{"id":133,"date":"2007-05-03T23:12:07","date_gmt":"2007-05-04T06:12:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/?p=133"},"modified":"2007-05-03T23:12:07","modified_gmt":"2007-05-04T06:12:07","slug":"excuses-for-slacking-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/2007\/05\/03\/excuses-for-slacking-off\/","title":{"rendered":"Excuses for slacking off"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been reading a lot (the better to write inspiring sermons, my dear). I always read as much I can to prolong the exegesis phase and avoid working on the sermon. I always read <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ccel.org\/c\/calvin\/\">Calvin<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ccel.org\/h\/henry\/\">Matthew Henry<\/a>, plus whatever <a href=\"http:\/\/catb.org\/esr\/jargon\/html\/D\/dead-tree-version.html\">dead-tree<\/a> commentaries I have for the passage I&#8217;m working on.<\/p>\n<p>Beside that, I read Ehrman&#8217;s <em>Misquoting Jesus<\/em>, about the (mis-)transmission of the Bible (mainly the NT) from Elder Days to the present. I really enjoyed the first half of it, which explains how Scripture came to be corrupted and how scholars try to reconstruct the original. The second half wasn&#8217;t as much fun. I often agreed with the author&#8217;s evaluation of the &#8220;correct&#8221; reading, while disliking how he arrived there. It&#8217;s difficult enough to attribute motives to someone we know first hand (sometimes, even ourself!). Doing it for some anonymous monk 1500 years ago is ridiculous.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve also been reading Warren&#8217;s <em>The Purpose Driven Church<\/em> and realized that mine doesn&#8217;t have one. Or, if it does, they haven&#8217;t told me yet.<\/p>\n<p>And lately I&#8217;ve been reading Ortberg&#8217;s <em>God is Closer Than You Think<\/em>. It&#8217;s pretty good. I&#8217;ve never been a Brother Lawrence type, so I can use all the help I can get in this department.<\/p>\n<p>Also I discovered how much more fun <strong>Flickr<\/strong> is when you have a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/tools\/\">program<\/a> to do your uploads for you. Here&#8217;s a picture of my neighborhood:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/befuddledsenses\/483372918\/\" title=\"Photo Sharing\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm1.static.flickr.com\/206\/483372918_2f46df7e8a_m.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"180\" alt=\"Yucca Valley from JTNP\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been reading a lot (the better to write inspiring sermons, my dear). I always read as much I can to prolong the exegesis phase and avoid working on the sermon. I always read Calvin and Matthew Henry, plus whatever dead-tree commentaries I have for the passage I&#8217;m working on. Beside that, I read Ehrman&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity","category-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paRqpr-29","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}