Thankful Thursday

I’m thankful for hot running water, central heating, and my automatic washer and dryer. While I’m thinking about it, I’m thankful for my electric stove and fridge, too. I have so much more than my grandmother did, things that I mostly take for granted, seldom stopping to consider that they are good gifts from God.  So today I’m thanking my heavenly Father for all these conveniences that make life easier for me.

I’m thankful for my kids. Sometimes they make things easier for me, and sometimes not. But they are always good gifts and I am thankful for them.

I’ve had a morning that’s been interrupted over and over again, and I’ve crossed off next to nothing from the list of things I’d hoped to do today. I’m thankful that God is in control of my interrupted days, too.

I’m thankful for the blessings of everyday life. I am thankful for the earthly life I’ve been given and also for the promise of eternal life.

On Thursdays throughout this year, I plan to post a few thoughts of thanksgiving along with Kim at the Upward Call and others. Why don’t you participate by posting your thanksgiving each week, too? It’ll be an encouragement to you and to others, I promise.

Called According to Paul

I want to put this old series of posts in the favorite posts section on the right sidebar, so I’ll be reposting them from my previous Blogger blog one by one over the next few weeks.

Not Herman Ridderbos.In Paul, an Outline of His Theology, Herman Ridderbos writes that

….something should be said about what Paul time and again terms the divine call and the calling of the church….He gives the word a pregnant significance….by understanding it of the word of divine power by which God calls into being the things that do not exist and by which he works what he commands. It is this effectual, efficient divine calling which now takes place through the gospel and by which God has called the church to faith itself as well as to the whole of the new life by faith.1

According to Ridderbos, then, when Paul uses the word call, he means something that does real work, something that gives rise to that which had not previously existed. Paul uses call to mean a call that is heeded because there is power in the call itself.

How did Ridderbos come to that conclusion? Well, I’m pretty sure he didn’t just consult a lexicon or concordance or Bible dictionary. Ridderbos is a biblical scholar, so he had years and years and years of study under his belt when he wrote that statement, but I’d bet that part of his study involved looking at the all the instances in which Paul used the word “called” and studying the context for clues to how the word was used in that particular place; and then putting all of that information together to come up with the general definition of the word given us in the quote.

This is something that even those of us who are not biblical scholars can do. We don’t have to just take Ridderbos’ word (or the lexicon’s or the dictionary’s or the concordance’s, either). Nope, we can check it out for ourselves. It’s not that difficult, but it does involve a bit of detective work done through careful inspection of the text. You don’t have to know New Testament Greek. Not that a knowledge of Greek wouldn’t be helpful, but you can still learn a lot about the meaning of biblical words without it, as long as you’ve got your trusty magnifying glass and notebook.

So this is what I’m planning to do: I’ll look at Paul’s use of the word “called” to determine how he used it. It’ll take a series of posts; I’m not sure how many. First up will be an examination of the use of the word “called” in 1 Corinthians 1.

Stay tuned….

1Herman Ridderbos, Paul, an Outline of His Theology, page 235.

Round the Sphere Again: Whatever You Eat or Drink

With Purpose
On slowing down at the dinner table. (The Irish Calvinist)

With Pumpkin
I made these cookies (Mennonite Girls Can Cook) with the canned pumpkin not used in the pie for Thanksgiving  dinner.  Except that I didn’t frost them because by the time I got around to it, the cookies already been pronounced “very good” and I didn’t see the point of making a whole batch of frosting for what was already only a half batch of cookies. They expecially liked them dunked in tea and are already asking me to make more. 

Pumpkins, you know, are one of God’s good gifts and so are good cookie recipes.