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JoeMo, a correction. It was Wanderer who shared about just listening. I agree as you do.

Some great stuff here. Teresaq had a great post about a friend who just "listened" rather than try to explain away or "solve" her pain. That's good advice for us who find it necessary to solve their issues. A lot of the time, sympathy and a good ear can bring more relief than theology. AS made a good point about "pretending" to be blessed when we were at church when we were actually miserable. While I agree with Rachel that it's not prudent to share one's issues with everyone, it is nice to have a few brothers and sisters in an inner circle (small group) to share with. I use this forum al ot to share, probably because there is some security (false though it may be) in anonymity. I loved how Rachel honestly shared above.

Somewhere along the line I picked up the idea that here is a time of uncleanness that accompanies a birth and that influenced the decision to have Mary and Joseph stay somewhere else rather than the kataluma.

The above is exactly right. There is nothing wrong with having a worship service on Sunday. What is wrong is substituting Sunday for the Sabbath. In my many years as a clergyperson, I have, in working for the Federal government, preached more often on Sunday morning than on Saturday morning. I kept the Sabbath, as much as I in my human way could do. But, I never kept Sunday as the Sabbath.

Robert Folkenberg, Former Adventist Church President, Dead at 74 He used innovation and technology and ShareHim to share Jesus in new ways. POSTED DECEMBER 24, 2015 By Andrew McChesney, Adventist Review, with ANN staff Robert S. Folkenberg, an innovative church administrator and mission advocate who led the Seventh-day Adventist Church for nine years, died Dec. 24 after a lengthy struggle with cancer. He was just days from his 75th birthday. Folkenberg felt that Adventists had an exciting message to share and the Internet was a great way to expand the church’s reach. The Adventist Church, he believed, could use the Internet to provide information, training, and experiences that better demonstrated the global aspect of its mission. Folkenberg on the cover of the July 8, 1990, issue of the Adventist Review after his election as General Conference president. He pushed the church forward with new technology during his tenure as president of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists from 1990 to 1999 and brought CompuServe, a precursor to the World Wide Web, into use within the church, making Seventh-day Adventists the first denomination to use such technology. “Elder Folkenberg was filled with creative and innovative ideas regarding church work and evangelism,” General Conference president Ted N.C. Wilson said. “As president of the General Conference, he strongly nurtured the media aspect of outreach for church activities and evangelism as well as pioneered the use of Internet for communication within the church structure.” Folkenberg also had a great passion for mission, the driving force of his ministry. During his time as world church president, he helped start the Global Mission initiative, which has been responsible for establishing thousands of new congregations around the world. “We could have not asked for a greater support than Folkenberg for Global Mission,” said Michael L. Ryan, the first director of Global Mission and a former general vice president of the General Conference. Ryan said he remembers Folkenberg often saying, “Participation in Global Mission is not optional.” “Elder Robert Folkenberg was visible, involved, and passionate about proclaiming the hope of the gospel in places where Jesus name was not known,” he said. “It mattered to him personally that the church was organized and focused on mission and that every member made being Christ's ambassador their top priority.” A Life of Mission Robert Stanley Folkenberg was born on Jan. 1, 1941, to missionary parents in Santurcee, Puerto Rico. He went to school in Puerto Rico until the fourth grade before finishing elementary school in Cuba. He entered high school in California and graduated from Milo Adventist Academy in Oregon in 1958. Folkenberg first attended Atlantic Union College in Massachusetts and then Newbold College in England before graduating from Andrews University in Michigan with a degree in ministry in 1962. In 1963 he completed a master’s degree in New Testament theology at Andrews University. Folkenberg returning to the United States from his studies at Newbold College in 1960. Folkenberg was an avid pilot. He secured a single and multi-engine airline transport pilot rating, commercial helicopter and sea rating, and flew more than 2,000 hours, the majority of which were in Central America and the Caribbean. Folkenberg dedicated much of his life to service in the Inter-American Division. Serving first as a pastor in Panama (1966-68), he later became stewardship director of the Panama Conference (1968), president of the Honduras Mission (1970), secretary (1974) and later president of the Central American Union (1975). In 1980 he became assistant to the president for the Inter-American Division. He served in North America as president of the Carolina Conference (1985-90) before being elected General Conference president in 1990. Folkenberg developed lifelong friendships among the people with whom he lived and worked. Libna Stevens, assistant communications director for the Inter-American Division, called Folkenberg “bigger than life” when she first met him at the age of 7 in her home in Costa Rica. “He would fly his plane from Guatemala to oversee the Adventist college my dad was managing in Alajuela, Costa Rica,” Stevens said. “He would come to our home for breakfast many times before he left on his trip. He loved yuca (cassava root) and would just get right in the kitchen to sauté onions while my mom was cooking. He did that every time with a big grin on his face.” She spoke fondly of his “funniest laugh” and kind affection. “He would always take time to talk to my sister and me,” she said. Hilda Matar-Montero, a staff member at the Miami-based Inter-American Division since 1977, recalled how Folkenberg had found the time in his busy schedule to officiate her wedding several months after his election as General Conference president. "He was a true friend," Matar-Montero said. “When I asked him to marry my husband and me, he told me, ‘Hilda, tell me when you need me to be there, and I will arrange my trips around your wedding.’ Sure enough, he took the time to marry us.” Matar-Montero kept in touch with Folkenberg over the years and most recently spoke with him by phone on Dec. 9. “I told him how much we were all praying for him,” she said. “He told me, ‘Time is so short Hilda, but I am ready. I love the Inter-American Division, and I love all the people I know.’ I look forward to meeting him in heaven.” Folkenberg died at 1:35 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 24, at his home in Winter Haven, Florida. Folkenberg’s final days were filled with peace, said his daughter, Kathi Folkenberg Jensen, a registered nurse. “Today when we were caring for him he smiled,” she wrote on Facebook on Dec. 21. “When my mom asked why he was smiling, he whispered he's happy because he is at peace. Praising the Lord for my Dad, his strong faith in His Savior, and the blessed assurance of salvation we can have because of Jesus and His sacrifice for us!” Folkenberg is survived by his wife, Anita Emmerson, along with their two children, Robert Jr. and Kathi, and six grandchildren. Robert Folkenberg Jr. serves as president of the Adventist Church’s Chinese Union Mission. A memorial service will be held at 4 p.m. on Jan. 10 at the Avon Park Seventh-day Adventist Church in Avon Park, Florida, his son said by e-mail. In lieu of flowers, the family welcomes donations to ShareHim, a mission and evangelistic initiative created by Folkenberg to train people and local churches to hold evangelistic series in their communities. ShareHim accepts online contributions at sharehim.org. Sharing Him to the End Folkenberg did not believe being an Adventist was a spectator sport and spoke often about what the Bible said regarding salvation. A favorite verse that he cited often was Romans 10:9, “If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (NKJV). Throughout his lifelong work in the Adventist Church, Folkenberg put an emphasis on “confessing” Christ — through technology, through mission and through the local churches with which he worked. After resigning as General Conference president in 1999, Folkenberg developed ShareHim, which has been active throughout the United States and around the world, including in an evangelistic series that resulted in 30,000 baptisms in Zimbabwe last May. “Elder Folkenberg spent part of his early ministry in frontline evangelistic activity and the last part of his ministry in direct evangelistic outreach through ShareHim,” Wilson said. “Evangelism and the proclamation of the three angels’ messages were the passion of his life.Whether he was in frontline or administrative work, his heart was in helping people know Christ and then become an active participant in the mission of the church. His early ministry as part of an evangelistic team gave him the foundation for the rest of his life.” The Frederick Seventh-day Adventist Church in Maryland caught a glimpse of Folkenberg’s passion for ShareHim when he visited the church several months ago. The church had decided to participate in ShareHim, and Folkenberg wanted to help members implement the program even though he had just been told that his cancer had recurred, church administrator Gail Boyer said. “We had members who responded not only to doing a church-held campaign but also to doing a ShareHim series in their homes,” Boyer said. “His love for the Lord was contagious.” Jeremiah Weeks, executive director of ShareHim, said he had experienced that passion every day since teaming up with Folkenberg at ShareHim in 2005. “Bob’s legacy is no doubt his passion, drive, and commitment to the spreading of the Advent hope,” Weeks said. “He believed that every one of us has a personal, nontransferable duty to share our faith with those around us. He didn’t think for a moment that merely being a ‘silent witness’ would cut it. He knew that we have to get up and do something, and that sharing the hope we have impacts both the salvation of others and of ourselves.” Jan Paulsen, who was elected following Folkenberg’s resignation in 1999 and served as General Conference president from 1999 to 2010, described Folkenberg as “a man of ideas, high energy, and a congenial spirit” whose lasting legacy would be his love for mission. “He assigned responsibilities to his colleagues and then allowed them space and time to carry out their task,” Paulsen said. “Micro-management was not his style. I found him easy to relate to, both as a colleague and a leader. “Since he left office he continued to let his energies and creative ideas develop and flow into the life and mission of the church, as seen particularly in the ShareHim program, which has been a blessing to our church widely and for which he will be long remembered.

