dual personalities

I have been suffering through this cold or whatever for a week now and it is no fun. Not to mention that the weather has been beautiful and I have been stuck inside.

Okay, enough with the whining. But really. I have kept up with my Bible reading and I did the homework for my Bible study, but that is about all I have managed. I am ready to move on.

When I started to read this I thought the person was in her thirties, but when I discovered she was in her sixties, I said, “What?!” Good luck, sweetie.

If you have an hour and a half to spare, I recommend watching this conversation with John Piper and John MacArthur where they discuss, among other things, how the Puritans shaped their lives and ministries. It is well worth your time.

In other news, today is the birthday of William Cullen Bryant (1794 – 1878), American romantic poet, journalist, and long-time editor of the New York Evening Post. Here is his poem “November–A Sonnet”:

Yet one smile more, departing, distant sun!
One mellow smile through the soft vapoury air,
Ere, o’er the frozen earth, the loud winds run,
Or snows are sifted o’er the meadows bare.
One smile on the brown hills and naked trees,
And the dark rocks whose summer wreaths are cast,
And the blue gentian flower, that, in the breeze,
Nods lonely, of her beauteous race the last.
Yet a few sunny days, in which the bee
Shall murmur by the hedge that skirts the way,
The cricket chirp upon the russet lea,
And man delight to linger in thy ray.
Yet one rich smile, and we will try to bear
The piercing winter frost, and winds, and darkened air.

And, hey, look–the Christmas cactus is budding right on schedule: