Side effects of prednisolone in boys
Where wishes are dismantled.
2017.10.01 20:52 RelaNarkin Where wishes are dismantled.
Do you ever wish for things without thinking through them first? Do you ever struggle with finding the downsides of your hopes and dreams? Well, whatever the case may be TheMonkeysPaw is at your service!
2014.05.05 12:40 LadyAbraxus Lexapro
A community for those prescribed Lexapro or Cipralex, also known as Escitalopram. Please be positive and supportive. [> If you are feeling suicidal call 1-800-273-8255. If you need emergency medical attention call 911. [> Read all the rules before posting the first time, and please do not ask for medical advice, contact your doctor or psychiatrist.
2016.11.06 08:12 Ephemeral_Halcyon Anything related to Nexplanon.
A sub for help with or questions about Nexplanon birth control.
2024.05.16 05:09 Nuyturah Abdominal pain after doing a bar kip, with persistent pain in first few months. Currently, inconsistent pain increases with some physical activity or food intake. No diagnosis to date.
Background
Demographic: White, male, age 30, 5' 5", 175 +/- 5lbs.
Lifestyle: Active (workout 3-4x per week), Desk/Physical work split of 90/10%.
Complaint: Abdominal injury and pain (1 year and 8 months since injury), presently inconsistent pains.
Medication: No consistent medications, no allergies.
Drug use: alcohol (1-3x per month), non-smoker.
History of the Injury
Late August of 2022, I hurt myself doing a kip on horizontal bar outdoors. Right after raising my feet to the bar and kicking my legs out I felt a sharp pain in my abdomen. (I've done this and similar moves many times before through my 20s, while exercising)
Bar kip example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRPFWdelsDY
I couldn't stop slouching and crunching my abdomen. Stretching backwards and straightening my posture was very discomforting. The severe pain subsided in a day but in the following months I couldn't stretch my stomach and had to sleep on my back with pillows under my knees to keep a flexed/crunched posture. Sleeping on the side was discomforting, because the stomach would hang to the side, bringing up the pain.
In 3 months, I felt better. However, there were always some flare-ups of pain.
Pain Description: The pain always feels along "horizontal lines", on 1-3 locations at a time, around the belly button level, below, or above it, with varying intensity of pain. Through my personal touch/observation, these horizontal lines of pain are always along tendinous inscriptions of the ab structures. Sometimes I feel lower 1 or two lines in pain. Other times it’s one of the upper line(s).
Tendinous inscriptions image: https://test.usabcd.org/courses/lk-native-ld2-basic-ugra/lessons/lknative-rectus-sheath-block/topic/3-anatomy-the-rectus-abdominis-muscle/
Causes of Pain from Movement: Pain flare-ups happen when moving heavy objects rapidly (without prior prep), pulling something heavy from ground, rapidly stretching the abdominal area, or a day after the occasional exercise. Jumping and landing on ground from 1 ft. or above can make me brace my abdomen, leading to some pain as well. Twisting my torso side to side could also make pain worse, stretching one side of the abdomen, especially if twisting in my full range. Slight turns are okay.
Causes of Pain from Food: Flare-ups also happen immediately after eating specific foods, like sunflower seeds, nutty bars, and when a bit bloated from eating. Trigger of this pain doesn't need to be a substantial amount of food either. Sometimes just a bite or two gets the sensation going.
Pain Relief: Often immediately after having bowel movement there is some pain relief. If pain is not too intense, and more of a discomfort, bowel movement can sometimes end the discomfort
Medical History and Pain Progress Timeline
- September 2022, within a week of the injury, ruled out hernia at a clinic.
- 3+ months of slow pain relief, with flare ups. Mostly sedentary life and very little physical activity.
- Late December 2022 through early February 2023: Doctors visit, abdominal ultrasound, and physical exam. No specific conclusions on either physical injury or gastric issues. No diagnosis.
- February to June 2023:
Slow increase in physical activity and exercise. Some running. With a good warm up, stretching the abdominal area isn't too painful (though I did not stretch the area at this time)
Rare ab exercises can feel discomforting, and some pain returns the day after.
Jumping high or landing from high jumps/drops can bring about the pain or worsen it.
Bloated stomach, or consumption of some foods (as mentioned above) can feel discomforting or even painful along 1 or more " horizontal lines". Bowel movement often relieves discomfort and even pain.
- July 1st, 2023, MRI of abdomen. No diagnosis or findings. Quote from the report: "IMPRESSION: Normal noncontrast MRI of the abdomen. There is no abnormality to explain the patient's pain."
- August 2023, start of physical therapy. Therapist's hypothesis - myofascial layer causes pain. Prescribed exercises to do at home with light stretch and some balance/strengthening of abdomen.
- August 2023, start of journaling of my pain in 1-10 scale on daily basis, as I do the PT.
- September 26, 2023, endoscopy was done, no notable results. Results were normal
- August 2023 - March 2024, pain fluctuates with steady 2/10 (pain discomfort) with multiple flare ups of pain, one reaching up to 5/10 and lasting and others staying at 3/10 or higher for 2-3 days in a row.
- April 2024, colonoscopy revealed no remarkable results. 1 week post colonoscopy pain levels increased to an all time high or close to it (5-6/10). Mostly pain along tendinous intersections, in 3 locations, with some lower right and left abdomen pains, burning sensation around or above bladder, and other discomforts. No issues with bowel movements or peeing.
Post colonoscopy I did not return to physical activities and PT as the pain lingers on and is too consistent and limiting to do much in terms of consistent exercise.
Self-medication: On a few occasions, I tried to apply heat or cold, which didn’t help with pain much. But the cold helped numb things down. Heat helped to warm the abdomen and make some movements easier for a short time.
Rare/inconsistent instances of ibuprofen use (around 400-600 mg). Can't remember how effective pain relief is.
Massage/poking: Generally, I do it when I feel pain or discomfort along the horizontal lines. Massage, poking, deep massage does NOT reduce the pain for me. Sometimes even makes me feel the pain more. But mentally feels good to do and feel out where I feel it.
Present day condition (May 2024)
Some pain flare-ups with physical activities, infrequent feeling of discomfort after food (for both, often relieved through bowel movement).
Concern: While pain level has overall gone down since 1.5 years ago, I am not certain what I should and should not do, given there is no diagnosis or clear understanding of cause of pain. The occasional pain increases made me curious if someone had an experience with pain like this. Doctor's appointment all have lead to little to no improvement.
Additionally, I sense a lot of dismissiveness in all the doctors and specialist for this entire timeline described above, where with no results to show on diagnostic tests, I am sent home to "rest" without any hypothesis or brainstorming, and telling me "come back if pain gets worse". It gets worse and I run another round of catching doctors for, what feels like, waste of time with more tests, same questions and same story being told over and over to each new referred specialist I see.
Note: I asked the doctors on multiple occasions to review the MRI images or query a radiologist to do so as there are 100s of frames. I genuinely don't believe that initial look at it was done properly, with only 1 page report showing "unremarkable" for all metrics they looked at. I don't sense that my pain patterns (which I described extensively to every doctor and the radiologist) were accounted for when looking through any of the tests done.
Thanks in advance for any feedback!!!
[Previously posted on AskDocs with no luck so far.]
submitted by Nuyturah to DiagnoseMe [link] [comments]
Demographic: White, male, age 30, 5' 5", 175 +/- 5lbs.
Lifestyle: Active (workout 3-4x per week), Desk/Physical work split of 90/10%.
Complaint: Abdominal injury and pain (1 year and 8 months since injury), presently inconsistent pains.
Medication: No consistent medications, no allergies.
Drug use: alcohol (1-3x per month), non-smoker.
History of the Injury
Late August of 2022, I hurt myself doing a kip on horizontal bar outdoors. Right after raising my feet to the bar and kicking my legs out I felt a sharp pain in my abdomen. (I've done this and similar moves many times before through my 20s, while exercising)
Bar kip example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRPFWdelsDY
I couldn't stop slouching and crunching my abdomen. Stretching backwards and straightening my posture was very discomforting. The severe pain subsided in a day but in the following months I couldn't stretch my stomach and had to sleep on my back with pillows under my knees to keep a flexed/crunched posture. Sleeping on the side was discomforting, because the stomach would hang to the side, bringing up the pain.
In 3 months, I felt better. However, there were always some flare-ups of pain.
Pain Description: The pain always feels along "horizontal lines", on 1-3 locations at a time, around the belly button level, below, or above it, with varying intensity of pain. Through my personal touch/observation, these horizontal lines of pain are always along tendinous inscriptions of the ab structures. Sometimes I feel lower 1 or two lines in pain. Other times it’s one of the upper line(s).
Tendinous inscriptions image: https://test.usabcd.org/courses/lk-native-ld2-basic-ugra/lessons/lknative-rectus-sheath-block/topic/3-anatomy-the-rectus-abdominis-muscle/
Causes of Pain from Movement: Pain flare-ups happen when moving heavy objects rapidly (without prior prep), pulling something heavy from ground, rapidly stretching the abdominal area, or a day after the occasional exercise. Jumping and landing on ground from 1 ft. or above can make me brace my abdomen, leading to some pain as well. Twisting my torso side to side could also make pain worse, stretching one side of the abdomen, especially if twisting in my full range. Slight turns are okay.
Causes of Pain from Food: Flare-ups also happen immediately after eating specific foods, like sunflower seeds, nutty bars, and when a bit bloated from eating. Trigger of this pain doesn't need to be a substantial amount of food either. Sometimes just a bite or two gets the sensation going.
Pain Relief: Often immediately after having bowel movement there is some pain relief. If pain is not too intense, and more of a discomfort, bowel movement can sometimes end the discomfort
Medical History and Pain Progress Timeline
- September 2022, within a week of the injury, ruled out hernia at a clinic.
- 3+ months of slow pain relief, with flare ups. Mostly sedentary life and very little physical activity.
- Late December 2022 through early February 2023: Doctors visit, abdominal ultrasound, and physical exam. No specific conclusions on either physical injury or gastric issues. No diagnosis.
- February to June 2023:
Slow increase in physical activity and exercise. Some running. With a good warm up, stretching the abdominal area isn't too painful (though I did not stretch the area at this time)
Rare ab exercises can feel discomforting, and some pain returns the day after.
Jumping high or landing from high jumps/drops can bring about the pain or worsen it.
Bloated stomach, or consumption of some foods (as mentioned above) can feel discomforting or even painful along 1 or more " horizontal lines". Bowel movement often relieves discomfort and even pain.
- July 1st, 2023, MRI of abdomen. No diagnosis or findings. Quote from the report: "IMPRESSION: Normal noncontrast MRI of the abdomen. There is no abnormality to explain the patient's pain."
- August 2023, start of physical therapy. Therapist's hypothesis - myofascial layer causes pain. Prescribed exercises to do at home with light stretch and some balance/strengthening of abdomen.
- August 2023, start of journaling of my pain in 1-10 scale on daily basis, as I do the PT.
- September 26, 2023, endoscopy was done, no notable results. Results were normal
- August 2023 - March 2024, pain fluctuates with steady 2/10 (pain discomfort) with multiple flare ups of pain, one reaching up to 5/10 and lasting and others staying at 3/10 or higher for 2-3 days in a row.
- April 2024, colonoscopy revealed no remarkable results. 1 week post colonoscopy pain levels increased to an all time high or close to it (5-6/10). Mostly pain along tendinous intersections, in 3 locations, with some lower right and left abdomen pains, burning sensation around or above bladder, and other discomforts. No issues with bowel movements or peeing.
Post colonoscopy I did not return to physical activities and PT as the pain lingers on and is too consistent and limiting to do much in terms of consistent exercise.
Self-medication: On a few occasions, I tried to apply heat or cold, which didn’t help with pain much. But the cold helped numb things down. Heat helped to warm the abdomen and make some movements easier for a short time.
Rare/inconsistent instances of ibuprofen use (around 400-600 mg). Can't remember how effective pain relief is.
Massage/poking: Generally, I do it when I feel pain or discomfort along the horizontal lines. Massage, poking, deep massage does NOT reduce the pain for me. Sometimes even makes me feel the pain more. But mentally feels good to do and feel out where I feel it.
Present day condition (May 2024)
Some pain flare-ups with physical activities, infrequent feeling of discomfort after food (for both, often relieved through bowel movement).
Concern: While pain level has overall gone down since 1.5 years ago, I am not certain what I should and should not do, given there is no diagnosis or clear understanding of cause of pain. The occasional pain increases made me curious if someone had an experience with pain like this. Doctor's appointment all have lead to little to no improvement.
Additionally, I sense a lot of dismissiveness in all the doctors and specialist for this entire timeline described above, where with no results to show on diagnostic tests, I am sent home to "rest" without any hypothesis or brainstorming, and telling me "come back if pain gets worse". It gets worse and I run another round of catching doctors for, what feels like, waste of time with more tests, same questions and same story being told over and over to each new referred specialist I see.
Note: I asked the doctors on multiple occasions to review the MRI images or query a radiologist to do so as there are 100s of frames. I genuinely don't believe that initial look at it was done properly, with only 1 page report showing "unremarkable" for all metrics they looked at. I don't sense that my pain patterns (which I described extensively to every doctor and the radiologist) were accounted for when looking through any of the tests done.
Thanks in advance for any feedback!!!
[Previously posted on AskDocs with no luck so far.]
2024.05.16 05:07 12313155979789m Bone pain
This is my second time on accutane. Last week I started to have pain in my collarbone area and chest and it started getting gradually worse until Sunday I decided to stop taking the accutane as the pain was making it so hard for me to even get out of bed, put clothes on, and pain in my ribs so much it made it hard for me to breathe. I call the dermatologist and they agree that I should stop, today I went to the hospital because the pain has still persisted, I get x rays and a thorough blood test and everything looks perfect. They just recommended to keep taking ibuprofen and Tylenol. The pain even with the ibuprofen is still persistent and I’m not sure what to do, has this happened to anyone else and how long did it take for this side effect to go away?
submitted by 12313155979789m to Accutane [link] [comments]
2024.05.16 05:05 Nosajhpled [We stopped robbing humans and started an orc-themed restaurant] - Chapter 25 - Fantasy
Previous
Chapter 1
"You imbeciles!" Fytistone shouted at the group.
"But Fy.." The woman standing before Fytistone began.
"No! You idiots abducted an Orc and brought him here!" Fytistone shouted.
"Her..." Derrick began.
"I don't care!" Fytistone screamed at the man, who recoiled from her anger. "They will look here first."
"Who would dare come here?" A man asked, "You are a pillar of this community."
Fytistone took a deep breath, "Yes, I am. But that Orc-loving mayor will come here first."
"Mayor Hamilton loves Orcs?" Derrick asked, "I didn't know that. I wonder if he and the imp are fighting over the Orc?"
Fytistone blinked a few times, "Shut up, Derrick. I don't want to know what nonsense you are spewing." Derrick looked down and mumbled something. Fytistone addressed the remaining humans in the room, "How long until he wakes up?"
"She," Said another man.
Fytistone sneered, "How long until it wakes up?"
"The spell should last twenty-four hours or so." The woman said.
"Fine, wait until tomorrow morning and get it out of here," Fytistone demanded. "I don't want it waking up or Hammy nosing around here. Understood?" The humans nodded.
A human male in the back raised his hand, "Uh, hi, uh, why not sneak her, I mean, it out tonight?"
"Because the guards will notice a single wagon and may want to inspect it. When there's more traffic tomorrow, they'll let you through without looking." Fytistone spoke slowly like she was speaking to a child. "The night guards are far more vigilant than the day guards."
"Ain't that the truth," a man said to the other woman in the room, "Your cousin didn't even look up as we brought her here."
—
"Good morning," Thorn said as she entered the big tent. Everyone had gathered for breakfast. The chatting stopped as Thorn sat down with her bacon, eggs, and coffee.
"Rose is missing!" Rick shouted as he ran into the tent.
"What?" Richard and Bob shouted.
"She didn't come back last night," Rick said, "I've looked all over for her."
Thorn looked at the panicking imp, "She's fine, imp. Maybe she needed some more time."
"Why didn't you say something last night?" Richard asked, ignoring Thorn.
"I, uh," the imp looked down, "I thought maybe she didn't want to see me yet." Rick kicked the ground, "Maybe Thorn was right."
"She's wrong," Ben and Betty said together. Thorn glared at them, and they glared back.
"Ben and Betty are right. She would have come back," Bob said, "She wouldn't have abandoned you." He gave Thorn a nasty look, "No matter who thought of what."
Richard rose from the table. "We need to search for her. I'll get a party together. Bob, you stay here with twins and run the restaurant."
"I'm going," Rick said, "I can smell where she has been."
Thorn looked at the little imp, "You can smell her? I can't believe that. Too many creatures have been through here."
"No, no, I can," Rick said, "She smells of flowers and rain. Everyone has a smell."
"What do I smell like, Rick," Bob asked.
"Gold and dirt," Rick said bluntly.
"Yeah, that tracks." Bob laughed.
The twins looked at each other, "What about us?" They asked.
"You smell of fire, wood, and hope," the twins nodded. “Great Orc Richard smells of sorrow and fallen leaves in autumn," Richard frowned and nodded. “Thorn smells like…" The imp's eyes widened, and he looked away.
"What do I smell like, Imp?" Thorn growled.
"Death." The imp whispered.
Thorn rose from her seat and stared down at the embarrassed imp, "You have a good nose, little one. And you spoke the truth." Thorn looked at Richard, "The imp and I will find Rose. I'm sure she's fine. Probably fell asleep under a tree."
The Orcs looked at each other, and finally, Richard said, "Okay, for now. But if she's in trouble, we'll come help."
Thorn laughed raspily, "No, death stalks the plains today." She turned and left the tent with the little imp running after her.
"I pray to all the gods that nothing has happened to Rose," Richard said. "For her sake and anyone stupid enough to cross those two."
Bob sighed, "Who's going to do the most property damage? Rick or Thorn?"
"Yes," Richard said as he went back to his breakfast.
–
Shaman Thorn and the Imp Rick stalked the camp. Everyone, Orcs, humans, imps, trolls, and giants, stayed out of the way. Soon, they found themselves on the road. Rick's nose was close to the ground like a hound on the trail of a fox.
"Here," Rick said as he stopped. "She was here with many humans and a horse. Her scent was strong but is now weaker."
Thorn inspected the ground and mumbled as she walked around. She stopped next to Rick, "A wagon. There are wheel tracks. I can sense some magic. Faint."
"What does that mean," Rick asked in a panicked voice.
"That Rose rode in a wagon towards the town," Thorn was attempting to not worry, but the more they looked, the more worried she became.
The two strange companions walked in silence toward the town. Neither wanted to talk to the other. Clouds hung in the sky as if watching them walk. Rick pointed to a road that branched off from the main road. They followed it all the way to the side gate.
"Rick!" A guard shouted. Rick looked up and waved. The guard approached the two. "What brings you here?"
"We are looking for the Orc Shaman Rose," Thorn announced, bringing the guard's attention to her. His eyes went wide, and he looked up at the intimidating Orc.
"Uh, well, I, uh," The guard bowed, "Welcome to our town."
"Don't bow, boy. It leaves your head exposed. One swipe and I could take your head right off your shoulders," Thorn said, looking down. Wide-eyed, the guard looked up. Thorn smiled a toothy grin. "Orcs don't bow."
"Right, right, uh," The guard said, "I haven't seen any orcs this morning."
"I can smell her; she came this way," Rick said, getting agitated.
"Maybe yesterday," the guard shouted over his shoulder, "Who was on duty yesterday?"
"Ted," Someone shouted back.
The guard sighed exasperated, "Well, that doesn't do any good. He doesn't do any work." He looked at Rick, "Maybe she came through yesterday. Does she know anyone here?"
"Batty," Rick said excitedly, "She could be visiting Batty."
As the two left, the guard waved over another guard, "Run to the Mayor and tell him they are here."
"Why, sir? They don't seem here to make trouble?" The new guard said.
"Call it a gut feeling, Those two could level this town.”
"An old Orc and an imp?" The new guard laughed.
The guard looked at him, "Yes, now run!"
–
"Something isn't right," Rick said. "Here, the smell stops and turns. The tavern is that way," he pointed.
"Rick! Thorn!" Mayor Hamilton shouted as he ran up to them. His face was red from the exercise. He stopped before the two and caught his breath. "Uh, I, uh, welcome to our town, Shaman Thorn." He bowed his head. "Hi Rick, I heard you are looking for Rose."
"Yes, but her smell goes that way." The imp pointed.
"Oh," The Mayor squeaked. He frowned. Then he growled, "Oh."
"Something the matter, Mayor?" Thorn asked.
"Yes, there is someone who lives that way, and I'm hoping she has nothing to do with this," The Mayor said.
"With what?" Batty asked as she and Battleax walked up.
"Rose is missing!" Rick shouted.
"What!" Batty shouted. She looked at her dad, who was looking toward where Rick was pointing. "Doesn't Fytistone live down that lane?"
"Yes," Battleax and Hamilton said together.
Batty and Rick began a fast march down the lane, and the rest followed.
"We burn her house down," Batty said.
"We kill everyone and then burn down the house," Rick said.
"Okay, everyone, calm down," Battleax said. He looked at Hamilton, who shook his head.
"It's a bad day with a Battleax is telling everyone to calm down," Hamilton said.
Thorn barked a laugh, "Truth." Her voice lowered, "But those two have a point. Rose better be fine."
As they approached the house in question, Fytistone walked out the front door. "Oh my, good morning Mayor, Battleaxes." She looked at Rick and Thorn and sneered, "You."
"Ah, Fytistone, good morning, ah, yes," The Mayor began. "We are looking for a friend. Tall, green Orc goes by the name Rose."
"Never heard of it," Fytistone sneered.
"Right, right, so we have a missing Orc, and we are wondering…" The Mayor began.
"Good!" Fytistone shouted, "We can lose a few more of them."
"Where is she?" Batty shouted as she took a step forward.
Battleax grabbed her arm and said, "Not yet, Batty."
"Where is Rose?" Thorn asked in a low grumble.
"Not here," Fytistone rolled her eyes.
"I can smell her," Rick said.
Fytistone laughed, "Orc stench is everywhere now. One less Orc would make this town smell better."
Hamilton held his arms out, keeping Batty and Rick from charging Fytistone. "Now, Fytistone, uh, we are just wondering if you have seen her."
"No, and I don't like this accusation," Fytistone sneered, "I have things to do. So good…"
The house exploded.
Check out my new website. You can find everywhere I post my stories!
https://links.hellodearreader.com/
submitted by Nosajhpled to redditserials [link] [comments]
Chapter 1
"You imbeciles!" Fytistone shouted at the group.
"But Fy.." The woman standing before Fytistone began.
"No! You idiots abducted an Orc and brought him here!" Fytistone shouted.
"Her..." Derrick began.
"I don't care!" Fytistone screamed at the man, who recoiled from her anger. "They will look here first."
"Who would dare come here?" A man asked, "You are a pillar of this community."
Fytistone took a deep breath, "Yes, I am. But that Orc-loving mayor will come here first."
"Mayor Hamilton loves Orcs?" Derrick asked, "I didn't know that. I wonder if he and the imp are fighting over the Orc?"
Fytistone blinked a few times, "Shut up, Derrick. I don't want to know what nonsense you are spewing." Derrick looked down and mumbled something. Fytistone addressed the remaining humans in the room, "How long until he wakes up?"
"She," Said another man.
Fytistone sneered, "How long until it wakes up?"
"The spell should last twenty-four hours or so." The woman said.
"Fine, wait until tomorrow morning and get it out of here," Fytistone demanded. "I don't want it waking up or Hammy nosing around here. Understood?" The humans nodded.
A human male in the back raised his hand, "Uh, hi, uh, why not sneak her, I mean, it out tonight?"
"Because the guards will notice a single wagon and may want to inspect it. When there's more traffic tomorrow, they'll let you through without looking." Fytistone spoke slowly like she was speaking to a child. "The night guards are far more vigilant than the day guards."
"Ain't that the truth," a man said to the other woman in the room, "Your cousin didn't even look up as we brought her here."
—
"Good morning," Thorn said as she entered the big tent. Everyone had gathered for breakfast. The chatting stopped as Thorn sat down with her bacon, eggs, and coffee.
"Rose is missing!" Rick shouted as he ran into the tent.
"What?" Richard and Bob shouted.
"She didn't come back last night," Rick said, "I've looked all over for her."
Thorn looked at the panicking imp, "She's fine, imp. Maybe she needed some more time."
"Why didn't you say something last night?" Richard asked, ignoring Thorn.
"I, uh," the imp looked down, "I thought maybe she didn't want to see me yet." Rick kicked the ground, "Maybe Thorn was right."
"She's wrong," Ben and Betty said together. Thorn glared at them, and they glared back.
"Ben and Betty are right. She would have come back," Bob said, "She wouldn't have abandoned you." He gave Thorn a nasty look, "No matter who thought of what."
