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| More examples of Norma A. Boeckler's art can be found here. |
Last night the wind chill was -7 or worse. The faucets were set to drip all night. Plumbing was exposed, with cupboard doors open. We counted ourselves blessed that the furnace conked earlier in the week, before the deep freeze arrived. We had two repair visits to make sure everything was working.
Yesterday, the birds ate all day at our feeders, where they can get kernel corn, cracked corn, sunflower seeds, Nyjer (thistle), and suet, with dried berries still available on Poke bushes and other plants.
This morning, the feeders were almost empty, so birds were clustered around to see what was left for them to eat. Sassy wanted her walk, so she went out with me for a quick walk. I have not been that cold since Minnesota. I looked at the rose cones packed with leaves - "That was a good year to do that."
When we returned, Sassy took up her post on the bed, and I fed the birds outside. They have many places to feed from, and all were nearly empty. Birds seldom wipe out the supply, even in weather like this. The flocking birds will arrive in an armada, eat a bit, then leave for a new location.
I added sunflower seeds and cracked corn in a total of seven places. Soon the backyard was Action Alley again. But lo, I saw for the first time - pigeons joining their cousins, the mourning doves, finding food on the ground.
Famine of the Word
10 And I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; and I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins, and baldness upon every head; and I will make it as the mourning of an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day.
Amos 8:11 Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the Words of the Lord:12 And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the Word of the Lord, and shall not find it.People are starting to realize that the Lutheran leaders have been replacing sound doctrine with false doctrine - for decades. That was not so clear in the heady days of the 1980s, when money was plentiful and men were attending seminary in large numbers. How great and glorious all sides felt. The Preus brothers had replaced the liberals. The biggest liars of Seminex had their own little seminary - and free to be, whatever that meant. The WELS pastors bragged about how they saw it coming decades before that, and the ELS declared they stood up to Missouri even before that.
But now alarm, insecurity, and fears are growing. Their money is all gone because the Lutheran leaders spent their Schwan indulgence loot like congressmen on a junket. And yet, the object of their UOJ doctrine remains where he belongs, because he thought he really could buy absolution from all three synds. Maybe he was not born forgiven, as they taught.
Sound doctrine is like investments in this sense. I can easily find people who have gambled everything on a particular sure-fire fund. One man borrowed $300,000 equity from his insurance to win big and ended up with about $1,100. He is unlikely to reverse that and turn the paltry remainder into a fortune.
The mainline seminaries are emptying out. They find creative ways to make their enrollments seem larger, such as calculating "full-time equivalents." Some of the FTEs are online students living far away. Some are graduate students. Bottom line - they are all shrinking faster than cheap socks in a hot drier. That not only includes the worst - ELCA seminaries - but also the ELCA wannabees like LCMS, ELS, WELS. The ELDONUTs are in danger of losing 100% of their enrollment when Heimbigner's son-in-law graduates.
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| Our Army Ranger neighbor loved seeing all the finches feeding at the kitchen window. |
