I have writers block about this biblical character.  Pulling my hair out trying to write something.

Self-righteous service comes through human effort. True service comes from a relationship with the divine Other deep inside.
Self-righteous service is impressed with the “big deal.” True service finds it almost impossible to distinguish the small from the large service.
Self-righteous service requires external rewards. True service rests contented in hiddenness.
Self-righteous service is highly concerned about results. True service is free of the need to calculate results.
Self-righteous service picks and chooses whom to serve. True service is indiscriminate in its ministry.
Self-righteous service is affected by moods and whims. True service ministers simply and faithfully because there is a need.
Self-righteous service is temporary. True service is a life-style.
Self-righteous service is without sensitivity. It insists on meeting the need even when to do so would be destructive. True service can withhold the service as freely as perform it.
Self-righteous service fractures community. True service, on the other hand, builds community.

Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline, “The Discipline of Service.”

The Packers can not win big games.  It was a nightmare watching the first half of the game against the Vikings.

Favre still has it and Rodgers still doesn’t know when to get rid of the ball.  Even all the “Booing” that kept up during the game against Favre did not seem to phase him one bit.

He just brought it to Ted Thompson, who looked like a little lost boy watching the Vikings stick it to the Packers.

I just don’t feel good about watching Packer games this year. Too many dumb penalties – Jolly’s head but really was dumber than dumb.  I don’t enjoy riding the Pain Train.

The Greek philosophers were the ones who talked most about the immortality of the soul, and they used a beautiful analogy to explain it. They saw the soul like a homing pigeon taking to a far land and when it is release, it always instinctively and unerringly returns to its true home. The soul they say is like that bird. In this life, we’re living in a foreign land or in a cage, death, therefore, in this view is a release – freeing the soul to return instinctively and unerringly to its true home. Now that’s beautiful, but it’s not Christian. It’s in much of our poetry and in much of our hymnody, you get some hints of it in the Bible, but that’s not primarily the teaching of the Bible. The primary teaching of scripture is not the immortality of the soul, but the resurrection of the body and eternal life. The Bible does not affirm that immortality is part and parcel of what it means to be human, but the Bible rather talks about eternal life as gifts – the gift of God in Jesus Christ to those who respond in faith to him.

If you’re going to live beyond death, the Bible says, there must be a resurrection of the body. A resurrection of who we are as we are as persons, yet made new by Christ himself, who even now sitting upon the throne, keeps saying, behold I am making all things new. When Paul was confronted with what people felt to be the preposterousness of this idea of the resurrection of the body, when you consider what happens to the body in death – he said, we will have a resurrected new body. And just as the Greeks had an analogy to talk about the immortality of the soul, so Paul had an analogy to talk about the resurrection of the body. He said it’s like a farmer, planting a seed in the ground, and the shell of the husk falls away and new life appears. So we die, to be born again into new life.

Maxie Dunnam, All This and Heaven, Too

Who are the Saints? By Dr. Richard P. Bucher

One way to get at this question is to investigate which people the New Testament authors address as saints. When we do this, we discover that, overwhelmingly, living Christians on earth are called saints in the New Testament.

• An extremely valuable verse in this regard is 1 Corinthians 1:2. Here Paul calls his readers “the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling, with all who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours.” What makes this passage valuable is that Paul defines the church of God at Corinth (the Christians at Corinth, his readers) as “those who have been sanctified (Greek – hagiazo) in Jesus Christ, saints (Greek – hagioi) by calling.” There are not two groups here that he writes the letter to, the church and the saints, but one group, the church of God in Corinth, who are saints!

This passage sets the tone for the New Testament, especially Paul’s letters. Living Christians at various churches or locations are called “saints”:

• Ananias tells Jesus, “I have heard from many about this man [Saul of Tarsus], how much harm he did to Thy saints at Jerusalem (Acts 9:13);
• Peter, “came down also to the saints who lived at Lydda” (Acts 9:32);
• Paul tells King Agrippa that in while in Jerusalem, he locked up “many of the saints in prisons” (Acts 26:10);
• Paul writes to the Christians at Rome, “to all who are beloved of God in Rome, called as saints” (Rom. 1:7);
• He addresses his second letter to the Corinthians, “to the church of God which is at Corinth with all the saints who are throughout Achaia” (2 Cor. 1:1);
• He addresses several other letters, “to the saints who are at Ephesus, and who are faithful in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 1:1), “to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi” (Phil. 1:1), “to the saints and faithful brethren in Christ who are at Colossae” (Col. 1:2);
• He tells the Corinthians, “All the saints greet you” (2 Co. 13:13) and the Philippians, “Greet every saint in Christ Jesus” and “All the saints greet you, especially those of Caesar’s household” (Phil. 4:21-22);
• · He asks the Roman Christians to “Greet Philologus and Julia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympas, and all the saints who are with them” (Rom. 16:15);
• He tells the Romans that Christians should be “contributing to the needs of the saints” (Rom. 12:13);
• He himself is busy readying a gift to bring to the poor Christians in Jerusalem: “I am going to Jerusalem serving the saints. For Macedonia and Achaia have been pleased to make a contribution for the poor among the saints in Jerusalem” (Rom. 15:25-26; see also Rom. 15:31; 1 Cor. 16:1-6; 2 Cor. 8:4, 9:1, 9:12);
• He takes the Corinthians to task for taking one another before secular courts, “Does any one of you, when he has a case against his neighbor, dare to go to law before the unrighteous, and not before the saints” (1 Cor. 6:1)?
• He gives instruction to Timothy that a true widow is one who “has washed the saints’ feet” (1 Tim. 6:10);
• the author of the letter to the Hebrews tells his readers to “Greet all of your leaders and all the saints” (Heb. 13:24).

The World’s Biggest Pumpkin > LINK

Don’t get lost in THE BONE GARDEN ESTATE – Online Haunted House > LINK

Haven’t Carved a Pumpkin yet?  Go Here: < LINK

Don’t Throw those seeds away – they are good for you > LINK

When did this Halloween Thing get started? > LINK

Kick the Pumpkin > LINK

Can you find your way through this CORN MAZE? > LINK

Dairy farmers have really taken a hit here in Wisconsin with the price for their hundred weight milk hitting all time lows.

A Midwestern farmer had the good fortune to win the Power Ball Jackpot of more than $100 million.

At the press conference announcing the winner, a reporter asked him what he planned to do with his winnings. He replied, “I think I’ll just keep on farming until it’s all gone.”

In his book Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser reports on a global marketing survey that studied the most widely recognized symbols in the world. Number one is the Olympic rings. Number two is McDonald’s Golden Arches. In third place is the Christian cross.

Symbols can point us either to nourishment … or to junk food. The deepest hunger of our world will not be satisfied by Olympic rings or Golden Arches.