Thursday: hammer & thunder

Wearing a Facemask doesn't bother me except that it hangs on my ears. Already hanging on my ears are my hearing aids, my eyeglasses, and now the Facemask against covid19. So, one, two, and now three. A result is that Facemask is jealous of my hearing aids and keeps jerking them loose. 

What might be convenient, I've not tried it yet, is a facemask that goes all the way around the head instead of clinging to the ears. Maybe a large bandana like my Boy Scout bandana was, or that old red cowboy bandana. Why do you suppose cowboys wore the bandana? Hint: it wasn't for High Fashion, and it was not to hold up banks in the Old West.

The cb bandana was to cover the nose and mouth against clouds of dust when driving cattle to market. Same as Facemasks against covid19

Facemasks have fast become a fashion item, all sorts of designs available. I'm thinking about one of these


But it may not arrive before Sunday. IDK, what do you think? Will it be distracting?

It's Thursday, Thor's Day, German Donnerstag, Thor, Donar, germanic and norse divinity with power, who wields power with a hammer and noisily with thunder. 


All bringing forth my meandering reading habits, including George R Stewart's post-apocalyptic novel in which the main character Isherwood Williams comes to be the leader, whose name subtly but naturally is shortened to Ish אִ֔ישׁ (Genesis 2:23,24) "man" and whose symbol of power comes to be the hammer he carries. Upon Ish's death, the man who is determined to succeed him, grabs Ish's hammer from Ish's dead body, as his sign of standing and power.

And also including this week a short article from a Christian magazine online about our God of power. Here's a link in case anyone cares to read it, as I say, it's short.




or



Mainly Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, every culture does not believe in our omnipotent God, a fact to ignite and fuel theological discourse that explores many thoughts in many directions including the tails side of the Man in God's Image coin, imago Dei, are we godlike or is our concept of God anthropomorphic, and God all that we wish we were? It becomes a practical and moral issue when dealing with theodicy, in which the question incorrectly raised "If God is all powerful and all loving, why does God allow such disasters to come upon us, why does a good and powerful God allow bad things to happen to us?" in fact should be an exploration of the possibility that we altogether misunderstand and misapprehend the nature of the Creator, even, as we believe, self-revealed in Holy Scripture. Do we pick out what we like and want and rationalize the rest, including such as the book of Joshua? (Have you read it?) Is God all-loving as God is self-revealed in the Bible? Is God all powerful as revealed in the works of Nature? We ask the wrong questions when we ponder theodicy; and that is because either we dare not, or it does not occur to us to, venture outside the box we have constructed around God.

In the Episcopal Church, and in our Sunday School class, there are no questions that may not be asked. Again, seek the truth, come whence it may, cost what it will. 

So this morning is Thor's Day, Donnerstag, the day of Thunder, and I'm contemplating the article's question: what does it mean to worship an all-powerful God?

T+


Art: Thor's Fight with the Giants (1872) by Mårten Eskil Winge.