Reach For The Beautiful KING JAMES VERSION BIBLE!

Faith is in the waiting: Sunday reflection

by ED MORRISSEY Aug 07, 2022 at HotAir:

Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow / Wikimedia Commons.

This morning’s Gospel reading is Luke 12:32–48:

Jesus said to his disciples:

“Do not be afraid any longer, little flock, for your Father is pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your belongings and give alms. Provide money bags for yourselves that do not wear out, an inexhaustible treasure in heaven that no thief can reach nor moth destroy. For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.

“Gird your loins and light your lamps and be like servants who await their master’s return from a wedding, ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds vigilant on his arrival. Amen, I say to you, he will gird himself, have them recline at table, and proceed to wait on them. And should he come in the second or third watch and find them prepared in this way, blessed are those servants. Be sure of this: if the master of the house had known the hour when the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.”

Then Peter said, “Lord, is this parable meant for us or for everyone?” And the Lord replied, “Who, then, is the faithful and prudent steward whom the master will put in charge of his servants to distribute the food allowance at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master on arrival finds doing so. Truly, I say to you, the master will put the servant in charge of all his property. But if that servant says to himself, ‘My master is delayed in coming,’ and begins to beat the menservants and the maidservants, to eat and drink and get drunk, then that servant’s master will come on an unexpected day and at an unknown hour and will punish the servant severely and assign him a place with the unfaithful. That servant who knew his master’s will but did not make preparations nor act in accord with his will shall be beaten severely; and the servant who was ignorant of his master’s will but acted in a way deserving of a severe beating shall be beaten only lightly. “Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.”

Does it seem that we spend a lot of our time waiting? We go to the doctor’s office, and we wait. We go to the DMV, and we wait. We call the cable company to reconnect our internet service, and we wait … and we wait … and we wait.

Yes, that example was recent.

Much of our lives are spent in anticipation on longer scales than that. We work for decades in anticipation of a hopefully long and comfortable retirement. Even during that time, we build our careers and often change them to anticipate what will make us happiest and most successful. We build families in anticipation of our offspring’s independence and their own journeys in life. Only recently have we been immersed in immediate gratification for our impulses, and it’s pretty clear that having those impulses gratified so quickly hasn’t exactly improved our overall happiness.

All during this time, we exist on faith of one kind or another — faith in ourselves, faith in our family and friends, faith on the economic and social systems in which we operate, and so on. That faith sometimes goes unrewarded, and sometimes bitterly so, but we still have to have faith in some measure to keep moving forward in life and in disciplining ourselves to the best possible outcomes as we see them.

This is especially challenging in our spiritual lives, where the need to rely on faith and discipline is greatest. In this fallen world, we only dimly see our spiritual existence; the material world blinds and deafens us most of the time to it. We lose the faith necessary to maintain our discipleship, for which discipline is required, and fall back to a sense of material reign and ignoring the Lord’s authority and love for us.

Jesus’ parables in today’s long reading addresses this directly, as do other similar parables and teachings. In both parables, Jesus stresses the need for faith in the Master in order to maintain the discipline necessary to fulfill ourselves in God’s salvation plan. In the first parable, Jesus teaches us to be servants on His watch while the Master is away, a task that takes faith that the Master will eventually return.

The second parable may be even more pointed. Again Jesus stresses the necessity of faith in the Master’s return, but He also makes a case for resisting materiality and usurpation of authority. The bad servants of this parable take the resources of the Master and consume them for their own vain gluttony rather than the good of others. They are demonstrating a lack of faith in the Master by assuming His role in Creation. Rather than steward these resources in accordance with the Master’s will — and having faith in His return — the servants take ownership of those resources and squander them entirely.

Disobedience is clearly a part of this lesson, as is self-discipline. But at the heart of both parables is the foundation of faith that molds us to the values of the Lord. That parallels how we mold ourselves in faith to the socio-economic and cultural values we embrace in order to succeed in our material existence and find happiness. That’s much more true in our spiritual lives, where faith should be complete and our foundation for embracing the Word and all the disciplines of discipleship.

