Not sure I quite like the new style. Mostly because the print that tells me who left a comment on my weblog is so small, I have to get just inches away from the monitor to read their names! Maybe everyone who comments could just type out, "Hey, it's Knothead commenting here!" (My apologies if there really is a Knothead; I just pulled that out of the middle of the air.)

So in Tudor England, strong men actually used church bells as their weights! They took the clappers out so they wouldn't be noisy, hence rendering them "dumb" (mute). Once they started to make their own equipment, even though the shape changed, the name had stuck. Hence, dumbbells. (They could have been called sandy kettles or something like that because large kettles (the kind you cook your soup in) were filled with sand and used as well. Now we know.

I have been pondering this. There is nothing dumb about working out with them and they don't resemble any kind of bell that I have ever seen.

I'll expound on my ponderings some more in a later post, but at the moment, Latin, hydrology, newspapers, and something mathematical beckon.

Hmm...the spell checker apparently doesn't like the word "ponderings." That's too bad as I have already added it to my vocabulary. Let's stir things up a bit.

So here I am having just finished preparing my youngest daughters' next several history lessons. We are studying ancient Egypt right now with lessons of Biblical history woven into the history tapestry in (hopefully) the right places. So the history book is the Bible and the history lessons are from the first 13 chapters of Exodus. I wrote the lessons out with a lot of quoting from scripture and points that I wanted to bring out to them. Such as, did Moses get his way when the Lord determined that Aaron would be his mouthpiece instead of Moses? No, because Moses still had to go (and he didn't really want to do that) and because he was still the leader of the two of them. or, "I don't know what you think, but it seems to me that Pharaoh wasn't a very smart man to refuse to obey God. Everyone is like that sometimes, we know what the Lord wants us to do, but we want to do something else so very much that we disobey him."

But I think what grabbed my attention the most this go-round with this portion of scripture was a promise made to Abraham in Genesis 15:13-14: "Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years. And also the nation whom they serve I will judge; afterward they shall come out with great possessions." What happened with this promise made so many hundreds of years before the time of Moses?

First, the descendants of Abraham did go to a land that was not the land that the Lord had promised them. They were in Egypt. Second, the descendants of Abraham were serving the Egyptians making bricks and helping with building projects in the land. Third, Pharaoh was afflicting the descendants of Abraham by giving them hard labor and eventually by killing their newborn sons. Fourth, the descendants of Abraham had been in Egypt for 430 years, which rounded off is 400. Fifth, God did judge the nation while the descendants of Abraham were there. He judged them and the gods they served with the plagues, the tenth being the harshest as it caused a cry to rise up in Egypt "the likes of which had never been heard before nor would ever be heard again." Sixth, the descendants of Abraham did leave Egypt, "all the armies of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt." And sixth, the descendants of Abraham left with great possessions, silver and gold and clothing that the Egyptians had given them, the wealthy Egyptians, I might add. "Thus they plundered Egypt."

My point in noting that promise was "...when God says something will be, then it will be. God keeps his promises whether he is promising good things like freedom from bondage for the Israelites and a land flowing with milk and honey or bad things like judgment on unrighteous people and nations. It doesn't matter how much time passes after God makes his promise. He will keep his promise in his own time.

And God kept every bit of that promise! He did not leave one thing out. Look at the detail in the promise and the fulfillment of the detail. I don't know about you, but this inspired me to remember the song, "Our God is an Awesome God." Praise the Lord!

What do we think of when we think of refreshing ourselves? A splash of cold water from the faucet at the sink? A tall glass of ice cold water to quench our thirst? Perhaps a quick shower and a change into clean clothes? Sounds wonderful, doesn't it?

If we break the word down into its two parts, we have re + fresh. Now most of us know that "re" means "again." So obviously the word means "to make fresh again." And that splash of water, the cool drink, the shower and clothes can certainly make our physical bodies feel fresh again. We are revitalized and ready to resume our daily tasks.