Richard rose from the table. "We need to search for her. I'll get a party together. Bob, you stay here with twins and run the restaurant."
"I'm going," Rick said, "I can smell where she has been."
Thorn looked at the little imp, "You can smell her? I can't believe that. Too many creatures have been through here."
"No, no, I can," Rick said, "She smells of flowers and rain. Everyone has a smell."
"What do I smell like, Rick," Bob asked.
"Gold and dirt," Rick said bluntly.
"Yeah, that tracks." Bob laughed.
The twins looked at each other, "What about us?" They asked.
"You smell of fire, wood, and hope," the twins nodded. “Great Orc Richard smells of sorrow and fallen leaves in autumn," Richard frowned and nodded. “Thorn smells like…" The imp's eyes widened, and he looked away.
"What do I smell like, Imp?" Thorn growled.
"Death." The imp whispered.
Thorn rose from her seat and stared down at the embarrassed imp, "You have a good nose, little one. And you spoke the truth." Thorn looked at Richard, "The imp and I will find Rose. I'm sure she's fine. Probably fell asleep under a tree."
The Orcs looked at each other, and finally, Richard said, "Okay, for now. But if she's in trouble, we'll come help."
Thorn laughed raspily, "No, death stalks the plains today." She turned and left the tent with the little imp running after her.
"I pray to all the gods that nothing has happened to Rose," Richard said. "For her sake and anyone stupid enough to cross those two."
Bob sighed, "Who's going to do the most property damage? Rick or Thorn?"
"Yes," Richard said as he went back to his breakfast.
–
Shaman Thorn and the Imp Rick stalked the camp. Everyone, Orcs, humans, imps, trolls, and giants, stayed out of the way. Soon, they found themselves on the road. Rick's nose was close to the ground like a hound on the trail of a fox.
"Here," Rick said as he stopped. "She was here with many humans and a horse. Her scent was strong but is now weaker."
Thorn inspected the ground and mumbled as she walked around. She stopped next to Rick, "A wagon. There are wheel tracks. I can sense some magic. Faint."
"What does that mean," Rick asked in a panicked voice.
"That Rose rode in a wagon towards the town," Thorn was attempting to not worry, but the more they looked, the more worried she became.
The two strange companions walked in silence toward the town. Neither wanted to talk to the other. Clouds hung in the sky as if watching them walk. Rick pointed to a road that branched off from the main road. They followed it all the way to the side gate.
"Rick!" A guard shouted. Rick looked up and waved. The guard approached the two. "What brings you here?"
"We are looking for the Orc Shaman Rose," Thorn announced, bringing the guard's attention to her. His eyes went wide, and he looked up at the intimidating Orc.
"Uh, well, I, uh," The guard bowed, "Welcome to our town."
"Don't bow, boy. It leaves your head exposed. One swipe and I could take your head right off your shoulders," Thorn said, looking down. Wide-eyed, the guard looked up. Thorn smiled a toothy grin. "Orcs don't bow."
"Right, right, uh," The guard said, "I haven't seen any orcs this morning."
"I can smell her; she came this way," Rick said, getting agitated.
"Maybe yesterday," the guard shouted over his shoulder, "Who was on duty yesterday?"
"Ted," Someone shouted back.
The guard sighed exasperated, "Well, that doesn't do any good. He doesn't do any work." He looked at Rick, "Maybe she came through yesterday. Does she know anyone here?"
"Batty," Rick said excitedly, "She could be visiting Batty."
As the two left, the guard waved over another guard, "Run to the Mayor and tell him they are here."
"Why, sir? They don't seem here to make trouble?" The new guard said.
"Call it a gut feeling, Those two could level this town.”
"An old Orc and an imp?" The new guard laughed.
The guard looked at him, "Yes, now run!"
–
"Something isn't right," Rick said. "Here, the smell stops and turns. The tavern is that way," he pointed.
"Rick! Thorn!" Mayor Hamilton shouted as he ran up to them. His face was red from the exercise. He stopped before the two and caught his breath. "Uh, I, uh, welcome to our town, Shaman Thorn." He bowed his head. "Hi Rick, I heard you are looking for Rose."
"Yes, but her smell goes that way." The imp pointed.
"Oh," The Mayor squeaked. He frowned. Then he growled, "Oh."
"Something the matter, Mayor?" Thorn asked.
"Yes, there is someone who lives that way, and I'm hoping she has nothing to do with this," The Mayor said.
"With what?" Batty asked as she and Battleax walked up.
"Rose is missing!" Rick shouted.
"What!" Batty shouted. She looked at her dad, who was looking toward where Rick was pointing. "Doesn't Fytistone live down that lane?"
"Yes," Battleax and Hamilton said together.
Batty and Rick began a fast march down the lane, and the rest followed.
"We burn her house down," Batty said.
"We kill everyone and then burn down the house," Rick said.
"Okay, everyone, calm down," Battleax said. He looked at Hamilton, who shook his head.
"It's a bad day with a Battleax is telling everyone to calm down," Hamilton said.
Thorn barked a laugh, "Truth." Her voice lowered, "But those two have a point. Rose better be fine."
As they approached the house in question, Fytistone walked out the front door. "Oh my, good morning Mayor, Battleaxes." She looked at Rick and Thorn and sneered, "You."
"Ah, Fytistone, good morning, ah, yes," The Mayor began. "We are looking for a friend. Tall, green Orc goes by the name Rose."
"Never heard of it," Fytistone sneered.
"Right, right, so we have a missing Orc, and we are wondering…" The Mayor began.
"Good!" Fytistone shouted, "We can lose a few more of them."
"Where is she?" Batty shouted as she took a step forward.
Battleax grabbed her arm and said, "Not yet, Batty."
"Where is Rose?" Thorn asked in a low grumble.
"Not here," Fytistone rolled her eyes.
"I can smell her," Rick said.
Fytistone laughed, "Orc stench is everywhere now. One less Orc would make this town smell better."
Hamilton held his arms out, keeping Batty and Rick from charging Fytistone. "Now, Fytistone, uh, we are just wondering if you have seen her."
"No, and I don't like this accusation," Fytistone sneered, "I have things to do. So good…"
The house exploded.
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2024.05.16 05:04 MirkWorks Excerpt from The Culture of Narcissism by Christopher Lasch (The Narcissistic Personality of Our Time Continuation)
II. The Narcissistic Personality of Our Time
...
Social Influences on Narcissism
Every age develops its own peculiar forms of pathology, which express in exaggerated form its underlying character structure. In Freud’s time, hysteria and obsessional neurosis carried to extremes the personality traits associated with the capitalist order at an earlier stage in its development - acquisitiveness, fanatical devotion to work, and a fierce repression of sexuality. In our time, the preschizophrenic, borderline, or personality disorders have attracted increasing attention, along with schizophrenia itself. This “change in the form of neuroses has been observed and described since World War II by an ever-increasing number of psychiatrists.” According to Peter L. Giovacchini, “Clinicians are constantly faced with the seemingly increasing number of patients who do not fit current diagnostic categories” and who suffer not from “definitive symptoms” but from “vague, ill-defined complaints.” “When I refer to ‘this type of patient,’” he writes, “practically everyone knows to whom I am referring.” The growing prominence of “character disorders” seems to signify an underlying change in the organization of personality, from what has been called inner-direction to narcissism.
Allen Wheelis argued in 1958 that the change in the “patterns of neuroses” fell “within the personal experience of older psychoanalysts,” while younger ones “become aware of it from the discrepancy between the older descriptions of neuroses and the problems presented by the patients who come daily to their offices. The change is from symptom neuroses to character disorders.” Heinz Lichtenstein, who questioned the additional assertion that it reflected a change in personality structure, nevertheless wrote in 1963 that the “change in neurotic patterns” already constituted a “well-known fact.” In the seventies, such reports have become increasingly common. “It is not accident,” Herbert Hendin notes, “that at the present time the dominant events in psychoanalysis are the rediscovery of narcissism and the new emphasis on the psychological significance of death.” “What hysteria and the obsessive neuroses were to Freud and his early colleagues…at the beginning of this century,” writes Michael Beldoch, “the narcissistic disorders are to the workaday analyst in these last few decades before the next millennium. Today’s patients by and large do not suffer from hysterical paralyses of the legs or hand-washing compulsions; instead it is their very psychic selves that have gone numb or that they must scrub and rescrub in an exhausting and unending effort to come clean.” These patients suffer from “pervasive feelings of emptiness and a deep disturbance of self-esteem.” Burness E. Moore notes that narcissistic disorders have become more and more common. According to Sheldon Bach, “You used to see people coming in with hand-washing compulsions, phobias, and familiar neuroses. Now you see mostly narcissists.” Gilbert J. Rose maintains that the psychoanalytic outlook, “inappropriately transplanted from analytic practice” to everyday life, has contributed to “global permissiveness” and the “over-domestication of instinct,” which in turn contributes to the proliferation of “narcissistic identity disorders.” According to Joel Kovel, the stimulation of infantile cravings by advertising, the usurpation of parental authority by the media and the school, and the rationalization of inner life accompanied by the false promise of personal fulfillment, have created a new type of “social individual.” “The result is not the classical neuroses where an infantile impulse is suppressed by patriarchal authority, but a modern version in which impulse is stimulated, perverted and given neither an adequate object upon which to satisfy itself nor coherent forms of control…. The entire complex, played out in a setting of alienation rather than direct control, loses the classical form of symptom - and the classical therapeutic opportunity of simply restoring an impulse to consciousness.”
The reported increase in the number of narcissistic patients does not necessarily indicate that narcissistic disorders are more common than they used to be, in the population as a whole, or that they have become more common than the classical conversion neurosis. Perhaps they simply come more quickly to psychiatric attention. Ilza Veith contends that “with the increasing awareness of conversion reactions and the popularization of psychiatric literature, the ‘old-fashioned’ somatic expressions of hysteria have become suspect among the more sophisticated classes, and hence most physicians observe that obvious conversion symptoms are now rarely encountered and, if at all, only among the uneducated.” The attention given to character disorders in recent clinical literature probably makes psychiatrists more alert to their presence. But this possibility by no means diminishes the importance of psychiatric testimony about the prevalence of narcissism, especially when this testimony appears at the same time that journalists begin to speculate about the new narcissism and the unhealthy trend toward self-absorption. The narcissist comes to the attention of psychiatrists for some of the same reasons that he rises to positions of prominence not only in awareness movements and other cults but in business corporations, political organizations, and government bureaucracies. For all his inner suffering, the narcissist has many traits that make for success in bureaucratic institutions, which put a premium on the manipulation of interpersonal relations, discourage the formation of deep personal attachments, and at the same time provide the narcissist with the approval he needs in order to validate his self-esteem. Although he may resort to therapies that promise to give meaning to life and to overcome his sense of emptiness, in his professional career the narcissist often enjoys considerable success. The management of personal impressions comes naturally to him, and his mastery of its intricacies serves him well in political and business organizations where performance now counts for less than “visibility,” “momentum,” and a winning record. As the “organization man” gives way to the bureaucratic “gamesman” - the “loyalty era” of American business to the age of the “executive success game” - the narcissist comes into his own.
In a study of 250 managers from twelve major companies, Michael Maccoby describes the new corporate leader, not altogether unsympathetically, as a person who works with people rather than with materials and who seeks not to build an empire or accumulate wealth but to experience “the exhilaration of running his team and of gaining victories.” He wants to “be known as a winner, and his deepest fear is to be labeled a loser.” Instead of pitting himself against a material task or a problem demanding solution, he puts himself against others, out of a “need to be in control.” As a recent textbook for managers puts it, success today means “not simply getting ahead” but “getting ahead of others.” The new executive, boyish, playful, and “seductive,” wants in Maccoby’s words “to maintain an illusion of limitless options.” He has little capacity for “personal intimacy and social commitment.” He feels little loyalty even to the company for which he works. One executive says he experiences power “as not being pushed around by the company.” In his upward climb, this man cultivates powerful customers and attempts to use them against his own company. “You need a very big customer,” according to his calculations, “who is always in trouble and demands changes from the company. That way you automatically have power in the company, and with the customer too. I like to keep my options open.” A professor of management endorses this strategy. “Overidentification” with the company, in his view, “produces a corporation with enormous power over the careers and destinies of its true believers.” The bigger the company, the more important he thinks it is for executes “to manage their careers in terms of their own…free choices” and to “maintain the widest set of options possible.”
According to Maccoby, the gamesman “is open to new ideas, but he lacks convictions.” He will do business with any regime, even if he disapproves of its principles. More independent and resourceful than the company man, he tries to use the company for his own ends, fearing that otherwise he will be “totally emasculated by the corporation.” He avoids intimacy as a trap, preferring the “exciting, sexy atmosphere” with which the modern executive surrounds himself at work, “where adoring, mini-skirted secretaries constantly flirt with him.” In all his personal relations, the gamesman depends on the admiration or fear he inspires in others to certify his credentials as a “winner.” As he gets older, he finds it more and more difficult to command the kind of attention on which he thrives. He reaches a plateau beyond which he does not advance in his job, perhaps because the very highest positions, as Maccoby notes, still go to “those able to renounce adolescent rebelliousness and become at least to some extent believers in the organization.” The job begins to lose its savor. Having little interest in craftsmanship, the new-style executive takes no pleasure in his achievements once he begins to lose the adolescent charm on which they rest. Middle age hits him with the force of a disaster: “Once his youth, vigor, and even the thrill in winning are lost, he becomes depressed and goalless, questioning the purpose of his life. No longer energized by the team struggle and unable to dedicate himself to something he believes in beyond himself, … he finds himself starkly alone.” It is not surprising, given the prevalence of this career pattern, that popular psychology returns so often to the “midlife crisis” and to ways of combating it.
In Wilfrid Sheed’s novel Office Politics, a wife asks, “There are real issues, aren’t there, between Mr. Fine and Mr. Tyler?” Her husband answers that the issues are trivial; “the jockeying of ego is the real story.” Eugene Emerson Jennings’s study of management, which celebrates the demise of the organization man and the advent of the new “era of mobility,” insists that corporate “mobility is more than mere job performance.” What counts is “style…panache…the ability to say and do almost anything without antagonizing others.” The upwardly mobile executive, according to Jennings, knows how to handle the people around him - the “shelf-sitter” who suffers from “arrested mobility” and envies success; the “fast learner”; the “mobile superior.” The “mobility-bright executive” has learned to “read” the power relations in his office and “to see the less visible and less audible side of his superiors, chiefly their standing with their peers and superiors.” He “Can infer from a minimum of cues who are the centers of power, and he seeks to have high visibility and exposure with them. He will assiduously cultivate his standing and opportunities with them and seize every opportunity to learn from them. He will utilize his opportunities in social world to size up the men who are centers of sponsorship in the corporate world.”
Constantly comparing the “executive success game” to an athletic contest or a game of chess, Jennings treats the substance of executive life as if it were just as arbitrarily and irrelevant to success as the task of kicking a ball through a net or of moving pieces over a chessboard. He never mentions the social and economic repercussions of managerial decisions or the power that managers exercise over society as a whole. For the corporate manager on the make, power consists not of money and influence but of “momentum,” a “winning image,” a reputation as a winner. Power lies in the eye of the beholder and thus has no objective reference at all.
The manager’s view of the world, as described by Jennings, Maccoby, and by the managers themselves, is that of the narcissist, who sees the world as a mirror of himself and has no interest in external events except as they throw back a reflection of his own image. The dense interpersonal environment of modern bureaucracy, in which work assumes an abstract quality almost wholly divorced from performance, by its very nature elicits and often rewards a narcissistic response. Bureaucracy, however, is only one of a number of social influences that are bringing a narcissistic type of personality organization into greater and greater prominence. Another such influence is the mechanical reproduction of culture, the proliferation of visual and audial images in the “society of the spectacle.” We live in a swirl of images and echoes that arrest experience and play it back in slow motion. Cameras and recording machines not only transcribe experience but alter its quality, giving to much of modern life that character of an enormous echo chamber, a hall of mirrors. Life presents itself as a succession of images of electronic signals, of impressions recorded and reproduced by means of photography, motion pictures, television, and sophisticated recording devices. Modern life is thoroughly mediated by electronic images that we cannot help responding to others as if their actions - and our own - were being recorded and simultaneously transmitted to an unseen audience or stored up for close scrutiny at some later time. “Smile, you’re on candid camera!” The intrusion into everyday life of this all-seeing eye no longer takes us by surprise or catches us with our defenses down. We need no reminder to smile. A smile is permanently graven on our features, and we already known from which of several angles its photographs to best advantage.
The proliferation of recorded images undermines our sense of reality. As Susan Sontag observes in her study of photography, “Reality has come to seem more and more like what we are shown by cameras.” We distrust our perceptions until the camera verifies them. Photographic images provide us with the proof of our existence, without which we would find it difficult even to reconstruct a personal history. Bourgeois families in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Sontag points out, posed for portraits in order to proclaim the family’s status, whereas today the family album of photographs verifies the individual’s existence: its documentary record of his development from infancy onward provides him with the only evidence of his life that he recognizes as altogether valid. Among the “many narcissistic uses” that Sontag attributes to the camera, “self-surveillance” ranks among the most important, not only because it provides the technical means of ceaseless self-scrutiny but because it renders the sense of selfhood dependent on the consumption of images of the self, at the same time calling into question the reality of the external world.
By preserving images of the self at various stages of development, the camera helps to weaken the older idea of development as moral education and to promote a more passive idea according to which development consists of passing through the stages of life at the right time and in the right order. Current fascination with the life cycle embodies an awareness that success in politics or business depends on reaching certain goals on schedule; but it also reflects the ease with which developments can be electronically recorded. This brings us to another cultural change that elicits a widespread narcissistic response and, in this case, gives it a philosophical sanction: the emergence of a therapeutic ideology that upholds a normative schedule of psychosocial development and thus gives further encouragement to anxious self-scrutiny. The idea of normative development creates the fear that any deviation from the norm has a pathological source. Doctors have made a cult of periodic checkup - an investigation carried out once again by means of cameras and other recording instruments - and have implanted in their clients the notion that health depends on eternal watchfulness and the early detection of symptoms, as verified by medical technology. The client no longer feels physically or psychologically secure until his X-rays confirm a “clean bill of health.”
Medicine and psychiatry - more generally, the therapeutic outlook and sensibility that pervade modern society - reinforce the pattern created by other cultural influences, in which the individual endlessly examines himself for signs of aging and ill health, for tell-tale symptoms of psychic stress, for blemishes and flaws that might diminish his attractiveness, or on the other hand for reassuring indications that his life is proceeding according to schedule. Modern medicine has conquered the plagues and epidemics that once made life so precarious, only to create new forms of insecurity. In the same way, bureaucracy has made life predictable and even boring while reviving, in a new form, the war of all against all. Our overorganized society, in which large-scale organizations predominate but have lost the capacity to command allegiance, in some respects more nearly approximates a condition of universal animosity than did the primitive capitalism on which Hobbes managed his state of nature. Social conditions today encourage a survival mentality, expressed in its crudest form in disaster movies or in fantasies of space travel, which allow vicarious escape from a doomed planet. People no longer dream of overcoming difficulties but merely of surviving them. In business, according to Jennings, “The struggle is to survive emotionally” -to “preserve or enhance one’s identity or ego.” The normative concept of developmental stages promotes a view of life as an obstacle course: the aim is simply to get through the course with a minimum of trouble and pain. The ability to manipulate what Gail Sheehy refers to, using a medical metaphor, as “life-support systems” now appears to represent the highest form of wisdom: the knowledge that gets us through, as she puts it, without panic. Those who master Sheehy’s “no-panic approach to aging” and to the traumas of the life cycle will be able to say, in the words of one of her subjects, “I know I can survive… I don’t panic any more.” This is hardly an exalted form of satisfaction, however. “The current ideology,” Sheehy writes, “seems a mix of personal survivalism, revivalism, and cynicism”; yet her enormously popular guide to the “predictable crises of adult life,” with its superficially optimistic hymn to growth, development, and “self-actualization,” does not challenge this ideology, merely restates it in more “humanistic” form. “Growth” has become a euphemism for survival.
The World View of the Resigned
New social forms require new forms of personality, new modes of socialization, new ways of organizing experience. The concept of narcissism provides us not with a ready-made psychological determinism but with a way of understanding the psychological impact of recent social changes - assuming that we bear in mind not only its clinical origins but the continuum between pathology and normality. It provides us, in other words, with a tolerably accurate portrait of the “liberated” personality of our time, with his charm, his pseudo-awareness of his own condition, his promiscuous pansexuality, his fascination with oral sex, his fear of the castrating mother (Mrs. Portnoy), his hypochondria, his protective shallowness, his avoidance of dependence, his inability to mourn, his dread of old age and death.
Narcissism appears realistically to represent the best way of coping with the tensions and anxieties of modern life, and the prevailing social conditions therefore tend to bring out narcissistic traits that are present, in varying degrees, in everyone. These condition have also transformed the family, which in turn shapes the underlying structure of personality. A society that dears it has no future is not likely to give much attention to the needs of the next generation, and the ever-present sense of historical discontinuity - the blight of our society - falls with particularly devastating effect on the family. The modern parent’s attempt to make children feel loved and wanted does not conceal an underlying coolness - the remoteness of those who have little to pass on the next generation and who in any case give priority to their own right to self-fulfillment. The combination of emotional detachment with attempts to convince a child of his favored position in the family is a good prescription for a narcissistic personality structure.
Through the intermediary of the family, social patterns reproduce themselves in personality. Social arrangements live on in the individual, buried in the mind below the level of consciousness, even after they have become objectively undesirable and unnecessary - as many of our present arrangements are now widely acknowledged to have become. The perception of the world as a dangerous and forbidding place, though it originates in a realistic awareness of the insecurity of contemporary social life, receives reinforcement from the narcissistic projection of aggressive impulses outward. The belief that society has no future, while it rests on a certain realism about the dangers ahead, also incorporates a narcissistic inability to identify with posterity or to feel one self part of a historical stream.
The weakening of social ties, which originates in the prevailing state of social warfare, at the same time reflects a narcissistic defense against dependence. A warlike society tends to produce men and women who are at heart antisocial. It should therefore not surprise us to find that although the narcissist conforms to social norms for fear of external retribution, he often thinks of himself as an outlaw and sees others in the same way, “as basically dishonest and unreliable, or only reliable because of external pressures.” “The value systems of narcissistic personalities are generally corruptible,” writes Kernberg, “in contrast to the rigid morality of the obsessive personality.”
The ethic of self-preservation and psychic survival is rooted, then, not merely in objective conditions of economic warfare, rising rates of crime, and social chaos but in the subjective experience of emptiness and isolation. It reflects the conviction - as much a projection of inner anxieties as a perception of the way things are - that envy and exploitation dominate even the most intimate relations. The cult of personal relations, which becomes increasingly intense as the hope of political solutions recedes, conceals a thoroughgoing disenchantment with personal relations, just as the cult of sensuality implies a repudiation of sensuality in all but its most primitive forms. The ideology of personal growth, superficially optimistic, radiates a profound despair and resignation. It is the faith of those without faith.
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...
Social Influences on Narcissism
Every age develops its own peculiar forms of pathology, which express in exaggerated form its underlying character structure. In Freud’s time, hysteria and obsessional neurosis carried to extremes the personality traits associated with the capitalist order at an earlier stage in its development - acquisitiveness, fanatical devotion to work, and a fierce repression of sexuality. In our time, the preschizophrenic, borderline, or personality disorders have attracted increasing attention, along with schizophrenia itself. This “change in the form of neuroses has been observed and described since World War II by an ever-increasing number of psychiatrists.” According to Peter L. Giovacchini, “Clinicians are constantly faced with the seemingly increasing number of patients who do not fit current diagnostic categories” and who suffer not from “definitive symptoms” but from “vague, ill-defined complaints.” “When I refer to ‘this type of patient,’” he writes, “practically everyone knows to whom I am referring.” The growing prominence of “character disorders” seems to signify an underlying change in the organization of personality, from what has been called inner-direction to narcissism.