It’s not easy to have faith in the waiting, however. The scriptures are full of failures in this regard, starting in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve rejected the Lord and His authority in order to take charge of the Master’s resources for themselves. The Israelites lost faith while waiting for Moses to come down from Mount Sinai. The kings of Israel abandoned the Lord’s will to create a nation of priests and prophets to proclaim salvation for the world, choosing instead temporal power and more immediate material gains. Both of Jesus’ parables today speak to all of those failures of faith.

There are also examples of enduring faith and trust in the Lord in our scriptural history as well. Paul recognized one of the most remarkable in his letter to the Hebrews for our second reading. Paul points out the endurance of faith in Abraham, even when the promise of it seemed impossible and its delivery either long in coming or well past his own lifetime. “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for,” Paul writes, “and evidence of things not seen”:

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; he went out, not knowing where he was to go. By faith he sojourned in the promised land as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs of the same promise; for he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and maker is God. By faith he received power to generate, even though he was past the normal age — and Sarah herself was sterile — for he thought that the one who had made the promise was trustworthy. So it was that there came forth from one man, himself as good as dead, descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sands on the seashore.

All these died in faith. They did not receive what had been promised but saw it and greeted it from afar and acknowledged themselves to be strangers and aliens on earth, for those who speak thus show that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land from which they had come, they would have had opportunity to return. But now they desire a better homeland, a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

This faith in waiting has been our journey since Adam and Eve. We are called to faith in our exile — faith that the Lord loves us, faith that He has a plan to call us back to His presence, and faith that His Word will lead us back to Him. It is that faith on which our spiritual discipleship rests, and in which we make decisions such as those in Jesus’ parables.

It is in that anticipation that we are tested. And if we are wise, it is in that anticipation in which our discipleship will be forged — if we recognize the importance of salvation and our spiritual eternity.

The front page image is “The parable of the wise and foolish virgins” by Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow, 19th century. Currently on display at the Städel Museum. Via Wikimedia Commons.

“Sunday Reflection” is a regular feature, looking at the specific readings used in today’s Mass in Catholic parishes around the world. The reflection represents only my own point of view, intended to help prepare myself for the Lord’s day and perhaps spark a meaningful discussion. Previous Sunday Reflections from the main page can be found here.  

SEEKING TRUTH IS SEEKING GOD!

“Beauty”, a Disease Conquered by the Obamaling Administration and His Universities

Posted on December 28, 2015 by Glenn H. Ray | Edit

One of the most powerful drugs imbibed for the past  300 years especially during the winter season  has been quite  successfully eradicated in the United States  by the current Obamaling administration.

It is an aural-attacking drug, that is, its noise arrangements, when heard,  quickly attack  the brain via the ear, thereby causing irrational excitement to the body’s soul, thereby   creating  social disorder at the most basic level of life.

Beauty then becomes exposed to the brains of others, causing inequality of thought and feeling, and so  forever threatening the peace and quiet  of Obamaworld equality of “Righteousness through Ignorance”.

The following noise arrangement is titled “Spring Sonata”. It’s composer, Ludwig von Beethoven, was a cantankerous, in-one’s-face, yet recluse bachelor who didn’t seem to be able to get along with any one. Yet, no creator of music in human history so revolutionized and influenced the art of creating beauty from his soul for all generations following, ever at the zenith of magnificence and popularity.

Further warning:  The composer  of this noise arrangement, long ago deceased, was another white male, and, God forbid, another German.

Proceed to listen at you own risk!  Listening to beautiful and  inspiring music is a threat to the world of the ignorant to remain equal!

(and please, Pray for Donald Trump)

These Dems MIGHT BE THESE DEMS FOREVER!

