Saturday's Old Photo

This is a picture of my Grandma Vogt taken in the summer of 1979. You saw a photo of her when she was much younger in the old photo posted two weeks ago.

The occasion is an anniversary celebration for her son (my uncle) Elton and his wife Marty. Those are their gifts in the background. This light peach dress (or maybe you’d call it flesh colored) was the dress she also wore to my sister’s wedding a couple of months earlier.

By now my grandma had been a widow for 3 years. She’d lost her first husband when she was in her twenties, so this would be her second time as a widow. She would pass away less than two years after this photo was taken.

Can you tell she was a quiet and kind woman?

The Primary Article of the Christian Religion

Or The Other Five Points of Calvinism.

From Michael Horton’s chapter in John Calvin: A Heart for Devotion, Doctrine & Doxology, a 5-point survey following the logic of Calvin’s argument on justification found in his Institutes of the Christian Religion:

1. To save us from judgment, the Son became flesh and merited our salvation (2.15-17).
2. Thus, the righteousness by which we are saved is alien to us (3.1.1; 3.1.4; 3.2.24; 4.7.11).
3. Yet Christ must not only be given for us; He must be given to us. (3.1.1).
4. We are recipients not only of Christ’s gifts but of Christ himself. (3.1.1; 3.1.4; 3.2.24; 4.17.11).
5. Faith unites us to Christ (3.1.1), but it is the Holy Spirit who gives faith, and it is Christ who always remains the sole ground of salvation rather than faith itself. In other words, faith is nothing in itself; it receives Christ and with Him all treasures. (3.11.7; 3.18.8).

Look for a review of this book to be posted here sometime before Calvin’s 500th birthday, which is coming up in

You can get your own John Calvin birthday clock at Calvin 500.

My Desktop Photo 62: Wild Strawberry

Photo by Andrew Stark
(click for larger view)

More about the wild strawberry, which is blooming right now: Waving the White Flag.