U.S. Elections

The Trumpet Soundeth: Christian, for whom are you voting?

/ Apple Hill Cottage / 15 Comments

This blog is rarely political because i have always thought that politics are personal and when we start discussing political things it is divisive. (And i just want everyone to get along.) But at this point in time, in this country, if i do not stand up and say what i need to say, then how can i live with myself at a later time? And actually, at this point in time, in this country, everything has become political — wearing a mask in the middle of a pandemic, going to church, going to school, having a summer picnic, or a simple conversation with your neighbor…

So this September i am standing up for what i am passionate about. i hope you will hear me out before you stop reading. And if i don’t change your mind, please, at least consider what i’m saying.  We need civil discourse in this country now more than ever.

If you are a Christian, you have a huge responsibility in this election. The current president is counting on you to reelect him because he passes himself off as someone who supports the Conservative Christian agenda. Somehow, for me, it has become more than a conservative/liberal agenda; it is about returning our country to common decency and democracy. My question to you is What Would Jesus Do?

For each of the next thirty days, i will post a Bible verse and a short discussion that (i hope) will make you think about what this president does, and says, and how he acts every single minute of his life. And if you, as a believer in Jesus, can still say at the end of these thirty days that you will be voting for him, then there’s nothing else i can do. But, at least, i have tried to make you think about choosing country over party, unity over division, compassion over hatred, civil discourse over anger, democracy over chaos…

Don’t you long to wake up in the morning and not have to hear who the President has made fun of today, or what new outrageous thing he has tweeted?

And if you have made it this far, i owe you at least a first Bible verse:

…For out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. Luke 6:45 (Translation is from the Berean Study Bible)

Vase of flowers and bible

Character

“Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.” –Colossians 3:12

“Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.” — Colossians 3:13

“And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” — Colossians 3:14 

“He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” — Micah 6:8

“Thus says the Lord of Hosts: Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another…”  –Zechariah 7:9

There are six things the Lord hates,
    seven that are detestable to him:
         haughty eyes,
        a lying tongue,
        hands that shed innocent blood,
         a heart that devises wicked schemes,
        feet that are quick to rush into evil,
        a false witness who pours out lies
and a person who stirs up conflict in the community.” —Proverbs 6:16-19

“Anyone who can be trusted in little matters can also be trusted in important matters. But anyone who is dishonest in little matters will be dishonest in important matters.” — Luke 16:10

“O LORD, who shall sojourn in your tent? Who shall dwell on your holy hill? He who walks blamelessly and does what is right and speaks truth in his heart; who does not slander with his tongue and does no evil to his neighbor, nor takes up a reproach against his friend; in whose eyes a vile person is despised, but who honors those who fear the Lord; who swears to his own hurt and does not change; who does not put out his money at interest and does not take a bribe against the innocent. He who does these things shall never be moved.“ — Psalm 15:1-5

For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. — Romans 12:3

Language and Words

Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. — Ephesians 5:4

“A fool takes no pleasure in understanding but only in expressing his opinion.” — Proverbs 18:2

The Lord detests lying lips, but he delights in those who tell the truth. — Proverbs 12:22

“Talk no more so very proudly; let not arrogance come from your mouth; for the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by Him actions are weighed.” — 1 Samuel 2:3

“But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person, For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person…“ — Matthew 15:18-20a

Issues

“Do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the foreigner, or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other.” –Zechariah 7:10

“In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good deeds and give glory to your Father in heaven.” — Matthew 5:16 

“And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” — Ezekiel 36:26 

“I brought you into a fertile land to eat its fruit and rich produce. But you came and defiled my land and made my inheritance detestable.” —Jeremiah 2:7

Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. — Romans 12:16-18

Leadership and Wisdom

A fool uttereth all his mind; but a wise man keepeth it in till afterwards.” — Proverbs 29:11

The righteous choose their friends carefully, but the way of the wicked leads them astray. –Proverbs 12:26 

And he sat down and called the twelve. And he said to them, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.” — Mark 9:35

“Without counsel, plans go wrong, but with many advisers they succeed.” – Proverbs 15:22

Our kings, our princes, our priests, and our fathers have not kept your law or paid attention to your commandments and your warnings that you gave them. — Nehemiah 9:34 

For inquire now of bygone generations, and consider what their ancestors have found; for we are but of yesterday and we know nothing, for our days on earth are but a shadow. Will they not teach you and tell you and utter words out of their understanding? — Job 8:8-10

Teach the older men to be temperate, worthy of respect, self-controlled, and sound in faith, in love and in endurance. — Titus 2:2

When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; but when a wicked man rules the people groan.–Proverbs 29:2

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things. — Philippians 4:8

Can a corrupt throne be allied with you–a throne that brings on misery by decrees?”–Psalm 94:20

Money and Riches

“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it?” –Luke 14:28

“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” — Matthew 6:24

The wicked earns deceptive wages, but one who sows righteousness gets a sure reward. –Proverbs 11:18

Retrieved from the trash bin

/ Apple Hill Cottage / 8 Comments

We were fifty minutes into the hour-long Outlander episode “The Deep Heart’s Core” when the DVD player stopped. Didn’t even give us any warning of weird blips or slow motion stoppages–just died. Just as Roger is about to escape from the Indians who are dragging him to New York far away from Brianna. Not only did it stop playing, but the disc wouldn’t eject. Visions of having to pay for a Netflix disc made us disgruntled, as well as the DVD stopping just at the exciting part. It might take us a week to find out what happened to Roger.

