Sunday's Hymn: William Cowper

One more hymn of hope from someone who often felt he had no hope.

The Saints Should Never Be Dismayed

The saints should never be dismayed,
Nor sink in hopeless fear;
For when they least expect His aid,
The Savior will appear.

This Abr’am found: he raised the knife;
God saw, and said, “Forbear!
Yon ram shall yield his meaner life;
Behold the victim there.”

Once David seemed Saul’s certain prey;
But hark! the foe’s at hand;
Saul turns his arms another way,
To save th’invaded land.

When Jonah sunk beneath the wave,
He thought to rise no more;
But God prepared a fish to save,
And bear him to the shore.

Blest proofs of power and grace divine,
That meet us in His Word!
May every deep felt care of mine
Be trusted with the Lord.

Wait for His seasonable aid,
And though it tarry, wait:
The promise may be long delayed,
But cannot come too late.

Other hymns, worship songs, etc. posted today:

• Happy the Home When God is There at Above the Clouds
• The Covenant at The Thirsty Theologian.
  
• Shall We Gather at the River at IMD 2.0.
• O Mother Dear, Jerusalem at John Dekker’s Journal
• Be Still, My Soul at Seasonings of the Heart
• God, Who in Various Methods Told at joythruChrist
• The Collect for the Fifth Sunday after Easter at Magic Statistics

Have you posted a hymn this Sunday and I missed it? Let me know by leaving a link in the comments or by emailing me at the address in the sidebar, and I’ll add your post to the list.

One is the Onlyist Number of Sovereignty

the … only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords …

(1 Timothy 6:15) 

sov·er·eign·ty (sŏv’ər-ĭn-tē)
n., pl. -ties.

1. Supremacy of authority or rule as exercised by a sovereign … .
   

By definition, to be sovereign over something means to have the highest (or supreme) authority or rule over it. Therefore, there can be only one sovereign over any one thing, and sovereignty over any one thing can’t be shared, since there can only be one supreme authority or rule over any single thing.

If you accept this definition of sovereignty (and you should, since both the dictionary and the verse say so), and you believe that there is one Sovereign over all the universe (and you should, since this verse and others says so), then you must believe that this one Sovereign has the highest authority over every single thing in it. 

Given this definition of sovereignty and that God is the one Sovereign over all the universe, here are few absurd phrases seen on the Baptist Board this week in regards to God’s sovereignty:

• Limited sovereignty. God’s sovereignty cannot be limited, because, first of all, he is sovereign over every single thing in the universe, so his sovereignty cannot be limited in regards to the number of thing he is sovereign over. Secondly, God’s sovereignty cannot be limited in regards to the extent of his sovereignty over any one thing because highest rule can never be less than highest rule and still be highest rule.
  
• Shared sovereignty. God can’t share sovereignty, because he is sovereign over every single thing, and sovereignty over any single thing can’t be shared, since …well …there is only one supreme ruler over every single thing.
  
• Remitting sovereignty. God cannot remit sovereignty, because to remit sovereignty over any one thing would mean that  someone or something else would be sovereign over that one thing, and God would not be the one Sovereign over all the universe.  And if he were not the one Sovereign over all the universe, he would not be the one God of the Bible.
• Allowing others to have sovereignty. God cannot allow others to have sovereignty. Everything said about God remitting sovereignty applies here as well, since the ideas are the same.  There is only one with sovereignty because there in only one Sovereign.
  

Elementary math, you might say: More than one can’t be supreme; more than one can’t be highest; universal sovereignty can’t be divided.

 

But if it’s such a simple idea, why is it so hard for people to understand it?  

Is a Headless Chicken Stupid?

If you ever need confirmation of the stupidity of the human race, the place to  look is at the search queries people use. For a while I was jealous of Kim’s “lifespan of a pickled egg,” but I then got my own really stupid query last week: life span of headless chicken. Once again, I could feel superior in the stupidity department.  

Until I investigated. If you click on the search link above, you’ll find that my blog is second on the list; number one is a link to www.thelongestlistofthelongeststuffatthelongest domainnameatlonglast.com. So of course, I clicked on the link. Who wouldn’t? 

This is the go-to place for information about longest stuff, like the longest female beard ever (Way to go, Vivian!), the longest parasite (Kudos to Sally Mae Wallace!), or the world’s longest dog tongue (Good girl, Brandy!). It’s at this very informative site that I discovered that my stupid search query might not be so stupid after all.

As it turns out, the longest life span of a headless chicken is eighteen months.

In Fruita, Colorado, on September 10 1945, farmer Lloyd Olsen was sent out to kill a chicken for dinner. His mother-in-law loved to eat the neck, so Mr. Olsen tried to chop off as little of the neck as possible. With a swing of his axe, off came the head. The chicken, now known as ‘Mike the Headless Chicken’, started to run around as chickens do, but never stopped.

And when Mike did finally keel over, it was, by all accounts, an untimely death.

Mike finally died in 1947, after living for 18 months. He started choking in the middle of the night, and since the Olsen’s left the syringes they used to clear his esophagus at the sideshow, they could not save him.

Who knows how long Mike might have lived were it not for the unfortunate choking incident, although some might say he was already living on borrowed time.

Mike the Headless Chicken has a song written for him. You can listen to it sung or you can just read the lyrics. I suggest the latter option.

The Cluck Stops Here: The Ballad of Mike the Headless Chicken

©2006, Julianne Mangin, Carol E. Rand

INTRO:
Mike the headless
Mike the headless
Mike the headless chicken! (2x)

He was just another nameless chicken
Scratching in his barnyard pen
Nothing much to live for
Just some food, and a little hen
He didn’t know what a hatchet was
Or what a skillet was for
But one false whack of the farmer’s axe
Made him a metaphor

CHORUS:
MIKE! MIKE! MIKE! MIKE!
Mike the headless chicken
Mike the headless chicken
Mike the headless chicken
Mike the headless chicken*
(*leave off the last word, in the final chorus)

Mike the headless chicken
Lost his head but found his fame
Mike the headless chicken
That’s why he got a name
He was headed for the kitchen
When fortune made its strike
How could they cook a chicken
As remarkable as Mike?

CHORUS

Even folks from far away
Knew the chicken who survived
Mike traveled the sideshow circuit
In 1945
Kept alive by an eyedropper
Food and water down his gullet
He even gained a couple of pounds
Now that’s a healthy pullet

CHORUS

Eighteen months without a head
Was enough for Miracle Mike
He didn’t even get a headstone
I can’t imagine why
He lived and died in the forties
Times were different then
Yet now we have celebrities
With no more brains than him

CHORUS (last)

The song may be stupid; I’m guessing the headless chicken was stupid. But apparently the query wasn’t.