I am thankful this year for so much. But I am especially thankful for the birth of Hosea Foster Downing to my daughter Anna. The picture above shows him (with my wife Linden) on his first trip with us to a TexMex restaurant. The Margarita was a little too much for him.
Thank you for visiting with The Penitent Thief. We hope your stay has been a pleasant one.
We try to take every precaution to make our irony-impaired guests feel at home, but sometimes we fall short of that goal. If that has been the case with your experience, and our peculiar use of sarcasm tinged irony has offended and/or escaped you, please accept our apologies. We suggest you try visiting more predictable sites in the future.
Sincerely yours,
The Management in Thief
...ya just can't beat the GOP.
Compare and contrast this picture with the one below.
Vice President Dick Cheney's family and friends watch as he speaks during a victory rally, Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2004, at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington. Left to right are Cheney's daughter Mary Cheney, granddaughter Kate Perry, and Mary Cheney's life partner Heather Poe. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds)
As a pro-life Democrat (all bad things to all peoples: a liberal to conservatives, a conservative to liberals, a homophobe to Gay Rights supporters, a Sodomite-enabler to Fundamentalists, etc., etc.) I have been toying with the idea of mounting a campaign for some way down-ticket office (or hopelessly lost cause... as most Dem slots are here in Texas), just so I can run a campaign as a "Christian Democrat". EVERY position would be based on the Good News of Jesus (explicitly) as rooted in the Law of Moses.
The Democratic Party needs some real Christians in it badly (yes, I am old enough to remember the Christian influences on the Civil Rights and Anti-War movements of my youth).
The GOP could use a few REAL Christians, too, who have God's law written on their hearts, and not just on granite monuments set up for public adoration.
I'll return now to Bonhoeffer and Kirkegaard (and Martin Luther King).
Then Jesus told them a story: "A man had a bush planted in his front yard. He came to it expecting to find fruit, but there weren't any. He said to his gardener, "What's going on here? For three years now I've come to this bush expecting fruit and not one have I found. Chop it down! Why waste good ground with it any longer?'
"The gardener said, "Let's give it another year. I'll dig around it and fertilize, and maybe it will produce next year; if it doesn't, then chop it down.'"
Luke 13:6-9
The Gospel Reading appointed for this day.
Proper 26, Year 2
Revised Common Lectionary