Pro-tax hike Dem continues to fail to pay his own taxes

JAZZ SHAW Aug 06, 2022 at Hot Air:

(Jake May/The Flint Journal-MLive.com via AP)

The very wealthy Leona Helmsley was once famously quoted as allegedly saying, ‘We don’t pay taxes; only the little people pay taxes.’ Now we have a repeat offender in Congress who may have studied Helmsley’s philosophy at some point. The Free Beacon has discovered that Pennsylvania Democratic Congressman Matthew Cartwright is once again in trouble for being delinquent on his property taxes. Cartwright and his wife share a condo in Washington and tax records indicate that they owed penalties and interest from 2021 due to being late in paying their taxes. As a Democrat who has repeatedly voted in favor of tax increases, that probably sends a rather poor message to the working-class voters of his district who have to avoid the wrath of a constantly growing army of IRS agents. With the midterms only a few months away and the country in the middle of a recession and skyrocketing prices for just about everything, people may have taxes on their minds when they go to the polls.

Rep. Matthew Cartwright (D., Pa.) was hit with tax penalties for late condo payments in 2021, just three years after facing media scrutiny for repeated tax delinquency.

Cartwright last year owed $436.63 in penalties and interest, stemming from the late property tax payments on his Washington, D.C., condo he shares with his wife, according to D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue records reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.

The news could be a problem for the congressman, who is locked in a competitive race against Republican challenger Jim Bognet.

Granted, we’re not talking about a huge sum of money here. Less than 500 dollars in penalties suggests that the Cartwright family probably paid most of their real estate taxes. But when you’re talking about the IRS, “most” isn’t good enough.

Also, this isn’t the first time that Cartwright has been in trouble with the Tax Man over his Washington condo. Back in 2018, he was in somewhat deeper hot water with the city. At that point he had run up a tab of nearly $4,000 in penalties and fees over a five-year period. His opponent in that year’s election ran campaign ads highlighting the situation and nearly unseated him.

Cartwright told reporters at that time that his tax delinquency was simply an “oversight.” He said that being in Congress is “a very busy job that I have and I’m working really hard at it.” That may be true, but do any of you think that the IRS would accept that excuse from you if you fell behind on your taxes? Color me dubious.

Again, this isn’t a huge sum of money we’re talking about and it’s not hard to see how someone might miss a payment here or there. (Doesn’t the congressman make enough money to pay someone to handle his taxes and keep up with these details, though?) But that’s not really the point. If you are one of the people charged with creating and modifying the tax laws that everyone else in the country has to follow, you are obviously going to be under scrutiny to ensure that you follow those laws yourself. A failure to do so produces some of the worst political optics imaginable.

And those optics may be on the congressman’s mind at the moment. He is currently in a tight race to keep his seat in November and it’s one that analysts are rating as a “tossup.” The GOP would dearly love to claw that seat back as they try to retake the majority in the house. And Cartwright’s tax headaches are the last thing his party needs to see right about now.

Sly, Allegedly Honest Joe Manchin LIES AGAIN!

Manchin’s disingenuous claim about the new spending bill

at THINK at NBC News:

The Inflation Reduction Act isn’t just misnamed because it won’t do what its title promises — it will likely make inflation worse.

Sen. Joe Manchin looks on during a hearing in Washington, D.C. on July 19. Al Drago / Bloomberg via Getty Images

Aug. 5, 2022, 11:09 AM CDT

By Wilbur John Coleman, professor of economics at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business

It seems that someone told Congress that deficits cause inflation, but forgot to mention why (or Congress wasn’t listening to the explanation). How else can you explain the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 with a straight face? 

The massive spending package that Senate Democrats are set to vote on Saturday, which allocates funding for health care, fighting climate change and controlling prescription drug costs in exchange for raising some taxes, focuses largely on deficit reduction that will have no effect on inflation. 

The “inflation reduction” label is being used to justify a hodgepodge of special interest spending that has absolutely nothing to do with inflation.

