January 2008

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“A family without a commitment to the God of the Bible has no hope of stemming the tide of cultural onslaught. If we mix a little biblical truth, a little secular psychology, a little romance novel ideology, and a little eastern mysticism, we will get a deadly mixture of lies. Unfortunately, this is what many Christian families do . . . If we are to experience multigeneraltional faithfulness we must come to a place where we throw off the shackles of our culture and live in the fullness that is found only in Christ. We must be people who live the Word in our homes.“

~By Voddie T. Baucham, Jr.~

On the Horizon was launched on January 13, 2007, so I celebrated my “blogiversary” a couple of days ago.

It was a good time to stop and consider my blogging adventures of the past year, as well as my goals for the next, and the quote selected by Lori this week provided a excellent foundation for my deliberations.

My blogiversary also marked another anniversary: One year has elapsed since my liberation from the shackles of membership in the institutional, patriarchal church. It has been the best year of my spiritual life.

So many things demand our attention during the day: Work, our children’s educational, athletic and social pursuits, tending to our home environment, our hobbies and interests. Everywhere we turn we are invited to focus on something other than being grateful for our many blessings. We are dared to be faithless and disobedient to the Word. And nowhere did I find that to be more true than inside the walls of organized religion.

The church on earth is supposed to be a family, the members of which, i.e., believers, come together each week to worship. Ironically, after a lifetime of church membership and activities, I have experienced the fullest, freest and more meaningful worship experiences of my life during the past twelve months that I have not set foot inside a church building.

The reasons are readily evident in the quote.

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On the seventh day God had finished his work of creation, so he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because it was the day when he rested from all his work of creation.

Genesis 2:2-3

Welcome to The Seventh Day: Third Edition, a weekly blog carnival designed to provide bloggers an opportunity to showcase their best work and readers a chance to get acquainted with some new sites and authors!

It is a beautiful Sunday morning, so sit back, relax, and enjoy all of this week’s entries from a group of talented bloggers broaching a wide variety of subjects!

Blogging

Saedel shares Improvement Using Addition By Subtraction from Planet Saedel, explaining the various techniques he is employing to improve his site.

Spirituality / Belief

Samuel Bryson shares The Meaning of life (and other trivial concerns!) – An Existentialist Approach from Total Wellbeing. He argues that “to find meaning in life we must take full responsibility for our own lives and through living life, thus, we create meaning.” Do you agree?

Sandy Carlson shares Beware the Spiritual Vampire from Writing in Faith. “Spiritual vampires will pull you into their darkness before you’ll ever draw them into the light,” she tells us. Having known quite a few of these creatures in my lifetime, this post really resonated with me — many of you will also relate.

Lexi Sundell shares Shirley posted at Energies of Creation, a poem she wrote for her friend, an artist who died almost 12 years ago.

Dan King, Guest Blogger on the Horizon, also known as Bible Dude, shares Life is Short from On the Horizon. Don’t miss his moving observation about a life that ended too soon.

Self-Improvement / Relationships

Todd Goldfarb shares Healing from the Inside Out — A Remedy to Save the World from We the Change: Development for Conscious People. He posits that whether you want to save the environment, a relationship or something else, you must begin the process of healing within yourself.

Kingsley Tagbo shares How to Overcome Procrastination in Eight Easy Steps: The Fastest Way to Learn Technical Skills or Get a Job from The Fastest Way to Learn Technical Skills or Get a Job.

Bonnie Krueger shares How To Be Happy With Your Debt from WhaleHook Loans. Our attitude impacts every aspect of our life — including our financial circumstances.

Alex Marlin shares Do You Know If You’re A Loving Parent? from Life Improvement Tips For the Wise Few. He includes a great list of seven characteristics of loving parents to facilitate a searching internal inventory by each of us who has children.

Politics / Opinion

Kansas Bob shares Political Idealism from Kansas Bob. Bob is struggling to rediscover the idealism he once felt which is evident from the definition of the word incorporated into this post. Check it out.

Health and Fitness

Fit Buff shares Average Men — How Do You Measure Up? from Fit Buff dot com: Total Mind and Body Fitness, saying, “Men love to measure themselves against others and engage in competitions whenever they can.” Check out the statistics provided by Fit Buff if you want to see how close to “average” you are.

GP shares Keeping Stable on the Trail from Innside Montana - Your Home at the Range. “When it comes to riding lessons and endurance riding,” she tells us, “there are a lot of rules that can help you stay safe around horses.”

Thank you all for participating this week either by submitting a post or supporting those who shared their work by visiting their site and leaving a comment letting them know how much you enjoyed their contribution!

Interested in hosting a future edition of The Seventh Day? Let me know what Sunday you would like to host the Carnival on your site using the Contact Form!

You can submit a post to be included in next week’s Carnival by clicking here. Posts submitted by next Saturday, January 19, 2008, at 12:00 p.m. (noon), Pacific Time, will be included in The Seventh Day: Fourth Edition published here next Sunday, January 20, 2008!

Once again, my special Guest Blogger on the Horizon is Dan King of BibleDude.net, an online Bible study resource.

Life is Short

by Dan King

I got some news recently about a young man that I know. I first met him when he was a middle-schooler and I was a youth group volunteer. He was quite an energetic young man, and I always enjoyed being around him. I was his small group leader in the youth group for a while. After my wife and I stopped working with the youth so that we could focus on having a child, I lost touch with him.

I actually ran into him about four or five months ago at a restaurant one morning while meeting some other friends for breakfast. He told me about how he had just been released from several months in jail that morning, and was there to meet his parents. He was in jail for getting into a fight that got a little too carried away because someone was using racial comments about his girlfriend. He was so fresh out of jail that I could even still smell it on him. He hadn’t even been “home” yet, and really didn’t have a home to go to anyway.

As I spoke with him, he shared with me about how his life had gotten way out of control since he stopped coming to church. I got the idea that he just started heading down the wrong path, and step-by-step, before you knew it he was knee-deep into a pretty bad lifestyle and was running with all of the wrong people.

But I also heard a desperate cry. One that was reaching out for a hand to help him get out of the lifestyle that he was in. So I told him that my wife and I were now leading the young adults ministry at our church, and that I knew that there were several guys there that had come from rough pasts that he could really connect with and help him to get on the right path. He told me that he would come, but I never did see him . . .

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“In her hand she holds the distaff and grasps the spindle with her fingers. She opens her arms to the poor and extends her hands to the needy. When it snows, she has no fear for her household; for all of them are clothed in scarlet.”

~Proverbs 31: 19 - 21~

“Forget it. I’ll participate next week. I have absolutely nothing to say in response to those verses.”

That’s what I said to myself the first time I read the verses that Nina selected for this week’s In other Words writing exercise. That quote sounded to me as though it were addressed to a full-time homemaker. And that’s not what I am. That’s not who I am.

Yes, I have a home. Yes, I have a family. But I am a professional woman. I spend my days away from my home and family earning our daily bread.

I know how to sew, but I have neither the time nor patience. I know how to cook, but most days I don’t because I only enjoy cooking when I can do so leisurely, lingering over the details to entertain friends and family. I have dabbled with various crafts over the years. For instance, I was a prolific needlepoint and counted cross stitch “artist.” I even won a couple of blue ribbons. But I have been “crafty” for a long time now.

Over the years, I have donated countless hours and immeasurable energy to various groups and organizations, especially the church.

Still, I read that quote and deemed myself entirely inadequate to write about it. I felt like a failure.

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