Actually, things have been going pretty well lately. I figured that a post with the above header would garner more readers than one entitled “Actually, things have been going pretty well lately,” however.
\nIt’s been a while since I posted, so I’ll work backwards in time through the missing month; and you the reader may play Merlin to my King Arthur (sounds like someone thinks a lot of her<\/i>self).<\/p>\n
Actually, things have been going pretty well lately. I figured that a post with the above header would garner more readers than one entitled “Actually, things have been going pretty well lately,” however. It’s been a while since I posted, so I’ll work backwards in time through the missing month; and you the reader may […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stagingpoint.com\/michele\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stagingpoint.com\/michele\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stagingpoint.com\/michele\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stagingpoint.com\/michele\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stagingpoint.com\/michele\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stagingpoint.com\/michele\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stagingpoint.com\/michele\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stagingpoint.com\/michele\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stagingpoint.com\/michele\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nYesterday we had our first new-members meeting at the church we’ve been attending. We have really been enjoying the church, the services are an interesting blend of traditional worship and interesting readings, artwork, etc. Andy remarked, and I agreed, that the people there seem to take faith really seriously, and engage it on an intellectual as well as emotional level. I think that intellect is too often seen as antithetical to faith in conservative Christianity. I believe that God desires to and does engage our intellects as well as our emotions. I think that the passage “trust the Lord…and lean not on your own understanding” means that we should offer our intelligence up to the Lord, and allow him to work through it; not to ignore our capacity for reason altogether. Once when I was flipping through channels on TV, a woman on one of the many televangelist channels we seem to get was urging her audience to act on their “gut feeling,” and not let their brains get in the way–honestly, the only thing my “gut” ever tells me is when I’m hungry, and unless the Lord wants me to do nothing but eat cookies for the rest of my life, I think that I will continue to assign relatively low significance to “gut feelings.”
\nAnyway, this is the first time I’ve ever really selected a church. In the past, I went to my parents’ church when I was home, and just went to the nearest Methodist church when I was elsewhere. In fact, one of the main things that first drew me to the church I attended in Chicago was the familiar sight of the Methodist hymnal ranged along the pews. I enjoy looking through hymnals, as they give a pretty good impression of the denomination responsible for them. The Methodist hymnal always includes John Wesley’s rules for singing<\/a>, and begins with the hymn O For A Thousand Tongues To Sing<\/a>:
\nO for a thousand tongues to sing
\nMy great Redeemer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"