It’s excessive money creation — the printing of more bills at the direction of the Federal Reserve, reducing the spending value of those already in circulation — and not the deficit that causes inflation. Controlling inflation demands controlling the supply of money. 

Yet, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., the driving force behind the Inflation Reduction Act, claims he torpedoed an earlier spending package (Build Back Better) with some of the same components over fears it would contribute to skyrocketing inflation — and now claims the bill on the table will help rein it in.

Instead, the “inflation reduction” label is being used to justify a hodgepodge of special interest spending that has absolutely nothing to do with inflation. Beyond the unneeded tax hike to reduce the deficit, the act proposes coercing drug companies to lower prices. The money that will now remain in people’s pockets will still be in circulation, though, so even if successful in reducing drug costs, this will have zero effect on overall inflation. Similarly, though it leads to heated discourse, global warming does not cause inflation, either. 

It’s true that deficits — how much more money the government spends each year than the revenue it receives, primarily from taxes — can sometimes cause inflation because they can exert pressure on the Federal Reserve to print money to help cover the gap. But that isn’t why Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell printed the excess money that led to our current predicament.

Sen. Sinema pledges support for Democrats’ tax and climate bill

AUG. 5, 2022

Instead, he printed money beginning in March 2020 because he feared the Covid pandemic would crash the economy, and he didn’t think printing that money would create inflation. He was wrong on both counts.

Powell has increased the money supply by some $6.2 trillion since the start of the pandemic (a 40 percent rise in cash and other assets easily convertible to cash in the economy). A 40 percent rise in money will lead to a roughly 30 percent rise in prices over three years, according to my calculations, which is about 10 percent inflation for three years. Unfortunately, we seem to be on target for the first year.

The Inflation Reduction Act purports to reduce the deficit by $300 billion. Even if plugging the deficit mattered, $300 billion won’t amount to a hill of beans in that calculus.

Though some students of history want to point to former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker’s complaints about the deficit when he famously tried to tame inflation four decades ago, that wasn’t central to his policy. And indeed, the deficit grew from 1.55% of gross domestic product in 1979 to 5.72% by 1983, so he clearly did not count on deficit reduction to lower inflation. 

Instead, Volker reduced the supply of money, via an interest rate rise from 13.77% in October 1979 to 19.08% in January 1981. Controlling the deficit doesn’t control inflation, not then and not now.

But the Inflation Reduction Act isn’t just misnamed because it won’t do what its title promises — it will likely make inflation worse by raising the cost of producing goods and services and lowering their overall supply. The higher cost and consequent lower supply of goods means that money circulating in the economy is used to purchase fewer goods, thereby pushing up the price of goods, leading to higher inflation. 

For instance, the push to remove carbon from production specified by the act is exactly the type of wasteful spending that raises the cost of producing goods. And while receiving the bill’s subsidies for green-related spending will lower the cost of purchasing these types of goods, the rise in demand will likely push the price back up.

It’s difficult to understand why Congress thinks this would reduce inflation. What’s needed is more supply or less demand, not higher demand. The act seems to get this point exactly wrong. 

The one part of the act that might help reduce inflation is ironically the one part that most Democrats don’t want in there: encouraging fossil fuel production. That could help to lower prices by creating more supply and reducing the cost of producing goods, which allows lower prices to be set.  

Manchin’s opposition to Build Back Better on inflation grounds was just as specious as his support for the Inflation Reduction Act on inflation grounds now. It seems inflation is the new buzzword, used to justify any action whether or not it actually lowers prices. 

Powell is largely responsible for the inflation mess, and only he can truly fix it. But he’s unlikely to do so anytime soon, as he has a lot of money to remove from a fragile economy, and his chief concern is likely not tipping the economy deeper into a recession by raising interest rates too much. 

GETTING TO KNOW MOTHER EARTH BETTER!

