago why I wanted to be attorney as I liked my job as a school counselor and that most of the people that she knew who were attorneys, if not all, were miserable. Long days of suing people is not a good way to spend one's waking hours. I really didn't have a good answer for her. Sh...

I had an interesting conversation with a guy at Wine and Food pairing on Friday night about a program about Nike on MSNBC (Me at a wine and food pairing? I am turning into quite the dainty. I have come along way from drinking beer and eating a pile of scrambled eggs at the end of the night). Here is a link to the program . After I tracked down the video, I was especially interested in the "Just Do It" ad campaign piece. As the promo states, "It took a quirky ad agency whiz, Dan Wieden, to convince Phil Knight that advertising could propel Nike to a global success. Popular and sometimes controversial ads featuring the top names in sports - Jordan, Woods, Barkley - helped Nike conquer the sports world. " The ad guy was searching for a slogan to unite, and lace together like a sneaker, Nike's first major and diverse ad campaign. The rest, as they say, is history. Makes me wonder, when considering the life of Jonah, if we make things much more complicated that ...

Jonah 1:3 "But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD, and went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish: so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD." Acts 10: 5 "And now send men to Joppa, and call for one Simon, whose surname is Peter." Special bonus today...two Scripture verses! Whenever place is mentioned in the Bible, it is often useful to overlay the historical significance of the same location in different biblical eras to see if God is speaking to us in a deeper way about a lesson of spiritual significance. For instance, with Bethlehem being the "House of Bread" in the Davidic lineage "bakery", there was a bread to come after David that was to be "Manna from Heaven." What often may look as arbitrary or a coincidence from our end can be a quite intentional message from God. Both Jonah and Peter were spoken to by God. It ...