New Brunswick Day 2024

Shane and I went up alone to harvest the beleaguered garlic bed at the rural property two ferries away. The first ferry is about 6 kilometers from our house (and can be seen from our third floor loft room) and runs two ferries at a time so the wait is usually not that long for the short crossing to the peninsula. Today we were able to drive right on to the ferry on our side as the last car without any wait at all.  Then it's about a 15 minute drive to the next ferry across a wider river that only has one ferry. We waited for only about 4 minutes with a motorcycle crew and plenty of other vehicles with various greetings passing between drivers coming and going. The local farmstand and ice cream shop was busy with kayakers and locals on this summer holiday.
As we started the long crossing, the anchored boats on both sides of the river bobbed up in down in the bay water. As we approached the other side, I strained to look over at a friend's anchored sailboat seeing a figure in swimming trunks moving about on its deck. While I was trying to decide who the figure was, we were ready to disembark and as we drove off the ferry, who is waiting in line to get on, but the very friend whose sailboat looked occupied. Shane and I waved hello through our open vehicle windows and the cheerful greeting was passed back immediately.
How fun to see friends just like a local.  It made me realize how much living here again has felt like coming home even though I wasn't born and raised here. I don't know who we saw on his sailboat but with a large, grown family living nearby chances are it was a relative of his. I've been on that boat two summers ago and it was my first time sailing. He let all of us take a turn steering up and down the bay and it was definitely my Swallows & Amazons moment!

 After I cleared out the garlic bed and the plastic chicken wire protecting it, Shane cleaned up the overgrown grasses and wildflowers in and around the fence posts and garden bed.  I picked a couple of the wild blackberries that Shane pointed out were growing after I had lamented that there were no wild raspberry bushes on the property. I had no ill-effects from the berries so we must have identified them correctly as edible. Phew!
The large oak trees have started dropping their green acorns so autumn feels close at hand.

Readings and Ideas for the week of July 28, 2024

Sermon Notes

From the Joint Outdoor Service on July 24, 2024 
Toby Sumpter: A Mind to Work
Nehemiah 4:6, "so we rebuilt..."
1. Clean Hearts- keep short account of sin with one another (1 John 1:7)
2. Honest Work - diligent labor with no lies, complete sobriety and a good name (Psalm 15:2-5)
3. True Worship - worship like you mean it, coming before the Lord in complete honesty, clothed in the righteousness of Christ
Doug Wilson: Lessons for the Limelight
Nehemiah 4:6
1. The people had a mind to work. People can be lazy, but also so can be entire cultures. (Proverbs 13:4, 26:16, 22:29
2. They were competent in their work. Industry: cultivate it in yourself and encourage it in your culture.
3. They were working in the presence of hostilities. Co-belligerence with who can stand with us against enemies takes wisdom. There is danger in persecution but also in blessing.
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Psalm 44:2 (from the Daily Office, July30th)
With Your hand, You drove out the nations
     and planted our fathers;
You crushed the peoples
     and made our fathers flourish.
Noticed how God is seen as the primary actor here in giving the land of the original occupiers to His people, especially in using the verb planted.

Isaiah 2:3b-4a
The law will go out from Zion.
    the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
He will judge between the nations
    and will settle disputes for many peoples.

John Calvin's commentary:
"Mount Zion...raised to the highest pitch of honour, when she shall become the fountain of saving doctrine, which shall flow out over the whole world." (p. 96)
"Who, then, would have thought not only that it would have a place there, but that it would also reign in all foreign places, and in the most distant regions?" (p. 97)
"We also infer that it was necessary that all the ancient ceremonies should be abolished, and that a new form of teaching should be introduced, though the substance of the doctrine continue to be the same; for the law formerly proceeded out of Mount Sinai (Exodus 19:20), but now it proceeded out of Zion, and therefore it assumed a new form." (p.98)

self-reflection with Elizabeth Bennett

As someone who has read this novel more than once, it was only on this recent reading this past month that this sentence reached out and emblazoned itself on my mind. 

How earnestly did she then wish her former opinions had been more reasonable, her expressions more moderate! ~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

"her former opinions had been more reasonable"
No one can know the particulars about every situation they encounter and so we are given instruction in places like Proverbs on how to reason through matters. 

Proverbs 18:17 (ESV)
The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.

Listening to the first person to present the particulars of a situation and expressing full faith in their narrative is folly and yet while I know the adage, it can be so hard to remember in the moment and hold back from issuing an opinion.

"her expressions more moderate"
Using superlatives in assessing a relatively new situation or new person in your acquaintance is often the mark of childhood. 

In Elizabeth Bennett's case, she listened to a new acquaintance and believed everything he told her about someone she already didn't like. It was indeed a hearty helping of confirmation bias which usually comes from listening to hearsay.

As I thought about this more, it occurred to me that because she was a young woman eligible for marriage, some parental wisdom could have instructed her how to treat men who brag to women about their victimhood. Something like, be suspicious about men who show off their victimhood without dignity. Wickham passed around his victimhood for all the women to admire and pity.  But Elizabeth and her sisters were not trained to listen carefully and consider the source critically: why is this information being made known by this person? What motives could they have?
And by Darcy staying silent but still interacting with the social calendar and manners, he allowed a lie to take hold when a few words to Wickham could have prevented him from gaining any sympathizers.
At the root of all of this story, is the utter neglect of both parents in helping their daughters grow out of weaknesses in their character. Foolish parents are a curse to their children.
It also contributes to my ongoing thinking of good hedges that girls and young women need around them to both protect them and free them from unwanted attention from men and women who may try to exploit and manipulate them.