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Yesterday morning in church, we had an unexpected real life object lesson in how urgent it is for each of us to invite Jesus into our hearts.  Just as Pastor Kurt was starting his conclusion to a great message, and was about to give an altar call for salvation, a lady in the congregation jerked, then slumped over on her daughter-in-law's shoulder.  She had a heart attack!

We all immediately prayed for her, someone called 911, the medics came, checked her (she had come around by then) and took her out on a gurney.  She is still in the hospital, but that's just how quickly any of us may leave this life and be standing before God.  It was a very sobering reminder of the brevity of life.

I wish you all a good night and a good day to follow.

Janet, thanks for a great devotional.  Your words this morning are very wise.  Many times people don't stop and think how fragile life is.  This is usually most true with the young people.  We have a young lady in our church who was in a car accident and spent months in the hospital.  She said she never thought it could happen to her.  We must do are part today because we don't even know if we'll have a tomorrow.  Lord bless everyone.  Have a wonderful day!  Ray

Hi Janet and gang,

Life is very unpredictable. We aren't guarnteed the next hour, much less the next minute or second. Janet, thanks for reminding us of this.

Everyone have a wonderful day. God has provided us with a lot of rain this morning. We have been in a drought and it's much appreciated and needed.

God Bless Everyone !

Greetings from Bandon by the Sea.  I'm on my wife's laptop, typing in the dark while she is slieeping so my comments will be brief as I struggle with an unfamiliar keyboard in the dark.

Janet, your story reminds me how fragile and unexpected our lives can be.  For those people who have heard Him knocking and have been saying "Not today...maybe tomorrow...I'm just not sure...etc", that tomorrow may not be yours to have.  For those of us who say we are in Christ, do we stand ready to see Him today?  Have we put off taking up our own cross and standing for Him?  There is no guarantee for tomorrow.  Live each day for Him.  What a great reminder, Janet.

Janet ~ Thanks for the devotion and what happened in your church could happen to any one of us at any second of our lives.  Life changes sometimes at the blink of an eye.  Ask any caregiver?  Right, Marilyn?  Janet, remember my saying...It is never too late to accept Christ but it might be too late not to accept Christ. It's never too late to accept Christ while we are living and breathing here on this earth.  But if you haven't accepted Christ before we stop living and breathing on this earth, it is too late.  And I said 'might' in my saying because we don't know that persons last thoughts before taking his/her last breath.  And I believe that last split second can make a difference. 

Does anyone else feel that way, too?  Some people won't have time to confess their acceptance of Christ to the public.  Is their scripture about this?  Am I right or totally off the wall?

And as for favorite scriptures.  You are right.  My favorites change daily.  I love it that you read the same verses year after year and each year you find a new meaning or even think, I never read that before.  I know I did but it is new to me at that time.  That's what I love about my favorite book of all...it is all new and refreshing.

And was it Kevin that read the Bible without Books and Verses?  What is the name of it?  Publisher?  I would love to read that.  I do sometimes get caught up in the verses divisions wondering why a new verse starts there.  Does anyone know how the Chapter, Book and Verses came about?  Does any other book do that besides The Bible?

Rained last night and raining today.  I slept in.  No sunshine to tell me it was time to wake up!  Ah, the life of a retiree!

Etta Sue that is The Message Bible by Eugene Peterson. You can get it in any bible store.

Janet what a story, It brings it close to home because of what happened to a friend of mine last  Wednesday. I posted it here and in the prayer forum. The funeral was yesterday.

If I remember right it was the scribes who were making the copies  that made it into books and chapter so it would be easier to read as they translated it for the original languages. Hey AL what do you say?

Gotta go now.

Before the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D., the New Testament was divided into paragraphs which were different from our current divisions.

An important canon of the New Testament was proclaimed by Pope Damasus I in the Roman synod of 374. Pope Damasus also induced Saint Jerome, a priest from Antioch, to undertake his famous translation of the entire Bible, both New Testament and Old Testament into the common language of the time. The Church continued to finance the very expensive copying and translate and provide copies of the Bible to local churches and communities from that point up to and beyond the invention of the printing press, which then greatly reduced the cost of producing copies of the Scriptures.

Churchmen Archbishop Stephen Langton and Cardinal Hugo de Sancto Caro determined different schemas for systematic division of the Bible between 1227 and 1248. It is the system of Archbishop Langton on which the modern chapter divisions are based.

In the New Testament, the verse divisions were first added by Robert Estienne in his 1551 edition of the Greek New testament. In 1557, the first English New Testament with verse divisions were used in a translation by William Whittingham (c. 1524-1579). These divisions have been used by nearly all English Bibles since then. Unlike the Hebrew of the Old Testament, the structure of the Greek language makes it highly susceptible to being broken up syntactically into inappropriate and even sense-contrary divisions. Inexact apportionment of Greek into verses therefore could easily have obscured the intent, relation, emphasis and force of the words themselves, and thus elicited the most strenuous objections of theologians. The retention of Robert Estienne's verse divisions essentially without alteration is a tribute not only to the inherent utility of his contribution to Bible study, but also to his excellent knowledge of the scriptures and grasp of the fine points of the ancient Greek language. The first Bible in English to use both chapters and verses was the Geneva Bible in 1560, coming soon after Estienne's introduction of New Testament verse numbers, and quickly rising to acceptance as a standard way to notate them.

