Scripture

I've been reading The Rest of God by Mark Buchanan lately. I'm really enjoying it - he's a gifted writer. As I was reading this weekend he mentioned the idea of "taking every thought captive" and my mind flashed back to high school.

It's one of those random memories frozen in my head. I was with a group of girls from church at one of the annual church camps, I don't remember which one, I just remember that randomly throughout the time together we'd all chant, "Take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. 2 Corinthians 10:5 B!"  (Always putting extra emphasis on the "B" for some reason.)  And years later - I don't remember why that was the verse we memorized that weekend or what sermon we heard based on it - but I remember the verse. I have a feeling that whoever taught the lesson or preached the sermon though is ok with that.

So let's look at this passage:

2 Corinthians 10

3For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. 4The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. 6And we will be ready to punish every act of disobedience, once your obedience is complete.

In context it seems to be saying that taking our thoughts captive is part of the spiritual warfare we fight - part of the ongoing struggle of the battle between living in this world and not operating our lives in a carnal way. Taking our thoughts captive is part of how we win that war - how we fight - how we demolish "every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God."

When I think of "capturing" something or keeping something "captive" I think of a wild animal. Now, I'm sure there are a variety of reasons to capture a wild animal and not all of them valid or beneficial - but I'm going to focus on a couple of reasons:  1) The animal is a danger to humans and needs to be contained and relocated or eliminated (like my euphemism?)  or 2) The animal would be useful is trained and therefore will be captured, broken, trained, and put to use.

Some thoughts are just plain deadly - figurative if not literally for many people - thoughts about how the world says our worth is found. Thoughts that seek to devalue us based on our appearance or our abilities or our relationships (or lake thereof). They kill our spirit and our motivation - stopping us in our tracks and making us unable to do that which God has called us to.

Other thoughts just need to be broken - need to learn to be obedient to God. Satan is the master of deception - every lie he speaks has a hint of truth and it is that truth that we first cling to. But when we don't take EVERY THOUGHT to Christ then it is easy to go in the wrong direction.

I know the more often I am reading scripture the easier it is to align my thoughts with Christ's. And when I memorize it, as I often don't do, it's even easier - the verses just pop into my head when I need them to realign my thoughts. The proverb, "I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you" proves true - His word is what gives us the power to obey His word - to demolish strongholds.



p.s. I know there are a couple of girls that grew up with me in the youth group who read this blog- - anyone else remember chanting that verse?

Regular Posts: Coming Soon

Thanks for your input on the idea of regular posts.

The ones with the most votes were Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  I can see the "memory mondays" being able to go under "friday favorites" - so I'm going to push those two together and every once in a while a Favorite Friday will be a favorite memory ;)

Wordy Wednesdays are a go - this will be fun for me and stimulating on an academic/intellectual level as I seek to actually research etymology and cultural uses of words and such rather than just thinking about it.. Self-education is always fun.

and, while it didn't get a lot of votes I'm going to do Sunday Scriptures too since I want to and it's my blog. :-D


Ok -so I need to give myself a week or so to figure out the format and get content ideas going - but - I'll get them up soon and hopefully keep up with it!

Regular Posts: Input Requested

In the interest of trying to become a regular blogger who blogs things of substance - I'm considering trying to do 1-3 weekly "themed" entries.  Hopefully with a few regular posts I'll get my writing mind back in gear and actually have ideas for other days of the week. Of the following - which do you think you would be most interested in reading?

(ignore the silly alliteration for now - I don't really like it but it's a way for me to think of themes and set a schedule. If you have better alternate names feel free to suggest!)

Sunday Scriptures - scriptures from The Bible that have recently been meaningful to me with my reflections.

Monday Memories - my idea here comes from my love of memoir and would be a bit of "stories from my life". Creative non-fiction writing that will hopefully, at least on occassion, link to other things - - like...web pages for vacation spot memories or pictures of vintage toys I loved or whatever so that blog readers can interact a bit.

Tasty Tuesday - food. something I made. something I ate. something that I saw a picture of and it left me drooling.  The type of food entries I used to do a lot of when I had time to cook more creatively.

Wednesday Words - I'm really intersted in linguistics and connotation vs. denotation.  I spend a lot of time thinking about words and what they mean and how we use them and if there's a right or wrong there or why people think there is a right and wrong. But, i'm getting wordy. Basically - - looking at words. I've never really written much on this topic - so it would be new for me to  put into writing. But this may be an area too narrow and geeky to actually have any wide readership interest.

Thankful Thursday - Reasons why I love life - one Thursday at a time.

Favorite Fridays - I highlight something that is a favorite of mine: webpage, place, cooking tool, organization, craft item, pointless cute thing, whatever.

Review: Organix Shampoo

At Least The Bottle Is Cute

A few months ago when I was shopping for shampoo I spotted the organix brand and thought I'd give it a try. It smelled nice, the bottle was cute, and less chemicals down the shower drain is always good, right?

Well, as the months wore on through my first mid-west summer I noticed that my hair was extra oily and that it was growing super fast.  Also - the shampoo smell did not transfer to my hair :(. That's why you buy shampoo based on smell - so your hair will smell like that! My hair was constantly in a clip because it would get oily by the end of the day even if I washed it that morning. I'm a little slow so I blamed it on new weather for my hair - even though that didnt' really make sense given that I came from the hot and humid south.

It wasn't until about a week ago that I realized it was that organic shampoo - the chemicals may not be good for the shower drain - but they do wonders for my hair.  However, the organic shampoo did make my hair grow very fast - so I didn't throw away the stuff - it's on the shelf in case I ever decide I'm ready for longer hair and I'll whip it out and deal with oily hair again for a few weeks. Until then, I'll get my organic fruit from the produce section and let my shampoo (and hair) enjoy the chemicals.

Statcounter fun

The keyword that most often gets people to my page when they google it is:

"Microplane zester 5100506"


or, more simply: "patent 5100506"


This kind of cracks me up in a "I wonder why so many people google that!" way. Like - is there some late night infomerical out there about this zester that is too good to pass up? Ironically - I'm nto the one who mentioned the microplane - it was mentioned in a comment on a post about my beloved lemon-lime press.


I'll try to have something more substantial to post about soon. :)