This glorious Good Friday reminds us about the redemption we have in Jesus Christ.
A few years ago I wrote this song in five verses. Five is the number of grace.
It can also be used as one way of expressing five pillars of the Christian faith.
To be sung to the tune of “Dark Eyes” (Ochi Chernye)
1 The word incarnate proclaimed by God.
• Once in David’s town
• As the prophet said
• God Himself came down
• In a manger laid
• Wise men saw his star
• They came from afar
• Unto Bethlehem
• Where our Lord was born
2. The prayer of submission to the cross.
• In Gethsemane
• There in bitter pains
• Sweat like blood did flow
• From His sacred veins
• In deep anguish he
• Prayed more earnestly
• That God’s will be done
• Jesus prayed
3. The redemption.
• Outside city walls
• Up on Calvary
• He hung on a cross
• In deep agony
• The atonement made
• As He loudly said
• It is finished, then
• Breathed his last
4. The Resurrection.
• First day of the week
• The three women went
• They the grave did seek
• Stone was rolled away
• Strips of cloth they found
• As the scripture said
• Jesus had to rise
• From the dead
5. The pilgrimage and final victory.
• Therefore let us rejoice
• Gladly let us go
• Conquered has our Lord
• Vanquished is the foe
• Christ without, our shield
• Christ within, our life
• Unto Him our all we yield
• this is victory!
“It is the only country in the world that has now had six elections since the first election of [its president in 1997]. (It is) the only one with elections, including the United States, including Israel, including you name it, where the liberals, or the progressives, have won two-thirds to 70 percent of the vote in the six elections…In every single election, the guys I identify with got two-thirds to 70 percent of the vote. There is no other country in the world that I can say that about, certainly not my own.” Davos, Switzerland, Feb.2005.
The person that said it is William Jefferson Clinton, former President of the United States of America, and the country he is referring to is the Islamic Republic of Iran. He said it in an interview with PBS Charlie Rose.
The Islamic Republic of Nation Iran
Bill Clinton admires as much as he can.
They are so progressive
What we call oppressive
Is freedom to nuke our friends; that’s their plan.
Listening to the words of treachery by our President I came up with this Limerick. Meanwhile in Alaska Sarah Palin penned her Facebook entry on precisely the same subject. Her message says it all in a simple language that anybody but a die-hard leftist would understand. It should be a must read for all who are concerned about the future of our Nation.
Here is Sarah Palin:
Whoever chooses to merely dismiss the significance of today’s exchange between our President and Russia’s President should have their intelligence and patriotism questioned. Let this exchange be a warning to voters: President Obama will have “more flexibility” to weaken us if he’s re-elected in November. He was caught speaking candidly to Russian President Dmitri Medvedev before a “hot mic” today (and surely one must believe he didn’t know the mics were still on; surely he’s not so audacious as to purposefully broadcast his intentions), as reported by ABC’s Jake Tapper. Here’s the exchange:
President Obama: On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved but it’s important for him to give me space.
President Medvedev: Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you…
President Obama: This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.
President Medvedev: I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir.
Let’s consider what this “flexibility” might mean. We know that he has repeatedly conceded to foreign demands and backed down on missile defense. I pointed this out as Governor of Alaska when he proposed reducing Alaska’s missile defense system capabilities. I explained then that the President’s proposed military cuts would diminish Alaska’s opportunity to defend the union with our strategic location’s defense infrastructure. We also know that in 2009, as part of his “reset” with Russia, President Obama turned his back on our Eastern European allies by abandoning past promises for a missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.
We can’t know for certain what this newly revealed “flexibility” means, but considering President Obama’s past actions, be sure it won’t involve a position of strength for America and our allies. Russia has been thwarting us on one issue after another, including the rushed-through revised START Treaty that many of us questioned after Obama insisted America ratify it first, then allow Russia to sit on it – unratified on their end – until it suited that foreign power’s needs.
Meanwhile, North Korea is planning another long-range missile launch, and the United States and our allies are still vulnerable to the threat of ballistic missiles. Our president has done nothing to alleviate this vulnerability; in fact, he’s done just the opposite. He has consistently taken a position of weakness and naïve trust in Putin’s Russia. Consider that one-sided New START Treaty as an example of this. Or consider those cuts to Alaska’s missile defense system, which leaves us much more vulnerable in the face of a nuclear North Korea. Now consider the state of our national defense under a President who whispers to a foreign power that he needs even “more flexibility” to weaken us further.
Two fellow Alaskan women, Kirsten Powers and Penny Lee, penned a letter to the New York Times calling out misogynist attacks on women in public life.
They included this interesting aside: “Coincidentally we both hail from Alaska — where women are treated as equals — so perhaps our threshold for this kind of behavior is less than here in the Lower 48.”
As an Alaskan woman, I completely agree. Women up here do not tolerate the sexist stereotyping and behavior.
Up here, I’m constantly around commercial fishermen who curse like sailors, oil field workers with hardcore blue collar work ethics, tattooed-up soldiers serving on our military bases, long-haul truck drivers, motorheads, hunters and sport fishermen; and yet I don’t know anyone who talks about women the way these misogynists on TV do with their degrading comments, which includes comments mocking those with special needs.
I grew up hunting, fishing, playing sports, plowing snow, and chopping wood just like the guys. My parents raised my sisters and me to never consider gender an unequal element in anything. (In fact, today is my Dad’s birthday, and I want to give him a shout out because as a science teacher and track coach, he treated all of his students and athletes equally with respect and encouragement.) My daughters have participated on football, hockey, and wrestling teams just like the guys. We even dress like the guys at times (or they, like us) in warm camo hoodies and Carharts. It’s accepted up here because the environment is rugged and real, and our Alaskan elements are a great equalizer.