Remember folks that the "message" is not a translation but just Mr Peterson's idea of a modern interpretation, I think that it is awful myself, but there you go.




http://www.bible-researcher.com/themessage.html

Off to the US of A in the morning, pray for us.!!

Our church had a sposored walk last Sunday, including these two.!!!




http://publish.hometown.aol.co.uk/chrisaund/myhomepage/superguy222222222222.jpg?

Cute, photo, Chris!  Are you coming to Kansas??? 

I also am ambivalent about Eugene Peterson's paraphrase of the Word.  Some parts give clarity, some (IMO) are questionable.

Terrorist attack on US Embassy in Lebanon last night...........

Etta Sue, good questions!  Chris has answered one, several more to go.  What think ye, folks?

Sleepy kind of day here, can't go to sleep until I get stuff done, and by then it will be bedtime, anyway.  (Why am I so hard on myself?) 

A last minute declaration, but don't wait till then.


http://www.brandonweb.com/gbt/sermonpages/luke37.htm

We are coming to Santa Monica then flying up to Portland Oregon then Eugene  then Idaho then Montana, a lot of driving!

Can you imagine telling someone to find John 3v 16 with no chapters nor verses!!!

Etta Sue,

As Marilyn said, I read it in The Message, by Dr. Eugene Peterson.  Yes, it is a paraphrase.  But who said it was anything other than that?

This links to a bit about Eugene and The Message.

http://www.lifeway.com/lwc/article_main_page/0,1703,A%253D150098%2526M%253D50022,00.html

You'll love it, I'm sure.  It made me hungrier for the word than I had been in years.

And there is a version now with the verses numbered for those who would like it to study, rather than read through.

In His Grip,
Kevin

Kevin, I enjoyed the article on Eugene Peterson, thanks for the link.

Quote from: Chris & Margit Saunders on September 12, 2006, 03:49:58 PM
Can you imagine telling someone to find John 3v 16 with no chapters nor verses!!!

Nope.  But I know the need to read the Word as it was intended, and the value of doing so.  And what value do you find in calling The Message "awful"?  I think an "awful" version or paraphrase of the Word, is one that:

1) is not read, nor studied, or
2) someone uses to rip unintended meaning from it's context, which verses make it so easy to do.

Gripped,
Kevin

Hey Chris will you be coming through her to say hello to Al and I?

Actually it is not hard to find the chapters and verses in the Message.  I didn't have any trouble when I read the Message Bible. the chapter numbers are there

Quote from: Janet on September 12, 2006, 05:28:42 PM
Kevin, I enjoyed the article on Eugene Peterson, thanks for the link.

You are quite welcome, Janet.  Eugene is a godly man, a former pastor and writer of books that have ministered to many.

In His Grip,
Kevin

Very well said Kevin.     I was just coming in here to say much the same thing but you beat me to it! 

Eugene Peterson is a scholar and teacher who taught Hebrew and Greek in a theological seminary for years before becoming a pastor (has pastored for over forty years) his purpose was to get the people reading and loving the Bible.  This work has been referred to as "Street Greek" by some because it makes the scriptures accessable to the "common man"  of today. 

The complete title is "The Message: The Bible in contemporary language"

From the frontispage:
"The Message is a contrmporary rendering of the Bible from the original languages, crafted to present its tone, rhythm, events, and ideas in everyday language."

Hi everyone!

This has been the "drizzliest" day so far!  No heavy rain, just drizzle, drizzle.

Good topic of discussion in here today.

I personally don't like "The Message" but if someone else does that's fine.

I was telling Kevin on Yahoo earlier that I have such wonderful memories of the whole congregation of my church standing up and reading a whole chapter in unison and that can't happen now with all the various version that are about.  I loved those times and we were always having "Sword Drills" and memorizing God's word.

Nice to see you in here today, Chris.

Have a great trip.  Hope you get to see Al, Jane and Marilyn.

Wish you were coming to Toronto area.

Hi everyone.  I was gone all morning as today was registration for our SeniorNet Computer Center Fall classes.  We had a big turnout and all of our beginner classes are full and we have a waiting list.  I acted as treasurer today because our regular treasurer is on a cruise and I had previously served that function for three years.  I just collected the cash and then all of the checks at the end.  I didn't have to work them up this time as they are being saved for the treasurer's return. 

I have enjoyed reading the various Bibles verses shared today as well as the discussion of various versions of the Bible.  Pat just got a new leather-bound Bible last week and in a few weeks I plan to get a new study Bible that is leather bound.  The one I am using is falling apart as it was not a good binding.  We are also being sure we get a larger print than some of the Bibles use so we won't have a problem in reading it in the years ahead. 

Tomorrow is our morning Bible study with our pastor and then tomorrow night we have another Bible study taught by our associate pastor.  They are both very good teachers and I am really learning a lot from the classes. 

Janet, that was certainly a powerful example of not putting off accepting Christ.  I am glad that the lady survived but we just never know.  Etta Sue, I liked your saying and remember your using it before. 

Till tomorrow.

Bye Larry...

Talk to you tomorrow.

With the discussion today, this hymn would seem to fit in don't you think?


.

Correction--the attack was on our embassy in Damascus, Syria, not in Lebanon.  My bad.

Just stopping by to check the posts, I am out of here shortly for a business meeting.

Lively discussions today eh? Just like the old days.

Time to open a new New Every Morning...

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