HARD TO BELIEVE

 It is hard to believe that the heart beats 100,000 times in a day.  But then there are 86,400 seconds in a day.  The heart beats about 3.5 million times in a year and in an average lifetime the heart beats more than 2.5 billion times.

The Jabez Prayer--1982 Edition

 The Jabez Prayer is in First Chronicles 4:10.  The New King James version of it reads as follows: "Oh that you would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that your hand would be with me, and that you would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain."

Most translations of the Jabez Prayer are characterized by this sentiment: "that I may not experience pain"rather than that I would not cause pain.

The scholars at Thomas Nelson Publishers "assigned" a merit to Jabez that led him to find favor with God. 

When I Was One-And-Twenty by A E Housman - Poetry Reading

Left Untried

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting.  It has been found difficult, and left untried. (G.K. Chesterton) 

Never Suburban

 "The spiritual life can never be made suburban," said Howard Masey.  "It is always frontier and we who live in it must accept and even rejoice that it remains untamed."

This quote brings to mind a quote from the Gospel of John:  Chapter 8 verse 3 in the King James Version reads : "The wind bloweth where it listeth. and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is everyone that is born of the Spiritt."

Millennium Morning

I was going to make all wars to cease

Before breakfast.  Before lunch

I was going to take 100 Dalmatians and

Fifty-six firetrucks and shut down hell

By eleven a.m.  I had read an issue of

The Journal of Near Death Studies

And realized hell was mostly frozen over and

My firetrucks would only make matters worse.

It was quiet though, all wars ceasing before

Breakfast, Nietzsche,  Marx, Lenin, and Hitler were enjoying a card game.

Schweitzer and Gandhi walked around on

Eggshells, pondering the first day of the thousand-year ceasefire.

Did I have regrets making Man in my own image?

Was it right for me to hide from Nietzsche when

He came looking for me? Did I learn to hide from

Adam, or did he learn to hide from me?

At 1 p.m. it was croquet with the prophet

Moses and Presley at Graceland.  We talked about the

Artichoke salad, Howard Finster's spelling and decided to

Take the next bus to Texas and visit the Cadillac Ranch. 

No One Ever Cared for Me Like Jesus

Charles Frederick Weigle

 The composer/evangelist Charles Frederick Weigle lived from 1871 to 1966.  He spent his last years as a guest resident of Tennessee Temple Schools and Highland Park Baptist Church in Chattanooga. One of the buildings was called the Weigle Building.  He had an apartment in the building.

One day in late 1965 or early 1966 my sister Debbie walked with him from the barber shop to his apartment. The sidewalks were icy and the walk took over ten minutes.  Debbie does not remember what they talked about as they walked.  Charles thanked her for walking with him.

Charles is best known for his song "No one ever cared for me like Jesus" written in 1932 as he recovered from a depression caused by his wife leaving him.

Here are the lyrics:

Chorus: No one ever cared for me like Jesus; There's no other friend so kind as He. No one else could take the sin and darkness from me; oh how much He cared for me.

First verse: I would love to tell you what I think of Jesus, since I found in Him a friend so strong and true. I would tell you how He changed my life completely;  He did something no other friend could do.

Second verse: All my life was full of sin when Jesus found me; all my heart was full of misery and woe. Jesus placed his strong arms about me and He led me in the way I ought to go.

Third verse: Ev'ry day He comes to me with new assurance; more and more I understand His word of love. But I'll never know just why He came to save me, till someday I see His blessed face above.

A Friend

A friend is one who knows you as you are, understands where you you've been, accepts who you've become, and still--gently--invites you to grow......(author unknown) 

Tell all the Truth

Tell all the truth but tell it slant (1263 Emily Dickinson)
Tell all the truth but tell it slant---
Success in Circuit Lies
Too bright for our firm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation Kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind.

Addendum: "Always tell the truth.  That way you won't have to remember what you said."

His Name Is Wonderful (Lyrics)

Cayce and Bible Quotes

"There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the  best of us, it doesn't behoove any of us to speak evil of the rest of us."  (Edgar Cayce)

"....why dost thou set at nought thy brother?"  Romans 14:10  KJV

"And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye?"  Luke 6:41  KJV

Two Cartoon Captions

From the December 10 2018 Issue of the New Yorker: "From 9 to 1 you will be answering emails.  From 1 to 2 you will be out to lunch. From 2 to 5 you will be answering emails that came in while you were out to lunch."

 From the cartoon "Shoe," published on Memorial Day 2019: He: "I remember when I was at Wrigley Field in 2016 for the World Series." She: "All you talk about is the Cubs.  You never share your deepest emotions with me."  He: "The Cubs are my deepest emotions!"

What! No Christmas Card?

An elderly couple were sitting on their porch in rocking chairs a few days after Christmas.

The man said to his wife "What ever happened to our sexual relations?"

She replied "I don't know.  I don't think we even got a Christmas card from them this year."

The Highest Good

To attain the highest good
Of true man and womanhood
Simply do your honest best.
God with joy will do the rest.

(James Whitcomb Riley)

A Poem By Francis William Bourdillon

The Night Has A Thousand Eyes

The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With they dying sun.

The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one:
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.

They thought he was Demented

They thought he was just a demented prisoner. After his death they found these words on the wall in his prison cell--another verse to the hymn The Love of God:

"Could we with ink the oceans fill and were the skies of parchment made; were every stalk on earth a quill and every man a scribe by trade; to write the love of God above would drain the oceans dry; nor could the scroll contain the whole though stretched from sky to sky."

The refrain (chorus) was written by another and reads "O love of God how rich and pure! How measureless and strong! It shall forever more endure---the saints' and angels' song."

His verse is beautiful poetic hyperbole. Reminds me of the King James Version of the last verse in the Gospel of John, intimating that the world itself could not contain the books that should be written about the life and works of Jesus Christ.

"Was there a Time"--poem by Dylan Thomas

Was there a time when dancers with their fiddles
In children's circuses could stay their troubles?
There was a time they could cry over books,
But time has set its maggot on their track.
Under the arc of the sky they are unsafe.
What's never known is safest in this life.
Under the skysigns they who have no arms
Have cleanest hands.
And as the heartless ghost alone's unhurt
So the blind man sees best.

"Don't Hesitate" --Prose Poem by Mary Oliver

If you suddenly and unexpectedly fee joy, don't hesitate.  Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still [,] life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happened better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instance when love begins. Anyway  that is often the case. Don't be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.

Dance Every Friday

Many years ago I was returning from a visit with my children in Asheville to my home in the Greater Atlanta area. I stopped at a rest area on Interstate 85. I noticed an abandoned yellow rubber ducky underneath one of the picnic tables. I decided to keep it and make it into my mascot for when my children rode in my automobile. I would set it on my dashboard when my children were with me.

I decided it needed a name and decided to call it Alpha Betty. I took the complete alphabet as my template and guideline for its complete name.

ABCDEF evolved into "Alpha Betty Can Dance Every Friday" from which I am using as the title of this blog entry.

GHIJKLMNOPQ evolved into "Good Health Is Just Knowing Larry Makes Nice Onion Pineapple Quiche." My children had for about three  years a stepdad named Larry.  He was my ex wife's high school sweetheart and her second husband.

RSTUVWXYZ evolved into "Root Specialists Treat Underground Vegetables With Xenophobic Yellow Zits."

I have thought of alternatives to the third name, one being Route Specialists Treat Undocumented Vagrants With Xeroxed Young Zebras.

Anyway I hope even John Doe can use the letters of his name to create something humorous and useful.