The apostle Peter was familiar with being refreshed, though the kind he was talking about was not the refreshing of our physical bodies. If you have a King James Version handy, take a look at 2 Peter 1:13. He writes: "I think it is right to refresh your memory as long as I live in the tent of this body." What he means is he finds it fitting to remind Christians of something.

Now let's see what we are being reminded of. Go back to the beginning of the chapter. (I'm switching over to the NKJV now for comprehension's sake.)

1. We have obtained a precious faith through the righteousness of God and Jesus Christ.

2. Through His divine power he has given us all things that pertain to life and godliness.

3. Because of this we can be partakers of the divine nature.

[Sounds good, right? Let's continue.]

4. We escaped the corruption that is in the world.

[Whoa! It all sounded so good and then, bam! I don't know if I like being reminded that I was once a sinner. (But I was. All who are now living godly once were sinners.) Well, let's read some more. Maybe it will get better.]

5. We must be diligent.

6. We must add to our faith virtue.

7. We must add to our virtue knowledge.

8. Then self-control.

9. Then perseverance.

10. Then godliness

11. And brotherly kindness.

12. And love.

[Oh, that sounds like an awful lot of work. That knowledge part sounds like a lot of studying and you know, I have my job and my family and then my friends and all of that takes a lot of time. And you know, Lord, I have to have time to myself. It's football season, basketball season, and all my shows on television are new because the T.V. season just started in September. And there's my hobbies, my house, my dog. I'll try to fit in reading a few verses every day, but I'm not sure about that studying part.

(But remember, way back in verse 3 we are told we are partakers of the divine nature through knowledge!)

Wait! There's more.]

13. If these things are ours...

[What things? Well, faith, virtue, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, and love, of course.

Oh, okay. I guess I can manage that daily Bible reading.

Oh, but we haven't read the rest of the verse yet.]

If these things are ours and abound...

[Did we catch that? We aren't supposed to have just a little faith, just a little virtue, just a little knowledge, just a little self-control, just a little perseverance, just a little godliness, just a little brotherly kindness, just a little love, these things are supposed to ABOUND. As in being bountiful, overflowing, plentiful.

Did it just get harder? Honestly, yes, it did. But let's keep going.]

Continuing #13 in the things we are being reminded of: If these things are ours and abound, we will not be unfruitful or barren in the knowledge of our Lord.

[If we're not unfruitful or barren in knowledge, then we are partakers of the divine nature.]

14. If we don't have these things, then we are shortsighted--and more than that, we are blind.

15. If we don't have these things, then we have forgotten that we were cleansed from our old sins.

[That corruption, that filth has come upon us again. Why did we bother with the cool drink, the splash of water, the shower (or bath) for our spiritual bodies? We are no longer revived; we are dead, covered again by filth.]

16. But if we do these things...

[What things? Well, add to our faith virtue, to our virtue knowledge, to our knowledge self-control, to our self-control perseverance, to our perseverance godliness, to our godliness brotherly kindness, to our brotherly kindness love.]

If we do these things, we will never stumble.

[Have we ever stumbled before? Got a scrape from it? A sprain? Jarred our brain a little? Not pleasant was it?]

17. If we do these things, an entrance will be provided--

[Read closely now because this is the good part.]

ABUNDANTLY, into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

[All that reading and studying is starting to sound worth it, isn't it?]

But wait. Now these Christians that Peter wrote must have been pretty weak, right? You know, he tells us. Look at verse 12. "For this reason I will not be negligent to remind you always of these things, though you know and are established in the present truth." They KNEW the truth. (We've been talking about knowledge, right?) They were ESTABLISHED in the truth. Tell me, would you set foot inside a building that you knew was not firmly established? I sure wouldn't. These Christians were established, and yet Peter say he's going to be ALWAYS reminding them. Not only that, but look at verse 15: "Moreover i will be careful to ensure that you ALWAYS have a reminder of these things after my decease. (And they do. We do.)

If these established and knowledgeable Christians ALWAYS needed reminding, then what about the rest of us?

Have we had our refreshment today?