My Uninhibited Joy In Watching the Grass Grow

Early Saturday morning, my husband urged me to rouse myself from the comfort of a cozy warm bed.

What kind of moron would do such a thing I ask you, especially when my coziness was further enhanced by the presence of several furry behbehs cuddling snuggling on or about my person? What kind of wild-eyed maniac would do something so ... so utterly devoid of human compassion, when a soft breeze was playing with the curtains, and the sweet chirping of meadowlarks afar was coming through the window borne on the gentlest of new sun's rays, beside said bed? When visions of heaven, starry sweeps of far off joy, and God knows whatever other ineffable images of contentment and homecoming were as yet being played out in the depths of my sleeping brain... quickly fading, never to be seen... come back! Come back! He'll go away, oh.....

Cathy, love of my life, you have to come see! Come see! Come on, I can't believe it! {he is gently tugging, misplacing all sorts of animal life mixed up with bedding, tossing pillows and tugging, tugging me to my feet}

There are several good reasons for not having a loaded pistol in my nightstand, which we can discuss later.

Having succeeded in his nefarious scheme to rob me of all peace and comfort, my husband proceeded to manhandle me to the front porch, whispering persistently in my ear
"look! Look! can you see it! Look!"

Fully expecting to witness at the very least an alien starship landing in the meadow beyond, I was looking up the hill for signs of extraterrestrial life when he pointed my head down, at the sad brown dirt we had recently covered with bits of hay....

and then I SAW IT! Gasp! The tiniest of hopeful blades of bright green baby grass, poking their heads out looking me straight in the face.

I hope our geriatric happy dance gave some measure of amusement to the neighbors down the road, i saw them look at me funny later. But come to think of it, they look at me funny every time i see them.

But to get back to the real point: We have Grass! Since that memorable moment the days have been punctuated by Sightings of the Green. Oh look! there's some over there! Can you see it? No? Oh well here's some!

We periodically walk out the front door, arm in arm, proud parents of an army of tiny blades (few and far between, but we were so skeptical they would ever appear we had already started scraping together errant nickels and dimes, wondering what the neighbors would think of us laying down two or three little strips of sod at a time, figuring we could get it all covered by, say, 2010).

Oh, life is gooood people. Life is good when a body got GRASS. Uh huh, uh huh, doin the grass happy dance.

Pop Quiz for Mormons

CARM's BrianH offers this handy LogikTool:

Here is a pop quiz for Mormons. Please try to answer with honesty and integrity, or just move on to some other thread.

Here is your quiz:

1.) If the Book of Mormon was a total and complete hoax, the product of Joseph Smith's fevered little con artist brain, how much historical evidence would we rightly expect to discover representing the "Nephite" civilization in the historical record? For example, how many BoM cities would we find? How much Hebrew DNA would there be in the Native American genome? How many chariots, coins, steel mills and Hebrew and or "Reformed Egyptian" textual evidence would we expect to find?

A.) Tons
B.) Some
C.) None

2.) If the Book of Abraham was a total and complete hoax how much of the text on the Sensen papyrus (the original "Book of Abraham" allegedly the autograph penned by the hand of Abraham himself) would we expect to correlate to the content of the Book of Abraham "translation" in your Quad?

A.) All of it
B.) Some of it
C.) None of it

3.) If Joseph Smith was a total and complete fraud as a "prophet" and was doing nothing more than extending his career as a con artist in claiming to have received revelations about future events from God, how many of his prophecies would we rightly expect to see fulfilled?

A.) All of them
B.) Some of them
C.) None of them

4.) If the Mormon church was NOT the "restoration" of true, authentic, apostolic Christianity, but instead was the evolving brain child of Joseph Smith and his crew, how much evidence should we find of the distinctive doctrines of Mormonism in the New Testament, the writings of the earliest church-leaders (the Ante-Nicene Fathers) and the art and artifacts of the ancient Christian world?

A.) It would be all over the place
B.) There might be some
C.) Zip

5.) If you had been deceived by a Satanic cult masquerading as "the one true church", how would you be able to tell?

A.) By the test of my burning boosom
B.) By carefully comparing its claims to God's deliberate revelation of himself in his word
C.) I wouldn't know, because it is the nature of deception that the deceived cannot tell they have been duped

6.) If you are afraid to answer these questions, or working to find ways of being clever in avoiding what you know to be the correct answer, or refusing to answer the above questions with honesty and integrity, or are seeking some way to attack the Bible or otherwise change the subject here, what does that rightly tell us about your state of mind?

A.) It tells you I am in a state of denial
B.) It tells you that if you will pray and seek God he will show you the truth of the LDS religion
C.) Uh dunno...

