Thursday, June 25, 2020

Five types of fools.

What are five types of fools?

Five Types of Fools
simple, silly, sensual, scorning, and steadfast fools

In the Old Testament, the word fool is actually a translation of five different Hebrew words that reflect subtle differences in "types" of fools. Unfortunately, the English translation makes it more difficult to identify the characteristics of five types of fools, but with a careful search of Scripture these differences can be distinguished.

Wise counselors—parents, pastors, friends, spouses—need to understand the progression of rebellion that is reflected in the Bible's description of fools. If you learn to perceive the characteristics of a simple fool, silly fool, sensual fool, scorning fool, and steadfast fool, you will be equipped to identify and respond to such fools with wisdom and discernment.

The Simple Fool

The Hebrew word for "simple [fool]" is pethîy(peth-EE). The root word from which it is derived, pâthâh, implies extreme vulnerability, literally meaning "to be opened up." The simple fool opens his mind to any passing thought and opens his arms to any passing stranger. In other words, he lacks discernment. He has an over-simplified view of life and fails to recognize the cause-and-effect sequences that affect every area of life. (See Proverbs 22:3.)

Because the simple fool is not discerning, he is easily captivated by all kinds of enticements and deceptions. He is dangerously immature, extremely gullible, and intensely curious. In the absence of instruction and consistent discipline, the simple fool will naturally become more foolish. A simple fool is especially vulnerable to seduction, lacking an understanding of the irreversible consequences of moral failure. (See Proverbs 7:6–7.)

The Proverbs provide instruction for the simple fool"The proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel … give subtlety to the simple [pethîy], to the young man knowledge and discretion" (Proverbs 1:4).

Scorning fools will seek out simple fools and try to become their heroes. Therefore, to protect simple fools from the destructive influence of the scorning fool, it is critical to bring swift correction to scorning fools. "Smite a scorner, and the simple [pethîy] will beware …"(Proverbs 19:25).

The Silly Fool

The Hebrew word that refers to a "silly fool" is 'eviyl (ev-EEL). Its definition is "to be perverse, silly." The mouth of a silly fool often gets him in trouble"Wise men lay up knowledge: but the mouth of the foolish ['eviyl] is near destruction" (Proverbs 10:14; see also Proverbs 20:3). When things go wrong for a silly fool, he becomes angry, resulting in more damage. "A stone is heavy, and the sand weighty; but a fool's ['eviyl] wrath is heavier than them both" (Proverbs 27:3).

A silly fool believes that his own way of thinking is right (see Proverbs 12:15), so much so that he reacts to instruction when it is offered"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge: but fools ['eviyl] despise wisdom and instruction" (Proverbs 1:7; see also Proverbs 10:21). Argument, persuasion, and advice from well-meaning friends fail to convince silly fools of error. Proper correction by authorities, which publicly shames the silly fool, will more often be effective in helping him change his ways. (See Proverbs 29:9 and Proverbs 7:22.)

The Sensual Fool

One who rejects the correction of parents or other authorities will become a sensual fool. This type of fool is identified in Scripture with the Hebrew word kecîyl (kess-EEL), which means "fat, i.e. stupid or silly." The word denotes a person who seems determined to make wrong choices. He does not have a mental deficiency, but rather rejects the wisdom of God.

The sensual fool's focus is on that which brings him immediate pleasure. He glories in that of which he should be ashamed"It is as sport to a fool [kecîyl] to do mischief … " (Proverbs 10:23; see also Proverbs 13:19–20).

A sensual fool is unreasonable. As a silly fool, his mouth got him into trouble. Now, as a sensual fool, his mouth gets him into more trouble. "A fool's [kecîyl] lips enter into contention, and his mouth calleth for strokes [blows]. A fool's [kecîyl] mouth is his destruction, and his lips are the snare of his soul" (Proverbs 18:6–7).

Scripture gives more warnings about the sensual fool than about any other type of fool. His motives and methods are subtle. He should be avoided, because those who follow him will be led astray. "… A companion of fools [kecîyl] shall be destroyed" (Proverbs 13:20). Severe punishment is prescribed for the sensual fool"A whip for the horse, a bridle for the ass, and a rod for the fool's [kecîyl] back"(Proverbs 26:3, see also Proverbs 19:29).

The Scorning Fool

The Hebrew word that denotes a "scorning fool" is lûwts (LOOTS). It means "to make mouths at, i.e. to scoff." The scorning fool's facial expressions communicate the disdain and contempt he has in his heart toward his authorities, including parents, civil authorities, and God.

This type of fool not only has rejected truth; he also has embraced that which is abominable to God. Psalm 1:1 describes the progression of foolishness, referring to a man who first walks "in the counsel of the ungodly,"then stands "in the way of sinners," and finally sits "in the seat of the scornful [lûwts]." The scorning fool utterly detests people and ideas that contradict his false thinking, and he expresses his scorn through derisive attitudes, behavior, and speech.