Allen Wheelis argued in 1958 that the change in the “patterns of neuroses” fell “within the personal experience of older psychoanalysts,” while younger ones “become aware of it from the discrepancy between the older descriptions of neuroses and the problems presented by the patients who come daily to their offices. The change is from symptom neuroses to character disorders.” Heinz Lichtenstein, who questioned the additional assertion that it reflected a change in personality structure, nevertheless wrote in 1963 that the “change in neurotic patterns” already constituted a “well-known fact.” In the seventies, such reports have become increasingly common. “It is not accident,” Herbert Hendin notes, “that at the present time the dominant events in psychoanalysis are the rediscovery of narcissism and the new emphasis on the psychological significance of death.” “What hysteria and the obsessive neuroses were to Freud and his early colleagues…at the beginning of this century,” writes Michael Beldoch, “the narcissistic disorders are to the workaday analyst in these last few decades before the next millennium. Today’s patients by and large do not suffer from hysterical paralyses of the legs or hand-washing compulsions; instead it is their very psychic selves that have gone numb or that they must scrub and rescrub in an exhausting and unending effort to come clean.” These patients suffer from “pervasive feelings of emptiness and a deep disturbance of self-esteem.” Burness E. Moore notes that narcissistic disorders have become more and more common. According to Sheldon Bach, “You used to see people coming in with hand-washing compulsions, phobias, and familiar neuroses. Now you see mostly narcissists.” Gilbert J. Rose maintains that the psychoanalytic outlook, “inappropriately transplanted from analytic practice” to everyday life, has contributed to “global permissiveness” and the “over-domestication of instinct,” which in turn contributes to the proliferation of “narcissistic identity disorders.” According to Joel Kovel, the stimulation of infantile cravings by advertising, the usurpation of parental authority by the media and the school, and the rationalization of inner life accompanied by the false promise of personal fulfillment, have created a new type of “social individual.” “The result is not the classical neuroses where an infantile impulse is suppressed by patriarchal authority, but a modern version in which impulse is stimulated, perverted and given neither an adequate object upon which to satisfy itself nor coherent forms of control…. The entire complex, played out in a setting of alienation rather than direct control, loses the classical form of symptom - and the classical therapeutic opportunity of simply restoring an impulse to consciousness.”
The reported increase in the number of narcissistic patients does not necessarily indicate that narcissistic disorders are more common than they used to be, in the population as a whole, or that they have become more common than the classical conversion neurosis. Perhaps they simply come more quickly to psychiatric attention. Ilza Veith contends that “with the increasing awareness of conversion reactions and the popularization of psychiatric literature, the ‘old-fashioned’ somatic expressions of hysteria have become suspect among the more sophisticated classes, and hence most physicians observe that obvious conversion symptoms are now rarely encountered and, if at all, only among the uneducated.” The attention given to character disorders in recent clinical literature probably makes psychiatrists more alert to their presence. But this possibility by no means diminishes the importance of psychiatric testimony about the prevalence of narcissism, especially when this testimony appears at the same time that journalists begin to speculate about the new narcissism and the unhealthy trend toward self-absorption. The narcissist comes to the attention of psychiatrists for some of the same reasons that he rises to positions of prominence not only in awareness movements and other cults but in business corporations, political organizations, and government bureaucracies. For all his inner suffering, the narcissist has many traits that make for success in bureaucratic institutions, which put a premium on the manipulation of interpersonal relations, discourage the formation of deep personal attachments, and at the same time provide the narcissist with the approval he needs in order to validate his self-esteem. Although he may resort to therapies that promise to give meaning to life and to overcome his sense of emptiness, in his professional career the narcissist often enjoys considerable success. The management of personal impressions comes naturally to him, and his mastery of its intricacies serves him well in political and business organizations where performance now counts for less than “visibility,” “momentum,” and a winning record. As the “organization man” gives way to the bureaucratic “gamesman” - the “loyalty era” of American business to the age of the “executive success game” - the narcissist comes into his own.
In a study of 250 managers from twelve major companies, Michael Maccoby describes the new corporate leader, not altogether unsympathetically, as a person who works with people rather than with materials and who seeks not to build an empire or accumulate wealth but to experience “the exhilaration of running his team and of gaining victories.” He wants to “be known as a winner, and his deepest fear is to be labeled a loser.” Instead of pitting himself against a material task or a problem demanding solution, he puts himself against others, out of a “need to be in control.” As a recent textbook for managers puts it, success today means “not simply getting ahead” but “getting ahead of others.” The new executive, boyish, playful, and “seductive,” wants in Maccoby’s words “to maintain an illusion of limitless options.” He has little capacity for “personal intimacy and social commitment.” He feels little loyalty even to the company for which he works. One executive says he experiences power “as not being pushed around by the company.” In his upward climb, this man cultivates powerful customers and attempts to use them against his own company. “You need a very big customer,” according to his calculations, “who is always in trouble and demands changes from the company. That way you automatically have power in the company, and with the customer too. I like to keep my options open.” A professor of management endorses this strategy. “Overidentification” with the company, in his view, “produces a corporation with enormous power over the careers and destinies of its true believers.” The bigger the company, the more important he thinks it is for executes “to manage their careers in terms of their own…free choices” and to “maintain the widest set of options possible.”
According to Maccoby, the gamesman “is open to new ideas, but he lacks convictions.” He will do business with any regime, even if he disapproves of its principles. More independent and resourceful than the company man, he tries to use the company for his own ends, fearing that otherwise he will be “totally emasculated by the corporation.” He avoids intimacy as a trap, preferring the “exciting, sexy atmosphere” with which the modern executive surrounds himself at work, “where adoring, mini-skirted secretaries constantly flirt with him.” In all his personal relations, the gamesman depends on the admiration or fear he inspires in others to certify his credentials as a “winner.” As he gets older, he finds it more and more difficult to command the kind of attention on which he thrives. He reaches a plateau beyond which he does not advance in his job, perhaps because the very highest positions, as Maccoby notes, still go to “those able to renounce adolescent rebelliousness and become at least to some extent believers in the organization.” The job begins to lose its savor. Having little interest in craftsmanship, the new-style executive takes no pleasure in his achievements once he begins to lose the adolescent charm on which they rest. Middle age hits him with the force of a disaster: “Once his youth, vigor, and even the thrill in winning are lost, he becomes depressed and goalless, questioning the purpose of his life. No longer energized by the team struggle and unable to dedicate himself to something he believes in beyond himself, … he finds himself starkly alone.” It is not surprising, given the prevalence of this career pattern, that popular psychology returns so often to the “midlife crisis” and to ways of combating it.
In Wilfrid Sheed’s novel Office Politics, a wife asks, “There are real issues, aren’t there, between Mr. Fine and Mr. Tyler?” Her husband answers that the issues are trivial; “the jockeying of ego is the real story.” Eugene Emerson Jennings’s study of management, which celebrates the demise of the organization man and the advent of the new “era of mobility,” insists that corporate “mobility is more than mere job performance.” What counts is “style…panache…the ability to say and do almost anything without antagonizing others.” The upwardly mobile executive, according to Jennings, knows how to handle the people around him - the “shelf-sitter” who suffers from “arrested mobility” and envies success; the “fast learner”; the “mobile superior.” The “mobility-bright executive” has learned to “read” the power relations in his office and “to see the less visible and less audible side of his superiors, chiefly their standing with their peers and superiors.” He “Can infer from a minimum of cues who are the centers of power, and he seeks to have high visibility and exposure with them. He will assiduously cultivate his standing and opportunities with them and seize every opportunity to learn from them. He will utilize his opportunities in social world to size up the men who are centers of sponsorship in the corporate world.”
Constantly comparing the “executive success game” to an athletic contest or a game of chess, Jennings treats the substance of executive life as if it were just as arbitrarily and irrelevant to success as the task of kicking a ball through a net or of moving pieces over a chessboard. He never mentions the social and economic repercussions of managerial decisions or the power that managers exercise over society as a whole. For the corporate manager on the make, power consists not of money and influence but of “momentum,” a “winning image,” a reputation as a winner
The manager’s view of the world, as described by Jennings, Maccoby, and by the managers themselves, is that of the narcissist, who sees the world as a mirror of himself and has no interest in external events except as they throw back a reflection of his own image. The dense interpersonal environment of modern bureaucracy, in which work assumes an abstract quality almost wholly divorced from performance, by its very nature elicits and often rewards a narcissistic response. Bureaucracy, however, is only one of a number of social influences that are bringing a narcissistic type of personality organization into greater and greater prominence. Another such influence is the mechanical reproduction of culture, the proliferation of visual and audial images in the “society of the spectacle.” We live in a swirl of images and echoes that arrest experience and play it back in slow motion. Cameras and recording machines not only transcribe experience but alter its quality, giving to much of modern life that character of an enormous echo chamber, a hall of mirrors. Life presents itself as a succession of images of electronic signals, of impressions recorded and reproduced by means of photography, motion pictures, television, and sophisticated recording devices. Modern life is thoroughly mediated by electronic images that we cannot help responding to others as if their actions - and our own - were being recorded and simultaneously transmitted to an unseen audience or stored up for close scrutiny at some later time. “Smile, you’re on candid camera!” The intrusion into everyday life of this all-seeing eye no longer takes us by surprise or catches us with our defenses down. We need no reminder to smile. A smile is permanently graven on our features, and we already known from which of several angles its photographs to best advantage.
The proliferation of recorded images undermines our sense of reality. As Susan Sontag observes in her study of photography, “Reality has come to seem more and more like what we are shown by cameras.” We distrust our perceptions until the camera verifies them. Photographic images provide us with the proof of our existence, without which we would find it difficult even to reconstruct a personal history. Bourgeois families in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Sontag points out, posed for portraits in order to proclaim the family’s status, whereas today the family album of photographs verifies the individual’s existence: its documentary record of his development from infancy onward provides him with the only evidence of his life that he recognizes as altogether valid. Among the “many narcissistic uses” that Sontag attributes to the camera, “self-surveillance” ranks among the most important, not only because it provides the technical means of ceaseless self-scrutiny but because it renders the sense of selfhood dependent on the consumption of images of the self, at the same time calling into question the reality of the external world.
By preserving images of the self at various stages of development, the camera helps to weaken the older idea of development as moral education and to promote a more passive idea according to which development consists of passing through the stages of life at the right time and in the right order. Current fascination with the life cycle embodies an awareness that success in politics or business depends on reaching certain goals on schedule; but it also reflects the ease with which developments can be electronically recorded. This brings us to another cultural change that elicits a widespread narcissistic response and, in this case, gives it a philosophical sanction: the emergence of a therapeutic ideology that upholds a normative schedule of psychosocial development and thus gives further encouragement to anxious self-scrutiny. The idea of normative development creates the fear that any deviation from the norm has a pathological source. Doctors have made a cult of periodic checkup - an investigation carried out once again by means of cameras and other recording instruments - and have implanted in their clients the notion that health depends on eternal watchfulness and the early detection of symptoms, as verified by medical technology. The client no longer feels physically or psychologically secure until his X-rays confirm a “clean bill of health.”
Medicine and psychiatry - more generally, the therapeutic outlook and sensibility that pervade modern society - reinforce the pattern created by other cultural influences, in which the individual endlessly examines himself for signs of aging and ill health, for tell-tale symptoms of psychic stress, for blemishes and flaws that might diminish his attractiveness, or on the other hand for reassuring indications that his life is proceeding according to schedule. Modern medicine has conquered the plagues and epidemics that once made life so precarious, only to create new forms of insecurity. In the same way, bureaucracy has made life predictable and even boring while reviving, in a new form, the war of all against all. Our overorganized society, in which large-scale organizations predominate but have lost the capacity to command allegiance, in some respects more nearly approximates a condition of universal animosity than did the primitive capitalism on which Hobbes managed his state of nature. Social conditions today encourage a survival mentality, expressed in its crudest form in disaster movies or in fantasies of space travel, which allow vicarious escape from a doomed planet. People no longer dream of overcoming difficulties but merely of surviving them. In business, according to Jennings, “The struggle is to survive emotionally” -to “preserve or enhance one’s identity or ego.” The normative concept of developmental stages promotes a view of life as an obstacle course: the aim is simply to get through the course with a minimum of trouble and pain. The ability to manipulate what Gail Sheehy refers to, using a medical metaphor, as “life-support systems” now appears to represent the highest form of wisdom: the knowledge that gets us through, as she puts it, without panic. Those who master Sheehy’s “no-panic approach to aging” and to the traumas of the life cycle will be able to say, in the words of one of her subjects, “I know I can survive… I don’t panic any more.” This is hardly an exalted form of satisfaction, however. “The current ideology,” Sheehy writes, “seems a mix of personal survivalism, revivalism, and cynicism”; yet her enormously popular guide to the “predictable crises of adult life,” with its superficially optimistic hymn to growth, development, and “self-actualization,” does not challenge this ideology, merely restates it in more “humanistic” form. “Growth” has become a euphemism for survival.
The World View of the Resigned
New social forms require new forms of personality, new modes of socialization, new ways of organizing experience. The concept of narcissism provides us not with a ready-made psychological determinism but with a way of understanding the psychological impact of recent social changes - assuming that we bear in mind not only its clinical origins but the continuum between pathology and normality. It provides us, in other words, with a tolerably accurate portrait of the “liberated” personality of our time, with his charm, his pseudo-awareness of his own condition, his promiscuous pansexuality, his fascination with oral sex, his fear of the castrating mother (Mrs. Portnoy), his hypochondria, his protective shallowness, his avoidance of dependence, his inability to mourn, his dread of old age and death.
Narcissism appears realistically to represent the best way of coping with the tensions and anxieties of modern life, and the prevailing social conditions therefore tend to bring out narcissistic traits that are present, in varying degrees, in everyone. These condition have also transformed the family, which in turn shapes the underlying structure of personality. A society that dears it has no future is not likely to give much attention to the needs of the next generation, and the ever-present sense of historical discontinuity - the blight of our society - falls with particularly devastating effect on the family. The modern parent’s attempt to make children feel loved and wanted does not conceal an underlying coolness - the remoteness of those who have little to pass on the next generation and who in any case give priority to their own right to self-fulfillment. The combination of emotional detachment with attempts to convince a child of his favored position in the family is a good prescription for a narcissistic personality structure.
Through the intermediary of the family, social patterns reproduce themselves in personality. Social arrangements live on in the individual, buried in the mind below the level of consciousness, even after they have become objectively undesirable and unnecessary - as many of our present arrangements are now widely acknowledged to have become. The perception of the world as a dangerous and forbidding place, though it originates in a realistic awareness of the insecurity of contemporary social life, receives reinforcement from the narcissistic projection of aggressive impulses outward. The belief that society has no future, while it rests on a certain realism about the dangers ahead, also incorporates a narcissistic inability to identify with posterity or to feel one self part of a historical stream.
The weakening of social ties, which originates in the prevailing state of social warfare, at the same time reflects a narcissistic defense against dependence. A warlike society tends to produce men and women who are at heart antisocial. It should therefore not surprise us to find that although the narcissist conforms to social norms for fear of external retribution, he often thinks of himself as an outlaw and sees others in the same way, “as basically dishonest and unreliable, or only reliable because of external pressures.” “The value systems of narcissistic personalities are generally corruptible,” writes Kernberg, “in contrast to the rigid morality of the obsessive personality.”
The ethic of self-preservation and psychic survival is rooted, then, not merely in objective conditions of economic warfare, rising rates of crime, and social chaos but in the subjective experience of emptiness and isolation. It reflects the conviction - as much a projection of inner anxieties as a perception of the way things are - that envy and exploitation dominate even the most intimate relations. The cult of personal relations, which becomes increasingly intense as the hope of political solutions recedes, conceals a thoroughgoing disenchantment with personal relations, just as the cult of sensuality implies a repudiation of sensuality in all but its most primitive forms. The ideology of personal growth, superficially optimistic, radiates a profound despair and resignation. It is the faith of those without faith.
2024.05.16 05:01 como365 50-hour filibuster forces more negotiations on GOP-backed initiative petition changes • “Are the bullies going to win?” Rizzo asked. “Or is the rest of the Senate finally going to stand up for itself and say ‘no more.’”
 | A 50-hour Democratic filibuster forced the Senate’s divided GOP majority to finally yield Wednesday evening, stalling a vote on a bill seeking to make it more difficult to amend Missouri’s constitution. submitted by como365 to missouri [link] [comments] Democrats have blocked all action in the Senate since Monday afternoon, demanding that the legislation be stripped of “ballot candy” that would bar non-citizens from voting and ban foreign entities from contributing to or sponsoring constitutional amendments, both of which are already illegal. The Senate passed the bill without ballot candy in February. The House added it back last month. Senate Minority Leader John Rizzo, an Independence Democrat, on Tuesday said the situation presented an existential crisis for the Senate, as Republicans openly considered a rarely-used maneuver to kill the filibuster and force a vote on the bill. “Are the bullies going to win?” Rizzo asked. “Or is the rest of the Senate finally going to stand up for itself and say ‘no more.’” He got an answer just before 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, when state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, an Arnold Republican and the bill’s sponsor, surprised many of her colleagues by asking that the Senate send the bill back to the House for more negotiations on whether to include “ballot candy.” Republicans simply didn’t have the votes to kill the filibuster, she said, and Democrats showed no signs of relenting before session ends at 6 p.m. Friday. “These policies are too important to play political games with,” Coleman said, adding that going to conference to work out a deal with the House was the only way to keep it alive in the face of unrelenting Democratic opposition. “In a perfect world, we would not be between a rock and a hard place.” The sudden change in tactics was not well-taken by members of the Freedom Caucus, who argued sending the bill back to the House with only two days left before adjournment puts its chances at risk. Tim Jones, a former Missouri House speaker and current director of the state’s Freedom Caucus, wrote on social media Thursday evening that Coleman “effectively killed her own bill today.” Ultimately, the Senate voted 18-13 to send the bill to conference, with nine Republicans joining nine Democrats in support of the move. If the bill passes, Missourians would have the opportunity to vote later this year on whether or not to require constitutional amendments be approved by both a majority of votes statewide and a majority of votes in five of the state’s eight congressional districts. Right now, amendments pass with a simple majority. A possible vote on abortion in November is a catalyst behind the battle over the bill, as a campaign to legalize abortion up to the point of fetal viability is on the path to the statewide ballot. Republicans have said that without raising the threshold for changing the state’s constitution, a constitutional right to abortion will likely become the law of the land in Missouri. State Sen. Rick Brattin, a Harrisonville Republican and a member of the Freedom Caucus, tipped his hat to the Democrats’ “wherewithal” before scorning some of his Republican colleagues. “Unfortunately, this Republican Party has no backbone to fight for what is right for life,” he shouted from the Senate floor. “ … They will have the blood of the innocent on their heads. Shame on this party.” Coleman’s move also came as a surprise to state Rep. Alex Riley, a Republican from Springfield who sponsored the initiative petition bill in the House. “We’re going to have to have some conversations tonight to figure out what exactly it is they have in mind,” he said. “We will be having many conversations over the next few hours.” House Speaker Dean Plocher said he was pleased to see the impasse broken, adding that the House is ready to work on a final version that can be passed. He didn’t promise to remove the “ballot candy” added by the House. Asked if Coleman made a tactical mistake in telling the House to restore the items removed during the first Democratic filibuster, Plocher said he hadn’t spoken to Coleman and declined to speculate on whether the outcome would have been different had she not. Democrats left the Senate Wednesday evening declaring victory. “This body by and large is a staunch supporter of democracy. That doesn’t just go for one side of the isle. That goes for both sides,” Rizzo said. “This is not protecting the ballot for Democrats or Republicans or one issue or the other issue that you might like or dislike. This protects the ballot box for Republicans and Democrats alike for the future.” Rizzo maintained that removing the ballot candy is still the only way Democrats will allow the bill to get through the Senate if it returns from the House. “If you haven’t figured that out in the last three or four days, I don’t know where you’ve been,” Rizzo said, adding: “Hopefully sleeping.” As the Senate prepared to vote, state Sen. Bill Eigel, a Weldon Spring Republican and Freedom Caucus member, warned his colleagues not to be optimistic that the Senate will come back Thursday and pass other bills waiting in the pipeline. “If the hope is that this process is going to somehow lead us back to a place of engaging more legislation besides this, I’m gonna say this very clearly,” he said. “Don’t get your hopes up.” |
2024.05.16 04:56 Sweet-Count2557 10 Tips for a Relaxing Maldives Resort Stay for Reluctant Travelers
 | 10 Tips for a Relaxing Maldives Resort Stay for Reluctant Travelers As we explore the realm of travel, it's intriguing to note that despite the allure of the Maldives' pristine beaches and luxurious resorts, many individuals may find themselves hesitant to embark on such a journey.However, with our ten expert tips crafted specifically for reluctant travelers, we aim to provide a comprehensive guide that transforms apprehension into anticipation.Let's uncover the secrets to a truly relaxing Maldives resort stay that caters to even the most hesitant of wanderers.Key TakeawaysPrioritize private villas and overwater accommodations for a secluded stay.Engage in beach activities and spa treatments to embrace relaxation.Opt for all-inclusive packages for worry-free luxury and convenience.Explore beyond the resort for unique experiences and hidden gems.Choosing the Right ResortWhen searching for the perfect Maldives resort for a relaxing getaway, it's crucial to prioritize factors like private villas, overwater accommodations, and exclusive amenities. A resort like Velassaru Maldives fits the bill, offering luxurious private villas where you can unwind in seclusion. These private villas provide the perfect sanctuary for a peaceful retreat, allowing you to enjoy the stunning views of the crystal-clear waters right from your doorstep. Additionally, resorts like JOALI BEING cater to the wellness-focused traveler, with integrated wellness programs and rejuvenating spa experiences that will leave you feeling refreshed and revitalized.In terms of dining options, it's essential to choose a resort that offers diverse culinary experiences. Look for resorts that not only serve delicious and healthy dishes but also provide a wide range of options to cater to different tastes. Whether you're craving fresh seafood by the beach or a gourmet meal under the stars, a resort with diverse dining options like JOALI BEING will ensure that your taste buds are always satisfied.Moreover, when selecting a Maldives resort, safety should be a top priority. Ensure that the resort you choose emphasizes safety protocols such as social distancing and mask-wearing to provide you with a worry-free and relaxing experience. By considering these factors, you can make sure that your Maldives getaway is everything you dreamed of and more.Embracing Island TimeEmbracing the tranquil rhythm of island time in the Maldives allows for a seamless transition into a world where relaxation and serenity reign supreme. The Maldives, with its paradisiacal setting, invites visitors to unwind and let go of the stresses of everyday life. Here are a few ways to fully embrace the relaxed pace and tranquil atmosphere of the Maldives:Immersing Yourself in Leisurely Days: Take advantage of the unhurried pace by indulging in beach activities, such as snorkeling or simply lounging by the crystal-clear waters. These leisurely days are perfect for unwinding and enjoying the serene beauty of the Maldives.Savoring Spa Treatments: Treat yourself to a pampering session at one of the many luxurious spas in the Maldives. From relaxing massages to rejuvenating facials, these treatments will help you reach the pinnacle of relaxation amidst the island's tranquil surroundings.Enjoying Serene Moments in Nature: Whether it's watching a breathtaking sunset, strolling along the powdery white sand beaches, or listening to the gentle lull of the waves, savoring these serene moments in nature is an integral part of embracing island time in the Maldives.Opting for All-Inclusive PackagesOpting for all-inclusive packages in the Maldives ensures a hassle-free and indulgent experience, covering accommodation, meals, drinks, and activities for a truly relaxing getaway. These packages provide a sense of security and convenience, allowing guests to unwind and enjoy their stay without fretting about additional costs. Here is a breakdown of what you can typically expect from an all-inclusive package in the Maldives:InclusionsDetailsBenefitsAccommodationLuxurious overwater villas or beachfront bungalowsUninterrupted relaxation in a stunning settingMealsGourmet dining options with international cuisinesCulinary delights without worrying about the billDrinksUnlimited beverages, including alcoholic drinksEnjoy tropical cocktails by the beach without extra chargesActivitiesWater sports, snorkeling, sunset cruises, and moreExciting adventures to make the most of your stayThese packages offer a worry-free vacation where guests can focus on rejuvenation without the need to constantly make decisions or pay for extras. Indulge in unlimited food and beverages, explore the underwater wonders, or simply lounge by the pristine beaches – all included in your package. With everything taken care of, all you need to do is relax and soak in the beauty of the Maldives.Exploring Beyond the ResortVenture beyond the confines of your resort to discover the authentic charm and diverse experiences awaiting in the Maldives. Exploring beyond the resort opens up a world of opportunities to immerse yourself in the beauty and culture of this stunning destination.Local Islands: Explore local islands like Maafushi and Guraidhoo to get a taste of Maldivian culture and experience daily island life firsthand.Diving Experience: Visit the Maldives Victory wreck site for a unique diving experience that not only allows you to explore underwater wonders but also offers a glimpse into the country's rich history.Capital City: Take a day trip to Male, the capital city, to wander through markets, visit landmarks like the Grand Friday Mosque, and indulge in local cuisine for a true Maldivian experience.Whether you're into water sports, guided excursions, or simply seeking to uncover hidden gems, stepping beyond the resort boundaries will introduce you to a whole new side of the Maldives. Don't miss out on the chance to explore the vibrant marine life through activities like snorkeling, diving, and fishing, or to journey to uninhabited islands for a secluded beach experience and witness untouched natural beauty.Mindful Relaxation PracticesHow can we incorporate mindfulness practices to enhance relaxation during our stay at a Maldives resort?One way to promote relaxation is by engaging in deep breathing exercises. Find a quiet spot on the beach, close your eyes, and take slow, deep breaths to center yourself and let go of any tension.Another effective practice is meditation. Set aside some time each day to meditate, focusing on the present moment and letting go of any stressful thoughts.Additionally, participating in gentle yoga sessions on the beach can help you unwind and destress. The combination of the soothing ocean waves and the calming yoga poses can create a serene environment for relaxation.To further enhance your relaxation, indulge in the spa treatments offered at the resort. Treat yourself to massages, facials, or body scrubs to rejuvenate your mind and body. The therapeutic touch and calming ambiance of the spa can elevate your relaxation experience.Moreover, take leisurely walks along the pristine beaches or simply relax in a hammock while listening to the sound of the waves. Disconnecting from technology and immersing yourself in the natural beauty of the Maldives can help you truly unwind and recharge.Packing Light and SmartLet's streamline our relaxation experience by packing light and smart for our Maldives resort stay. When it comes to packing light, focusing on the essentials is key. Here are a few tips to ensure you're prepared without overpacking:Swimsuits: Given that you'll likely spend most of your time in the water or on the beach, packing a few swimsuits is a must. Opt for versatile pieces that you can mix and match for different looks.Sunscreen: Protecting your skin from the sun is crucial, especially in a tropical destination like the Maldives. Consider bringing reef-safe sunscreen to not only safeguard your skin but also the marine environment.Curly Hair Care: Embrace your natural curls during your stay and keep your hair routine simple. Pack the necessary products to manage and enhance your curls in the humid weather.Respecting Local CustomsRespecting local customs in the Maldives entails dressing modestly and being mindful of cultural norms to ensure a harmonious experience during your stay. It's important to cover your shoulders, chest, and knees when venturing outside resort islands to show respect for local customs. Avoiding public displays of affection is also crucial to adhere to cultural norms on local islands. Additionally, alcohol consumption is restricted to resort islands only, in compliance with Maldivian regulations.To have a pleasant and respectful stay, it's essential to understand and follow the local rules. By being aware of and respecting cultural sensitivities, you not only show respect but also demonstrate appreciation for the Maldivian way of life. Embracing these customs not only enhances your experience but also fosters positive interactions with locals and fellow travelers.Navigating Transportation HasslesNavigating transportation in the Maldives can be an exciting part of your journey, with seaplanes and boats commonly used to travel from Male to resort islands. Understanding the logistics of island transfers can help make your travel experience smoother and more enjoyable.Seaplanes and Boats: Seaplanes are a popular and picturesque mode of transportation from Male to resort islands. Boats are also commonly used for transfers, especially to islands closer to the capital.Transportation Costs: Seaplane costs typically range from $200 to $600 round trip, depending on the distance to the resort island. It's essential to factor in these costs when planning your trip budget.Resort Coordination: Coordinating with your resort for island transfers can simplify the transportation process. Many resorts offer package deals that include transportation from Male to the island, so be sure to inquire about these options when booking your stay.Navigating transportation in the Maldives may seem daunting at first, but with a bit of preparation and understanding of the available options, you can make the journey from Male to your resort island a seamless and enjoyable part of your overall travel experience.Enjoying Water ActivitiesExploring the stunning aquatic wonders of the Maldives adds a thrilling dimension to our resort stay. The crystal-clear waters beckon us to immerse ourselves in vibrant marine life through activities like snorkeling and diving. For a more leisurely experience, we can opt for kayaking and paddleboarding, allowing us to unwind while soaking in the picturesque views surrounding us. These serene moments on the water offer a peaceful escape from the hustle and bustle of everyday life.If seeking a bit of adventure, windsurfing and parasailing provide an exhilarating twist during our time at the resort. Feeling the wind in our hair and the rush of excitement as we glide over the turquoise waters is sure to create lasting memories. On the other hand, a leisurely swim in the calm lagoons or simply lounging on the pristine white-sand beaches offer moments of pure relaxation and tranquility.As the day transitions into evening, indulging in sunset cruises or joining fishing excursions can provide a tranquil and memorable experience. Watching the sun dip below the horizon while gently cruising along the Maldivian waters is a perfect way to unwind and appreciate the natural beauty that surrounds us. Whether seeking relaxation or adventure, the water activities in the Maldives cater to all preferences, ensuring a truly unforgettable stay.Unwinding With Spa TreatmentsAfter a day of thrilling water activities, unwinding with spa treatments in the Maldives is the perfect way to rejuvenate and relax. Spa treatments in this luxurious destination offer a range of relaxing experiences, from massages to facials, all set in serene and tranquil surroundings. Specialized spa therapists are on hand to provide customized treatments tailored to individual needs and preferences, ensuring the ultimate relaxation experience. Many resorts in the Maldives boast world-class spas equipped with luxurious amenities such as hydrotherapy pools, sauna rooms, and private treatment rooms, adding an extra touch of indulgence to your wellness journey.Customized Treatments: Specialized spa therapists offer personalized treatments tailored to your specific needs and preferences, ensuring a truly relaxing experience.Luxurious Amenities: Enjoy the lavish facilities of Maldivian spas, including hydrotherapy pools, sauna rooms, and private treatment rooms, adding to the overall sense of relaxation and rejuvenation.Holistic Wellness: Indulge in signature spa rituals inspired by local traditions and ingredients, promoting holistic wellness and leaving you feeling refreshed and invigorated.Immerse yourself in the soothing sounds of the ocean and gentle sea breeze that enhance the spa experience, creating a peaceful oasis for unwinding and de-stressing in the Maldives.Frequently Asked QuestionsWhat Are the Do's and Don'ts in the Maldives?When visiting the Maldives, it's important to be mindful of beach etiquette, local customs, dress codes, and language barriers. Following these guidelines will help you navigate the cultural norms with ease.Remember to cover up appropriately, respect the designated beach areas, and avoid public displays of affection. By showing respect for the local customs and sensitivities, you can ensure a smooth and enjoyable experience during your stay in the Maldives.Should You Stay at an All Inclusive in the Maldives?Why miss out on the convenience of an all-inclusive stay in the Maldives? With budget options, local cuisine, water activities, private villas, and sunset views all included, it's a stress-free way to unwind.We find that staying at an all-inclusive resort lets us relax and fully enjoy the beauty of the Maldives without worrying about extra costs.What Do I Need to Know Before Going to Maldives?Before going to the Maldives, we recommend packing essentials like sunscreen, light clothing, and swimwear. Respect cultural etiquette by dressing modestly on local islands.Try local cuisine like mas huni and hedhikaa for a true taste of Maldivian flavors.Transportation options include speedboats and seaplanes to hop between islands easily.Consider weather conditions for the best time to visit and enjoy your stay in this tropical paradise.Which Part of Maldives Is the Best to Stay?When choosing where to stay in the Maldives, the best part for a relaxing getaway is the South Male Atoll. This area offers beachfront villas, overwater bungalows, and private islands, perfect for secluded retreats.You can also enjoy local experiences like snorkeling in beautiful coral reefs. South Male Atoll is easily accessible from Male International Airport, making it a convenient choice for a tranquil and luxurious vacation.ConclusionAs we set sail from the tranquil shores of the Maldives, let's remember that just as the ocean ebbs and flows, so too does our need for relaxation and rejuvenation. By following these ten tips, we've unlocked the treasure trove of serenity that this paradise has to offer.May we carry the calmness of these crystal clear waters with us, wherever our journey may take us.Bon voyage! submitted by Sweet-Count2557 to worldkidstravel [link] [comments] |
2024.05.16 04:55 Bishop-Boomer Bible Studies From The Daily Office Thursday, May 16, 2024
The Collect
O God, the King of glory, you have exalted your only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph to your kingdom in heaven: Do not leave us comfortless, but send us your Holy Spirit to strengthen us, and exalt us to that place where our Savior Christ has gone before; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.