Mr. H.C. is handy with pliers and screwdrivers, so he took the thing apart and we physically took the disc out of the player. We retired to the bedroom and watched the last ten minutes on the laptop. Roger escaped.

Now, I can hear you saying, why do you even rent discs from Netflix anyway? Can’t you just stream like the rest of the world?

Well, thanks for asking, but no. We can’t, actually. Because we live in rural Pennsylvania, where there are hills and hollers, and the nearest 5G network is 50 miles north in Pittsburgh. We have three options for internet service: Windstream, whose fastest rate in our neck of the woods is 1 mbps (yes, 1); Dish networks, which everyone knows are worthless when it is cloudy (and let me just say, we have cloudy here); and a hotspot. Which is what we have. It’s serviceable. It works. Sort of. Most of the time. It’s expensive. We don’t have unlimited data. But I digress. This is not a post about our crappy internet service.

The next morning Mr. H.C. took a look inside the player and (unbeknownst to me) tossed it in the garbage.

Let me tell you, this is something that NEVER happens. Mr. H.C. keeps everything so he can fix it someday.

By the next afternoon we had surveyed our options and they were: 1. Buy a cheap one on Amazon for $45; or 2. buy the one they had left at Walmart for $150.  (I would just like to interject here, that when we lived in Pittsburgh, we had a very modern set up with streaming and a decent-sized multi-screen that functioned both as a TV and a media screen, and if we ever got discs we played them through the computer. It all worked smoothly.) DVD players seem so 90s. So I spent some time online the next morning to see if anyone could tell us how to fix it. The best I could come up with was a YouTube video on cleaning your DVD player.

“Maybe it just needs to be cleaned?” I asked him.

“Well, it’s in the garbage, so it really needs to be cleaned now,” he said, as he rooted through the trash and dug it out brushing off some crusted oatmeal. (No, that’s a lie. There was no oatmeal on the DVD player because we are a zero-food-trash- composting family.)

Genius husband then cleaned the DVD player and tried an old disc we didn’t care about, and then ended up watching the whole thing. DVD player is as good as new, which is a great thing, because now we don’t have to spend our Lockdown money on a 90s DVD player. It’s also a great thing, because now we can avoid the news and watch the last few episodes of Outlander. Unfortunately, we’re a season behind, because we live on a country road (almost heaven, but not quite) where there is no streaming (in heaven the light will be all the streaming we need). Oh, I mentioned no streaming already.

The moral of this story is Never throw anything away because you might have to retrieve it from the trash bin. Yes, our recycling place is closed too.

The real moral of the story is Don’t live in rural Pencilbania. Where there’s no recycling and no decent internet. And the yard signs are all for the wrong guy. (I’m debating about whether to put a Biden sign in the front yard, but I don’t want to start a sign war…)

The real, real moral of the story is Can our country be retrieved from the trash bin, cleaned, and fixed so it works once again?

 

 

Grateful on February 20th

/ Apple Hill Cottage / 8 Comments

The country world is a mess; governments are failing in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Haiti, Syria, United States; there are wars and rumors of wars everywhere; Australia is burning; there are diseases and rumors of diseases everywhere; and the potus has not yet been banned from Twitter. Sometimes it seems like a world gone mad, and it can get a person down in the gray winter dumps…

Here are some things to be grateful for…

 

  1. If you are reading this, you have survived the grayest winter ever — 0 sunny days in January; 3.5 sunny days so far in February… (statistics are from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania).
  2. Though there wasn’t much sun, neither did you have to touch your snow blower or snow shovel (This is specific to Southwest PA…);
  3. You probably have not contracted the Corona Virus;
  4. There are 28 days left until spring — (Dandelions are sprouting in my yard. In February! And the daffodil buds are fat.)
  5. We have spring gardening, summer vacations, and fall harvests to look forward to in 2020;
  6. Writing the date 02/20/2020 is very symmetrical and pleasurable;
  7. According to Ballotpedia there are 1,047 candidates who have filed to run for president in 2020, including:
    • 309 Democratic candidates
    • 156 Republican candidates
    • 64 Libertarian candidates
    • 22 Green candidates
    • 1,045 of them are probably better than Donny Johnny Rump or Grumpy Grampy Bernie;
  8. You have 256 days left to decide — Nov. 3, 2020…
  9. the courage of Col. Alexander Vindman, Ambassador Bill Taylor, Dr. Fiona Hill,  Marie Yovanovitch, and Mitt Romney;
  10. This is a Leap Year and you have a free day on Saturday, Feb. 29, 2020. Celebrate it.
  11. the joy of getting a new book and having time to read it. (Currently reading Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke; just finished Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout.)
  12. You are still here, most likely sitting in a warm place on this beautiful blue planet, in this candy bar galaxy, in the Lord’s world. We are here for a purpose. What will you do about it?