Psalms

I love Psalms, and I've been greatly enjoying memorizing some of them over the last couple weeks. Every part of the Bible is amazing, but sometimes it is hard to put specific reasons for this enjoyment into words, and analyze it.

For me, part of the delight in reading the Psalms is pure literary appreciation, which sounds a bit strange when applied to the Bible. However, God created and uses the written medium to allow humans to communicate across space and time, and the fact that when He inspires men to write He inspires them to write well should not be astonishing. The poetry of the Psalms, the word choice, and the different voices of different psalmists are all part of the literary aspect. It must have been fun for the translators, trying to figure out how to put Hebrew poetry into English and retain some of the lyrical qualities while keeping the sense of the original. No surprise that some of our greatest hymns echo the Psalms.

I also enjoy finding places in Psalms that are quoted in other places—either multiple places in Psalms, or in other passages I've memorized from all over the Bible, OT and NT. Sometimes the words are exactly the same, sometimes they differ slightly, and sometimes it is just the idea, but it is always fun to see how Scripture intertwines with itself.

Another reason the Psalms are so beloved by many people is because they give a picture of how we can interact with God, since they are people talking to God, primarily, rather than the other way around. Whenever I read through them a lot or memorize them, I notice some of the phrases carry over to my thinking and prayers, giving me words with which to address God, and a greater understanding of His awesome holiness.

Most important by far is the wonderful theology they contain: all the attributes of God, the precise descriptions of Christ, the incredible insight into human nature, and the interaction with Israel's history, to name just a few aspects of theology involved in the book of Psalms. No matter how often we hear it, we always need to be reminded of the basics of our faith, and Psalms does this over and over.

Defining Courtship and Dating

From what I have observed, all homeschooled girl bloggers either write a blog post on this subject sometime in their mid teen years, or, once they get into their later teen years, are (presumably) given no peace until they do so. Though this has not been true in my case (I cannot see why), I turned nineteen last week, so I thought for once: why not fall into the homeschooled young lady stereotype of my own accord? Why not be the one to write the bazillionth article saying pretty much the same thing, in pretty much the same words about the necessity of defining one's terms, and which of those clearly defined terms I prefer but am not going to force on everyone else, etc., etc.?And so, like bloggers have from the beginning of time, I sat down at my computer, completely unresearched, with no sources but my own experience and (mostly unfounded) opinion, and set about broadcasting my knowledge and lack thereof on the internet. This was the result. I hope —but do not expect— that you find it helpful and enlightening:


In my mind, the differences between Dating and Courtship are quite simple and obvious. Granted, there is more than one definition of each. Still, I thought, if you only saw the definitions written down you would see how they simply cannot be confused. They are entirely different things however one looks at it.
Here are the definitions as outlined by M. C. Eddy, Defining Courtship and Dating, 2015:

Courtship: 

1. A ship that is employed by the court. 

2. A ship the carries around the court. (i.e. When the viking kings would go to battle the king and his court would all be in one ship so that they could confer more conveniently. More often, however, this is called the "Kingship".)

3. Ships used by individual court members to attend court when the actual court consisted entirely of water. This particular kind of court was mostly limited to the Renessaince era in Venice and similar parts of Italy. Its general impracticality, and the ease of "accidentally" dispensing of opposing members of the court by toppling them out of their boat overrode the aesthetic appeal as soon as reason once more reigned in Europe.

Dating:

1. The process of making historical dates. This is most commonly employed by historians and archaeologists, but is very easy to do by anyone. The preferred process is to find something (in the ground or otherwise) and make up a time period for it. Using as many zeros as possible is encouraged.

2. The process of making a certain food like substance called dates. We seem to recall that drying them is necessary at some point in the process. We are not completely sure what they were before becoming dates. It is commonly believed that dates were figs, or some other kind of fruit, before becoming distorted and altered in taste, texture, and appearance. The personal theory of the author is that they were at one time the heads of very large caterpillars.


What did I say? Dating and Courtship are very different things. I, personally, prefer courtship, as I do not find even the mental picture of caterpillar heads very appetizing. However, if you do, I will try not to judge you, though I doubt that I will succeed. 

This has been Margaret Eddy: bringing clarity where there was confusion.

Putting Pressure in its Place

I think having pressure in my life can be kind of like having the wind blowing incessantly behind me. 

If there is a little wind, it helps me progress a little faster, but blows my hair into my face, which is annoying, and, depending on what I am trying to accomplish, it may outweigh the tiny bit of good it does to my speed. If I am standing still and/or trying to eat, it is a disadvantage to have any wind whatsoever. If I want to go faster, but I also want to be accurate, the wind can be more bother to factor in than it is worth. However, if I just want to go as far as I can as fast as I can, I take all the wind I can get. 

I think we need to identify what we are trying to accomplish to know whether pressure, and how much, will help or hinder us. If all we really want to do in a project is stay in the same spot, recuperate, and to just have the constant blowing go away for a while, then adding deadlines and timers would be counterproductive. If we want a perfect grade and to remember every possibly helpful detail in the process, cramming a month's worth of work into one week is probably not the ticket. However, if we want to break records, we should recognize that the wind can be used to our advantage.

I use pressure as a way to get myself to do things a lot. Music recitals and competitions, Bible Bee, Spelling Bee, trying to fit high-school geometry into six months, wanting to graduate high-school when I was sixteen, and now college. The first time I remember consciously using deadlines as a way to improve without any outside suggestion was when I was five just after I learned how to read. I set a goal to read my Little Bear Treasury in one day. The whole thing was probably only four stories, but it seemed like a feat at the time, and I kept trying until I got it. A little later I set the goal of reading the whole Chronicles of Narnia in a week, and when I was ten or so I wrote five chapters of a book every week of the summer. The book was incredibly boring, but I did not miss one week. (On the other hand, I have not really set any deadlines for posting on this blog. You are a witness of the result.)

Pressure can be a really powerful thing, especially in some types of people, but in those same people it can be a really dangerous thing. There is no way to miss out on the important things in life like constantly having to meet unimportant deadlines, and, for some, there is no way to kill the enjoyment of something like giving it a deadline. Not everything in life should have pressure, and some things should only have pressure sometimes. I do not have a deadline for every last thing I do in music or academic pursuit, but I usually try to have at least one deadline in one area of those things, because I know it will motivate me to grow in them like nothing else will, but if I get to much I will forget my love for them in the midst of the stress. (Also, I might get shingles. Just saying.) I took last week completely off of school and piano. My family and I had a great time at Mount Rainer with Grandma and Grandpa Eddy. I turned nineteen. I slept ten to fifteen hours a day in attempt to recover from a cold that hit me a few days before we left. Then, we had people (now friends) from Kansas that we had never met, friends from Virginia that we had not seen in ten years, and our old babysitter and her two little girls at our house over the weekend. I did not study during that time, either. Did I feel guilty? Well, yes. Habit is a hard thing to work against. But I knew that the purpose for that week was not to break records for how much college work I accomplished.

Which leg of the race are you in? When, and how, should you apply pressure to manage your time accordingly? There is no one answer for all people all the time, except that whatever we do should be for God's greatest glory. I guess what I am saying is: perhaps if we identify what we are trying to accomplish by the things we do, we can better know when pressure will help us, and we can overall run with greater purpose and focus.

1Corinthians 9:24-27 Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it. 

And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown. 

Therefore I run thus: not with uncertainty. Thus I fight: not as one who beats the air. 

But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified. (NKJV)