Issue 91, Winter 2015 Prayers for Richard By David Ramsey | December 11, 2015 Illustration of Little Richard by Jim Blanchard | www.jimblanchard.com And there appeared a great wonder in heaven *** Little Richard has always been attuned to signs. At the height of his fame, on tour in Australia in October 1957, he saw a big ball of fire in the sky above the stadium. This was his second vision of fire. On the flight over, the glow of the engines appeared to him as flames and he pictured yellow-haired angels holding the plane aloft. The message, to Little Richard, was clear. He had to leave show business, quit singing the devil’s music, and get right with God. “It looked as though the big ball of fire came directly over the stadium about two or three hundred feet above our heads,” he later told his biographer, Charles White. “It shook my mind. . . . I got up from the piano and said, ‘This is it. I am through. I am leaving show business to go back to God.’” And he did. He ditched the tour—leaving half a million dollars’ worth of canceled bookings, with multiple lawsuits to come. The change in plans kept him off a scheduled flight that crashed into the Pacific Ocean. The Lord wasn’t messing around. Little Richard quit rock & roll altogether, at least for a time. He enrolled at Oakwood College in Huntsville, Alabama, to study to become a minister. All to the despair of the money men at Specialty Records—owner Art Rupe said that Little Richard was so popular they could have recorded him blowing his nose and made a hit. What Little Richard saw overhead in Australia was in fact Sputnik, the Russian satellite traveling 18,000 miles an hour in the night sky. Picture Little Richard, far from home, drenched in sweat. “He made an impressive entry,” according to Australian newspaper the Age, “wearing a brilliant red coat over a canary yellow suit, topped off with a bright green turban. But he discarded all the trimmings until he was left with only pyjama pants and the turban.” Pounding on the piano and then dancing on top of it and then throwing his bedazzled clothes into the crowd. And Richard saw the bright yellow burn of the satellite, or probably the rocket casing trailing it, perhaps streaking past the vibrant Alpha and Beta Centauri stars of the Southern Cross. A star who mistook a satellite for a ball of fire. And we might pause here to note that whether or not it was a message from God, something like a miracle was afoot. A freaky-deaky bisexual black man who grew up poor in the Jim Crow South in Macon, Georgia, singing a wild, sexy nonsense song that changed music forever, everywhere—even in a packed stadium halfway around the world, as shrieking Australian teenagers nearly started a riot, scuffling to touch the man’s discarded clothes. Fire in the heavens and fire on earth. There are miracles everywhere if you know where to look. And know how to listen: A wop-bop-a-loo-mop-a-lop-bam-boom! *** And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us *** Little Richard was born Richard Wayne Penniman in Macon in 1932, the third of twelve children. His daddy, Bud Penniman, was a church deacon and a bootlegger and a club owner. God, sin, and music. Bud met Richard’s mother, Leva Mae, at a Seventh-day Adventist holy meeting when she was thirteen. After a year of courtship, the couple married. Leva Mae meant to name her third child Ricardo, but there was a mistake on the birth certificate. “I never had sus enough to check it out and make ’em straighten it up right,” she said. And so he was Richard. He was born with his right leg shorter than his left. His limp made him look like he was sashaying when he walked, and the kids called him faggot, sissy, freak, punk. He felt more like a girl than a boy, he said later, and used to imitate his mother putting powder on her face. When he was a child, a lady in town put the “bad-mouth” on Richard, a curse that he would die at twenty-one. “I always believed that,” he told his biographer. “But it just made me wilder.” Richard’s career as a traveling musician—and his life as a sexually adventurous, gender-bending wild man—started in his teenage years. He experimented with men in the gay underworld in Macon, guys named Madame Oop and Sis Henry and Bro Boy, as well as with older women. At sixteen, Richard had a falling out with his father over his sexuality—Bud told him he was “half a son.” He left home to join a traveling medicine show literally selling snake oil; he would sing Louis Jordan’s “Caldonia,” the only tune he knew that wasn’t a church song. He joined up with various other traveling bands, sometimes performing in drag as Princess Lavonne. One group, B. Brown and His Orchestra, named him Little Richard. After years on the chitlin’ circuit, Little Richard got a break with Specialty Records, which brought him to Cosimo Matassa’s J&M Studio in New Orleans in 1955, in the back of an appliance store on Rampart Street. And here, in the history of American music, by accident or fate, the contingencies aligned just so. “I created rock & roll, didn’t even know what I was doing,” Richard said. In the studio, Specialty’s producer Bumps Blackwell found a wild-dressing, wild-talking man with his hair waved up half a foot. But Blackwell thought that the first tracks they recorded were too mild, too milquetoast, especially for a guy whose stage act was famously outlandish and untamed. “If you look like Tarzan and