If you get a moment, please pray for my brother and his wife. Their baby is on the way! My brother is a member of the US Army and is currently in Iraq, trying to get to England on time. The most urgent prayer request is a safe delivery for their little boy, but the secondary hope is that he’ll make it before the baby is born. I hope so!
Japanese folk artist videos
Last Sunday, we visited the Phoenix Art Museum and watched a Japanese folk artist perform. I took several videos to share. The artist was kind enough to give me permission to post them on-line. If you only watch one of them, watch the last one. That performance was awesome!
The artist’s introduction and playing on the たいこ (taiko – drum).
すきやき (上を向いて歩こう) guitar performance (the song title: “Sukiyaki” or “I look up when I walk”).
Final performance, playing on the large たいこ (taiko – drum).
Weekly Memory Verse
I really feel like I have retreated from the world for awhile. I find myself surprised when I realize I haven’t signed on to Facebook in a week or blogged for a few days. My husband’s work has been super busy, plus we’ve had some dental drama. When I’m not taking care of my husband or the house, I’ve been studying Japanese. Hopefully this week will find me being more social!
Last week’s verse is partially memorized. I’m going to continue working on it this week and also start another passage. This passage was in a chapter my husband read for sundown worship last night and I love it.
Sing, O daughter of Zion!
Shout, O Israel!
Be glad and rejoice with all your heart,
O daughter of Jerusalem!
The LORD has taken away your judgments,
He has cast out your enemy.
The King of Israel, the LORD, is in your midst;
You shall see disaster no more.
In that day it shall be said to Jerusalem:
“Do not fear;
Zion, let not your hands be weak.
The LORD your God in your midst,
The Mighty One, will save;
He will rejoice over you with gladness,
He will quiet you with His love,
He will rejoice over you with singing”
Zephaniah 3:14-17, NKJV
Wednesday? Really?
How can it possibly be Wednesday night? The last time I turned around, it was Sunday evening.
It’s been a busy week, but a slightly unusual one. Sunday afternoon was spent at the Phoenix Art Museum for their international art appreciation event. It was a lot of fun. I need to edit/resize the photos so that I can post more about it. We saw a Japanese drummer, an African band, a group demonstration on how to play a Bali instrument, a quartet, and a demonstration on いけばな (Japanese flower arranging). And all of that doesn’t even include all the art we saw!
We spent so much time on our feet Sunday that my heel feels like it might be bruised. It hurts when I spend too much time standing so I haven’t been able to exercise at all this week. It really throws my schedule off, because I’ve gotten into the habit of it. Hopefully as soon as my foot feels better, I’ll be able to get back into the daily exercise.
Tomorrow afternoon I’m making a big pot of tortilla soup. Hubby and I are going back to the dentist for the third time in a month and I was hoping soup would be a good meal for after our appointments. Hubby has to get fillings done and I need them to check on the filling I had replaced last week. I can’t floss between that tooth and the one in front of it. When I called, the receptionist said something about needing to reshape it. Hopefully it doesn’t include any needles or drilling!
Weekly Memory Verse
What happened to last week? It went by so quickly I barely noticed. And now it’s Monday again. I screwed up last week. I waited so long to post my verse online and then forgot to study it. So I’m starting over with this text and I’m going to learn it again this week.
For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior,
who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
1 Timothy 2:3-4, NKJV
I study Japanese for hours every week and memorize Kanji, vocabulary, etc. so I really have no excuse for not memorizing Scripture. It just needs to be more of a priority. I’m telling everyone that I made a mistake last week in hopes that it will encourage me to do better this week. I don’t want to post this same message again next Monday!
Weekly Memory Verse
I can’t believe I haven’t posted this week’s verse yet. I think I’m going to start posting them on Sundays, so that I remind myself to start memorizing it.
Last week’s text went well (Romans 8:1) so I’m going to memorize another that has the same theme.
For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior,
who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
1 Timothy 2:3-4, NKJV
The second verse is the one I greatly need to memorize. It’s such a reassurance that God wants all men to be saved, not just a few.
What’s On My Nightstand?
I didn’t do that much reading in January. I wanted to, but I felt a greater drive to progress in my Japanese studies. Almost all of my free time has been working with Japanese, so I’ve already completed 30 study hours so far this month.
Books completed in January (links are to my reviews):
Slave, John MacArthur
Bleak House, Charles Dickens – dropped it 1/3 of the way through. I just couldn’t get into it and didn’t see the point of forcing myself to finish.
A Proper Pursuit, Lynn Austin
Fire by Night, Lynn Austin
Currently reading
Memoir/Autobiography/Biography – Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time
Health/Cookbooks – Skinny Italian: Eat It and Enjoy It – Live La Bella Vita and Look Great, Too!
Christian life – The Walk: Clear Direction and Spiritual Power for Your Life (Review copy)
Theology – Proverbs (Bible) – reading a chapter a day, will finish January 31.
To-read in February
Homemaking – The Well-Ordered Home: Organizing Techniques for Inviting Serenity into Your Life
Christian life – Becoming a Woman of Excellence
For fun – Beaded Hope
Menu Plan Monday
We seem to be on a Mexican food kick! I love Mexican food, so I don’t mind.
Monday – Tacos
Tuesday – Stir-fry (new recipe, carryover from last week)
Wednesday – Pizza Margherita (new recipe from Skinny Italian)
Thursday – Tacos and Mexican rice
Friday – Curry
Sabbath – Breakfast burritos
Sunday – Spur of the moment meal based on cupboard contents
I’ve been working on breakfasts lately. We don’t usually eat breakfast together as I’m ok just eating fruit but hubby needs something substantial. He doesn’t always get to eat lunch and doesn’t like being hungry all day! Instead, I’ve been setting my alarm for the past week and getting up early enough to make muffins or pancakes before he has to leave for work.