Readings:
Psalm 105:1–22 Zechariah 4
Gospel: Matthew 9:1–8
1 And he entered into a ship, and passed over, and came into his own city.
2 And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy;Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.
3 And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth.
4 And Jesus knowing their thoughts said,Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts?
5For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk?
6But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins,(then saith he to the sick of the palsy,)Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.
7 And he arose, and departed to his house.
8 But when the multitudes saw it, they marvelled, and glorified God, which had given such power unto men.
Commentary:
“And he entered into a ship, and passed over, and came into his own city.” (v. 1) Here in these verses, we find a strange if not ironic comparison. On the one side we have those that find his miracles awe inspiring, or as we find in verse 8 where Matthew states in reference to the multitude following and who had witnessed Jesus’ miracles: “theymarvelled, and glorified God.” And on the other hand we see those who hate Jesus, because he dares to upset the status quo that they so coveted.
At the end of the previous chapter, Matthew tells us of his version of Jesus exorcising demons from two men (other Gospels only mention one) on the coast of the Sea of Galilee nearGadarene.As you recall fromother studies, Jesus cast out the demons, who then fled from him, entering into a herd of swine, causing the pigs to run into the sea and drown. The citizens ofGadarenes—upset at the loss of theirswine—asked Jesus to leave. Which brings us toour first verse for today inwhichMatthewtells usJesusagain crossed over the Sea tohis own city,Capernaum;where:
“And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy;Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth.” (v. 2-3)
“they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed” Other Gospels explain how the man was brought to Jesus. Because of the crowds, his friends lowered him down to Jesus througha hole inthe roof.
“Jesus’ miracles were not primarily calculated for crowd effect. Instead they were primarily done to minister to the humble needs of humble people. For the most part, most Jewish people of that time would have preferred much more spectacular signs – like calling down fire from heaven upon a Roman Legion.” (Guzik)
“and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy” Jesus was impressed by the faith of the friends of this man. The phrase: “seeing their faith” demonstrates that their faith was so great that they carried this man through the crowds to bring him before Jesus. Again in the other Gospels, (Mark 2:1-12, Luke 5:17-26) we find that their faith was so great, that their belief that Jesus could heal their friend was so strong that when they could not press through the multitude gathered outside, they carried him up onto the roof of the house in which Jesus was in at the time, they tore a hole in the roof and lowered the man down into the midst of the gathering who had come to hear Jesus speak.
We also can assume that the paralyzed man himself had little faith; as Matthew emphasizes “seeing their faith” in that Jesus noted the faith of his friends, not the man with palsy. Therefore it appears that Jesus wanted to encourage this man’s faith by His next words.
“Son, be of good cheer” “With swift sure diagnosis Jesus sees in the man not faith but deep depression…and uttering first a kindly hope-inspiring word, such as a physician might address to a patient: cheer up, child!” (Bruce)
“thy sins be forgiven thee.” “The faith of the paralyzed man’s friends did something – they brought this man to Jesus. Yet they only thought of bringing him to Jesus for the healing of his body. They certainly didn’t think that Jesus would forgive His sins.” (Guzik)
We need not infer that the man was paralyzed as the direct result of some sin that needed forgiving. This did not seem to be Jesus’ point in saying, “your sins are forgiven you.”
Matthew Poole saw six reasons why Jesus dealt with the man’s sin first. To paraphrase Poole’s reasons why the sin was dealt with first:
“And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth.” (v. 3)
“They said within themselves, in their hearts, among themselves, in their secret whisperings, This man blasphemeth. See how the greatest instance of heaven's power and grace is branded with the blackest note of hell's enmity; Christ's pardoning sin is termed blasphemy; nor had it been less, if he had not had commission from God for it. They, therefore, are guilty of blasphemy, that have no such commission, and yet pretend to pardon sin.” (Henry)
“certain of the scribes” Not all but a select few; “said within themselves” They didn’t have the courage to speak aloud their treasonous thoughts, which exposedtheir irrational belief that Jesus is but a man, one of their own,Jesushaving spent an indeterminate period of time in Capernaumbefore beginning his ministry.
In John chapter three, verse 2, Nicodemus the Pharisee came under cover of night so that his peers would not see him conversing with Jesus, and he said, “Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him. ”Itshould have been evident, that no mortal man could do the miraculous healings that Jesus did, unless he be sent by God.Nicodemus and presumably others were not so blind that they could not see that Jesus had authority given to him by God, but yet these scribes in Capernaum chose to ignore the obvious and focus on what they perceived to be an infraction of the Law.
While the friends of the sick man had a great deal of faith, enough to touch the heart of Jesus, the scribes had no faith, and could not see something as obvious as Jesus having authority given him by God to heal and to forgive sins. No, they had to be showed the divinity of Christ.
“ He undertakes to make out, that the Son of man, the Mediator, has power on earth to forgive sins; for therefore the Father has committed all judgment to the Son, and has given him this authority, because he is the Son of man, Jn. 5:22, 27. If he has power to give eternal life, as he certainly has (Jn. 17:2), he must have power to forgive sin; for guilt is a bar that must be removed, or we can never get to heaven. What an encouragement is this to poor sinners to repent, that the power of pardoning sin is put into the hands of the Son of man, who is bone of our bone! And if he had this power on earth, much more now that he is exalted to the Father's right hand, to give repentance and remission of sins, and so to be both a Prince and a Saviour,” (Henry)
“And Jesus knowing their thoughts said,Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts? For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins,(then saith he to the sick of the palsy,)Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.” (vs. 4-6)
“How he proves it, by his power in the kingdom of nature; his power to cure diseases. Is it not as easy to say, Thy sins are forgiven thee, as to say, Arise and walk? He that can cure the disease, whether declaratively as a Prophet, or authoritatively as God, can, in like manner, forgive the sin. Now, This is a general argument to prove that Christ had a divine mission. His miracles, especially his miraculous cures, confirm what he said of himself, that he was the Son of God; the power that appeared in his cures proved him sent of God; and the pity that appeared in them proved him sent of God to heal and save. The God of truth would not set his seal to a lie.” (Ibid)
“And Jesus knowing their thoughtsWherefore think ye evil in your hearts?” This alone should have told them they where in the presence of someone with great power and authority.
“For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk?” “Both healing and forgiveness are impossible with man. Yet only the promise of healing could be immediately proven, because though you can’t see someone’s sin being forgiven, you can see that they are healed.” (Guzik)
“This appears to have been founded on Psalm 103:3. Who forgiveth all thine iniquities, and healeth all thy diseases. Here pardon precedes health.” (Clarke)
“But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins” Regarding which is easier to say, “Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk” Jesus answered His own question before the religious leaders did. Since He could make good on His claim to heal the man, it gave proof of His claim to also have the authority to forgive sins.If he had the Godly power to heal, then logically he must also have the power to forgive sins.
“And he arose, and departed to his house. But when the multitudes saw it, they marveled, and glorified God, which had given such power unto men.” (vs. 7-8) At the man’s healing, the crowd properly gave God the glory for this miracle. Jesus obviously did not draw attention to Himself by the manner in which the healing was done.
At the beginning of this study, we mentioned how the men of Gadarene, were upset that Jesus had exorcised the demons and those entities drove the herd of swine mad and they ran into the sea. These men seemed obvious to the fact that Jesus had cured the possessed men, something an ordinary man could not do. Likewise the scribes of Capernium were oblivious to the many healings Jesus had done, acts that only God could do, and they chose to focus on Jesus having pronounced the sick man’s sins forgiven. However while the men of Gadarene and the scribes of Capernium ignored the divinity of Jesus, we see the people in awe and worshiping God, for having sent his own into their midst.
In the beginning of his Gospel John makes the case in an eloquent and poetic prose that Jesus was with God from the beginning of time, a part of God. Here we see Matthew attempting to make the same argument by illustrating how Jesus demonstrated his divinity and authority by healing and forgiving sins; again obvious acts that only God could authorize.
“ Note, All our wonder should help to enlarge our hearts in glorifying God, who alone does marvellous things. They glorified God for what he had done for this poor man. Others' mercies should be our praises, and we should give him thanks for them, for we are members one of another. God must be glorified in all the power that is given to men to do good.” (Henry)Benediction
Everliving God, whose will it is that all should come to you through your Son Jesus Christ: Inspire our witness to him, that all may know the power of his forgiveness and the hope of his resurrection; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Thought for the Day:
Prayer is the risen Jesus coming in with His resurrection power, given free rein in our lives, and then using His authority to enter any situation and change things.
submitted by Bishop-Boomer to ChristianityUnfilter [link] [comments]
O God, the King of glory, you have exalted your only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph to your kingdom in heaven: Do not leave us comfortless, but send us your Holy Spirit to strengthen us, and exalt us to that place where our Savior Christ has gone before; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.
Readings:
Psalm 105:1–22 Zechariah 4
Gospel: Matthew 9:1–8
1 And he entered into a ship, and passed over, and came into his own city.
2 And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy;Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.
3 And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth.
4 And Jesus knowing their thoughts said,Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts?
5For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk?
6But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins,(then saith he to the sick of the palsy,)Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.
7 And he arose, and departed to his house.
8 But when the multitudes saw it, they marvelled, and glorified God, which had given such power unto men.
Commentary:
“And he entered into a ship, and passed over, and came into his own city.” (v. 1) Here in these verses, we find a strange if not ironic comparison. On the one side we have those that find his miracles awe inspiring, or as we find in verse 8 where Matthew states in reference to the multitude following and who had witnessed Jesus’ miracles: “theymarvelled, and glorified God.” And on the other hand we see those who hate Jesus, because he dares to upset the status quo that they so coveted.
At the end of the previous chapter, Matthew tells us of his version of Jesus exorcising demons from two men (other Gospels only mention one) on the coast of the Sea of Galilee nearGadarene.As you recall fromother studies, Jesus cast out the demons, who then fled from him, entering into a herd of swine, causing the pigs to run into the sea and drown. The citizens ofGadarenes—upset at the loss of theirswine—asked Jesus to leave. Which brings us toour first verse for today inwhichMatthewtells usJesusagain crossed over the Sea tohis own city,Capernaum;where:
“And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy;Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth.” (v. 2-3)
“they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed” Other Gospels explain how the man was brought to Jesus. Because of the crowds, his friends lowered him down to Jesus througha hole inthe roof.
“Jesus’ miracles were not primarily calculated for crowd effect. Instead they were primarily done to minister to the humble needs of humble people. For the most part, most Jewish people of that time would have preferred much more spectacular signs – like calling down fire from heaven upon a Roman Legion.” (Guzik)
“and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy” Jesus was impressed by the faith of the friends of this man. The phrase: “seeing their faith” demonstrates that their faith was so great that they carried this man through the crowds to bring him before Jesus. Again in the other Gospels, (Mark 2:1-12, Luke 5:17-26) we find that their faith was so great, that their belief that Jesus could heal their friend was so strong that when they could not press through the multitude gathered outside, they carried him up onto the roof of the house in which Jesus was in at the time, they tore a hole in the roof and lowered the man down into the midst of the gathering who had come to hear Jesus speak.
We also can assume that the paralyzed man himself had little faith; as Matthew emphasizes “seeing their faith” in that Jesus noted the faith of his friends, not the man with palsy. Therefore it appears that Jesus wanted to encourage this man’s faith by His next words.
“Son, be of good cheer” “With swift sure diagnosis Jesus sees in the man not faith but deep depression…and uttering first a kindly hope-inspiring word, such as a physician might address to a patient: cheer up, child!” (Bruce)
“thy sins be forgiven thee.” “The faith of the paralyzed man’s friends did something – they brought this man to Jesus. Yet they only thought of bringing him to Jesus for the healing of his body. They certainly didn’t think that Jesus would forgive His sins.” (Guzik)
We need not infer that the man was paralyzed as the direct result of some sin that needed forgiving. This did not seem to be Jesus’ point in saying, “your sins are forgiven you.”
Matthew Poole saw six reasons why Jesus dealt with the man’s sin first. To paraphrase Poole’s reasons why the sin was dealt with first:
- Because sin is the root from which all our evils come.
- To show that forgiveness is more important than bodily healing.
- To show that the most important thing Jesus came to do was to deal with sin.
- To show that when a man’s sins are forgiven, he becomes a son of God.
- To show that the response to faith is the forgiveness of sin.
- To begin an important conversation with the scribes and Pharisees.
“And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth.” (v. 3)
“They said within themselves, in their hearts, among themselves, in their secret whisperings, This man blasphemeth. See how the greatest instance of heaven's power and grace is branded with the blackest note of hell's enmity; Christ's pardoning sin is termed blasphemy; nor had it been less, if he had not had commission from God for it. They, therefore, are guilty of blasphemy, that have no such commission, and yet pretend to pardon sin.” (Henry)
“certain of the scribes” Not all but a select few; “said within themselves” They didn’t have the courage to speak aloud their treasonous thoughts, which exposedtheir irrational belief that Jesus is but a man, one of their own,Jesushaving spent an indeterminate period of time in Capernaumbefore beginning his ministry.
In John chapter three, verse 2, Nicodemus the Pharisee came under cover of night so that his peers would not see him conversing with Jesus, and he said, “Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him. ”Itshould have been evident, that no mortal man could do the miraculous healings that Jesus did, unless he be sent by God.Nicodemus and presumably others were not so blind that they could not see that Jesus had authority given to him by God, but yet these scribes in Capernaum chose to ignore the obvious and focus on what they perceived to be an infraction of the Law.
While the friends of the sick man had a great deal of faith, enough to touch the heart of Jesus, the scribes had no faith, and could not see something as obvious as Jesus having authority given him by God to heal and to forgive sins. No, they had to be showed the divinity of Christ.
“ He undertakes to make out, that the Son of man, the Mediator, has power on earth to forgive sins; for therefore the Father has committed all judgment to the Son, and has given him this authority, because he is the Son of man, Jn. 5:22, 27. If he has power to give eternal life, as he certainly has (Jn. 17:2), he must have power to forgive sin; for guilt is a bar that must be removed, or we can never get to heaven. What an encouragement is this to poor sinners to repent, that the power of pardoning sin is put into the hands of the Son of man, who is bone of our bone! And if he had this power on earth, much more now that he is exalted to the Father's right hand, to give repentance and remission of sins, and so to be both a Prince and a Saviour,” (Henry)
“And Jesus knowing their thoughts said,Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts? For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins,(then saith he to the sick of the palsy,)Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.” (vs. 4-6)
“How he proves it, by his power in the kingdom of nature; his power to cure diseases. Is it not as easy to say, Thy sins are forgiven thee, as to say, Arise and walk? He that can cure the disease, whether declaratively as a Prophet, or authoritatively as God, can, in like manner, forgive the sin. Now, This is a general argument to prove that Christ had a divine mission. His miracles, especially his miraculous cures, confirm what he said of himself, that he was the Son of God; the power that appeared in his cures proved him sent of God; and the pity that appeared in them proved him sent of God to heal and save. The God of truth would not set his seal to a lie.” (Ibid)
“And Jesus knowing their thoughtsWherefore think ye evil in your hearts?” This alone should have told them they where in the presence of someone with great power and authority.
“For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk?” “Both healing and forgiveness are impossible with man. Yet only the promise of healing could be immediately proven, because though you can’t see someone’s sin being forgiven, you can see that they are healed.” (Guzik)
“This appears to have been founded on Psalm 103:3. Who forgiveth all thine iniquities, and healeth all thy diseases. Here pardon precedes health.” (Clarke)
“But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins” Regarding which is easier to say, “Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk” Jesus answered His own question before the religious leaders did. Since He could make good on His claim to heal the man, it gave proof of His claim to also have the authority to forgive sins.If he had the Godly power to heal, then logically he must also have the power to forgive sins.
“And he arose, and departed to his house. But when the multitudes saw it, they marveled, and glorified God, which had given such power unto men.” (vs. 7-8) At the man’s healing, the crowd properly gave God the glory for this miracle. Jesus obviously did not draw attention to Himself by the manner in which the healing was done.
At the beginning of this study, we mentioned how the men of Gadarene, were upset that Jesus had exorcised the demons and those entities drove the herd of swine mad and they ran into the sea. These men seemed obvious to the fact that Jesus had cured the possessed men, something an ordinary man could not do. Likewise the scribes of Capernium were oblivious to the many healings Jesus had done, acts that only God could do, and they chose to focus on Jesus having pronounced the sick man’s sins forgiven. However while the men of Gadarene and the scribes of Capernium ignored the divinity of Jesus, we see the people in awe and worshiping God, for having sent his own into their midst.
In the beginning of his Gospel John makes the case in an eloquent and poetic prose that Jesus was with God from the beginning of time, a part of God. Here we see Matthew attempting to make the same argument by illustrating how Jesus demonstrated his divinity and authority by healing and forgiving sins; again obvious acts that only God could authorize.
“ Note, All our wonder should help to enlarge our hearts in glorifying God, who alone does marvellous things. They glorified God for what he had done for this poor man. Others' mercies should be our praises, and we should give him thanks for them, for we are members one of another. God must be glorified in all the power that is given to men to do good.” (Henry)Benediction
Everliving God, whose will it is that all should come to you through your Son Jesus Christ: Inspire our witness to him, that all may know the power of his forgiveness and the hope of his resurrection; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Thought for the Day:
Prayer is the risen Jesus coming in with His resurrection power, given free rein in our lives, and then using His authority to enter any situation and change things.
- Ole Hallesby
2024.05.16 04:55 Bishop-Boomer Bible Studies From The Daily Office Thursday, May 16, 2024
The Collect
O God, the King of glory, you have exalted your only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph to your kingdom in heaven: Do not leave us comfortless, but send us your Holy Spirit to strengthen us, and exalt us to that place where our Savior Christ has gone before; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.