sound like Mickey Mouse it just doesn’t work out,” Blackwell later explained. They went to take a break at the Dew Drop Inn on LaSalle Street. Out of the studio, Little Richard immediately started hamming it up for the scattering of daytime drunks. “Boosters, rounders, pimps, whores was hanging around,” Blackwell said. “That’s all you gotta do is give Richard an audience.” He went to the piano and banged out a raunchy ode to sodomy that he used to play at the dodgier clubs on the circuit: “A wop bop a loo mop / A good goddamn / Tutti Frutti / Good booty / If it don’t fit / Don’t force it / You can grease it / Make it easy.” And a good goddamn, thought Bumps Blackwell—now that is what I need to get on record. Blackwell brought in a local songwriter, Dorothy LaBostrie, to write some family-friendly lyrics. “Good booty” became “aw rutti,” and then there was a girl named Sue and a gal named Daisy. LaBostrie delivered the words with just fifteen minutes of studio time left, and that was all it took. This was the Little Richard they called “War Hawk” in church because of his hollering and screaming. This was the Little Richard who used to bang on tin cans and wail as a boy; one of his brothers remembered, “I thought he couldn’t sing, anyway, just a noise.” The Little Richard whose protégé, Jimi Hendrix, would later say that he wanted to do with his guitar what Richard did with his voice. This was the freak, the circus showman, the vamping diva, the Holy Ghost. He sounds breathless and fierce, a little unhinged. He sounds like the last man on earth singing the first song ever written. The bubblegum lyrics don’t change the urgency of the song, barely contain the sex and fury and fun. Nonsense can deliver a perfectly coherent message depending on the way you say it. And, wooo, how he said it. Like a preacher speaking, lasciviously, in tongues. *** You have turned my mourning into dancing for me *** Little Richard, now eighty-two years old, has reportedly been living the last several years in a penthouse suite at the Hilton hotel in downtown Nashville (the Hilton will neither confirm nor deny that they have a guest named Mr. Penniman). Most Nashvillians I’ve talked to have no idea, although a local country singer told me he once happened to spot Richard sitting in the passenger seat of his black stretch Cadillac Escalade, the window cracked. He shouted out Little Richard’s name and Richard rolled down the window to say, “God bless you,” and hand him a book of prayers. Richard doesn’t get out on the town much. He has been confined to a wheelchair since hip surgery in 2009 that he says went awry. Here’s how he explained it last summer in a rare public appearance, at Nashville’s Wildhorse Saloon, where he was honored at a luncheon hosted by the National Museum of African American Music: “I came to Nashville to see my sister. I bought a home for me and her here in the hills. And I went in for surgery on my hip. I was walking on my way in but I couldn’t walk out. The hip surgery was really bad for me. I haven’t walked since. I’m in pain twenty-four hours a day. I have never seen nothing like it.” I knew someone who knew someone who had Little Richard’s cell phone number, and in June, I cold-called him. To my surprise, he picked up. He was kind but adamant about not doing an interview. He told me about his hip, about how much pain he was in. “People have been calling me from all over the world,” he said. “But I haven’t been doing any interviews, I’ve been refusing all of them. I’ll be eighty-three on December 5. The Lord has blessed me to still be alive.” He told me about the event at the Wildhorse a week later and I decided to show up. He wouldn’t be performing or anything—I believe him when he says he won’t ever be performing again—but, well, I just wanted to see him. When he was a boy, people in Macon thought Richard was a healer. The Beatles, when they first met him, kept wanting to touch his hands. Think of the teenage fans who used to fight over his clothes. Or offer up their own: a Little Richard concert in Baltimore in 1956 is supposedly the first incident of female fans throwing their underwear onstage (“a shower of panties,” a bandmate remembered). It was around eleven in the morning when the Escalade rolled past the honky-tonks on Broadway and turned down Second Avenue to the Wildhorse. Downtown Nashville in the morning is strange—the honky-tonks have opened for the early-bird tourists, cover bands playing Hank and Elvis and Jerry Lee. But the neon lights aren’t on yet, so the reds, pinks, and purples are dingy and dim. Richard’s entourage, four men dressed in suits and Secret Service shades, made quick work, lifting Richard out of the passenger seat, into his wheelchair, and onto the red carpet. The whole operation looked like a kidnapping in reverse. Little Richard wore a paisley jacket with a psychedelic floral pattern over a polka-dot button-up shirt, a pompadour hairpiece, rhinestone boots, and gold sunglasses, which he never removed. I can report to you, readers, that the self-proclaimed king and queen of rock & roll looked fabulous. He also looked, of course, like an octogenarian, a little bit frail. He was in a surly mood when he arrived because the whole red carpet thing presented a problem. He did not want to be photographed in a wheelchair. “I really don’t want anyone seeing me like this,” he said. By the time he received his