Perhaps the phrase “thoughts and prayers” has been overused in recent years in our society. There is some push back by critics who believe politicians, law enforcement, celebrities and media repeat the statement too often to feel like they are doing something when they really mean to do nothing more at all, beyond the press conference following a tragic event. That may or may not be a valid criticism depending on who says it and under what circumstances.
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Home of the Braves – This image was posted in one of the baseball forums I follow. People immediately launched into how fake it is, calling it bad Photoshop from before the time of AI. Someone said it’s not even shopped, it’s just two image put side by side because the two never played on the same minor league team at the same time. I know the socks don’t match, I can see the giant M on the caps, I have no comment on whether or not Chipper looks fat… but the simple fact of the matter is that the picture is real. Someone jumped into the comment thread with his autographed copy signed by both players:
The M on the caps, and the logo’s on the sleeve, are throwbacks to when the Braves were in Milwaukee. This is from Spring Training down in Florida back in 1996, when both players were in Atlanta on the MLB team. That’s the world we live in. Not knowing what you are talking about is no longer a barrier to having an expert opinion and expressing it loudly. This person’s autographed photo, along with the explanation he provided, should have shut down the argument but he was largely ignored and people continued yelling stupid things at each other. I recently watched a short video of a pickup truck backing out of the driveway, across the street, through the neighbors yard and then through the wall into the house. Someone in a European country asked what sort of polystyrene American homes are made of. I explained how frames are wrapped in OSB that keeps the studs in place and gives the vinyl siding guys something to nail into. A random person that doesn’t know me from Adam called me a clueless idiot and further said I knew nothing about building houses. I replied that I knew some things about building houses… from the time I spent building houses. That person just silently removed his comment but some people double down.
Continue readingIf I attend a big conference with a celebrity speaker or meet an author or musician I usually write a post about it. I didn’t post for nine months so instead of writing one post for each I’m going to run everything together, hopefully in order.
Life Surge Atlanta – those are the best pics I could get from our seats. Life Surge is not exactly what I would call Health Wealth and Prosperity gospel but some of it was a little cringy, I admit. We didn’t sign up for any courses in buying real estate, I went to hear some of these speakers close to home. Up top is Jonathan Roumie from The Chosen, Willy Robertson and his daughter Sadie.
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Last August we posted this image of Van Til with the headline Technical Difficulty. We asked our readers to please stand by. In the months since then The Master’s Table has been viewed almost 13,000 times, even while no content was added. Thank you for standing by.
I know what you’re thinking; earlier this week I said not to expect regular recurring features like Happy Monday and Satur-deja Vu. So if you were not expecting it… what can I say? Surprise!
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I re-entered the blogosphere yesterday with a rather weak statement by asking the question Are we back? I wanted to emphasize the soft launch aspect and point out that we are not trying to restart all the spinning plates that were going before. I have updated the Our Daily Bread and Bible Gateway features in the left-hand sidebar. That only takes a couple of minutes and it’s a good routine for me to start the day with; I have been updating the verse of the day on the Unity Baptist Facebook page this whole time. Our Daily Bread now has a daily video devotional you can subscribe to, so check that out.
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So when The Master’s Table went on hiatus last fall I was hoping that would last a few weeks and we would resume business as usual. After a week or two of not having the stress of Happy Monday and Satur-deja Vu bearing on me, I had a little bit of guilt because of how good it felt. I would often stay up late on Sunday or more likely get up early on Monday morning to meet a self-imposed deadline. Discussing theology, responding to headlines and reviewing books is easy when you can pop out a post every now and then when there are things to write about i.e. stuff I need to get off my chest. Cranking out those e-zines twice a week became a grind and like I say, I felt a little guilty about how good it felt to not be under the pressure to produce those on a regular on-going basis.
Continue readingHappy Monday is experiencing technical difficulty. Please stand by.
Yeah, no – I guess if you live in the State of California where they have rolling blackouts during peak usage times this might be necessary. The last time they opened a nuclear power plant was 1985. The population increased from 26 to 39 million in the years since. If you live in Texas, 78 degrees inside would feel a lot better than the 105 degrees outside. I live in Georgia and 78 at 100% relative humidity is sweltering. Our temp setpoint is 72 degrees during the day and we turn it down to 71 at night. Don’t get me wrong, I love summer. I would rather sit inside with the AC on than sit inside during the winter with the heat on. I love baseball games, swim parties, grilling out and late sunsets. I would rather cut grass than shovel snow. Everything people claim to love about fall – hoodies, bonfires, pumpkin spice lattes, snuggling up in blankets – those are all just attempts to keep warm.
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Not a recent pic – I visited the Ark Encounter back when it was relatively new in 2016. I took the picture above before the sun, wind and rain started working on the exterior. I wrote a post this week about making the mistake of reading the comments when I saw an ad placed by the Ark Encounter on Twitter. Back in 2016 I wrote about my visit to the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter. There are links to albums full of pics on Facebook from both places. Reading that 2016 post reminded me that used to really write, not just post pics and links.
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I don’t have a lot of interaction with Twitter but I am on it and sometimes scroll through the feed of people and pages that I follow. There was an ad from the Ark Encounter, linking to an article about which type of cubit Noah used (a royal cubit is a little bit longer than what we typically think of as a cubit, around 20 or 21 inches). I made the mistakes of reading the comments. However you feel about a global flood or Old Testament historical accounts aside; there were hundreds of comments about how it doesn’t matter what he used because there was never an ark/never a global flood/the ark should have been a box not a boat/foolish Christians that believe in fairytale stories and such like. There was not one defender of the faith or Christian apologist in the multitude.
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