Readings:
Psalm 105:1–22 Zechariah 4
Gospel: Matthew 9:1–8
1 And he entered into a ship, and passed over, and came into his own city.
2 And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy;Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.
3 And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth.
4 And Jesus knowing their thoughts said,Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts?
5For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk?
6But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins,(then saith he to the sick of the palsy,)Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.
7 And he arose, and departed to his house.
8 But when the multitudes saw it, they marvelled, and glorified God, which had given such power unto men.
Commentary:
“And he entered into a ship, and passed over, and came into his own city.” (v. 1) Here in these verses, we find a strange if not ironic comparison. On the one side we have those that find his miracles awe inspiring, or as we find in verse 8 where Matthew states in reference to the multitude following and who had witnessed Jesus’ miracles: “theymarvelled, and glorified God.” And on the other hand we see those who hate Jesus, because he dares to upset the status quo that they so coveted.
At the end of the previous chapter, Matthew tells us of his version of Jesus exorcising demons from two men (other Gospels only mention one) on the coast of the Sea of Galilee nearGadarene.As you recall fromother studies, Jesus cast out the demons, who then fled from him, entering into a herd of swine, causing the pigs to run into the sea and drown. The citizens ofGadarenes—upset at the loss of theirswine—asked Jesus to leave. Which brings us toour first verse for today inwhichMatthewtells usJesusagain crossed over the Sea tohis own city,Capernaum;where:
“And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy;Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth.” (v. 2-3)
“they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed” Other Gospels explain how the man was brought to Jesus. Because of the crowds, his friends lowered him down to Jesus througha hole inthe roof.
“Jesus’ miracles were not primarily calculated for crowd effect. Instead they were primarily done to minister to the humble needs of humble people. For the most part, most Jewish people of that time would have preferred much more spectacular signs – like calling down fire from heaven upon a Roman Legion.” (Guzik)
“and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy” Jesus was impressed by the faith of the friends of this man. The phrase: “seeing their faith” demonstrates that their faith was so great that they carried this man through the crowds to bring him before Jesus. Again in the other Gospels, (Mark 2:1-12, Luke 5:17-26) we find that their faith was so great, that their belief that Jesus could heal their friend was so strong that when they could not press through the multitude gathered outside, they carried him up onto the roof of the house in which Jesus was in at the time, they tore a hole in the roof and lowered the man down into the midst of the gathering who had come to hear Jesus speak.
We also can assume that the paralyzed man himself had little faith; as Matthew emphasizes “seeing their faith” in that Jesus noted the faith of his friends, not the man with palsy. Therefore it appears that Jesus wanted to encourage this man’s faith by His next words.
“Son, be of good cheer” “With swift sure diagnosis Jesus sees in the man not faith but deep depression…and uttering first a kindly hope-inspiring word, such as a physician might address to a patient: cheer up, child!” (Bruce)
“thy sins be forgiven thee.” “The faith of the paralyzed man’s friends did something – they brought this man to Jesus. Yet they only thought of bringing him to Jesus for the healing of his body. They certainly didn’t think that Jesus would forgive His sins.” (Guzik)
We need not infer that the man was paralyzed as the direct result of some sin that needed forgiving. This did not seem to be Jesus’ point in saying, “your sins are forgiven you.”
Matthew Poole saw six reasons why Jesus dealt with the man’s sin first. To paraphrase Poole’s reasons why the sin was dealt with first:
“And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth.” (v. 3)
“They said within themselves, in their hearts, among themselves, in their secret whisperings, This man blasphemeth. See how the greatest instance of heaven's power and grace is branded with the blackest note of hell's enmity; Christ's pardoning sin is termed blasphemy; nor had it been less, if he had not had commission from God for it. They, therefore, are guilty of blasphemy, that have no such commission, and yet pretend to pardon sin.” (Henry)
“certain of the scribes” Not all but a select few; “said within themselves” They didn’t have the courage to speak aloud their treasonous thoughts, which exposedtheir irrational belief that Jesus is but a man, one of their own,Jesushaving spent an indeterminate period of time in Capernaumbefore beginning his ministry.
In John chapter three, verse 2, Nicodemus the Pharisee came under cover of night so that his peers would not see him conversing with Jesus, and he said, “Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him. ”Itshould have been evident, that no mortal man could do the miraculous healings that Jesus did, unless he be sent by God.Nicodemus and presumably others were not so blind that they could not see that Jesus had authority given to him by God, but yet these scribes in Capernaum chose to ignore the obvious and focus on what they perceived to be an infraction of the Law.
While the friends of the sick man had a great deal of faith, enough to touch the heart of Jesus, the scribes had no faith, and could not see something as obvious as Jesus having authority given him by God to heal and to forgive sins. No, they had to be showed the divinity of Christ.
“ He undertakes to make out, that the Son of man, the Mediator, has power on earth to forgive sins; for therefore the Father has committed all judgment to the Son, and has given him this authority, because he is the Son of man, Jn. 5:22, 27. If he has power to give eternal life, as he certainly has (Jn. 17:2), he must have power to forgive sin; for guilt is a bar that must be removed, or we can never get to heaven. What an encouragement is this to poor sinners to repent, that the power of pardoning sin is put into the hands of the Son of man, who is bone of our bone! And if he had this power on earth, much more now that he is exalted to the Father's right hand, to give repentance and remission of sins, and so to be both a Prince and a Saviour,” (Henry)
“And Jesus knowing their thoughts said,Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts? For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins,(then saith he to the sick of the palsy,)Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.” (vs. 4-6)
“How he proves it, by his power in the kingdom of nature; his power to cure diseases. Is it not as easy to say, Thy sins are forgiven thee, as to say, Arise and walk? He that can cure the disease, whether declaratively as a Prophet, or authoritatively as God, can, in like manner, forgive the sin. Now, This is a general argument to prove that Christ had a divine mission. His miracles, especially his miraculous cures, confirm what he said of himself, that he was the Son of God; the power that appeared in his cures proved him sent of God; and the pity that appeared in them proved him sent of God to heal and save. The God of truth would not set his seal to a lie.” (Ibid)
“And Jesus knowing their thoughtsWherefore think ye evil in your hearts?” This alone should have told them they where in the presence of someone with great power and authority.
“For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk?” “Both healing and forgiveness are impossible with man. Yet only the promise of healing could be immediately proven, because though you can’t see someone’s sin being forgiven, you can see that they are healed.” (Guzik)
“This appears to have been founded on Psalm 103:3. Who forgiveth all thine iniquities, and healeth all thy diseases. Here pardon precedes health.” (Clarke)
“But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins” Regarding which is easier to say, “Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk” Jesus answered His own question before the religious leaders did. Since He could make good on His claim to heal the man, it gave proof of His claim to also have the authority to forgive sins.If he had the Godly power to heal, then logically he must also have the power to forgive sins.
“And he arose, and departed to his house. But when the multitudes saw it, they marveled, and glorified God, which had given such power unto men.” (vs. 7-8) At the man’s healing, the crowd properly gave God the glory for this miracle. Jesus obviously did not draw attention to Himself by the manner in which the healing was done.
At the beginning of this study, we mentioned how the men of Gadarene, were upset that Jesus had exorcised the demons and those entities drove the herd of swine mad and they ran into the sea. These men seemed obvious to the fact that Jesus had cured the possessed men, something an ordinary man could not do. Likewise the scribes of Capernium were oblivious to the many healings Jesus had done, acts that only God could do, and they chose to focus on Jesus having pronounced the sick man’s sins forgiven. However while the men of Gadarene and the scribes of Capernium ignored the divinity of Jesus, we see the people in awe and worshiping God, for having sent his own into their midst.
In the beginning of his Gospel John makes the case in an eloquent and poetic prose that Jesus was with God from the beginning of time, a part of God. Here we see Matthew attempting to make the same argument by illustrating how Jesus demonstrated his divinity and authority by healing and forgiving sins; again obvious acts that only God could authorize.
“ Note, All our wonder should help to enlarge our hearts in glorifying God, who alone does marvellous things. They glorified God for what he had done for this poor man. Others' mercies should be our praises, and we should give him thanks for them, for we are members one of another. God must be glorified in all the power that is given to men to do good.” (Henry)Benediction
Everliving God, whose will it is that all should come to you through your Son Jesus Christ: Inspire our witness to him, that all may know the power of his forgiveness and the hope of his resurrection; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Thought for the Day:
Prayer is the risen Jesus coming in with His resurrection power, given free rein in our lives, and then using His authority to enter any situation and change things.
submitted by Bishop-Boomer to Christianity [link] [comments]
O God, the King of glory, you have exalted your only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph to your kingdom in heaven: Do not leave us comfortless, but send us your Holy Spirit to strengthen us, and exalt us to that place where our Savior Christ has gone before; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.
Readings:
Psalm 105:1–22 Zechariah 4
Gospel: Matthew 9:1–8
1 And he entered into a ship, and passed over, and came into his own city.
2 And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy;Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.
3 And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth.
4 And Jesus knowing their thoughts said,Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts?
5For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk?
6But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins,(then saith he to the sick of the palsy,)Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.
7 And he arose, and departed to his house.
8 But when the multitudes saw it, they marvelled, and glorified God, which had given such power unto men.
Commentary:
“And he entered into a ship, and passed over, and came into his own city.” (v. 1) Here in these verses, we find a strange if not ironic comparison. On the one side we have those that find his miracles awe inspiring, or as we find in verse 8 where Matthew states in reference to the multitude following and who had witnessed Jesus’ miracles: “theymarvelled, and glorified God.” And on the other hand we see those who hate Jesus, because he dares to upset the status quo that they so coveted.
At the end of the previous chapter, Matthew tells us of his version of Jesus exorcising demons from two men (other Gospels only mention one) on the coast of the Sea of Galilee nearGadarene.As you recall fromother studies, Jesus cast out the demons, who then fled from him, entering into a herd of swine, causing the pigs to run into the sea and drown. The citizens ofGadarenes—upset at the loss of theirswine—asked Jesus to leave. Which brings us toour first verse for today inwhichMatthewtells usJesusagain crossed over the Sea tohis own city,Capernaum;where:
“And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy;Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth.” (v. 2-3)
“they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed” Other Gospels explain how the man was brought to Jesus. Because of the crowds, his friends lowered him down to Jesus througha hole inthe roof.
“Jesus’ miracles were not primarily calculated for crowd effect. Instead they were primarily done to minister to the humble needs of humble people. For the most part, most Jewish people of that time would have preferred much more spectacular signs – like calling down fire from heaven upon a Roman Legion.” (Guzik)
“and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy” Jesus was impressed by the faith of the friends of this man. The phrase: “seeing their faith” demonstrates that their faith was so great that they carried this man through the crowds to bring him before Jesus. Again in the other Gospels, (Mark 2:1-12, Luke 5:17-26) we find that their faith was so great, that their belief that Jesus could heal their friend was so strong that when they could not press through the multitude gathered outside, they carried him up onto the roof of the house in which Jesus was in at the time, they tore a hole in the roof and lowered the man down into the midst of the gathering who had come to hear Jesus speak.
We also can assume that the paralyzed man himself had little faith; as Matthew emphasizes “seeing their faith” in that Jesus noted the faith of his friends, not the man with palsy. Therefore it appears that Jesus wanted to encourage this man’s faith by His next words.
“Son, be of good cheer” “With swift sure diagnosis Jesus sees in the man not faith but deep depression…and uttering first a kindly hope-inspiring word, such as a physician might address to a patient: cheer up, child!” (Bruce)
“thy sins be forgiven thee.” “The faith of the paralyzed man’s friends did something – they brought this man to Jesus. Yet they only thought of bringing him to Jesus for the healing of his body. They certainly didn’t think that Jesus would forgive His sins.” (Guzik)
We need not infer that the man was paralyzed as the direct result of some sin that needed forgiving. This did not seem to be Jesus’ point in saying, “your sins are forgiven you.”
Matthew Poole saw six reasons why Jesus dealt with the man’s sin first. To paraphrase Poole’s reasons why the sin was dealt with first:
- Because sin is the root from which all our evils come.
- To show that forgiveness is more important than bodily healing.
- To show that the most important thing Jesus came to do was to deal with sin.
- To show that when a man’s sins are forgiven, he becomes a son of God.
- To show that the response to faith is the forgiveness of sin.
- To begin an important conversation with the scribes and Pharisees.
“And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth.” (v. 3)
“They said within themselves, in their hearts, among themselves, in their secret whisperings, This man blasphemeth. See how the greatest instance of heaven's power and grace is branded with the blackest note of hell's enmity; Christ's pardoning sin is termed blasphemy; nor had it been less, if he had not had commission from God for it. They, therefore, are guilty of blasphemy, that have no such commission, and yet pretend to pardon sin.” (Henry)
“certain of the scribes” Not all but a select few; “said within themselves” They didn’t have the courage to speak aloud their treasonous thoughts, which exposedtheir irrational belief that Jesus is but a man, one of their own,Jesushaving spent an indeterminate period of time in Capernaumbefore beginning his ministry.
In John chapter three, verse 2, Nicodemus the Pharisee came under cover of night so that his peers would not see him conversing with Jesus, and he said, “Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him. ”Itshould have been evident, that no mortal man could do the miraculous healings that Jesus did, unless he be sent by God.Nicodemus and presumably others were not so blind that they could not see that Jesus had authority given to him by God, but yet these scribes in Capernaum chose to ignore the obvious and focus on what they perceived to be an infraction of the Law.
While the friends of the sick man had a great deal of faith, enough to touch the heart of Jesus, the scribes had no faith, and could not see something as obvious as Jesus having authority given him by God to heal and to forgive sins. No, they had to be showed the divinity of Christ.
“ He undertakes to make out, that the Son of man, the Mediator, has power on earth to forgive sins; for therefore the Father has committed all judgment to the Son, and has given him this authority, because he is the Son of man, Jn. 5:22, 27. If he has power to give eternal life, as he certainly has (Jn. 17:2), he must have power to forgive sin; for guilt is a bar that must be removed, or we can never get to heaven. What an encouragement is this to poor sinners to repent, that the power of pardoning sin is put into the hands of the Son of man, who is bone of our bone! And if he had this power on earth, much more now that he is exalted to the Father's right hand, to give repentance and remission of sins, and so to be both a Prince and a Saviour,” (Henry)
“And Jesus knowing their thoughts said,Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts? For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins,(then saith he to the sick of the palsy,)Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.” (vs. 4-6)
“How he proves it, by his power in the kingdom of nature; his power to cure diseases. Is it not as easy to say, Thy sins are forgiven thee, as to say, Arise and walk? He that can cure the disease, whether declaratively as a Prophet, or authoritatively as God, can, in like manner, forgive the sin. Now, This is a general argument to prove that Christ had a divine mission. His miracles, especially his miraculous cures, confirm what he said of himself, that he was the Son of God; the power that appeared in his cures proved him sent of God; and the pity that appeared in them proved him sent of God to heal and save. The God of truth would not set his seal to a lie.” (Ibid)
“And Jesus knowing their thoughtsWherefore think ye evil in your hearts?” This alone should have told them they where in the presence of someone with great power and authority.
“For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk?” “Both healing and forgiveness are impossible with man. Yet only the promise of healing could be immediately proven, because though you can’t see someone’s sin being forgiven, you can see that they are healed.” (Guzik)
“This appears to have been founded on Psalm 103:3. Who forgiveth all thine iniquities, and healeth all thy diseases. Here pardon precedes health.” (Clarke)
“But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins” Regarding which is easier to say, “Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk” Jesus answered His own question before the religious leaders did. Since He could make good on His claim to heal the man, it gave proof of His claim to also have the authority to forgive sins.If he had the Godly power to heal, then logically he must also have the power to forgive sins.
“And he arose, and departed to his house. But when the multitudes saw it, they marveled, and glorified God, which had given such power unto men.” (vs. 7-8) At the man’s healing, the crowd properly gave God the glory for this miracle. Jesus obviously did not draw attention to Himself by the manner in which the healing was done.
At the beginning of this study, we mentioned how the men of Gadarene, were upset that Jesus had exorcised the demons and those entities drove the herd of swine mad and they ran into the sea. These men seemed obvious to the fact that Jesus had cured the possessed men, something an ordinary man could not do. Likewise the scribes of Capernium were oblivious to the many healings Jesus had done, acts that only God could do, and they chose to focus on Jesus having pronounced the sick man’s sins forgiven. However while the men of Gadarene and the scribes of Capernium ignored the divinity of Jesus, we see the people in awe and worshiping God, for having sent his own into their midst.
In the beginning of his Gospel John makes the case in an eloquent and poetic prose that Jesus was with God from the beginning of time, a part of God. Here we see Matthew attempting to make the same argument by illustrating how Jesus demonstrated his divinity and authority by healing and forgiving sins; again obvious acts that only God could authorize.
“ Note, All our wonder should help to enlarge our hearts in glorifying God, who alone does marvellous things. They glorified God for what he had done for this poor man. Others' mercies should be our praises, and we should give him thanks for them, for we are members one of another. God must be glorified in all the power that is given to men to do good.” (Henry)Benediction
Everliving God, whose will it is that all should come to you through your Son Jesus Christ: Inspire our witness to him, that all may know the power of his forgiveness and the hope of his resurrection; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Thought for the Day:
Prayer is the risen Jesus coming in with His resurrection power, given free rein in our lives, and then using His authority to enter any situation and change things.
- Ole Hallesby
2024.05.16 04:54 Bishop-Boomer Bible Studies From The Daily Office Thursday, May 16, 2024
The Collect
O God, the King of glory, you have exalted your only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph to your kingdom in heaven: Do not leave us comfortless, but send us your Holy Spirit to strengthen us, and exalt us to that place where our Savior Christ has gone before; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.
Readings:
Psalm 105:1–22 Zechariah 4
Gospel: Matthew 9:1–8
1 And he entered into a ship, and passed over, and came into his own city.
2 And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy;Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.
3 And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth.
4 And Jesus knowing their thoughts said,Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts?
5For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk?
6But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins,(then saith he to the sick of the palsy,)Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.
7 And he arose, and departed to his house.
8 But when the multitudes saw it, they marvelled, and glorified God, which had given such power unto men.
Commentary:
“And he entered into a ship, and passed over, and came into his own city.” (v. 1) Here in these verses, we find a strange if not ironic comparison. On the one side we have those that find his miracles awe inspiring, or as we find in verse 8 where Matthew states in reference to the multitude following and who had witnessed Jesus’ miracles: “theymarvelled, and glorified God.” And on the other hand we see those who hate Jesus, because he dares to upset the status quo that they so coveted.
At the end of the previous chapter, Matthew tells us of his version of Jesus exorcising demons from two men (other Gospels only mention one) on the coast of the Sea of Galilee nearGadarene.As you recall fromother studies, Jesus cast out the demons, who then fled from him, entering into a herd of swine, causing the pigs to run into the sea and drown. The citizens ofGadarenes—upset at the loss of theirswine—asked Jesus to leave. Which brings us toour first verse for today inwhichMatthewtells usJesusagain crossed over the Sea tohis own city,Capernaum;where:
“And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy;Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth.” (v. 2-3)
“they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed” Other Gospels explain how the man was brought to Jesus. Because of the crowds, his friends lowered him down to Jesus througha hole inthe roof.
“Jesus’ miracles were not primarily calculated for crowd effect. Instead they were primarily done to minister to the humble needs of humble people. For the most part, most Jewish people of that time would have preferred much more spectacular signs – like calling down fire from heaven upon a Roman Legion.” (Guzik)
“and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy” Jesus was impressed by the faith of the friends of this man. The phrase: “seeing their faith” demonstrates that their faith was so great that they carried this man through the crowds to bring him before Jesus. Again in the other Gospels, (Mark 2:1-12, Luke 5:17-26) we find that their faith was so great, that their belief that Jesus could heal their friend was so strong that when they could not press through the multitude gathered outside, they carried him up onto the roof of the house in which Jesus was in at the time, they tore a hole in the roof and lowered the man down into the midst of the gathering who had come to hear Jesus speak.
We also can assume that the paralyzed man himself had little faith; as Matthew emphasizes “seeing their faith” in that Jesus noted the faith of his friends, not the man with palsy. Therefore it appears that Jesus wanted to encourage this man’s faith by His next words.
“Son, be of good cheer” “With swift sure diagnosis Jesus sees in the man not faith but deep depression…and uttering first a kindly hope-inspiring word, such as a physician might address to a patient: cheer up, child!” (Bruce)
“thy sins be forgiven thee.” “The faith of the paralyzed man’s friends did something – they brought this man to Jesus. Yet they only thought of bringing him to Jesus for the healing of his body. They certainly didn’t think that Jesus would forgive His sins.” (Guzik)
We need not infer that the man was paralyzed as the direct result of some sin that needed forgiving. This did not seem to be Jesus’ point in saying, “your sins are forgiven you.”
Matthew Poole saw six reasons why Jesus dealt with the man’s sin first. To paraphrase Poole’s reasons why the sin was dealt with first:
“And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth.” (v. 3)
“They said within themselves, in their hearts, among themselves, in their secret whisperings, This man blasphemeth. See how the greatest instance of heaven's power and grace is branded with the blackest note of hell's enmity; Christ's pardoning sin is termed blasphemy; nor had it been less, if he had not had commission from God for it. They, therefore, are guilty of blasphemy, that have no such commission, and yet pretend to pardon sin.” (Henry)
“certain of the scribes” Not all but a select few; “said within themselves” They didn’t have the courage to speak aloud their treasonous thoughts, which exposedtheir irrational belief that Jesus is but a man, one of their own,Jesushaving spent an indeterminate period of time in Capernaumbefore beginning his ministry.
In John chapter three, verse 2, Nicodemus the Pharisee came under cover of night so that his peers would not see him conversing with Jesus, and he said, “Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him. ”Itshould have been evident, that no mortal man could do the miraculous healings that Jesus did, unless he be sent by God.Nicodemus and presumably others were not so blind that they could not see that Jesus had authority given to him by God, but yet these scribes in Capernaum chose to ignore the obvious and focus on what they perceived to be an infraction of the Law.
While the friends of the sick man had a great deal of faith, enough to touch the heart of Jesus, the scribes had no faith, and could not see something as obvious as Jesus having authority given him by God to heal and to forgive sins. No, they had to be showed the divinity of Christ.
“ He undertakes to make out, that the Son of man, the Mediator, has power on earth to forgive sins; for therefore the Father has committed all judgment to the Son, and has given him this authority, because he is the Son of man, Jn. 5:22, 27. If he has power to give eternal life, as he certainly has (Jn. 17:2), he must have power to forgive sin; for guilt is a bar that must be removed, or we can never get to heaven. What an encouragement is this to poor sinners to repent, that the power of pardoning sin is put into the hands of the Son of man, who is bone of our bone! And if he had this power on earth, much more now that he is exalted to the Father's right hand, to give repentance and remission of sins, and so to be both a Prince and a Saviour,” (Henry)
“And Jesus knowing their thoughts said,Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts? For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins,(then saith he to the sick of the palsy,)Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.” (vs. 4-6)
“How he proves it, by his power in the kingdom of nature; his power to cure diseases. Is it not as easy to say, Thy sins are forgiven thee, as to say, Arise and walk? He that can cure the disease, whether declaratively as a Prophet, or authoritatively as God, can, in like manner, forgive the sin. Now, This is a general argument to prove that Christ had a divine mission. His miracles, especially his miraculous cures, confirm what he said of himself, that he was the Son of God; the power that appeared in his cures proved him sent of God; and the pity that appeared in them proved him sent of God to heal and save. The God of truth would not set his seal to a lie.” (Ibid)
“And Jesus knowing their thoughtsWherefore think ye evil in your hearts?” This alone should have told them they where in the presence of someone with great power and authority.
“For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk?” “Both healing and forgiveness are impossible with man. Yet only the promise of healing could be immediately proven, because though you can’t see someone’s sin being forgiven, you can see that they are healed.” (Guzik)
“This appears to have been founded on Psalm 103:3. Who forgiveth all thine iniquities, and healeth all thy diseases. Here pardon precedes health.” (Clarke)
“But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins” Regarding which is easier to say, “Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk” Jesus answered His own question before the religious leaders did. Since He could make good on His claim to heal the man, it gave proof of His claim to also have the authority to forgive sins.If he had the Godly power to heal, then logically he must also have the power to forgive sins.
“And he arose, and departed to his house. But when the multitudes saw it, they marveled, and glorified God, which had given such power unto men.” (vs. 7-8) At the man’s healing, the crowd properly gave God the glory for this miracle. Jesus obviously did not draw attention to Himself by the manner in which the healing was done.
At the beginning of this study, we mentioned how the men of Gadarene, were upset that Jesus had exorcised the demons and those entities drove the herd of swine mad and they ran into the sea. These men seemed obvious to the fact that Jesus had cured the possessed men, something an ordinary man could not do. Likewise the scribes of Capernium were oblivious to the many healings Jesus had done, acts that only God could do, and they chose to focus on Jesus having pronounced the sick man’s sins forgiven. However while the men of Gadarene and the scribes of Capernium ignored the divinity of Jesus, we see the people in awe and worshiping God, for having sent his own into their midst.