Women and men are equals in every way in the Last Frontier, and real men are not threatened by strong women. Real men don’t insult women with gross sexist comments meant to demean and objectify them.
These misogynists wouldn’t know how real men behave. I cannot imagine them working on my commercial fishing skiff in Bristol Bay, or driving our trucks to haul gear out to a remote cabin, or fueling up the float plane, or even having a tinge of grease under their fingernails which symbolizes the hard work needed to fuel the nation’s economy. And yet these are all things average Alaskan women do everyday. If these misogynists said one of their disgusting comments up here in person to an “Alaskan chick,” they would have to replace their veneered teeth.
I personally do not seek an apology from these narrow-minded men. With a full family and productive “to-do” list everyday, I just don’t have time for them. But I do feel sorry for them and for their obvious need to compensate for something that’s missing in their own lives, which compels them to belittle others in order to feel big. And I feel sorry for our culture for having to listen to them. America deserves better. I applaud Kirsten and Penny for taking a stand when too many feminists don’t speak up when the attacks are directed at their conservative sisters. And unfortunately too many men, like our president, will only defend certain women, not all women.
– Sarah Palin
Here is my two cents worth of reply:
Thank you Sarah for speaking the truth, again. This mirrors my own experience. The misogynists cannot look at a woman as an equal, for they see only a sex-object. In a strange way the pill and other contraceptives have transformed “liberated” women from being one man’s property to being every man’s property. They think free sex liberates since Hollywood promotes it and society encourages it, but in fact it is a new form of loss of freedom. We must work to a day when men look at women as partners in a cause greater than themselves. We must also work for a day when “feminists” no longer look at themselves as victims bent on revenge, but as equals.
From the show Detektor, Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR.) host Thomas Buch-Andersen shows a tounge-in-cheek evaluation of the President Obama’s amazing use of a very specialized vocabulary.
This morning in Cushing, Oklahoma, in front of a stack of steel pipes stored for construction of the most Southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline, President Obama delivered a short message to a few busloads of loyal supporters, mostly women. Spring break could have something to do with that. There were also a much larger number of protestors kept out of range booing the speech as they listened to a live feed.
The President tried to claim credit for this segment of the pipeline. The trouble is, it was going to start in June anyway since it already had and only needed State and Army Corps of Engineers approval. The stacks of stored pipes bear witness of the imminent start of construction. No presidential approval was needed. The speech contained his usual mantra that we must wean ourselves off dependency on fossil fuels and go green, which in a way contradicts his eagerness to claim credit for something that is being built despite his efforts
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in his speech Mar 4 2012 to AIPAC said this:
Ladies and Gentlemen,
This week, we will read how one woman changed Jewish history.
In Synagogues throughout the world, the Jewish people will celebrate the festival of Purim. We will read how some 2,500 years ago, a Persian anti-Semite tried to annihilate the Jewish people.
And we will read how that plot was foiled by one courageous woman – Esther.
In every generation, there are those who wish to destroy the Jewish people.
The next day Netanyahu handed US President Barack Obama a gift that spoke volumes about Israel’s tensions with Iran – an ancient Hebrew tome about a Persian plot to annihilate Jews, otherwise known as the Scroll of Esther.
The Scroll, or the Megila, tells a tale of palace intrigue featuring a Jewish beauty, Queen Esther, who charms a Persian king into foiling an evil adviser’s genocidal plans for her people some 2,500 years ago.
“Then too, they wanted to wipe us out,” Netanyahu told Obama, according to an Israeli official.
History was made last week. Did you miss it? There was but a one paragraph mention in most of the news clips.
For what it is worth here is my take on it.
Sarah Palin visited India in 2011 (She came, She spoke, She conquered, Hindustan Times).
On the way back she and her husband Todd visited Israel. She wore a large David’s star as a necklace. One of the stops was to celebrate Purim with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara. At the feast of Purim it is customary to read the entire scroll of Esther. That Purim was no exception. They mentioned they talked about many things, but mentioned Esther in particular.
When Netanyahu spoke Sunday night he was not only talking to all Jews, but it was a coded signal to Sarah Palin. When Sarah Palin abruptly resigned as Governor less than 3 years into her term, she went fishing. The press was there and asked her many questions. She claimed the reasons for her resignation were so obvious that anybody should get it. Liberal interviewers are not just anybody, so they kept asking. In one of her answers she said the phrase from Esther, slightly concealed “If I die, I die”. This was too deep for the interviewers, for they do not even know there is a book in the Bible called Esther, and if they do they would never admit it, for the Bible is not something about which they are supposed to acknowledge any positive knowledge.
Anyhow the exact quote is: Esther 4:13-16 (ESV)
13 Then Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, “Do not think to yourself that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. 14 For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” 15 Then Esther told them to reply to Mordecai, 16 “Go, gather all the Jews to be found in Susa, and hold a fast on my behalf, and do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my young women will also fast as you do. Then I will go to the king, though it is against the law, and if I perish, I perish.”
I believe Netanyahu reminded Sarah Palin about her quote from Esther and the consequences if she doesn’t answer the challenge.
I also believed Sarah wore the same necklace in Hannity’s interview of her the same week to respond in solidarity with the Jewish People.
Excerpts from the interview can be found in a desperate Obama fundraiser video where Sarah’s remarks are taken out of context to deliberately generate a false narrative of Sarah. But there it is: The David’s star necklace. In Obama’s narrative only a racist can support the Jews.
Len Bilén's blog, a blog about faith, politics and the environment. 