Hot time, summer in the city

by chuckofish

Praise God that His grace is sufficient for each day.

How is your week going? I have been working inside, moving things around to accommodate my new wing chair, which I am picking up later today with the assistance of the boy and his truck. My home is definitely a work in progress…adding and subtracting and rediscovering things that I have put away. As the @madcapcottage boys say: “When it’s time to change! Let’s rearrange…”

I worked in the yard for small amounts of time this week, but we have entered that portion of our flyover summer when it is too darn hot to do much outside. The yard is on its own.

I also worked on (and finished) my new Rifle Co. puzzle.

It was a fun one!

And I am reading J.C. Ryle’s oft-quoted book Holiness.

Published in 1879, it is remarkably readable and relevant. I highly recommend it!

“It is vain to shut our eyes to the fact that there is a vast quantity of so-called Christianity nowadays which you cannot declare positively unsound, but which, nevertheless, is not full measure, good weight and sixteen ounces to the pound. It is a Christianity in which there is undeniably ‘something about Christ and something about grace and something about faith and something about repentance and something about holiness’, but it is not the real ‘thing as it is’ in the Bible. Things are out of place and out of proportion.”

Boy, old J.C. should see what passes for Christianity these days!

Tomorrow is the birthday of film director and writer John Huston, who was born in Nevada, Missouri in 1906. He made a lot of movies–some bad and some good. You might want to watch one of his good ones such as Key Largo (1948) or The African Queen (1951). He also directed The Bible: In the Beginning, which was the second highest-grossing movie in 1966. (No kidding.) He also played Noah. It is not a great movie, but I would like to see Peter O’Toole as the Three Angels again. He was pretty great.

You will recall that he (they) brings down the wrath of God on Sodom and Gomorrah.

In my Bible reading I am currently in Judges and have recently read all about Samson and Delilah–quite a story! I was reminded that Cecil B. deMille made a movie about them with Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr cleverly titled Samson and Delilah (1949). I want to check it out.

I mean that story was made for the movies!

When Delilah saw that he had told her everything, she sent word to the rulers of the Philistines, “Come back once more; he has told me everything.” So the rulers of the Philistines returned with the silver in their hands. 19 After putting him to sleep on her lap, she called for someone to shave off the seven braids of his hair, and so began to subdue him.[a] And his strength left him.

20 Then she called, “Samson, the Philistines are upon you!”

He awoke from his sleep and thought, “I’ll go out as before and shake myself free.” But he did not know that the Lord had left him.

21 Then the Philistines seized him, gouged out his eyes and took him down to Gaza. Binding him with bronze shackles, they set him to grinding grain in the prison. 22 But the hair on his head began to grow again after it had been shaved.

–Judges 16: 18-22

Well, we amuse ourselves.