In the beginning of his Gospel John makes the case in an eloquent and poetic prose that Jesus was with God from the beginning of time, a part of God. Here we see Matthew attempting to make the same argument by illustrating how Jesus demonstrated his divinity and authority by healing and forgiving sins; again obvious acts that only God could authorize.
“ Note, All our wonder should help to enlarge our hearts in glorifying God, who alone does marvellous things. They glorified God for what he had done for this poor man. Others' mercies should be our praises, and we should give him thanks for them, for we are members one of another. God must be glorified in all the power that is given to men to do good.” (Henry)Benediction
Everliving God, whose will it is that all should come to you through your Son Jesus Christ: Inspire our witness to him, that all may know the power of his forgiveness and the hope of his resurrection; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Thought for the Day:
Prayer is the risen Jesus coming in with His resurrection power, given free rein in our lives, and then using His authority to enter any situation and change things.
submitted by Bishop-Boomer to BreakBreadYESHUA [link] [comments]
O God, the King of glory, you have exalted your only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph to your kingdom in heaven: Do not leave us comfortless, but send us your Holy Spirit to strengthen us, and exalt us to that place where our Savior Christ has gone before; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.
Readings:
Psalm 105:1–22 Zechariah 4
Gospel: Matthew 9:1–8
1 And he entered into a ship, and passed over, and came into his own city.
2 And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy;Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.
3 And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth.
4 And Jesus knowing their thoughts said,Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts?
5For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk?
6But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins,(then saith he to the sick of the palsy,)Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.
7 And he arose, and departed to his house.
8 But when the multitudes saw it, they marvelled, and glorified God, which had given such power unto men.
Commentary:
“And he entered into a ship, and passed over, and came into his own city.” (v. 1) Here in these verses, we find a strange if not ironic comparison. On the one side we have those that find his miracles awe inspiring, or as we find in verse 8 where Matthew states in reference to the multitude following and who had witnessed Jesus’ miracles: “theymarvelled, and glorified God.” And on the other hand we see those who hate Jesus, because he dares to upset the status quo that they so coveted.
At the end of the previous chapter, Matthew tells us of his version of Jesus exorcising demons from two men (other Gospels only mention one) on the coast of the Sea of Galilee nearGadarene.As you recall fromother studies, Jesus cast out the demons, who then fled from him, entering into a herd of swine, causing the pigs to run into the sea and drown. The citizens ofGadarenes—upset at the loss of theirswine—asked Jesus to leave. Which brings us toour first verse for today inwhichMatthewtells usJesusagain crossed over the Sea tohis own city,Capernaum;where:
“And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy;Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth.” (v. 2-3)
“they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed” Other Gospels explain how the man was brought to Jesus. Because of the crowds, his friends lowered him down to Jesus througha hole inthe roof.
“Jesus’ miracles were not primarily calculated for crowd effect. Instead they were primarily done to minister to the humble needs of humble people. For the most part, most Jewish people of that time would have preferred much more spectacular signs – like calling down fire from heaven upon a Roman Legion.” (Guzik)
“and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy” Jesus was impressed by the faith of the friends of this man. The phrase: “seeing their faith” demonstrates that their faith was so great that they carried this man through the crowds to bring him before Jesus. Again in the other Gospels, (Mark 2:1-12, Luke 5:17-26) we find that their faith was so great, that their belief that Jesus could heal their friend was so strong that when they could not press through the multitude gathered outside, they carried him up onto the roof of the house in which Jesus was in at the time, they tore a hole in the roof and lowered the man down into the midst of the gathering who had come to hear Jesus speak.
We also can assume that the paralyzed man himself had little faith; as Matthew emphasizes “seeing their faith” in that Jesus noted the faith of his friends, not the man with palsy. Therefore it appears that Jesus wanted to encourage this man’s faith by His next words.
“Son, be of good cheer” “With swift sure diagnosis Jesus sees in the man not faith but deep depression…and uttering first a kindly hope-inspiring word, such as a physician might address to a patient: cheer up, child!” (Bruce)
“thy sins be forgiven thee.” “The faith of the paralyzed man’s friends did something – they brought this man to Jesus. Yet they only thought of bringing him to Jesus for the healing of his body. They certainly didn’t think that Jesus would forgive His sins.” (Guzik)
We need not infer that the man was paralyzed as the direct result of some sin that needed forgiving. This did not seem to be Jesus’ point in saying, “your sins are forgiven you.”
Matthew Poole saw six reasons why Jesus dealt with the man’s sin first. To paraphrase Poole’s reasons why the sin was dealt with first:
- Because sin is the root from which all our evils come.
- To show that forgiveness is more important than bodily healing.
- To show that the most important thing Jesus came to do was to deal with sin.
- To show that when a man’s sins are forgiven, he becomes a son of God.
- To show that the response to faith is the forgiveness of sin.
- To begin an important conversation with the scribes and Pharisees.
“And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth.” (v. 3)
“They said within themselves, in their hearts, among themselves, in their secret whisperings, This man blasphemeth. See how the greatest instance of heaven's power and grace is branded with the blackest note of hell's enmity; Christ's pardoning sin is termed blasphemy; nor had it been less, if he had not had commission from God for it. They, therefore, are guilty of blasphemy, that have no such commission, and yet pretend to pardon sin.” (Henry)
“certain of the scribes” Not all but a select few; “said within themselves” They didn’t have the courage to speak aloud their treasonous thoughts, which exposedtheir irrational belief that Jesus is but a man, one of their own,Jesushaving spent an indeterminate period of time in Capernaumbefore beginning his ministry.
In John chapter three, verse 2, Nicodemus the Pharisee came under cover of night so that his peers would not see him conversing with Jesus, and he said, “Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him. ”Itshould have been evident, that no mortal man could do the miraculous healings that Jesus did, unless he be sent by God.Nicodemus and presumably others were not so blind that they could not see that Jesus had authority given to him by God, but yet these scribes in Capernaum chose to ignore the obvious and focus on what they perceived to be an infraction of the Law.
While the friends of the sick man had a great deal of faith, enough to touch the heart of Jesus, the scribes had no faith, and could not see something as obvious as Jesus having authority given him by God to heal and to forgive sins. No, they had to be showed the divinity of Christ.
“ He undertakes to make out, that the Son of man, the Mediator, has power on earth to forgive sins; for therefore the Father has committed all judgment to the Son, and has given him this authority, because he is the Son of man, Jn. 5:22, 27. If he has power to give eternal life, as he certainly has (Jn. 17:2), he must have power to forgive sin; for guilt is a bar that must be removed, or we can never get to heaven. What an encouragement is this to poor sinners to repent, that the power of pardoning sin is put into the hands of the Son of man, who is bone of our bone! And if he had this power on earth, much more now that he is exalted to the Father's right hand, to give repentance and remission of sins, and so to be both a Prince and a Saviour,” (Henry)
“And Jesus knowing their thoughts said,Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts? For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins,(then saith he to the sick of the palsy,)Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.” (vs. 4-6)
“How he proves it, by his power in the kingdom of nature; his power to cure diseases. Is it not as easy to say, Thy sins are forgiven thee, as to say, Arise and walk? He that can cure the disease, whether declaratively as a Prophet, or authoritatively as God, can, in like manner, forgive the sin. Now, This is a general argument to prove that Christ had a divine mission. His miracles, especially his miraculous cures, confirm what he said of himself, that he was the Son of God; the power that appeared in his cures proved him sent of God; and the pity that appeared in them proved him sent of God to heal and save. The God of truth would not set his seal to a lie.” (Ibid)
“And Jesus knowing their thoughtsWherefore think ye evil in your hearts?” This alone should have told them they where in the presence of someone with great power and authority.
“For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk?” “Both healing and forgiveness are impossible with man. Yet only the promise of healing could be immediately proven, because though you can’t see someone’s sin being forgiven, you can see that they are healed.” (Guzik)
“This appears to have been founded on Psalm 103:3. Who forgiveth all thine iniquities, and healeth all thy diseases. Here pardon precedes health.” (Clarke)
“But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins” Regarding which is easier to say, “Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk” Jesus answered His own question before the religious leaders did. Since He could make good on His claim to heal the man, it gave proof of His claim to also have the authority to forgive sins.If he had the Godly power to heal, then logically he must also have the power to forgive sins.
“And he arose, and departed to his house. But when the multitudes saw it, they marveled, and glorified God, which had given such power unto men.” (vs. 7-8) At the man’s healing, the crowd properly gave God the glory for this miracle. Jesus obviously did not draw attention to Himself by the manner in which the healing was done.
At the beginning of this study, we mentioned how the men of Gadarene, were upset that Jesus had exorcised the demons and those entities drove the herd of swine mad and they ran into the sea. These men seemed obvious to the fact that Jesus had cured the possessed men, something an ordinary man could not do. Likewise the scribes of Capernium were oblivious to the many healings Jesus had done, acts that only God could do, and they chose to focus on Jesus having pronounced the sick man’s sins forgiven. However while the men of Gadarene and the scribes of Capernium ignored the divinity of Jesus, we see the people in awe and worshiping God, for having sent his own into their midst.
In the beginning of his Gospel John makes the case in an eloquent and poetic prose that Jesus was with God from the beginning of time, a part of God. Here we see Matthew attempting to make the same argument by illustrating how Jesus demonstrated his divinity and authority by healing and forgiving sins; again obvious acts that only God could authorize.
“ Note, All our wonder should help to enlarge our hearts in glorifying God, who alone does marvellous things. They glorified God for what he had done for this poor man. Others' mercies should be our praises, and we should give him thanks for them, for we are members one of another. God must be glorified in all the power that is given to men to do good.” (Henry)Benediction
Everliving God, whose will it is that all should come to you through your Son Jesus Christ: Inspire our witness to him, that all may know the power of his forgiveness and the hope of his resurrection; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Thought for the Day:
Prayer is the risen Jesus coming in with His resurrection power, given free rein in our lives, and then using His authority to enter any situation and change things.
- Ole Hallesby
2024.05.16 04:53 Bishop-Boomer Bible Studies From The Daily Office Thursday, May 16, 2024
The Collect
O God, the King of glory, you have exalted your only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph to your kingdom in heaven: Do not leave us comfortless, but send us your Holy Spirit to strengthen us, and exalt us to that place where our Savior Christ has gone before; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.
Readings:
Psalm 105:1–22 Zechariah 4
Gospel: Matthew 9:1–8
1 And he entered into a ship, and passed over, and came into his own city.
2 And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy;Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.
3 And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth.
4 And Jesus knowing their thoughts said,Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts?
5For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk?
6But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins,(then saith he to the sick of the palsy,)Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.
7 And he arose, and departed to his house.
8 But when the multitudes saw it, they marvelled, and glorified God, which had given such power unto men.
Commentary:
“And he entered into a ship, and passed over, and came into his own city.” (v. 1) Here in these verses, we find a strange if not ironic comparison. On the one side we have those that find his miracles awe inspiring, or as we find in verse 8 where Matthew states in reference to the multitude following and who had witnessed Jesus’ miracles: “theymarvelled, and glorified God.” And on the other hand we see those who hate Jesus, because he dares to upset the status quo that they so coveted.
At the end of the previous chapter, Matthew tells us of his version of Jesus exorcising demons from two men (other Gospels only mention one) on the coast of the Sea of Galilee nearGadarene.As you recall fromother studies, Jesus cast out the demons, who then fled from him, entering into a herd of swine, causing the pigs to run into the sea and drown. The citizens ofGadarenes—upset at the loss of theirswine—asked Jesus to leave. Which brings us toour first verse for today inwhichMatthewtells usJesusagain crossed over the Sea tohis own city,Capernaum;where:
“And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy;Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth.” (v. 2-3)
“they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed” Other Gospels explain how the man was brought to Jesus. Because of the crowds, his friends lowered him down to Jesus througha hole inthe roof.
“Jesus’ miracles were not primarily calculated for crowd effect. Instead they were primarily done to minister to the humble needs of humble people. For the most part, most Jewish people of that time would have preferred much more spectacular signs – like calling down fire from heaven upon a Roman Legion.” (Guzik)
“and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy” Jesus was impressed by the faith of the friends of this man. The phrase: “seeing their faith” demonstrates that their faith was so great that they carried this man through the crowds to bring him before Jesus. Again in the other Gospels, (Mark 2:1-12, Luke 5:17-26) we find that their faith was so great, that their belief that Jesus could heal their friend was so strong that when they could not press through the multitude gathered outside, they carried him up onto the roof of the house in which Jesus was in at the time, they tore a hole in the roof and lowered the man down into the midst of the gathering who had come to hear Jesus speak.
We also can assume that the paralyzed man himself had little faith; as Matthew emphasizes “seeing their faith” in that Jesus noted the faith of his friends, not the man with palsy. Therefore it appears that Jesus wanted to encourage this man’s faith by His next words.
“Son, be of good cheer” “With swift sure diagnosis Jesus sees in the man not faith but deep depression…and uttering first a kindly hope-inspiring word, such as a physician might address to a patient: cheer up, child!” (Bruce)
“thy sins be forgiven thee.” “The faith of the paralyzed man’s friends did something – they brought this man to Jesus. Yet they only thought of bringing him to Jesus for the healing of his body. They certainly didn’t think that Jesus would forgive His sins.” (Guzik)
We need not infer that the man was paralyzed as the direct result of some sin that needed forgiving. This did not seem to be Jesus’ point in saying, “your sins are forgiven you.”
Matthew Poole saw six reasons why Jesus dealt with the man’s sin first. To paraphrase Poole’s reasons why the sin was dealt with first:
“And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth.” (v. 3)
“They said within themselves, in their hearts, among themselves, in their secret whisperings, This man blasphemeth. See how the greatest instance of heaven's power and grace is branded with the blackest note of hell's enmity; Christ's pardoning sin is termed blasphemy; nor had it been less, if he had not had commission from God for it. They, therefore, are guilty of blasphemy, that have no such commission, and yet pretend to pardon sin.” (Henry)
“certain of the scribes” Not all but a select few; “said within themselves” They didn’t have the courage to speak aloud their treasonous thoughts, which exposedtheir irrational belief that Jesus is but a man, one of their own,Jesushaving spent an indeterminate period of time in Capernaumbefore beginning his ministry.
In John chapter three, verse 2, Nicodemus the Pharisee came under cover of night so that his peers would not see him conversing with Jesus, and he said, “Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him. ”Itshould have been evident, that no mortal man could do the miraculous healings that Jesus did, unless he be sent by God.Nicodemus and presumably others were not so blind that they could not see that Jesus had authority given to him by God, but yet these scribes in Capernaum chose to ignore the obvious and focus on what they perceived to be an infraction of the Law.
While the friends of the sick man had a great deal of faith, enough to touch the heart of Jesus, the scribes had no faith, and could not see something as obvious as Jesus having authority given him by God to heal and to forgive sins. No, they had to be showed the divinity of Christ.
“ He undertakes to make out, that the Son of man, the Mediator, has power on earth to forgive sins; for therefore the Father has committed all judgment to the Son, and has given him this authority, because he is the Son of man, Jn. 5:22, 27. If he has power to give eternal life, as he certainly has (Jn. 17:2), he must have power to forgive sin; for guilt is a bar that must be removed, or we can never get to heaven. What an encouragement is this to poor sinners to repent, that the power of pardoning sin is put into the hands of the Son of man, who is bone of our bone! And if he had this power on earth, much more now that he is exalted to the Father's right hand, to give repentance and remission of sins, and so to be both a Prince and a Saviour,” (Henry)
“And Jesus knowing their thoughts said,Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts? For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins,(then saith he to the sick of the palsy,)Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.” (vs. 4-6)
“How he proves it, by his power in the kingdom of nature; his power to cure diseases. Is it not as easy to say, Thy sins are forgiven thee, as to say, Arise and walk? He that can cure the disease, whether declaratively as a Prophet, or authoritatively as God, can, in like manner, forgive the sin. Now, This is a general argument to prove that Christ had a divine mission. His miracles, especially his miraculous cures, confirm what he said of himself, that he was the Son of God; the power that appeared in his cures proved him sent of God; and the pity that appeared in them proved him sent of God to heal and save. The God of truth would not set his seal to a lie.” (Ibid)
“And Jesus knowing their thoughtsWherefore think ye evil in your hearts?” This alone should have told them they where in the presence of someone with great power and authority.
“For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk?” “Both healing and forgiveness are impossible with man. Yet only the promise of healing could be immediately proven, because though you can’t see someone’s sin being forgiven, you can see that they are healed.” (Guzik)
“This appears to have been founded on Psalm 103:3. Who forgiveth all thine iniquities, and healeth all thy diseases. Here pardon precedes health.” (Clarke)
“But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins” Regarding which is easier to say, “Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk” Jesus answered His own question before the religious leaders did. Since He could make good on His claim to heal the man, it gave proof of His claim to also have the authority to forgive sins.If he had the Godly power to heal, then logically he must also have the power to forgive sins.
“And he arose, and departed to his house. But when the multitudes saw it, they marveled, and glorified God, which had given such power unto men.” (vs. 7-8) At the man’s healing, the crowd properly gave God the glory for this miracle. Jesus obviously did not draw attention to Himself by the manner in which the healing was done.
At the beginning of this study, we mentioned how the men of Gadarene, were upset that Jesus had exorcised the demons and those entities drove the herd of swine mad and they ran into the sea. These men seemed obvious to the fact that Jesus had cured the possessed men, something an ordinary man could not do. Likewise the scribes of Capernium were oblivious to the many healings Jesus had done, acts that only God could do, and they chose to focus on Jesus having pronounced the sick man’s sins forgiven. However while the men of Gadarene and the scribes of Capernium ignored the divinity of Jesus, we see the people in awe and worshiping God, for having sent his own into their midst.
In the beginning of his Gospel John makes the case in an eloquent and poetic prose that Jesus was with God from the beginning of time, a part of God. Here we see Matthew attempting to make the same argument by illustrating how Jesus demonstrated his divinity and authority by healing and forgiving sins; again obvious acts that only God could authorize.
“ Note, All our wonder should help to enlarge our hearts in glorifying God, who alone does marvellous things. They glorified God for what he had done for this poor man. Others' mercies should be our praises, and we should give him thanks for them, for we are members one of another. God must be glorified in all the power that is given to men to do good.” (Henry)Benediction
Everliving God, whose will it is that all should come to you through your Son Jesus Christ: Inspire our witness to him, that all may know the power of his forgiveness and the hope of his resurrection; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Thought for the Day:
Prayer is the risen Jesus coming in with His resurrection power, given free rein in our lives, and then using His authority to enter any situation and change things.
submitted by Bishop-Boomer to AngloCatholicism [link] [comments]
O God, the King of glory, you have exalted your only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph to your kingdom in heaven: Do not leave us comfortless, but send us your Holy Spirit to strengthen us, and exalt us to that place where our Savior Christ has gone before; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.
Readings:
Psalm 105:1–22 Zechariah 4
Gospel: Matthew 9:1–8
1 And he entered into a ship, and passed over, and came into his own city.
2 And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy;Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.
3 And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth.
4 And Jesus knowing their thoughts said,Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts?
5For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk?
6But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins,(then saith he to the sick of the palsy,)Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.
7 And he arose, and departed to his house.
8 But when the multitudes saw it, they marvelled, and glorified God, which had given such power unto men.
Commentary:
“And he entered into a ship, and passed over, and came into his own city.” (v. 1) Here in these verses, we find a strange if not ironic comparison. On the one side we have those that find his miracles awe inspiring, or as we find in verse 8 where Matthew states in reference to the multitude following and who had witnessed Jesus’ miracles: “theymarvelled, and glorified God.” And on the other hand we see those who hate Jesus, because he dares to upset the status quo that they so coveted.
At the end of the previous chapter, Matthew tells us of his version of Jesus exorcising demons from two men (other Gospels only mention one) on the coast of the Sea of Galilee nearGadarene.As you recall fromother studies, Jesus cast out the demons, who then fled from him, entering into a herd of swine, causing the pigs to run into the sea and drown. The citizens ofGadarenes—upset at the loss of theirswine—asked Jesus to leave. Which brings us toour first verse for today inwhichMatthewtells usJesusagain crossed over the Sea tohis own city,Capernaum;where:
“And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy;Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth.” (v. 2-3)
“they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed” Other Gospels explain how the man was brought to Jesus. Because of the crowds, his friends lowered him down to Jesus througha hole inthe roof.
“Jesus’ miracles were not primarily calculated for crowd effect. Instead they were primarily done to minister to the humble needs of humble people. For the most part, most Jewish people of that time would have preferred much more spectacular signs – like calling down fire from heaven upon a Roman Legion.” (Guzik)
“and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy” Jesus was impressed by the faith of the friends of this man. The phrase: “seeing their faith” demonstrates that their faith was so great that they carried this man through the crowds to bring him before Jesus. Again in the other Gospels, (Mark 2:1-12, Luke 5:17-26) we find that their faith was so great, that their belief that Jesus could heal their friend was so strong that when they could not press through the multitude gathered outside, they carried him up onto the roof of the house in which Jesus was in at the time, they tore a hole in the roof and lowered the man down into the midst of the gathering who had come to hear Jesus speak.
We also can assume that the paralyzed man himself had little faith; as Matthew emphasizes “seeing their faith” in that Jesus noted the faith of his friends, not the man with palsy. Therefore it appears that Jesus wanted to encourage this man’s faith by His next words.
“Son, be of good cheer” “With swift sure diagnosis Jesus sees in the man not faith but deep depression…and uttering first a kindly hope-inspiring word, such as a physician might address to a patient: cheer up, child!” (Bruce)
“thy sins be forgiven thee.” “The faith of the paralyzed man’s friends did something – they brought this man to Jesus. Yet they only thought of bringing him to Jesus for the healing of his body. They certainly didn’t think that Jesus would forgive His sins.” (Guzik)
We need not infer that the man was paralyzed as the direct result of some sin that needed forgiving. This did not seem to be Jesus’ point in saying, “your sins are forgiven you.”
Matthew Poole saw six reasons why Jesus dealt with the man’s sin first. To paraphrase Poole’s reasons why the sin was dealt with first:
- Because sin is the root from which all our evils come.
- To show that forgiveness is more important than bodily healing.
- To show that the most important thing Jesus came to do was to deal with sin.
- To show that when a man’s sins are forgiven, he becomes a son of God.
- To show that the response to faith is the forgiveness of sin.
- To begin an important conversation with the scribes and Pharisees.
“And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth.” (v. 3)
“They said within themselves, in their hearts, among themselves, in their secret whisperings, This man blasphemeth. See how the greatest instance of heaven's power and grace is branded with the blackest note of hell's enmity; Christ's pardoning sin is termed blasphemy; nor had it been less, if he had not had commission from God for it. They, therefore, are guilty of blasphemy, that have no such commission, and yet pretend to pardon sin.” (Henry)
“certain of the scribes” Not all but a select few; “said within themselves” They didn’t have the courage to speak aloud their treasonous thoughts, which exposedtheir irrational belief that Jesus is but a man, one of their own,Jesushaving spent an indeterminate period of time in Capernaumbefore beginning his ministry.
In John chapter three, verse 2, Nicodemus the Pharisee came under cover of night so that his peers would not see him conversing with Jesus, and he said, “Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him. ”Itshould have been evident, that no mortal man could do the miraculous healings that Jesus did, unless he be sent by God.Nicodemus and presumably others were not so blind that they could not see that Jesus had authority given to him by God, but yet these scribes in Capernaum chose to ignore the obvious and focus on what they perceived to be an infraction of the Law.
While the friends of the sick man had a great deal of faith, enough to touch the heart of Jesus, the scribes had no faith, and could not see something as obvious as Jesus having authority given him by God to heal and to forgive sins. No, they had to be showed the divinity of Christ.
“ He undertakes to make out, that the Son of man, the Mediator, has power on earth to forgive sins; for therefore the Father has committed all judgment to the Son, and has given him this authority, because he is the Son of man, Jn. 5:22, 27. If he has power to give eternal life, as he certainly has (Jn. 17:2), he must have power to forgive sin; for guilt is a bar that must be removed, or we can never get to heaven. What an encouragement is this to poor sinners to repent, that the power of pardoning sin is put into the hands of the Son of man, who is bone of our bone! And if he had this power on earth, much more now that he is exalted to the Father's right hand, to give repentance and remission of sins, and so to be both a Prince and a Saviour,” (Henry)
“And Jesus knowing their thoughts said,Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts? For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins,(then saith he to the sick of the palsy,)Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.” (vs. 4-6)
“How he proves it, by his power in the kingdom of nature; his power to cure diseases. Is it not as easy to say, Thy sins are forgiven thee, as to say, Arise and walk? He that can cure the disease, whether declaratively as a Prophet, or authoritatively as God, can, in like manner, forgive the sin. Now, This is a general argument to prove that Christ had a divine mission. His miracles, especially his miraculous cures, confirm what he said of himself, that he was the Son of God; the power that appeared in his cures proved him sent of God; and the pity that appeared in them proved him sent of God to heal and save. The God of truth would not set his seal to a lie.” (Ibid)
“And Jesus knowing their thoughtsWherefore think ye evil in your hearts?” This alone should have told them they where in the presence of someone with great power and authority.