award, he was in better spirits. He told stories about the old days in Nashville, playing gigs as a teenager at the New Era Club, sleeping at the YMCA because the white hotels wouldn’t let him in. He had his bodyguards hand out copies of a book, Finding Peace Within, to members of the audience. “Y’all keep me in your prayers,” he said. After the Wildhorse, I talked to Richard a few more times briefly on the phone; he was always polite but wouldn’t budge on the topic of an interview. “I’ve been going through a lot of pain and stuff and it ain’t worth it to me,” he said. The last time we spoke, he told me, “I’m really not interested in that kind of thing right now, baby. I’ve been real sick. I’m sick, I’m really trying to get well, baby.” He checked to make sure I had gotten the book he handed out and made me promise that I would read it. Music fans are insatiable. The records are not enough. We are historians, anthropologists, archivists, psychologists. Little Richard is not just a legend but one of the last people alive among that first wave of rock & roll, the prime movers and shakers. So it is probably inevitable to treat Richard Penniman like a public treasure. If Richard is gracious, if he keeps thanking God simply that he is still alive, we are gracious, too. Every minute that he remains on this earth feels precious. Start the tape recorders, aim the cameras. But there comes a day when what we want and need from our legends no longer jibes with what fragile human beings have to give. When bodies break down. In 1964, when folklorists found the legendary country blues singer Skip James, dying of stomach cancer in a charity hospital in Tunica, Mississippi, they begged him to play again. James supposedly answered, “I don’t know. Skippy tired.” If Richard had granted an interview, what would I have asked? Not about the pain, which is probably all he can think about and all he wants to talk about. The old stories—Sister Rosetta Tharpe at the Macon City Auditorium, Miss Ann and the Tick-Tock Club, the Beatles, the Stones, the gospel songs with Quincy Jones, the years preaching as an evangelist, Vegas, Pancake 31 makeup, the “wonderful orgies” (his words) and the threesome with Buddy Holly, angel dust and cocaine, a signifying satellite in outer space—he’s told those tales a million times, and maybe there’s nothing much more to tell. What is fresh and vital and constant is the pain. Keep Little Richard in your prayers. Praise and thanksgiving. And intercession too. May he find comfort and ease. May he find a little more of that old rhythm, a little more of that wild light. The book that Richard hands out is a collection of Bible verses, along with a modernized version of Ellen G. White’s Steps to Christ. White was a cofounder of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the nineteenth century after she had a series of more than a hundred visions, of Jesus and of yellow-haired angels. The last line in the book: “And there is joy in heaven in the presence of God and the holy angels over one soul redeemed, a joy that is expressed in songs of holy triumph.” *** And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars *** A different sort of troublemaker, Martin Luther, wrote in a letter to a friend in 1530, “Whenever the devil harasses you thus, seek the company of men, or drink more, or joke and talk nonsense, or do some other merry thing. Sometimes we must drink more, sport, recreate ourselves, aye, and even sin a little to spite the devil, so that we leave him no place for troubling our consciences with trifles.” Richard was often torn between his life as a Christian and his life as a rock & roll sinner. “I would get up off an orgy and go pick up my Bible,” he once explained. “Sometimes I would have the Bible right by me.” During one spell as an evangelist, he preached that “this kind of music is demonic.” Certainly, if you watch videos of Little Richard performing, he looks something like possessed. But the spirit he found, the way we move to Little Richard songs, must be a holy thing. Beyond boogie: the ecstatic mode, to spite the devil. At the Wildhorse in Nashville, Richard told the crowd: “I just want y’all also to know that Jesus is coming soon. I’m serious. He’s been talking to me and I just want you to know that and remember that something is fixing to happen in this old world. Get closer to God. All of you. Black people and white people. White people, you get closer too. He made you too. Everybody, get closer.” Richard said something similar at a Recording Academy fund-raiser in Atlanta in 2013. “God talked to me the other night,” he told CeeLo Green, in what might end up being his last interview, and probably the last public appearance in which Little Richard was fully in character as himself. “He said He’s getting ready to come. The world’s getting ready to end . . . and He’s coming, wrapped in flames of fire with a rainbow around his throne.” When someone in the audience laughed, Richard said: “When I talk to you about God, I’m not playing.” And who am I to say that Little Richard is wrong? For all of us, actuarially speaking, sooner or later the end is nigh. So let us dance: black and white, man and woman, believer and heathen. And everything in between. Let us dance, all of us, while we are still able, while we still can. ......................... http://www.oxfordamerican.org/magazine/item/719-prayers-for-richard