The scorning fool turns a deaf ear to rebuke"A wise son heareth his father's instruction: but a scorner [lûwts] heareth not rebuke" (Proverbs 13:1; see also Proverbs 14:6). Those who attempt to lead the scorning fool away from the path of destruction that he seems determined to follow will suffer his wrath. "A scorner loveth not one that reproveth him: neither will he go unto the wise" (Proverbs 15:12). "He that reproveth a scorner [lûwts] getteth to himself shame: … Reprove not a scorner [lûwts], lest he hate thee: rebuke a wise man, and he will love thee" (Proverbs 9:7–8).

A scorner must be punished—for his own sake and for the sake of those whom he can potentially influence. "Smite a scorner [lûwts], and the simple [pethîy] will beware … "(Proverbs 19:25). "When the scorner [lûwts] is punished, the simple [pethîy] is made wise … "(Proverbs 21:11; see also Proverbs 22:10).

The Steadfast Fool

The most dangerous type of fool is a steadfast fool. The Hebrew word nâbâl (naw-BAWL), which means "stupid, wicked," identifies this type of person. Elsewhere in the Old Testament, nâbâl also is translated as vile person.

A steadfast fool totally rejects God and His ways"The fool [nâbâl] hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good" (Psalm 14:1). This type of fool is self-confident and close-minded. He is his own god, freely gratifying his lower nature. It is his goal to draw as many others as possible into his evil ways. Attempts to reprove him will be futile and bring frustration to the one who tries to influence him. Only God can successfully reprove a steadfast fool.

Choose Wisdom; Reject Foolishness

In Proverbs 1:22, wisdom declares: "How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge? Turn you at my reproof: behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you. I will make known my words unto you. … The turning away of the simple shall slay them, and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them. But whoso hearkeneth unto me shall dwell safely, and shall be quiet from fear of evil." Let us heed this declaration and "walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise" (Ephesians 5:15; see also Proverbs 1:7, 3:35).

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C Straubel

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Wednesday, June 3, 2020

Fwd: 5 Ways to Play Without Buying Toys



C Straubel

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Begin forwarded message:

From: Becoming Minimalist <joshua@becomingminimalist.com>
Date: June 1, 2020 at 10:20:36 AM EDT
To: Cheni <cstraubel@live.com>
Subject: 5 Ways to Play Without Buying Toys


Becoming Minimalist Logo

5 Ways to Play Without Buying Toys

Note: This is a guest post from Denaye Barahona of Simple Families.

What do you want first, the good news or the bad news?

Let's start with the bad news. You can't one-click-Amazon-order your way out of dealing with boredom in childhood. We have all desperately wanted to find the "perfect" toy to keep our children engaged and happy. We may feel as we have found it briefly, but the novelty passes with time and we find our way right back into the online shopping cart.

It's easy to fall into a cycle.

Kids get bored? Buy them a new toy. When the newness wears off? Rinse and repeat.

Which brings me to the good news, you can put your credit cards away. Because kids don't need toys to play. In fact, most kids (including my own) spend less time than you think engaging with toys. Don't get me wrong–they are still busy little bodies. But when you have fewer toys, you will see the creativity and innovation abound. But the play doesn't revolve around toys and a "playroom".

In fact, I often spy play that sneaks out of its designated playspace, winds its way through the kitchen, flutters through the backyard, and lands in a secret drawer filled with treasures collected along the way.

Toys can be amazing tools for play, but let's consider other important ways to play and pass the time without buying toys.

1. Nature

Humans need nature. It doesn't have to be a proper hike in the woods, just breathing the fresh air and watching a snail cross the sidewalk can do. Turning over a rock to observe some bugs. Feeling the wind on your face. These all count as engaging and enjoyable experiences in childhood. Play in nature can look like balancing on a fallen tree, jumping from stump to stump, and building a fairy house in anticipation of magical visitors.

Play in nature doesn't have any prescribed way of looking. Some children go "all in" and jump into puddles and others just observe and keep a distance from all creatures. Regardless of how your children are spending this time outdoors, it is valuable. We know that our bodies and our brains need nature to thrive.

2. Imitation

Our children learn through experimenting and exploring, but they also learn through imitation. This means you might find them hanging around your feet when you are trying to take care of "real life" stuff like dishwashing and cooking.

When possible, I challenge you to invite them in and let them imitate you. Although it might not seem playful in the traditional sense, play is defined as "activity engaged in for recreation and enjoyment." If your children enjoy grabbing a stool and splashing around in the bubbly dishwater, that's play.

The hardest part is taking a deep breath, slowing down, and making space for this type of play.