“For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk?” “Both healing and forgiveness are impossible with man. Yet only the promise of healing could be immediately proven, because though you can’t see someone’s sin being forgiven, you can see that they are healed.” (Guzik)
“This appears to have been founded on Psalm 103:3. Who forgiveth all thine iniquities, and healeth all thy diseases. Here pardon precedes health.” (Clarke)
“But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins” Regarding which is easier to say, “Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk” Jesus answered His own question before the religious leaders did. Since He could make good on His claim to heal the man, it gave proof of His claim to also have the authority to forgive sins.If he had the Godly power to heal, then logically he must also have the power to forgive sins.
“And he arose, and departed to his house. But when the multitudes saw it, they marveled, and glorified God, which had given such power unto men.” (vs. 7-8) At the man’s healing, the crowd properly gave God the glory for this miracle. Jesus obviously did not draw attention to Himself by the manner in which the healing was done.
At the beginning of this study, we mentioned how the men of Gadarene, were upset that Jesus had exorcised the demons and those entities drove the herd of swine mad and they ran into the sea. These men seemed obvious to the fact that Jesus had cured the possessed men, something an ordinary man could not do. Likewise the scribes of Capernium were oblivious to the many healings Jesus had done, acts that only God could do, and they chose to focus on Jesus having pronounced the sick man’s sins forgiven. However while the men of Gadarene and the scribes of Capernium ignored the divinity of Jesus, we see the people in awe and worshiping God, for having sent his own into their midst.
In the beginning of his Gospel John makes the case in an eloquent and poetic prose that Jesus was with God from the beginning of time, a part of God. Here we see Matthew attempting to make the same argument by illustrating how Jesus demonstrated his divinity and authority by healing and forgiving sins; again obvious acts that only God could authorize.
“ Note, All our wonder should help to enlarge our hearts in glorifying God, who alone does marvellous things. They glorified God for what he had done for this poor man. Others' mercies should be our praises, and we should give him thanks for them, for we are members one of another. God must be glorified in all the power that is given to men to do good.” (Henry)Benediction
Everliving God, whose will it is that all should come to you through your Son Jesus Christ: Inspire our witness to him, that all may know the power of his forgiveness and the hope of his resurrection; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Thought for the Day:
Prayer is the risen Jesus coming in with His resurrection power, given free rein in our lives, and then using His authority to enter any situation and change things.
- Ole Hallesby
2024.05.16 04:53 Bishop-Boomer Bible Studies From The Daily Office Thursday, May 16, 2024
The Collect
O God, the King of glory, you have exalted your only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph to your kingdom in heaven: Do not leave us comfortless, but send us your Holy Spirit to strengthen us, and exalt us to that place where our Savior Christ has gone before; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.
Readings:
Psalm 105:1–22 Zechariah 4
Gospel: Matthew 9:1–8
1 And he entered into a ship, and passed over, and came into his own city.
2 And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy;Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.
3 And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth.
4 And Jesus knowing their thoughts said,Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts?
5For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk?
6But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins,(then saith he to the sick of the palsy,)Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.
7 And he arose, and departed to his house.
8 But when the multitudes saw it, they marvelled, and glorified God, which had given such power unto men.
Commentary:
“And he entered into a ship, and passed over, and came into his own city.” (v. 1) Here in these verses, we find a strange if not ironic comparison. On the one side we have those that find his miracles awe inspiring, or as we find in verse 8 where Matthew states in reference to the multitude following and who had witnessed Jesus’ miracles: “theymarvelled, and glorified God.” And on the other hand we see those who hate Jesus, because he dares to upset the status quo that they so coveted.
At the end of the previous chapter, Matthew tells us of his version of Jesus exorcising demons from two men (other Gospels only mention one) on the coast of the Sea of Galilee nearGadarene.As you recall fromother studies, Jesus cast out the demons, who then fled from him, entering into a herd of swine, causing the pigs to run into the sea and drown. The citizens ofGadarenes—upset at the loss of theirswine—asked Jesus to leave. Which brings us toour first verse for today inwhichMatthewtells usJesusagain crossed over the Sea tohis own city,Capernaum;where:
“And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy;Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth.” (v. 2-3)
“they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed” Other Gospels explain how the man was brought to Jesus. Because of the crowds, his friends lowered him down to Jesus througha hole inthe roof.
“Jesus’ miracles were not primarily calculated for crowd effect. Instead they were primarily done to minister to the humble needs of humble people. For the most part, most Jewish people of that time would have preferred much more spectacular signs – like calling down fire from heaven upon a Roman Legion.” (Guzik)
“and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy” Jesus was impressed by the faith of the friends of this man. The phrase: “seeing their faith” demonstrates that their faith was so great that they carried this man through the crowds to bring him before Jesus. Again in the other Gospels, (Mark 2:1-12, Luke 5:17-26) we find that their faith was so great, that their belief that Jesus could heal their friend was so strong that when they could not press through the multitude gathered outside, they carried him up onto the roof of the house in which Jesus was in at the time, they tore a hole in the roof and lowered the man down into the midst of the gathering who had come to hear Jesus speak.
We also can assume that the paralyzed man himself had little faith; as Matthew emphasizes “seeing their faith” in that Jesus noted the faith of his friends, not the man with palsy. Therefore it appears that Jesus wanted to encourage this man’s faith by His next words.
“Son, be of good cheer” “With swift sure diagnosis Jesus sees in the man not faith but deep depression…and uttering first a kindly hope-inspiring word, such as a physician might address to a patient: cheer up, child!” (Bruce)
“thy sins be forgiven thee.” “The faith of the paralyzed man’s friends did something – they brought this man to Jesus. Yet they only thought of bringing him to Jesus for the healing of his body. They certainly didn’t think that Jesus would forgive His sins.” (Guzik)
We need not infer that the man was paralyzed as the direct result of some sin that needed forgiving. This did not seem to be Jesus’ point in saying, “your sins are forgiven you.”
Matthew Poole saw six reasons why Jesus dealt with the man’s sin first. To paraphrase Poole’s reasons why the sin was dealt with first:
“And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth.” (v. 3)
“They said within themselves, in their hearts, among themselves, in their secret whisperings, This man blasphemeth. See how the greatest instance of heaven's power and grace is branded with the blackest note of hell's enmity; Christ's pardoning sin is termed blasphemy; nor had it been less, if he had not had commission from God for it. They, therefore, are guilty of blasphemy, that have no such commission, and yet pretend to pardon sin.” (Henry)
“certain of the scribes” Not all but a select few; “said within themselves” They didn’t have the courage to speak aloud their treasonous thoughts, which exposedtheir irrational belief that Jesus is but a man, one of their own,Jesushaving spent an indeterminate period of time in Capernaumbefore beginning his ministry.
In John chapter three, verse 2, Nicodemus the Pharisee came under cover of night so that his peers would not see him conversing with Jesus, and he said, “Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him. ”Itshould have been evident, that no mortal man could do the miraculous healings that Jesus did, unless he be sent by God.Nicodemus and presumably others were not so blind that they could not see that Jesus had authority given to him by God, but yet these scribes in Capernaum chose to ignore the obvious and focus on what they perceived to be an infraction of the Law.
While the friends of the sick man had a great deal of faith, enough to touch the heart of Jesus, the scribes had no faith, and could not see something as obvious as Jesus having authority given him by God to heal and to forgive sins. No, they had to be showed the divinity of Christ.
“ He undertakes to make out, that the Son of man, the Mediator, has power on earth to forgive sins; for therefore the Father has committed all judgment to the Son, and has given him this authority, because he is the Son of man, Jn. 5:22, 27. If he has power to give eternal life, as he certainly has (Jn. 17:2), he must have power to forgive sin; for guilt is a bar that must be removed, or we can never get to heaven. What an encouragement is this to poor sinners to repent, that the power of pardoning sin is put into the hands of the Son of man, who is bone of our bone! And if he had this power on earth, much more now that he is exalted to the Father's right hand, to give repentance and remission of sins, and so to be both a Prince and a Saviour,” (Henry)
“And Jesus knowing their thoughts said,Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts? For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins,(then saith he to the sick of the palsy,)Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.” (vs. 4-6)
“How he proves it, by his power in the kingdom of nature; his power to cure diseases. Is it not as easy to say, Thy sins are forgiven thee, as to say, Arise and walk? He that can cure the disease, whether declaratively as a Prophet, or authoritatively as God, can, in like manner, forgive the sin. Now, This is a general argument to prove that Christ had a divine mission. His miracles, especially his miraculous cures, confirm what he said of himself, that he was the Son of God; the power that appeared in his cures proved him sent of God; and the pity that appeared in them proved him sent of God to heal and save. The God of truth would not set his seal to a lie.” (Ibid)
“And Jesus knowing their thoughtsWherefore think ye evil in your hearts?” This alone should have told them they where in the presence of someone with great power and authority.
“For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk?” “Both healing and forgiveness are impossible with man. Yet only the promise of healing could be immediately proven, because though you can’t see someone’s sin being forgiven, you can see that they are healed.” (Guzik)
“This appears to have been founded on Psalm 103:3. Who forgiveth all thine iniquities, and healeth all thy diseases. Here pardon precedes health.” (Clarke)
“But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins” Regarding which is easier to say, “Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk” Jesus answered His own question before the religious leaders did. Since He could make good on His claim to heal the man, it gave proof of His claim to also have the authority to forgive sins.If he had the Godly power to heal, then logically he must also have the power to forgive sins.
“And he arose, and departed to his house. But when the multitudes saw it, they marveled, and glorified God, which had given such power unto men.” (vs. 7-8) At the man’s healing, the crowd properly gave God the glory for this miracle. Jesus obviously did not draw attention to Himself by the manner in which the healing was done.
At the beginning of this study, we mentioned how the men of Gadarene, were upset that Jesus had exorcised the demons and those entities drove the herd of swine mad and they ran into the sea. These men seemed obvious to the fact that Jesus had cured the possessed men, something an ordinary man could not do. Likewise the scribes of Capernium were oblivious to the many healings Jesus had done, acts that only God could do, and they chose to focus on Jesus having pronounced the sick man’s sins forgiven. However while the men of Gadarene and the scribes of Capernium ignored the divinity of Jesus, we see the people in awe and worshiping God, for having sent his own into their midst.
In the beginning of his Gospel John makes the case in an eloquent and poetic prose that Jesus was with God from the beginning of time, a part of God. Here we see Matthew attempting to make the same argument by illustrating how Jesus demonstrated his divinity and authority by healing and forgiving sins; again obvious acts that only God could authorize.
“ Note, All our wonder should help to enlarge our hearts in glorifying God, who alone does marvellous things. They glorified God for what he had done for this poor man. Others' mercies should be our praises, and we should give him thanks for them, for we are members one of another. God must be glorified in all the power that is given to men to do good.” (Henry)Benediction
Everliving God, whose will it is that all should come to you through your Son Jesus Christ: Inspire our witness to him, that all may know the power of his forgiveness and the hope of his resurrection; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Thought for the Day:
Prayer is the risen Jesus coming in with His resurrection power, given free rein in our lives, and then using His authority to enter any situation and change things.
submitted by Bishop-Boomer to All_About_Him [link] [comments]
O God, the King of glory, you have exalted your only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph to your kingdom in heaven: Do not leave us comfortless, but send us your Holy Spirit to strengthen us, and exalt us to that place where our Savior Christ has gone before; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.
Readings:
Psalm 105:1–22 Zechariah 4
Gospel: Matthew 9:1–8
1 And he entered into a ship, and passed over, and came into his own city.
2 And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy;Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.
3 And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth.
4 And Jesus knowing their thoughts said,Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts?
5For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk?
6But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins,(then saith he to the sick of the palsy,)Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.
7 And he arose, and departed to his house.
8 But when the multitudes saw it, they marvelled, and glorified God, which had given such power unto men.
Commentary:
“And he entered into a ship, and passed over, and came into his own city.” (v. 1) Here in these verses, we find a strange if not ironic comparison. On the one side we have those that find his miracles awe inspiring, or as we find in verse 8 where Matthew states in reference to the multitude following and who had witnessed Jesus’ miracles: “theymarvelled, and glorified God.” And on the other hand we see those who hate Jesus, because he dares to upset the status quo that they so coveted.
At the end of the previous chapter, Matthew tells us of his version of Jesus exorcising demons from two men (other Gospels only mention one) on the coast of the Sea of Galilee nearGadarene.As you recall fromother studies, Jesus cast out the demons, who then fled from him, entering into a herd of swine, causing the pigs to run into the sea and drown. The citizens ofGadarenes—upset at the loss of theirswine—asked Jesus to leave. Which brings us toour first verse for today inwhichMatthewtells usJesusagain crossed over the Sea tohis own city,Capernaum;where:
“And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy;Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth.” (v. 2-3)
“they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed” Other Gospels explain how the man was brought to Jesus. Because of the crowds, his friends lowered him down to Jesus througha hole inthe roof.
“Jesus’ miracles were not primarily calculated for crowd effect. Instead they were primarily done to minister to the humble needs of humble people. For the most part, most Jewish people of that time would have preferred much more spectacular signs – like calling down fire from heaven upon a Roman Legion.” (Guzik)
“and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy” Jesus was impressed by the faith of the friends of this man. The phrase: “seeing their faith” demonstrates that their faith was so great that they carried this man through the crowds to bring him before Jesus. Again in the other Gospels, (Mark 2:1-12, Luke 5:17-26) we find that their faith was so great, that their belief that Jesus could heal their friend was so strong that when they could not press through the multitude gathered outside, they carried him up onto the roof of the house in which Jesus was in at the time, they tore a hole in the roof and lowered the man down into the midst of the gathering who had come to hear Jesus speak.
We also can assume that the paralyzed man himself had little faith; as Matthew emphasizes “seeing their faith” in that Jesus noted the faith of his friends, not the man with palsy. Therefore it appears that Jesus wanted to encourage this man’s faith by His next words.
“Son, be of good cheer” “With swift sure diagnosis Jesus sees in the man not faith but deep depression…and uttering first a kindly hope-inspiring word, such as a physician might address to a patient: cheer up, child!” (Bruce)
“thy sins be forgiven thee.” “The faith of the paralyzed man’s friends did something – they brought this man to Jesus. Yet they only thought of bringing him to Jesus for the healing of his body. They certainly didn’t think that Jesus would forgive His sins.” (Guzik)
We need not infer that the man was paralyzed as the direct result of some sin that needed forgiving. This did not seem to be Jesus’ point in saying, “your sins are forgiven you.”
Matthew Poole saw six reasons why Jesus dealt with the man’s sin first. To paraphrase Poole’s reasons why the sin was dealt with first:
- Because sin is the root from which all our evils come.
- To show that forgiveness is more important than bodily healing.
- To show that the most important thing Jesus came to do was to deal with sin.
- To show that when a man’s sins are forgiven, he becomes a son of God.
- To show that the response to faith is the forgiveness of sin.
- To begin an important conversation with the scribes and Pharisees.
“And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth.” (v. 3)
“They said within themselves, in their hearts, among themselves, in their secret whisperings, This man blasphemeth. See how the greatest instance of heaven's power and grace is branded with the blackest note of hell's enmity; Christ's pardoning sin is termed blasphemy; nor had it been less, if he had not had commission from God for it. They, therefore, are guilty of blasphemy, that have no such commission, and yet pretend to pardon sin.” (Henry)
“certain of the scribes” Not all but a select few; “said within themselves” They didn’t have the courage to speak aloud their treasonous thoughts, which exposedtheir irrational belief that Jesus is but a man, one of their own,Jesushaving spent an indeterminate period of time in Capernaumbefore beginning his ministry.
In John chapter three, verse 2, Nicodemus the Pharisee came under cover of night so that his peers would not see him conversing with Jesus, and he said, “Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him. ”Itshould have been evident, that no mortal man could do the miraculous healings that Jesus did, unless he be sent by God.Nicodemus and presumably others were not so blind that they could not see that Jesus had authority given to him by God, but yet these scribes in Capernaum chose to ignore the obvious and focus on what they perceived to be an infraction of the Law.
While the friends of the sick man had a great deal of faith, enough to touch the heart of Jesus, the scribes had no faith, and could not see something as obvious as Jesus having authority given him by God to heal and to forgive sins. No, they had to be showed the divinity of Christ.
“ He undertakes to make out, that the Son of man, the Mediator, has power on earth to forgive sins; for therefore the Father has committed all judgment to the Son, and has given him this authority, because he is the Son of man, Jn. 5:22, 27. If he has power to give eternal life, as he certainly has (Jn. 17:2), he must have power to forgive sin; for guilt is a bar that must be removed, or we can never get to heaven. What an encouragement is this to poor sinners to repent, that the power of pardoning sin is put into the hands of the Son of man, who is bone of our bone! And if he had this power on earth, much more now that he is exalted to the Father's right hand, to give repentance and remission of sins, and so to be both a Prince and a Saviour,” (Henry)
“And Jesus knowing their thoughts said,Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts? For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins,(then saith he to the sick of the palsy,)Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.” (vs. 4-6)
“How he proves it, by his power in the kingdom of nature; his power to cure diseases. Is it not as easy to say, Thy sins are forgiven thee, as to say, Arise and walk? He that can cure the disease, whether declaratively as a Prophet, or authoritatively as God, can, in like manner, forgive the sin. Now, This is a general argument to prove that Christ had a divine mission. His miracles, especially his miraculous cures, confirm what he said of himself, that he was the Son of God; the power that appeared in his cures proved him sent of God; and the pity that appeared in them proved him sent of God to heal and save. The God of truth would not set his seal to a lie.” (Ibid)
“And Jesus knowing their thoughtsWherefore think ye evil in your hearts?” This alone should have told them they where in the presence of someone with great power and authority.
“For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk?” “Both healing and forgiveness are impossible with man. Yet only the promise of healing could be immediately proven, because though you can’t see someone’s sin being forgiven, you can see that they are healed.” (Guzik)
“This appears to have been founded on Psalm 103:3. Who forgiveth all thine iniquities, and healeth all thy diseases. Here pardon precedes health.” (Clarke)
“But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins” Regarding which is easier to say, “Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk” Jesus answered His own question before the religious leaders did. Since He could make good on His claim to heal the man, it gave proof of His claim to also have the authority to forgive sins.If he had the Godly power to heal, then logically he must also have the power to forgive sins.
“And he arose, and departed to his house. But when the multitudes saw it, they marveled, and glorified God, which had given such power unto men.” (vs. 7-8) At the man’s healing, the crowd properly gave God the glory for this miracle. Jesus obviously did not draw attention to Himself by the manner in which the healing was done.
At the beginning of this study, we mentioned how the men of Gadarene, were upset that Jesus had exorcised the demons and those entities drove the herd of swine mad and they ran into the sea. These men seemed obvious to the fact that Jesus had cured the possessed men, something an ordinary man could not do. Likewise the scribes of Capernium were oblivious to the many healings Jesus had done, acts that only God could do, and they chose to focus on Jesus having pronounced the sick man’s sins forgiven. However while the men of Gadarene and the scribes of Capernium ignored the divinity of Jesus, we see the people in awe and worshiping God, for having sent his own into their midst.
In the beginning of his Gospel John makes the case in an eloquent and poetic prose that Jesus was with God from the beginning of time, a part of God. Here we see Matthew attempting to make the same argument by illustrating how Jesus demonstrated his divinity and authority by healing and forgiving sins; again obvious acts that only God could authorize.
“ Note, All our wonder should help to enlarge our hearts in glorifying God, who alone does marvellous things. They glorified God for what he had done for this poor man. Others' mercies should be our praises, and we should give him thanks for them, for we are members one of another. God must be glorified in all the power that is given to men to do good.” (Henry)Benediction
Everliving God, whose will it is that all should come to you through your Son Jesus Christ: Inspire our witness to him, that all may know the power of his forgiveness and the hope of his resurrection; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Thought for the Day:
Prayer is the risen Jesus coming in with His resurrection power, given free rein in our lives, and then using His authority to enter any situation and change things.
- Ole Hallesby
2024.05.16 04:51 Better-Wonder-9930 AITA for laughing at a joke someone made about my SIL?
I (27f) have been married to my husband (29m) for 2 years. He has an ex wife (Allie- fake name,29f) and he and she have two kids together, a boy and a girl. We all get along really well, even if we aren’t doing family dinners etc like some co parents do.
This story is about my brothers wife, Caitlin (also fake name, 19f). My husband and I recently had twins (b/g) and sadly our son didn’t make it. It’s been a long couple of months with our grief and having my first baby, after a rough pregnancy.
My brother is in the army, and while he’s doing some training, his wife is staying with us, because they’re moving soon after he’s finished. It was fine at first, until Caitlin started making little digs about me. That I haven’t lost the baby weight, if I don’t want to stay my size I shouldn’t eat xyz, etc and when my stepkids are here, she once remarked that “it was good my husband managed to get at least one son.” She’s careful to only say these things where I can hear them and no one else. It’s gotten to be a lot to take. I’ve spent a lot of time crying over the things she’s said to/ about me on top of still grieving my son. I haven’t told anybody what she’s been doing just because I don’t have it in me to have one more thing for people to feel bad for me about. Until this past Friday.
Friday afternoon, Allie dropped the kids off for the weekend, and while I was standing there talking to her, I guess I looked really upset (Caitlin had just made another crappy comment). And I ended up telling her everything. I told her the last thing Caitlin had said about my weight before Allie and the kids got there. Unfortunately (for Caitlin at least) Allie has a complete lack of what you’d call “give a fuck”. Caitlin walks into the room and I’m teary eyed and Caitlin makes a comment about me being whiny. Allie immediately fires back (with a tone I’ve NEVER heard her use) with “you know being a pick me bitch doesn’t burn calories. If it did maybe you wouldn’t look like a beluga whale.”
At first I was stunned into silence but before I even realized it I had started laughing. Caitlin immediately starts crying and leaves the room. Allie goes home, and I get a call from my brother telling me I’m terrible because apparently Caitlin had an ED in her younger teenage years and I was insensitive to that by laughing at allie’s mean comment. While I tried to explain to him that she’s been making nonstop comments towards me he didn’t care and kept trying to call me out on it. He even went so far as to tell our parents, who aren’t really taking sides but they do think we should both apologize to each other.
So, AITA for laughing at what Allie said?
submitted by Better-Wonder-9930 to AmItheAsshole [link] [comments]
This story is about my brothers wife, Caitlin (also fake name, 19f). My husband and I recently had twins (b/g) and sadly our son didn’t make it. It’s been a long couple of months with our grief and having my first baby, after a rough pregnancy.
My brother is in the army, and while he’s doing some training, his wife is staying with us, because they’re moving soon after he’s finished. It was fine at first, until Caitlin started making little digs about me. That I haven’t lost the baby weight, if I don’t want to stay my size I shouldn’t eat xyz, etc and when my stepkids are here, she once remarked that “it was good my husband managed to get at least one son.” She’s careful to only say these things where I can hear them and no one else. It’s gotten to be a lot to take. I’ve spent a lot of time crying over the things she’s said to/ about me on top of still grieving my son. I haven’t told anybody what she’s been doing just because I don’t have it in me to have one more thing for people to feel bad for me about. Until this past Friday.
Friday afternoon, Allie dropped the kids off for the weekend, and while I was standing there talking to her, I guess I looked really upset (Caitlin had just made another crappy comment). And I ended up telling her everything. I told her the last thing Caitlin had said about my weight before Allie and the kids got there. Unfortunately (for Caitlin at least) Allie has a complete lack of what you’d call “give a fuck”. Caitlin walks into the room and I’m teary eyed and Caitlin makes a comment about me being whiny. Allie immediately fires back (with a tone I’ve NEVER heard her use) with “you know being a pick me bitch doesn’t burn calories. If it did maybe you wouldn’t look like a beluga whale.”
At first I was stunned into silence but before I even realized it I had started laughing. Caitlin immediately starts crying and leaves the room. Allie goes home, and I get a call from my brother telling me I’m terrible because apparently Caitlin had an ED in her younger teenage years and I was insensitive to that by laughing at allie’s mean comment. While I tried to explain to him that she’s been making nonstop comments towards me he didn’t care and kept trying to call me out on it. He even went so far as to tell our parents, who aren’t really taking sides but they do think we should both apologize to each other.
So, AITA for laughing at what Allie said?