The earth is spinning faster… or slower

by JAZZ SHAW Aug 07, 2022 at HotAir:

(Laurent Gillieron/dpa via AP)

The latest clickbait science headline that’s been making the rounds is the one where scientists have determined that the rotation of the earth is speeding up. Or maybe it’s actually slowing down. It depends who you ask, as it turns out. But one thing is for sure. It will potentially “cause problems” and it probably has something to do with climate change. This headline at MSN makes it clear that the rotation of the planet is accelerating.

Earth is Spinning Faster than Usual and Here’s How it’s Already Affected You

If it seems the days are getting shorter; they are and have been since the summer solstice in June. But the earth recently recorded its shortest day for an entirely different and unusual reason—the earth is spinning faster. Scientists have found the development puzzling, although they have some theories about why it’s happening and what impact it may have on our lives.

Okay. So the earth is spinning faster and scientists aren’t sure why. But wait! A quick glance at this headline from SciTechDaily in the same 24-hour period seems to say something different. What’s going on?

Earth’s Days Have Been Mysteriously Increasing in Length – Scientists Don’t Know Why

Precise astronomical observations, combined with atomic clocks, have revealed that the length of a day is suddenly getting longer. Scientists don’t know why.

This has critical impacts not just on our timekeeping, but also on things like GPS and other precision technologies that govern our modern life.

Before you begin worrying about whether we’re all about to fly off the planet or if the earth is going to slam to a halt leaving one hemisphere permanently in darkness, let’s look at how much of a change we’re talking about. June 29th, the “shortest day in the past half-century” was 1.59 milliseconds shorter than the “average” day. That’s a pretty subtle difference. If it keeps going in that direction, it’s believed that the change could cause some problems for our satellites, GPS systems, or other technology. But as long as we’re monitoring it, adjustments can be made to prevent any sort of massive system failure.

There is discussion of adding a “leap second” to the calendar, which has been done in the past, but tech industry experts say that might just make matters worse. In reality, a “day” on planet earth is almost never exactly 86,400 seconds, so we have to keep making adjustments over time if we want to remain accurate in our measurements.

Interestingly, geologists are pretty sure that the earth’s rotational speed has been slowing down steadily ever since the planet formed. It’s been concluded that two billion years ago, a day on earth was only roughly 19 hours long. The suspected reasons are a bit complicated for my layman’s brain, but they seem to fall into two categories. One is a “friction effect” caused by the ocean tides and driven by the gravity of the moon. That tugging creates a “drag” on the planet’s rotation, slowing it over time.

The other factor is even more difficult to track, but it involves the distribution of mass on the surface of the earth. When more mass accumulates near the equator, the rotation tends to slow. When landmasses migrate toward the poles, as they have been since the end of the last ice age, the speed increases. It’s described as being similar to the way a figure skater speeds up or slows down in a spin by holding her hands further from her body or in close.

So how worried should you be about this? Unless you plan on living to be half a million years old, the answer is probably “not very.”

The World And State Keep Changing….and often not to the good!

AUGUST 6, 2022 BY JOHN HINDERAKER at Power Line:

THE COMING WAR ON AGRICULTURE

You probably know about what has happened in Sri Lanka, where the government’s attempt to impose organic farming led to food shortages, impoverishment, and a revolt that caused that country’s prime minister to flee. Also the Netherlands, where the government’s attempt to drastically reduce fertilizer use has led to massive protests by farmers that continue to this day.

At Hot Air, Jazz Shaw notes that farmers in other countries are up in arms as well:

There are already protests by farmers taking place in a number of countries besides the Netherlands, though the farmers there are currently drawing the most headlines. Similar uprisings are happening in Spain, Ireland, and New Zealand. There are food shortages gripping a number of countries around the world, but our elite climate warriors are pushing to reduce food production rather than expanding it.

Next up is Canada:

Undaunted by the uproar in the Netherlands over the impact on farmers of rules limiting nitrogen emissions, Canada’s government is now looking to go down a similar route.