“This took place in Charlotte,North Carolina. A lawyer purchased a box of very rare and expensive cigars, then insured them against, among other things, fire. Within a month, having smoked his entire stockpile of these great cigars, the lawyer filed a claim against the insurance company. In his claim, the lawyer stated the cigars were lost ‘in a series of small fires.’ The insurance company refused to pay, citing the obvious reason, that the man had consumed the cigars in the normal fashion. The lawyer sued and WON! Delivering the ruling, the judge agreed with the insurance company that the claim was frivolous. The judge stated, nevertheless, that the lawyer held a policy from the company, in which it had warranted that the cigars were insurable and also guaranteed that it would insure them against fire, without defining what is considered to be unacceptable ‘fire’, and was obligated to pay the claim. Rather than endure a lengthy and costly appeal process, the insurance company accepted the ruling and paid $15,000 to the lawyer for his loss of the cigars that perished in the ‘fires’. After the lawyer cashed the check, the insurance company had him arrested on 24 counts of ARSON!!! With his own insurance claim and testimony from the previous case being used against him, the lawyer was convicted of intentionally burning his insured property and was sentenced to 24 months in jail and a $24,000 fine. This true story wonFirst Placein last year’s Criminal Lawyers Award contest. “Only inAmerica.” No wonder the rest of the world thinks we are a bunch of nuts!”