2024.05.16 04:48 MyNi_Redux Commentary: Gamma Squeeze and 39-Month LEAPS
 | I'm going to comment on two option-related topics today - the possibility of a gamma squeeze, and the 39-month LEAPS. As the first is relevant since monthly opex is in 2 days (5/17), and the second has been making its rounds, and needs some fact-checking. submitted by MyNi_Redux to amcstock [link] [comments] As always, not financial advice - I am sharing what I am tracking and what I think. You're welcome to contribute to the discussion. Gamma SneezeThe table below gives us the current situation with OI for all AMC options expiring in 2 days (my calcs). This tells us how much of the float each OI is equivalent to as a %, and how much it cumulatively is, too. We can surmise the following:
OI as of start of day, May 15, 2024 By the way, I make no mention of "max pain". That's because it's not a thing. A useful thing, anyway. 39-month LEAPSTl;dr: This "theory" is a complete and utter horseshit.The most glaring error is that the smooth brain that came up with this did not actually check if those LEAPS even existed in Feb 2021 (39 months ago). These are the farthest out OI at that time - only the Jan 2023 chain existed then: Farthest out expiries on Feb 28, 2021 691 days is 23 months. That's 16 months short. Those alleged 39-month LEAPS didn't even exist at that time. I'll do you one better - here is the option chain from Jan 2022 - still no May 2024. Farthest out expiries on Jan 1, 2022 And no, we cannot have private derivative transactions show up on a public chain, so any claims of "this was a private transaction" are also moot. That those claimed expiries don't exist makes perfect sense, of course. Equity LEAPS are only ever there 24 months out any given time, with very few exceptions. Only ones which will have 3+ year chains are indices, like SPX. A related claim is that somehow LEAPS were used by shorts to hedge. Apart from the lunacy of hedging for 39 months (lol), LEAPS are an absurdly inefficient way to delta hedge. If under pressure, shorts will hedge with short DTEs, so that the cost is not that high, and the higher gamma works in their favor. (And no, shorts are not and have not been "stuck," which is often the hope and basis for many of these absurd claims.) Clearly this 39-month LEAPS claim was the product of a moron masquerading as a market commentator. They didn't even know what they didn't know to know how wrong they were. Hilarious and sad at the same time. But not surprising, given where it came from, and their track record of pumping out horseshit that has almost never passed the test of time. Looking forward to your thoughts. |
2024.05.16 04:46 donewiththedark hair loss in first week?
hi all I’m on day 8 of accutane 30mg and I’ve been experiencing side effects already (purging, bloody noses, super dry lips). I also noticed yesterday when I washed my hair I lost a little bit more than normal. not a crazy amount, maybe like 25% more than normal… I know hair loss is listed as a side effect, but isn’t it usually due to telogen effluvium which happens 2-3 months after a stressor? I have also been having an itchy scalp so I’m wondering if I could just be dry and needing to step up my hair care. has anybody else lost hair really early in their journey? did the hair loss stop after a few months or continue? thanks in advance
submitted by donewiththedark to Accutane [link] [comments]
2024.05.16 04:40 tirzbeau Week-In Review: SlimDown Rx
 | Alright it’s going on my second week with SlimDown Rx and I’m frequently asked about the medication so far so here’s a rundown of FAQ. submitted by tirzbeau to tirzepatidecompound [link] [comments]
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2024.05.16 04:35 Estefierrote_ Post Birth Control Syndrome - Beyond The Pill
I come off the pill 8 months ago and i've dealing with terrible side effects. Anxiety, weight gain, hormonal acne for the very first time in my life, joint pain, depression, lack of motivation, low libido, fatigue, hair loss the first month, migraine some days during the month.... I have them all!!! I bought the book Beyond The Pill from Dr Jolene Brighten. I want to do her protocol.... Did someone did it already? Is it hard to follow in terms of food and cooking? Did you see results? My book will arrive in 1 month and i'm kind of desperate... I would like to read some reviews from you. Thank you! :)
submitted by Estefierrote_ to birthcontrol [link] [comments]
2024.05.16 04:34 Substantialmajestic Suspicious Circumstance
A police officer received a call to help another officer, who he had known for many years. The call was designated as "suspicious circumstance."
The call was from a son who said that when he went to check on his mom at her old farmhouse, he had heard noises from downstairs in the basement.
It took the officer about 15 minutes to get out to this old farmhouse outside of town. It was yellow stucco and very old. He could see the old knob and tubing wiring on the outside of the house.
There is an upset old woman on the porch, the mom, and then a younger adult male standing next to her, the son, and then his fellow police officer standing next to them.
He goes up to them and gets all the information. When the son got to his mom's farmhouse to check on his mom, while he was talking to his mom on the main floor, he heard a noise in the basement like something being dropped. He dismissed it as perhaps an animal.
However, then there were more noises of things moving around and then he also started hearing voices.
The son said he thinks maybe someone is living down there taking advantage of his mom. He says the basement is unlivable as it has a dirt floor and no electricity.
The mom is upset. She said she didn't want the son to go down in the basement. And now, the mom didn't want the police officers to go down in the basement either.
So, he asks her why she doesn't want them to go down there. She says, "Because the others are down there."
And he asks her what she means by that. She says "The others were here long before me and they will be here long after me."
He says he understands but that they need to go check the basement. The mom says nicely "You are both good boys. Don't go down there."
Meanwhile, the officer sees that the fellow officer has a very scared look on his face. This fellow police officer has helped the police officer who is calling into the show many many times. The intuition from him has saved both of them in many situations. So, this guy trusts him a lot. He pulls him to the side and says "What's going on here?" The fellow police officer says "There is a very dark fog around this house."
The two police officers decide to go clear the basement with their weapons drawn. They let dispatch know they are going to clear the basement and then they make their way into the old house.
They go through the front door and enter an entryway. There is a kitchen to the left. There are two double doors to a living room on the right. They go through the kitchen and then through a small hallway towards the garage where there are steps down to the basement.
They open the basement door and start going down the steps. The steps are very steep and narrow like steps on a boat. There is no electricity downstairs. He only has the light on his gun. He said every single inch of his exposed skin felt like it was under assault from a thickness in the air.
They get downstairs and to the left are a bunch of old boilers. First a wood fire one, then an oil fire one, and then an updated furnace. To the left are steep stairs that go back outside through a bulkhead entrance (like the wizard of oz -- those basement doors that are flat in the ground).
And, in between the boilers and that bulkhead stair is a door to a back room inside the basement. And they focus on opening up that door.
The fellow officer opens the door and he goes inside. The room is filled with old wooden items and some boxes. There is nothing for anyone to hide behind. In the center of the room near the back is an old rocking horse. The white paint has been chipping and the hair on the horse has faded severely.
They both stand there looking at the rocking horse. He says he was drawn to the rocking horse in a very weird way.
Then he hears his radio as dispatch is calling. Dispatch says "Security check" as in "Are you guys ok?" He answers back that they are ok and dispatch says "What is taking you so long." He thinks this is very odd since usually dispatch does not interrupt you when you are clearing a house like that as they know you are highly focused.
He looks over to his fellow officer and he is staring at that rocking horse. His eyes are glossed over in a daze. He shakes his fellow officer and his fellow officer snaps out of it. They make their way back upstairs. They both talk in the kitchen that they are going to have to talk about this with each other after they leave the house to get their bearings back.
They go back out on the porch. The old woman has a smirk on her face. She says "Didn't feel good did it? You should have listened shouldn't you?"
He gets back in his vehicle and he asks dispatch why they interrupted him. Dispatch says he was gone too long. He says he wasn't gone long. Dispatch says he was gone for 10 minutes. He says he was not gone for 10 minutes. He says he was gone for about 2 minutes before they interrupted him.
There are more calls that come in and they move on to those.
However, later, back at the police station, they review the police body camera. Sure enough, once they get down into that room with the rocking horse, both he and the fellow officer freeze for 7 minutes looking at that rocking horse. They do not move. They do not speak. You can hear them both breathing for 7 minutes on the video. The only reason they snap out of it is because dispatch interrupts them on the radio. They both stood looking at that rocking horse for 7 minutes without realizing it.
submitted by Substantialmajestic to TrueScaryStories [link] [comments]
The call was from a son who said that when he went to check on his mom at her old farmhouse, he had heard noises from downstairs in the basement.
It took the officer about 15 minutes to get out to this old farmhouse outside of town. It was yellow stucco and very old. He could see the old knob and tubing wiring on the outside of the house.
There is an upset old woman on the porch, the mom, and then a younger adult male standing next to her, the son, and then his fellow police officer standing next to them.
He goes up to them and gets all the information. When the son got to his mom's farmhouse to check on his mom, while he was talking to his mom on the main floor, he heard a noise in the basement like something being dropped. He dismissed it as perhaps an animal.
However, then there were more noises of things moving around and then he also started hearing voices.
The son said he thinks maybe someone is living down there taking advantage of his mom. He says the basement is unlivable as it has a dirt floor and no electricity.
The mom is upset. She said she didn't want the son to go down in the basement. And now, the mom didn't want the police officers to go down in the basement either.
So, he asks her why she doesn't want them to go down there. She says, "Because the others are down there."
And he asks her what she means by that. She says "The others were here long before me and they will be here long after me."
He says he understands but that they need to go check the basement. The mom says nicely "You are both good boys. Don't go down there."
Meanwhile, the officer sees that the fellow officer has a very scared look on his face. This fellow police officer has helped the police officer who is calling into the show many many times. The intuition from him has saved both of them in many situations. So, this guy trusts him a lot. He pulls him to the side and says "What's going on here?" The fellow police officer says "There is a very dark fog around this house."
The two police officers decide to go clear the basement with their weapons drawn. They let dispatch know they are going to clear the basement and then they make their way into the old house.
They go through the front door and enter an entryway. There is a kitchen to the left. There are two double doors to a living room on the right. They go through the kitchen and then through a small hallway towards the garage where there are steps down to the basement.
They open the basement door and start going down the steps. The steps are very steep and narrow like steps on a boat. There is no electricity downstairs. He only has the light on his gun. He said every single inch of his exposed skin felt like it was under assault from a thickness in the air.
They get downstairs and to the left are a bunch of old boilers. First a wood fire one, then an oil fire one, and then an updated furnace. To the left are steep stairs that go back outside through a bulkhead entrance (like the wizard of oz -- those basement doors that are flat in the ground).
And, in between the boilers and that bulkhead stair is a door to a back room inside the basement. And they focus on opening up that door.
The fellow officer opens the door and he goes inside. The room is filled with old wooden items and some boxes. There is nothing for anyone to hide behind. In the center of the room near the back is an old rocking horse. The white paint has been chipping and the hair on the horse has faded severely.
They both stand there looking at the rocking horse. He says he was drawn to the rocking horse in a very weird way.
Then he hears his radio as dispatch is calling. Dispatch says "Security check" as in "Are you guys ok?" He answers back that they are ok and dispatch says "What is taking you so long." He thinks this is very odd since usually dispatch does not interrupt you when you are clearing a house like that as they know you are highly focused.
He looks over to his fellow officer and he is staring at that rocking horse. His eyes are glossed over in a daze. He shakes his fellow officer and his fellow officer snaps out of it. They make their way back upstairs. They both talk in the kitchen that they are going to have to talk about this with each other after they leave the house to get their bearings back.
They go back out on the porch. The old woman has a smirk on her face. She says "Didn't feel good did it? You should have listened shouldn't you?"
He gets back in his vehicle and he asks dispatch why they interrupted him. Dispatch says he was gone too long. He says he wasn't gone long. Dispatch says he was gone for 10 minutes. He says he was not gone for 10 minutes. He says he was gone for about 2 minutes before they interrupted him.
There are more calls that come in and they move on to those.
However, later, back at the police station, they review the police body camera. Sure enough, once they get down into that room with the rocking horse, both he and the fellow officer freeze for 7 minutes looking at that rocking horse. They do not move. They do not speak. You can hear them both breathing for 7 minutes on the video. The only reason they snap out of it is because dispatch interrupts them on the radio. They both stood looking at that rocking horse for 7 minutes without realizing it.
2024.05.16 04:32 akff2016 Should I sue? Dog Bite
Hi!
I work as a dog groomer. On March 1st a client’s pit-bull attacked my face. It ripped a part of my chin off and I received 30 stitches to sew it back together. It didn’t let go, I had to fight it off. I know this is part of a risk that comes with the job. I’ve been slightly bitten by dogs before, but never anything this bad.
I was clipping the dog’s nails and he started growling, so I followed protocol and muzzled the dog. I was able to finish clipping its nails with little to no struggle, I went and set my tools down, then came back to take the muzzle off and put the dog away because he was all done and ready to go home. When I took the muzzle off, he reared his head back, reversing it out of the muzzle himself, turned to the side and lunged for my face….I mean, I hadn’t touched the dog for a few minutes and he had seemed to calm down, it was like he was watching me move around the room and plotting until I was close enough . He didn’t let go either, I’ve had dogs snap at me and get me, but never latch on and try to maul me like this. It had my whole head in its mouth with his molars from temple to temple, and then ripped my chin off with his canines.
Everyone in my life is telling me to sue. Everyone. Everyone except my boss. Even random people in the grocery store said to sue.
Because,
When the owner dropped her dog off, I asked her “has he ever been groomed before? Does he do okay? Is there anything he doesn’t like or doesn’t behave well with?” She said yes yes and no he’s perfect for everything.
When I was in the ER she came to pick her dog up and apparently said “oh I know he growls on nails but he’s never bit meee.”
I live in Alaska and I guess the state law is you are responsible for your pet no matter what it did. And I’ve been told that since I asked her those questions I can prove negligence.
What do you guys think? Is it worth it? Should I just move on?
Im traumatized now. I had to find a new job, do emdr in therapy, even when I see my own dog now if his face is too close to mine I get a flashback. My own dog :( . People in public comment on my horrible scars now.
And the lady never called to apologize. Or even find out what happened. In fact, my coworker found her social media, that he she dog a tattoo of her “perfect boy”, THE NEXT DAY, and has bathed the dog herself.
I don’t know what to do. Suing is a lot of work. I don’t want to just roll over, but I feel kind of fucked over here. If she had told me he was aggressive, I would’ve approached completely differently and had two groomers do the nails, or taken the muzzle off with two groomers and added caution. We also found out that she had adopted him only 6-7 months prior from our local pound.
Should I sue like everyone is telling me I should?
submitted by akff2016 to legaladvice [link] [comments]
I work as a dog groomer. On March 1st a client’s pit-bull attacked my face. It ripped a part of my chin off and I received 30 stitches to sew it back together. It didn’t let go, I had to fight it off. I know this is part of a risk that comes with the job. I’ve been slightly bitten by dogs before, but never anything this bad.
I was clipping the dog’s nails and he started growling, so I followed protocol and muzzled the dog. I was able to finish clipping its nails with little to no struggle, I went and set my tools down, then came back to take the muzzle off and put the dog away because he was all done and ready to go home. When I took the muzzle off, he reared his head back, reversing it out of the muzzle himself, turned to the side and lunged for my face….I mean, I hadn’t touched the dog for a few minutes and he had seemed to calm down, it was like he was watching me move around the room and plotting until I was close enough . He didn’t let go either, I’ve had dogs snap at me and get me, but never latch on and try to maul me like this. It had my whole head in its mouth with his molars from temple to temple, and then ripped my chin off with his canines.
Everyone in my life is telling me to sue. Everyone. Everyone except my boss. Even random people in the grocery store said to sue.
Because,
When the owner dropped her dog off, I asked her “has he ever been groomed before? Does he do okay? Is there anything he doesn’t like or doesn’t behave well with?” She said yes yes and no he’s perfect for everything.
When I was in the ER she came to pick her dog up and apparently said “oh I know he growls on nails but he’s never bit meee.”
I live in Alaska and I guess the state law is you are responsible for your pet no matter what it did. And I’ve been told that since I asked her those questions I can prove negligence.
What do you guys think? Is it worth it? Should I just move on?
Im traumatized now. I had to find a new job, do emdr in therapy, even when I see my own dog now if his face is too close to mine I get a flashback. My own dog :( . People in public comment on my horrible scars now.
And the lady never called to apologize. Or even find out what happened. In fact, my coworker found her social media, that he she dog a tattoo of her “perfect boy”, THE NEXT DAY, and has bathed the dog herself.
I don’t know what to do. Suing is a lot of work. I don’t want to just roll over, but I feel kind of fucked over here. If she had told me he was aggressive, I would’ve approached completely differently and had two groomers do the nails, or taken the muzzle off with two groomers and added caution. We also found out that she had adopted him only 6-7 months prior from our local pound.
Should I sue like everyone is telling me I should?
2024.05.16 04:32 tonyyaya4 Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches from the Wrong Side of History by Nellie Bowles Free Audiobook and Review
A critical analysis of numerous modern social, political, and cultural concerns is provided in "Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches from the Wrong Side of History" edited by Nellie Bowles. As Bowles challenges conventional narratives and questions the consequences of progress, readers are taken on a tour through the aftermath of societal transformations.
Issues covered in depth include the effects of technology on interpersonal relationships and psychological well-being, the ascent of the elite in Silicon Valley, the nature and dynamics of contemporary activism, and the intricacies of identity politics. By weaving together journalistic research and introspection, Bowles provides an intriguing look at the paradoxes and intricacies of our modern world.
Bowles' prose is captivating and perceptive; her stories are vivid and analytical, and they transport readers to the settings she writes about. She urges readers to address the intricacies of modern challenges by not shying away from unpleasant realities or opposing viewpoints.
All things considered, "Morning After the Revolution" provides an incisive analysis of contemporary culture, prompting readers to question their presumptions and dive deeper into the complexity of our global community. Anyone curious about the paradoxes and difficulties of the here and now will find this book to be an engaging and thought-provoking read.
Free Audiobook with a free trial of Audible at freeaudiobookstrial .com
submitted by tonyyaya4 to Audiobookladz [link] [comments]
Issues covered in depth include the effects of technology on interpersonal relationships and psychological well-being, the ascent of the elite in Silicon Valley, the nature and dynamics of contemporary activism, and the intricacies of identity politics. By weaving together journalistic research and introspection, Bowles provides an intriguing look at the paradoxes and intricacies of our modern world.
Bowles' prose is captivating and perceptive; her stories are vivid and analytical, and they transport readers to the settings she writes about. She urges readers to address the intricacies of modern challenges by not shying away from unpleasant realities or opposing viewpoints.
All things considered, "Morning After the Revolution" provides an incisive analysis of contemporary culture, prompting readers to question their presumptions and dive deeper into the complexity of our global community. Anyone curious about the paradoxes and difficulties of the here and now will find this book to be an engaging and thought-provoking read.
Free Audiobook with a free trial of Audible at freeaudiobookstrial .com
2024.05.16 04:24 yodabutter69 Does anybody have experience with intermittent fasting? Is it safe?
So I have had 3 seizures before. Over the course of 8 or so years. After the second one I started taking lamictal but the doctor was trying to switch me to something else, so we cut my lamictal dosage and half and I was supposed to be starting the other one. I don’t remember exactly what happened and yes maybe I am an idiot for not doing it right and I do feel dumb about it. But I was taking a less than therapeutic dose. 200 mg a day instead of 400. And I believe I was taking the 200XR. When I had the seizure the doc immediately did a blood test and found the level of lamotrigine in my body was not a therapeutic dose. I slowly increased my dosage to 400.
So now I take 400 mg, I have been tested and there is a therapeutic dose in my blood. I have not had any seizures since I started the proper dosage.
So after the second seizure is when I started the meds and about 2 years later I had another seizure. I was very sleep deprived, was mourning, hadn’t ate properly and was playing a music festival and it happened during my set. I say these bc they all can be factors.
Anyway it has been about 10 months since my last seizure. I have been gaining weight Ever since I can remember. I started an SSRI a while back that just made me gain more. I haven’t been able to go to the gym much bc I injured my wrist, I know I could still go but I want to play basketball and climb and not just sit on a machine the whole time. I want to be better at it but I am working towards getting more exercise.
The main problem with my diet is late at night. I will eat healthy all day and then at night I just want to eat trash and sugar sugar sugar. I have found that it is super effective for me to fast bc if I stop eating at a certain time I will consume no garbage and sugar that night bc I have already stopped eating.
My neuro said that keto or being in ketosis is effective in treating seizures and I have heard fasting is a big part of keto. My concern is that I did not have proper food in my body at the time of the last seizure. I am just wondering if intermittent fasting is ok or if it would put me more at risk for having a seizure. I know ketosis can achieved by the diet and or fasting. So kind of seems confusing.
I would appreciate any helpful or positive input.
Also side note in case it matters- I am also taking pantaprozale for acid reflux and recently started vyvanse again but am not taking it every day.
TIA! ❤️
submitted by yodabutter69 to Epilepsy [link] [comments]
So now I take 400 mg, I have been tested and there is a therapeutic dose in my blood. I have not had any seizures since I started the proper dosage.
So after the second seizure is when I started the meds and about 2 years later I had another seizure. I was very sleep deprived, was mourning, hadn’t ate properly and was playing a music festival and it happened during my set. I say these bc they all can be factors.
Anyway it has been about 10 months since my last seizure. I have been gaining weight Ever since I can remember. I started an SSRI a while back that just made me gain more. I haven’t been able to go to the gym much bc I injured my wrist, I know I could still go but I want to play basketball and climb and not just sit on a machine the whole time. I want to be better at it but I am working towards getting more exercise.
The main problem with my diet is late at night. I will eat healthy all day and then at night I just want to eat trash and sugar sugar sugar. I have found that it is super effective for me to fast bc if I stop eating at a certain time I will consume no garbage and sugar that night bc I have already stopped eating.
My neuro said that keto or being in ketosis is effective in treating seizures and I have heard fasting is a big part of keto. My concern is that I did not have proper food in my body at the time of the last seizure. I am just wondering if intermittent fasting is ok or if it would put me more at risk for having a seizure. I know ketosis can achieved by the diet and or fasting. So kind of seems confusing.
I would appreciate any helpful or positive input.
Also side note in case it matters- I am also taking pantaprozale for acid reflux and recently started vyvanse again but am not taking it every day.
TIA! ❤️
2024.05.16 04:24 william-t-power The interesting effect of rebuilding my life and getting it to a respectable and decent place is exposing that, dear God am I lonely
I got divorced a few years back before I got sober. It was then inevitable result of my alcoholism. My life was a disaster for quite a long time, then I got sober. Sobriety had it's own challenges but it's been a few years and things have really improved. I am more or less fixed most of all the major problems. My life is now stable and pretty successful, I would say.
This has the side effect of now living a well built and running life, I realize how incredibly lonely I am. I intentionally kept people at a distance for years. I didn't want to hurt anyone else or draw them into my radius of toxicity and destruction. I still have problems where I assume that anyone I socialize with for long enough will walk away damaged after enough time.
I am in AA, and I have a group. Thank God for that. For the rest of the week, however, I am very isolated. I have small interactions here and there with people but nothing of depth. I am past 40 and worry both that I have lost time as well as I am not using the time I have well. I tear up at scenes in movies where there's a moment of romantic connection and I do not cry easily. That has been a recent thing.
I just wanted to write this out somewhere. I have hope that I will start building connections soon. Maybe I'll meet a woman who might want to date me. That seems crazy to consider.
submitted by william-t-power to stopdrinking [link] [comments]
This has the side effect of now living a well built and running life, I realize how incredibly lonely I am. I intentionally kept people at a distance for years. I didn't want to hurt anyone else or draw them into my radius of toxicity and destruction. I still have problems where I assume that anyone I socialize with for long enough will walk away damaged after enough time.
I am in AA, and I have a group. Thank God for that. For the rest of the week, however, I am very isolated. I have small interactions here and there with people but nothing of depth. I am past 40 and worry both that I have lost time as well as I am not using the time I have well. I tear up at scenes in movies where there's a moment of romantic connection and I do not cry easily. That has been a recent thing.
I just wanted to write this out somewhere. I have hope that I will start building connections soon. Maybe I'll meet a woman who might want to date me. That seems crazy to consider.
2024.05.16 04:23 -ystanes- Harmony of Dissonance - muted or bright?
 | Been playing through Harmony of Dissonance on my RP2S and switching back and forth between the color correct gba filter and a custom CRT filter. I feel like it’s hard to choose which I like more for this game given its aesthetic. I’ve seen some people call it “psychadelic horror” which I definitely agree with. I still favor the GBA filter since that’s the original way it was intended but it’s definitely fun to see those fully saturated colors in some of the environments. Also really glad I found the Crimson Cape. The trailing effect is actually pretty cool in red. submitted by -ystanes- to SBCGaming [link] [comments] Side note; lots of people say this is the worst of the GBA games and one of the worst Castlevania games… but I’m having a blast. Compared to CotM which I played before this it just feels so much snappier and I love a lot of the art. The soundtrack also has a different vibe that a lot of people don’t like but there are some tunes I’ve really enjoyed. CotM I felt like I was grinding a lot both for leveling and for creatures to drop their cards. I ended up just using the glitch towards the end to use the combos I wanted. Here it’s just way faster glass cannon type of gameplay dashing back and forth to avoid attacks which paired with quick saving/savescumming (sue me) so I don’t get set back too far on deaths just feels so fun. |