The Financial Post:

The government is proposing to cut emissions from fertilizer 30 per cent by 2030 as part of a plan to get to net zero in the next three decades. But growers are saying that to achieve that, they may have to shrink grain output significantly at a time when the world is scrambling for more supplies.

Also at stake is the estimated $10.4 billion that farmers could lose this decade from the reduced output.
***
Cattle and fertilizer are key sources of nitrogen emissions.

Global warming religion is international, and the same anti-farming movement is coming soon to the U.S., the world’s number one agricultural economy. The first target will be nitrogen-based fertilizers, which are a principal foundation of the world’s ag productivity. Without fertilizers, the world will go hungry.

That leads to target number two: animals, especially cows. By far the largest crop in the U.S. is corn, and that corn is fed to cows and pigs to produce steaks, ground beef, bacon, pork chops, and so on. Liberals will argue that this is “inefficient.” People should live on vegetables and insects, and animal husbandry should be phased out. The fact that cattle also emit methane, primarily by chewing cud, makes their decline an added bonus from a global warming perspective.

Will the Left’s war on agriculture succeed? I don’t know. The Sri Lankan government pushed it until mobs invaded the prime minister’s residence. The government of the Netherlands isn’t giving an inch, despite massive and prolonged civil disobedience by farmers. Justin Trudeau apparently likes what he sees in those countries. And consider the Left’s war on energy: I never would have imagined that it could get as far as it has.

I think many liberals are essentially sadists. They love to boss the rest of us around and make us miserable. If you didn’t know better, you might think they spend their days dreaming up ways to humiliate their fellow citizens. “Here’s an idea–let’s screw up the grid to produce blackouts, so that people turn on the lights and nothing happens!” “They’ll never stand for that.” “We’ll make them stand for that, and like it, too!” “Here’s another idea: let’s tell people they can no longer eat hamburgers and bacon, they have to eat crickets and vegetables!” “What? No one is crazy enough to go along with that.” “Sure they will–all we have to do is tell them it’s necessary to save the planet.”

Making food scarce and expensive, so that much of the population is threatened with starvation, has another benefit for liberals. They can respond by writing people checks representing food subsidies. Thus they turn millions of formerly self-sufficient Americans into government-reliant serfs. It’s a win-win, if you are a liberal.

All of this is coming to the U.S. soon. We have seen the opening shots fired, as environmental groups have tried to block the expansion of dairy herds on the ground that cows cause global warming. We have seen the price of meat skyrocket, so that many Americans have had to change their eating habits. Already, if you look at ingredient lists on food products, you may see ground-up crickets. And the effort to delegitimize eating meat, especially beef, like the effort to delegitimize air travel, is under way.

I will hazard one more guess: when the Left looked for another state to follow California’s lead on automobile emissions, where did they go? Minnesota. When the Left wanted to spread California’s “ethnic studies” curriculum into the Midwest, where did they go? Minnesota. When the Left launches its full-scale war on American agriculture, where will that war begin? It won’t be Iowa. It will be Minnesota. And Minnesota currently has a governor and an administration that would be willing to lead the anti-food charge.

A final comment: global warming is a great boon to the Left because every human activity emits carbon dioxide. In fact, human beings emit carbon dioxide simply by living. So if you believe that carbon dioxide is the worst possible threat to the world, it justifies absolutely any government action that leftists might want to take.

So conservatives, and conservative politicians, need to stop conceding the premises of global warming to the Left. “Climate change”–that is, the theory of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming–has been decisively refuted as a matter of science. But it lives on as a religion for those seeking meaning in their lives, and as a cynical political tool of the Left. Conservatives need to stop conceding moral high ground to environmental Leftists, and instead attack them head-on.

G.F. Handel: Messiah!

Dear Viewer….Before you ignore the above piece of music composed more than two centuries ago, please think about our music of today and the animals who compose them why and where? Think of the nation you live in and the Nancy Pelosis and Chuck Schumers who model America with their distortions, greed, and even evil of the day, and the nation it has created….ghr