Odd that we have blindly determined that unity is inherently and unquestionably a virtue. The unity which so often is humanly strived for is false and even evil. We naively assume that somehow that being of one mind and purpose, especially under a sanctimonious theme (or a defined set of them), is a sign of the righteousness of our unity. But when that very same "unity" is used even subtly as a cudgel or a cleaver to beat others into agreeable and compliant submission to that "unity" or to separate anyone from it, it ceases to be the unity of which Jesus spoke on the eve of his supreme proof of the extreme lengths to which we are to follow him in restoring His unity. It is very much the opposite. Jesus was talking about love. It is his perfect love that is the key to and essence of unity.

teresaq brought up an interesting point. How DO you explain "why is there suffering" to a non-believer? If I were a non-believer and one of the "saints" told me that maybe Jesus was trying to get my attention, I might tend to doubt the goodness of a god who used torture to "get my attention". I'll go back to Wanderer's advice - lend a sympathetic ear; and maybe a hug; maybe cry together. I would consider that more of a blessing than a sermon on Job. At any rate, today is Christmas; and my prayer for all of you is freedom from pain, suffering, and grief - at least for today.

It is not easy to be gay in society..and even worse in Church. esp back then! they mirror their God and somehow you have to see past that.. GOD HELP THE LGBTIQQAAP