Thank you for participating.

The correct answers will be posted soon and you can check your score!

-BH

.

__________________
"God is Dead" - Nietzsche, 1882
"Nietzsche is Dead" - God, 1900


WOW, imtheonlycathy is indebted to you Brian!
again many thanks to CARM's BrianH (whose signature is da bomb).

We were discussing... the Bible

The Bible offers us a "revealing" (revelation) of God's nature, our nature, our position as sinners before God, in a panorama stretching through the ages that is consistent and which confirms itself as well as the very existence of God. Scripture doesn't contradict scripture, and has a beginning, middle and ending. It answers clearly every question most vital to our souls (why are we here? Is there a God? Can I know God? Why is there evil in the world? What happens when I die?) Throughout scripture we discover prophecies fulfilled, and mirrors of events to come, author after author, prophet after prophet, all with the same purpose and theme. All pointing towards the same place on the horizon, the same hope, the same promise.

Then in a wonderful display of love and mercy God reveals His love for us, bringing the Savior promised through the ages, God Himself provides the answer to our dilemma of sin and death, God gives all to save us and bridge the gap, revealing more of Himself and His nature in the process, and even more so by "insuring" and unitiing the Body through the gift of the Holy Spirit given to each believer.

The Bible is awesome read just as a book. It has all the ingredients: tragedy, love, death, violence, drama, suspense, hope: and delivering a happy ending way beyond what we could have anticipated. Of course the good guy wins

God's Word appeals to the very faculties, gifts and even the needs endowed by a gracious Creator: our inquisitive nature, our thirst for knowledge and truth, logic, love, understanding, and reason while at the same time answering the need He placed in our souls to know Him.

Without God, there is no truth. Without Christ, there is no salvation. The Bible is His word, produced by God the Holy Spirit Himself. And while it speaks to our minds and hearts, it's confirmed within the Body, and remains the promise fulfilled, the bulwark and foundation of a solid faith.

Like everything He creates, the Bible holds his unmistakeable signature.

Why April 2nd Should Be a National Holiday

April 2 is, aside from being the day after April Fool's Day,
historically significant. In so many, many ways:

on April 2, 999 Gerbert of Aurillac was elected as the 1st French Pope!
in 1416, Alfonso V succeeds his father as king of Aragon!!
April 2, 1877 1st Easter egg roll held on White House lawn!!!

not to mention:
1989 Wrestlemania V at Trump Plaza, Hulk Hogan beats "Macho Man" Savage
1978 TV show "Dallas" premieres on CBS
1956 Soap operas "As the World Turns" and "Edge of Night" premieres on TV
1954 Plans to build Disneyland 1st announced
1945 1st U.S. units reach east coast of Okinawa
1931 Teenage girl strikes out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in an exhibition game in Chattanooga, Tennessee
1921 Albert Einstein lectures in New York City on his new theory of relativity
1917 Jeannette Rankin becomes 1st women member of U.S. House of Representatives
1917 President Wilson asks Congress to declare war against Germany
1902 1st motion picture theater opens in Los Angeles
1884 London prison for debtors closed
1845 H L Fizeau and J Leon Foucault take 1st photo of Sun
1827 Joseph Dixon begins manufacturing lead pencils
1819 1st successful agricultural journal ("American Farmer") begins
1800 1st performance of Ludwig von Beethoven's 1st Symphony in C
1792 Congress establishes Philadelphia mint
1792 U.S. authorizes $10 Eagle, $5 half-Eagle and 2.50 quarter-Eagle gold coins and silver dollar, dollar, quarter, dime and half-dime
1745 Austria and Bavaria sign peace
1645 Robert Devereux resigns as parliament supreme commander
1595 Cornelis de Houtman's ships depart to Asia through Cape of Good Hope
1590 States-General appoints earl Mauritius, viceroy of Utrecht
1559 England/France signs 1st Treaty of Le Cateau-Cambresis
1513 Florida discovered, claimed for Spain by Ponce de Leon

April 2, 1947: sailorpb meets the world
April 2, 1951: imtheonycathy makes her grand entrance

Others sharing our birthday:
Chalemagne born in 742
Casanova, 1725
Hans Christian Andersen, 1805
Emile Zola, 1840
Walter Chrysler, 1875 (yes he made the cars)
Max Ernst, 1891 (founder of surrealism)
Buddy Ebsen, 1908
Alec Guinness, 1914 (Bridge on the River Kwai)
Jack Webb, 1920 (Dragnet)
and Jenny Craig,
Rodney King, and Emmylou Harris

Well even if it's NOT a national holiday, we can all still

CELEBRATE PARTY DOWN GET CRAZY

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, US!