So far, here’s what I have for breakfasts. We’ve been eating a ton of oranges lately!
Muffins & Fruit
Pancakes
Cornbread & Fruit
Cold cereal & Fruit
Hot cereal (for me)
Maybe one of these days I’ll try making breakfast burritos for breakfast instead of dinner!
Another Sabbath is almost here
I know I say this a lot, but I am so grateful for Sabbaths. I kept myself pretty busy this week, trying to stretch my productivity in both homemaking and studying Japanese. The apartment stayed pretty clean this week and I have invested over nine hours in Japanese studies since last Sunday. The accomplishments are nice, but I’m tired and ready for a day off!
We’ve been blessed with several answers to prayer in the past week. Hubby needs to get a certain certification for his job. Thankfully, his boss offered to pay for the exams! We’ve paid out of pocket for all of his certifications up to date, considering it an investment in his career. So to have an employer pay for a certification is a huge blessing! There are three tests required. Hubby passed the first last Friday and the second exam this morning. He has the third and final exam scheduled for next Friday morning.
I’m headed to the kitchen shortly to start making our Friday night curry. We’ve tried various curries over the past few months, but we love eating a great curry meal to start the Sabbath.
I hope everyone has a very restful Sabbath day!
Slave – A Book Review
Slave was offered for review on BookSneeze and I snatched it up. I loved John MacArthur’s book The Jesus You Can’t Ignore and Slave sounded like another great read.
From Amazon’s product description: “What does it mean to be a Christian the way Jesus defined it? MacArthur says it all boils down to one word: Slave. ‘We have been bought with a price. We belong to Christ. We are His own possession.'”
Unfortunately, the book got off on the wrong foot. The preface talks about an intentional translation cover up, a conspiracy, if you will. While I do believe that conspiracies exist on occasion, I find it rather suspect that multiple Bible translators have intentionally made a mistake. Perhaps it’s true, but this accusation made me wary of anything else MacArthur proposes in this book.
MacArthur believes that the Greek word doulos has intentionally been mistranslated as servant rather than slave. He writes that “whenever it [doulos] is used, both in the New Testament and in secular Greek literature, it always and only means slave” (pg 16). Both in this chapter and in others, MacArthur stresses that Christians being a slave to God is completely involuntary.
I am not a Greek scholar, but I looked up one example listed in the footnote: Revelation 1:1. Both in my Bible’s Greek dictionary and on Net Bible, I found the following definitions:
doulos
1) a slave, bondman, man of servile condition
1a) a slave
1b) metaph., one who gives himself up to another’s will
those whose service is used by Christ in extending and
advancing his cause among men
1c) devoted to another to the disregard of one’s own interests
2) a servant, attendant
from 1210; a slave (literal or figurative, involuntary or voluntary;
frequently, therefore in a qualified sense of subjection or
subserviency):-bond(-man), servant.
Again, I don’t know much about Greek, having never studied it. But the definition says that this word can be literal or figurative, voluntary or involuntary. MacArthur asserts that doulos only refers to involuntary slavery.
The chapters dealing with what it means to be a slave to God are actually quite good. Whether we call ourselves as Christians slaves or servants, whether it be involuntary or voluntary, we do have a specific relationship with God. One of the best summations in the book is that “a slave’s life was one of complete surrender, submission, and service to the master – and the people of Jesus’ day would have immediately recognized the parallel. Christ’s invitation to follow Him was an invitation to that same kind of life” (43).
I fully agree with the above statement. A Christian’s life should be one of complete surrender, submission, and service to the Master. The discussions detailing parallels between Roman slavery and our Christian responsibilities toward God were really insightful. Too often, the church gets caught up in grace and forgets that the Jesus who said “you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind” also said “if you love Me, keep My commandments” (Luke 10:27, John 14:15).
All of that said, I had a deeper problem with book. I walked away from it feeling incredibly depressed. As good as the message is about serving God, it was completely overshadowed by the author’s belief in predestination. MacArthur states that “God, in His infinite mercy, chose to save those sinners on whom He had set His love in eternity past” (147). There are a few other quotes that address the same issue – God chooses who He will love and only saves those people. Not only does God only love a select few, MacArthur states that everyone else has no choice in the matter; they were born into sinfulness, have no possible chance of responding to the gospel, and will die and be punished for their sins.
I don’t have all the answers. I don’t understand God completely. But the idea that God may not love me, that He doesn’t want me, and that I don’t even have a chance in becoming His daughter is repulsive. I’ve been depressed for a week because of this idea. If this idea is true, then God may have chosen me, in which case He loves me and I have the opportunity to respond to the gospel. But if God didn’t choose me, then I am unloved and will be punished for my sins even though I had no choice in the matter. Is that fair? Is that even Biblical?
I can’t recommend this book unless you are extremely secure in your beliefs and want to pick out the nuggets available. Slave does have some nuggets of truth and insight, but it is completely overshadowed by the idea that God does not love everyone nor does He want everyone to be saved.
This week I chose to memorize Romans 8:1 in response to reading this book. Another text I need to memorize is 1 Timothy 2:3, 4.
There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus,
who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit
Romans 8:1.
For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior,
who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth
1 Timothy 2:3, 4 (emphasis mine).
I received a reader copy of this book from BookSneeze in exchange for an honest review.