Learning To Learn: Intuition Isn’t Optional by Kalid Azad · 13 comments My learning progress skyrocketed after adopting a new standard: Intuition Isn’t Optional. Imagine a chef who follows a new recipe to the letter. No matter how it looks, no matter the reviews the recipe has, if the dish doesn’t taste good we know something is wrong. A sense of taste is the ultimate cooking tool. When learning, we defer to external indicators (tests, teachers) to inform us we’ve learned something. External standards are made to be objective and easily-verified (Did you pick the correct answer?), but the important, subjective question is how well a concept sits in your mind. Did you actually experience it? My checklist of truly learning a topic means it is: Understandable: Did I have an aha! moment? Can I explain the concept in simple language? Does it connect to other topics I know? Memorable: Do I have an analogy, diagram, or example that will stick with me for months or years? Enjoyable: Do I want to revisit or use this knowledge? Don’t study literature in a way that makes you hate reading. That’s my current definition of “intuitive understanding”, and for subjects I care about, I keep digging until I have all three aspects. It’s ok to take your time (calculus took years to become enjoyable) and it’s ok to not care about everything equally (biology isn’t particularly compelling for me). I firmly believe any subject can become intuitive if I put in the effort to find analogies, diagrams, examples, plain-english descriptions, and technical details (the ADEPT method). So, how do you set your own learning standard? Step 1: Study Famous Learners Let’s not recreate the wheel: famous learners have already described their thinking process, which we can adopt. It’s not about memorizing Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, it’s about internalizing the mindset that could lead to that idea. Here’s a few viewpoints that resonated for me: “Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.” —Albert Einstein “The only real valuable thing is intuition.” —Albert Einstein True learning goes beyond memorized facts. While I can forget the equation of a circle, I can’t forget that it’s round. And knowing it’s perfectly round quickly leads me back to the equation. “The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.” —Da Vinci True understanding implies joy. And practically, you’ll only continue studying what you like. “To teach effectively a teacher must develop a feeling for his subject; he cannot make his students sense its vitality if he does not sense it himself. He cannot share his enthusiasm when he has no enthusiasm to share. How he makes his point may be as important as the point he makes; he must personally feel it to be important.” —George Póyla “Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.” —Socrates We aren’t robots, and we should embrace the subjective aspects of learning. A teacher’s goal goes beyond knowledge-transfer to enjoyment-transfer. The Humane Representation of Thought from Bret Victor There are deeper, richer levels of understanding than what’s traditionally used. Explore a higher standard. “I think most people can learn a lot more than they think they can. They sell themselves short without trying. One bit of advice: it is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree — make sure you understand the fundamental principles, ie the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to.” —Elon Musk Your own standards greatly influence your understanding. External tests won’t check if facts are comfortably connected. I have a larger collection of quotes that help align my thinking. Step 2: Ask Questions That Check Your Standards After rummaging through quotes that resonate, build a set of questions that capture your standard. For me, it became: Do I have a visceral, ingrained analogy? Can it help solve problems? Can I explain the concept to others? Do they want to explain it to their friends afterwards? Will I remember the essential idea after a few months or years? Can I find something to enjoy in the topic? Will I return after I inevitably forget 95% of it? Questions seem to prompt more interest than a statement: “Do I have an analogy?” vs. “I must have an analogy”. With this approach, strange corners of math I didn’t previously enjoy (like Euler’s Formula) became mysteries to solve: what is the insight here? Can I express it in a plain-English sentence? (Here’s a shot: Continuous rotation means you’re moving in a circle.) Setting new standards helps take control of your education and overcome longstanding demons. When people say “I hate math” I doubt they actually hate numbers (arithmetic), patterns & relationships (algebra), or shapes (geometry). They hate lessons that don’t contain insight, enjoyment, and basic human empathy. It’s fine to be disinterested in Ancient Egyptian Civilization, but hate comes from getting lost on a tour and spending the night near a sarcophagus. These are the questions that helped me: what are your standards for learning? (Thanks to Scott Young, Uri Bram, and Tom Miller for brainstorming ideas.) Other Posts In This Series How to Develop a Mindset for Math Developing Your Intuition For Math Learn Difficult Concepts with the ADEPT Method Brevity Is Beautiful Learning To Learn: Embrace Analogies Learning To Learn: Pencil, Then Ink Intuition, Details and the Bow/Arrow Metaphor Finding Unity in the Math Wars Why Do We Learn Math? Math As Language: Understanding the Equals Sign Learning math? Think like a cartoonist. Learning To Learn: Intuition Isn't Optional Avoiding The Adjective Fallacy http://betterexplained.com/articles/intuition-isnt-optional/

I've always liked math, but the more advanced problems that take three pages to solve can be rather tedious.

I just found out yesterday he was/is SDA. What a trip. A strange conversion, but, from the little bit I've read, I'm leaving that one totally up to God as I have no idea what the man has had to deal with in his mind, and in his life.

We hear what we want to hear...I didn't read anything as angry, just forthcoming. Much presumption...maybe?

Awww...facts vs traditions! Perhaps it is because the event/s or meaning/s are more important than time or place?

This seems rather incomplete and perhaps misleading. The pagans were celebrating the winter solstice, which falls around December 21 on our present Gregorian calendar. But they weren't using the Gregorian calendar at the time of Constantine. Constantine would have been using the Julian calendar, in which the winter solstice drifted slowly as the centuries passed. The pagans in northern Europe, where many of the Christmas practices came from, probably weren't using Constantine's calendar at all until many centuries after Constantine, so to say that "December 25" was not a special date for pagans could be misleading, since "December" probably had no meaning to them at all. Were they using a calendar where the months were determined by the moon itself, rather than being determined by the Roman emperor and later by the Pope? There is no doubt that "Christ Mass" at it's best is a Catholic holiday, which was once outlawed in Britain and parts of the US because of its pagan roots and popish trappings. Both Constantine and the Catholics brought pagan practices into the Church and "christianized" them in order to make the Church more appealing to local pagans.

I wouldn't have a problem worshipping on Sunday. I WOULD have a problem being prohibited from worshipping on Sabbath.

