Meme: Passion Quilt

I’ve been tagged by Kim of Hiraeth for the passion quilt meme. Here are the instructions.

• Post a picture or make/take/create your own that captures that about which YOU are most passionate for students to learn.
  
• Give your picture a short title.
• Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt.”
• Link back to this blog entry.
• Include links to 5 (or more) educators. (I won’t be doing this. Tagging people is not favorite thing.)
  

If you’ve read here for a while, you  won’t be surprised by where my passion lies.

The Cross 

 

This depiction of Christ being lifted up on the cross is by the French illustrator, Gustave Dore.

I’m passionate about the cross of Christ and here are a few of the reasons.

 

• The cross is the solution to everything that’s not right with the universe, including what’s not right with me. No matter what the human need, it is, ultimately, met at the cross, and all real hope is grounded there.

• So many of God’s attributes are seen most fully in the cross. The cross is, for instance, the pinnacle of the expression of God’s grace. It was also a public display of God’s mercy, love, holiness, righteousness and justice. Do you want to know God? Look through the lens of the cross.

• What happened on the cross is, in one sense, simple: Christ died for our sins. He bore the penalty for our sins so that we can be forgiven by God and reconciled to him. On the other hand, there are so many layers to the work of the cross! Or maybe it’d be better to say that the work of the cross can be seen from many different angles and they all fit together to paint one picture that grows more and more glorious as it is viewed from additional angles. That makes it an infinitely fascinating work and an infinitely satisfying work.

• The work of the cross is the center of everything: the gospel, God’s plan for history, our Christian faith.

• The cross is powerful: it transforms lives; it gives meaning to life. It is because of the cross that we are new creatures; and the cross, in turn, calls us to live out our new-creaturely lives in “the way of the cross.” It is because of the cross that we are to “take up our cross daily.”

• For those who are redeemed by it, the cross of Christ will be an enduring passion, a passion that only increases in eternity. Christ’s work on the cross is the centerpiece of the new song:  
  
  

  “Worthy are you to take the scroll
  and to open its seals,
  for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God
  from every tribe and language and people and nation,
  and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God…
  
  “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain,
  to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might
  and honor and glory and blessing!” 

Saturday's Old Photo Meets A Meme

The 8AM Saturday grocery shopper has tagged me for a meme. The instructions are to list six unimportant things about me: facts, quirks, or habits. And I’ve thrown in a gratuituous old photo, too.

1. I still don’t really know right from left. I don’t know whether to chalk it up to being left handed or having some strange learning disability or both. If I think for a second (Which hand do I use to write? Okay, then this is a right turn), I’ll get it right, but left/right directions have never been automatic for me. I am, however, better than most on north, south, east, or west.
   
2. I was the kid with the wrong hand over her heart during the pledge of allegiance. (See explanation above.)
   
3. I have owned at least 10 11 cats in my life, one at a time. That doesn’t speak well for my ability to keep cats alive. (The kitten in the photo belonged to me in 1976. Her name was Kitty McFitty. She is no longer with us.)
   
4. I am allergic to peanuts, corn, pine pollen and more. I wish I knew what the more is.
5. When I need an important paper or document, I’m never sure I’ll be able to find it. I’ve struggled with this for my whole life, so much that when I need to come up with a receipt or proof of citizenship or insurance or whatever, I automatically feel a little panic.  
6. My favorite colour is yellow. I wear a lot of pink and blue.
   

Yet Another Meme

I’ve been tagged by Jen for a meme that involves a little reviewing and assessing of my blogging past. 

My Worst Post
I really don’t know. This one I’m composing right now might be in the runnning.

If I really thought a post was bad, I wouldn’t post it in the first place or I’d delete it. I have quite few posts that are of no real consequence, but does that make them bad?  I guess I’d say I’ve posted a fair amount of drivel, but none I consider dregs.

My Best Post
Of all the posts I’ve written, I like this one the most. It may also be the one I spent the most time on. Every once in a while I edit it again just for the fun of it. And because I have an obsessive-compulsive streak.

A Post on Which I’ve Changed My Mind
I’m not sure I’ve actually changed my mind about anything. When I’m posting about anything important, I’ve usually thought things through ahead of time, and by the time I post on the subject, I’m pretty sure of what I think. If I’m not sure, I try to indicate that, since I’d rather understate the case than overstate it. That doesn’t leave much room for backtracking.

I’ve learned more about some things, so if I were to tackle certain subjects again, I might do things a little differently.

I’ve also regretted a remark I made in one of the old photo posts, because a couple of people I couldn’t have anticipated found it and I may have hurt their feelings a little. I can’t go into it more than that, because I might just make things worse. I also made a remark about a certain local event that annoyed someone and they sent me a few very nasty emails. In that case, I was right and the emails proved it, but the issue wasn’t worth the hassle, so I regretted my initial post.  Let’s just say  there are at least a couple of remarks that I wish I hadn’t written. Is that changing my mind?

The Post That Generated The Most Comments
I don’t know, and I can’t find out very easily, because the comment count drops off the Haloscan comments after a while. A few of the posts dealing with the sovereignty of God in salvation and the substitutionary atonement had 50 or more comments, and some of the cooperative list posts had quite a few as well.

Those aren’t really very satisfying answers, are they? If I had done this meme 6 months into blogging, I probably would have had better answers. But there’s just so much that’s gone on here over the years that it’s hard for me to remember specifics.