Tobit 11 – Raphael and Tobias decide to go ahead of Sarah and the rest so as to greet Tobit and put the “gall” from the fish on his eyes so he will be cured. They do and of course both Tobit and his wife are overjoyed to see their son. Tobias applies the gall and Tobit’s sight is restored. They praise God and go off to the gates of Nineveh to greet Sarah.

Tobit 12 – Tobit tells Tobias they need to reward Azariah [Raphael] for all his help. Tobias thinks half of…

My Meeting is facing a sizable deficit in its budget. It has been previously able to rely on endowment money to take care of sizable expenses. However, as has been announced and stressed many times before, we are largely subsisting on dead peoples' contributions. We do not have the ability to rely on regular contributions from current members and consistent…

Tobit 9 – Tobias sends Azariah (Raphael) to Gabael, the cousin of his father with whom he long ago left the silver. He also lives in Media. Tobias wants him to come to the wedding feast that is planned. Azariah goes to Gabael, presents him with the receipt [Tobit’s half] and tells him about the marriage of Tobias and Sarah. The seals to the sacks of silver are “still intact” (9:7). They load the silver on the camels and the next morning set off for the feast together. When Gabael sees…

One thing that's great about North Valley Friends is that each year we have a worship service that celebrates our high school graduates. We play a "name that graduate" game (in which we win chocolate!), and the youth pastor gives a message that encourages them and the rest of us. This year, Leslie Murray, the youth pastor, had mentors of each of the youth write a letter to them/about them that records some of their gifts and strengths, and ways they've seen the graduates grow. Check out the…

Tobit 7 – They go to Raguel’s home and are well-received. Raguel learns that Tobias is son of his kinsman, Tobit. Raguel responds warmly to Tobias’ appeal to marry his daughter, and he tells the whole story about the seven husbands. They are given in marriage and Sarah’s mother goes to prepare the place where they will come together.

Tobit 8 – Tobias does as he was instructed and burns the fish’s organs on the incense. This drives the demon to the “remotest…

Reading the newspaper this morning, I came across this quotation from Harry Emerson Fosdick: “I should be ashamed to live in this generation and not be a heretic."  That sentence, I learned later, is from the final sermon he preached at First Presbyterian Church in New York City, in March 1925.  The whole quotation is worth noting: "They call me a heretic. Well, I am a heretic if conventional orthodoxy is the standard. I should be ashamed to live in this generation and not be a…

Tobit 5 – Tobias answers that he will go and try to get the silver his father left in Media some twenty years earlier, but he wonders how he will get the money since the man to whom it was given does not know him. Tobit says that he “set his signature to a note which I cut in two, so that each could keep half of it. I took one piece, and put the other with the silver” (5:3). CLEVER!

Tobias needs to get someone who knows how to get to Media; so he does. He finds the…

Tobit 3 – There follows a lovely ode on his unworthiness and desire for God’s forgiveness – here is some of it:

                                            You are just, O Lord,

                                            And just are all your works,

                                            All your ways are grace and truth,

                                            And you are the Judge of the…

Greetings, Friends!

Chapter 7 of Minding the Light: Our Collective Journal is now available online and also attached in a PDF file below.  For this chapter, we invited Friends to respond to the query, "When has following the Light led you to a change of heart, despite initial resistance?"    We received 10 responses to the query.   

Minding the Light is a bimonthly publication of West Hills Friends, a Quaker meeting in Portland, Oregon.  Using the guidelines of…

Tobit is not in the Protestant Bible; it is part of what is called the “apocrypha.” My Jerusalem Bible introduction to the books says they were “only recognized by the Church after a certain hesitancy in the patristic period” but they have been “read and quoted from early days and appear in the official canonical lists in the West from the time of the Roman Synod of 382 and, in the East, from 682” (601). All three “belong to the same type of literature”; they all deal with…

I stopped going to Meeting, months ago...

I lost an Employment Tribunal case...I sat and heard people in positions of authority purjuring themselves, bearing false witness and fabricating and concealing evidence. I suppose I was naive to believe that people under oath would tell the truth! It was/is no consolation at all that I was speaking truth to power, since a panel decided my case against me, because it was technically  'out of time'. It was such a bitter experience that a bully…

QuakerQuaker This Week, 6th Month 10, 2012

A Friend asks if we're risk averse, the AFSC urges us not to simply protect the status quo, Kenyan Friends respond to war, and a pacifist challenges a self-identified Friend with the highest soapbox in American media.

QQ Editor Picks, 6/10/2012…

2 Kings 24 – King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. Jerusalem Bible says Nabu-kudur-usur, founder of the Neo-Babylonian or Chaldean Empire, which succeeded Assyria from 605-562. This expedition to Palestine took place around 602. He defeated Pharaoh at Carchemish in 605. He comes to dominate Judah. Jehoiakim “became his servant for three years,” but then Jehoiakim rebels. “The Lord” sent against them bands of Chaldeans, Arameans, Moabites and Ammonites “to destroy” Judah…

2 Kings 22 – Josiah is just eight years old when he comes to the throne.  He will serve 31 years (640-609), and he will do “what [is] right in the sight of the Lord” (22:2). He begins another restoration of the temple (the last was done by Joash of Judah during his reign about two hundred years earlier). Hilkiah reports that (in the process of restoration?) they have found in the Temple the book of the law. 

This is almost certainly the book of…

Talk about taking a vow of silence!  The Hermit's hard drive crashed, so I'm stuck using the library's resources for accessing QuakerQuaker.  I can kind of check email via a data service on my cell phone for $15 a month, which costs less than a new computer.  (The old one is 5 years old, the RW/CD drive is dead and now the hard drive, so I don't see repairing it as an option.)  

The famous Kentucky writer and poet, Wendell Berry, refuses to let a computer in his house.  He hand writes…

2 Kings 20 – Hezekiah becomes sick—he has some kind of boil—and Isaiah comes to tell him he should set his house in order; he is going to die.  He turns “his face to the wall” and prays that the Lord will “remember . . . how I have walked before you in faithfulness with a whole heart, and have done what is good in your sight” (20:3).

As Isaiah is leaving, the Lord comes to him and tells him to go back and say to Hezekiah that He has heard Hezekiah’s…

2 Kings 18 – Hezekiah (715-686 BC), begins his reign in Judah. He is 25. His mother was Abijah, daughter of Zechariah. He did what was right in the sight of the Lord. He removes the high places (finally), breaks down the sacred pillars and cuts down the sacred poles. He breaks the bronze serpent Moses was said to have made in the desert (it was called Nehushtan or “thing of brass”); it had become an idol over the years. It is interesting to ponder the thought that even in…