Unity, One more thing- If your "name" denotes your character, let's try to focun on things that indeed unify us rather than divide us. Unity is not the same thing as uniformity. We can all be united in our love of Jesus, and our desire to spread His good news; But that doesn't mean we all have to do it the same way. For example, the way most African SDA's worship (drums and clapping for musical accompaniment) might not be attractive to us North American white folks. Similarly, the worship music that is a blessing to younger people may not fit the sense of propriety of some of us older folks. Some people are more comfortable hanging on to the rules of a specific denomination, where others look for a unity of brotherhood among all Christians - regardless of denomination or worship style. As long as we both believe the good news of Christ's redemption of those who believe that He did a good enough job on the cross to save us, many of the things that divide us are just a personal preference (i.e., non-salvational). As an SDA, I am conviced that the Sabbath is deeply intertwined with my salvation; however, I cannot in good conscience imply to others that they are lost unless they keep "my" Sabbath. If they are truly born again believers, the Holy Spirit can bring them to that conclusion if necessary. My impression of TOP is that their priority is bringing people to Jesus. If bringing them to Jesus includes bringing them into Adventism, so much the better.

Unity, Speaking for myself, I wouldn't call you a Pharisee. Jesus' rant on the Pharisees wasn't because they were strict adherents to the Law, it was because of their hypocrisy. You don't strike me as a hypocrite; it's more like an idealist. I may be wrong, but my guess is that you are young. If you are convicted by your theology, by all means stay with it. But keep an open mind. Not everyone believes like you and reddogs. If you are offended by movements like TOP, by all means stay away. I would never "judge" or "condemn" you for your religious fervor; I was os the same persuasion as you for decades. It rarely made me feel closer to Jesus or "saved". I was always worried that I wasn't doing enough to please God. When I gave up on trying to be "perfect", and turned my life over to Jesus, trusting Him to save me (I wasn't doing a good job of "adding merit"). When I focused on what Jesus has done for me rather than what I should be doing for Jesus, my life indeed started to change for the better and continues to do so. I still have issues; but Jesus and I are working on them together rather than me doing it myself. I happen to believe that Jesus wants us as we are; not how we ought to be. Indeed, there are churches and movements out there that are "pushing the envelope" as far as traditional theology. They are questioning all the traditional answers. They are truly exploring faith. It can get messy; and people will make mistakes. I know I have. But I pray that Jesus keeps me on the narrow path to the Kingdom; which includes respect for other people's walks. Merry Christmas!

We MIGHT be able to use the same argument for December 25. In the articles that Biblical Archaeology Review and Bible Review has been quite good at publishing over recent years, and which is also starting to cross over into other articles and sermons and programs. Some of the scholars looking at this evidence are saying that there is no historical evidence of December 25 being a special date for the Pagans until the time of Constantine when they moved their different important days around this date to this date specifically. This may or may not be true but if it is true then Christians had December 25 first. In the Bible we find Sabbath from the beginning, but it was not fully revealed and understood as Sabbath until the exodus. So it is not what came first but how it is used. Remember Mrs. White's counsel about Sunday Laws, that we are then to give Sunday to the Lord and use it for a day of evangelism and meetings. Sunday keeping is clearly paganism, but the problem with Sunday keeping is how it is used in place of the Sabbath. We can do special things on Sunday just as long as we remember that Sabbath is Sabbath. While not sure just when it started, it appears that the early church went to Synagogue on Sabbath and kept the Sabbath, but on Sunday got together to study the life of Christ and writings of Paul and things that were more specifically of interest to Christians as opposed to the Jewish/Christian topics of Sabbath worship in the Synagogue. The problem came when the Sunday get together started to replace the Sabbath.

Oh the word mistranslated as "Inn" [Kataluma] meaning "Guest Chamber" was a room in a family home for out of town relatives. There was no "Inn" nor "Innkeeper" in the story. It was Joseph's family where there was no room in the Kataluma. Now we don't know if the reason was that Mary and Joseph were unwelcome, or if it was just so busy with little Sarah asking every few minutes if cousin Mary had the baby yet and little Moshie constantly saying "I want a drink of water" . Now actually it was common for giving birth in the stable because it would have been a cave with a constant comfortable temperature, but after the birth for the family to return to the Kataluma. The Bible contrasts how Mary was open to the birth but Joseph was skeptical. Then how when going out of town to visit Mary's family how they were welcome, but when going out of town to visit Joseph's family either they were unwelcoming, or else they were welcomed but so full of hustle and bustle, maybe a little of both reasons; but his family did not have room. Now when the Magi came they probably came to the same house that originally did not have room in the Kataluma, but who at that time did have room, just as Joseph finally had room after the dream.

Has this topic gone to la-la land??

39 You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. john 5:39 and 40.

can you imagine what would have happened if President Obama's daughters were depicted as monkeys?

i read this again..i wished i just put up just the link ..not here on a Christian message Board. Perhaps someone who has the power to delete it. My apologies. i skimmed thru the rock part and focused on the Testimony