3. Loose Parts

Handfuls of sparkly rocks. Collections of international coins. An array of treasures from a recent beachcombing adventure. Scrap pieces of fabric. The list goes on.

You'd be amazed at the play that can come from loose parts that are gathered together. "Loose Parts" play is using natural or scrap materials to create, imagine, and support play activities. This type of play encourages problem-solving and divergent thinking. So next time you go to throw away those toilet paper rolls—think again! The possibilities are endless. And they are free.

4. Books

Much like a stage performance, play often has "scripts" or stories. Children's play typically involves pretend through acting out these scripts that they either invent or hear in stories. When we keep them surrounded in good books, we are enhancing their literacy skills, but we are also giving them opportunities to launch off in new play scripts based on the books they are reading.

Fill their minds with warm, beautiful stories and you just may see the results in their play.

5. Household items

Minimalists don't use top sheets on their beds. Or maybe that's just me? I made that up. When I purchase a set of sheets, the fitted sheet goes on the bed and the flat sheet goes to the kids. That sheet transforms into a fort, a sled to pull each other around, and even a cape or a makeshift sari.

Household items like sheets, towels, and pans can provide incredible options for open-ended play in childhood.

But I'm telling you something that your children already know: Play is everywhere in our lives. Our children have a magical way of bringing it to everything that they do.

Our job as parents is to start seeing that play in the most unexpected ways and places. When we do that, we can let go of the need to buy all the toys to keep them happy. Because with fewer toys, children can actually do so much more.

***

Denaye Barahona Ph.D. is a mother of two and the founder of Simple Families, a podcast and community for families interested in minimalism with kids, family wellness, and positive parenting. Denaye has a doctorate in child development and over a decade of experience in coaching parents to more harmonious lives with children.

If you would like to know more about this topic, our new issue of Simplify Magazine takes a deep dive into the theme of Work + Play. Get a lifetime subscription to the magazine here.


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Friday, May 29, 2020

Dying to Self

THE TRANSFORMED SOUL
"DYING TO SELF"
DR. D. W. EKSTRAND
# 1
The essence of a being's "existence" has to do with the fact that he is a "living reality" -- if one no longer has or the functions of vitality, they are said to "no longer exist." So, the essence of "death" is the absence of "life" – therefore when one dies "one ceases to exist." To carry the argument into the spiritual realm, when someone "spiritually dies to self," self ceases to exist – that is, SELF IS NO LONGER THE REASON FOR ONE'S EXISTENCE. As such, the individual is no longer concerned with "his own will or happiness," because he is no longer in the picture... he is no longer the center of his own little universe... he no longer continues to arrange the world around himself.


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C Straubel

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Friday, May 22, 2020

How to stay young.

How to Stay Young

1. Throw out non-essential numbers such as your age, weight and height.

2. Keep only cheerful friends. The grouches pull you down. If you really need a grouch, there are probably family members to fill that need.

3. Keep learning. Learn more about the computer, crafts, gardening, whatever. Just never let the brain idle.

4. Enjoy the simple things. When the children are young - that is all you can afford. When they are in college that is all you can afford. When they are grown, and you are on retirement, that is all you can afford.

5. Laugh often, long and loud. Laugh until you gasp for breath. Laugh so much that you can be tracked in the store by your distinctive laughter.

6. The tears happen. Endure, grieve, and move on. The only person that is with us our entire life is ourselves.

7. Surround yourself with what you love, whether it is family, pets, keepsakes, music, plants, hobbies or whatever. Your home is your refuge.

8. Cherish your health. If it is good, preserve it. If it is unstable, improve it. If it is beyond what you can improve, get help.

9. Don't take guilt trips. Go to the mall, the next county, a foreign country - but not guilt.

10. Tell the people you love how much you love them every chance you get. Never assume they know.

11. Don't worry about things you cannot change or do anything about. Accept them and move on.

12. Read more and dust less.

13. Spend more time with your family and friends and less time working.

14. Whenever possible, life should be a pattern of experiences to savor, not to endure. Recognize these moments now and cherish them.

15. Do not "save" anything. Use your good china and crystal for every special event such as losing a pound, getting the sink unstopped, or the next blossom of flowers you see.

16. Wear your best outfit to the market.

17. Don't save your good perfume for only special occasions. Use it even if you are going shopping or just to the bank.

18. "Someday" and "one of these days" should vanish from your vocabulary. If something is worth seeing, hearing or doing, go and see, hear or do it now.

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Friday, May 15, 2020

"We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence, the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are the shining parts, is the soul. Only by the vision of that Wisdom can the horoscope of the ages be read, and by falling back on our better thoughts, by yielding to the spirit of prophecy which is innate in every man, we can know what it says." Ralph Waldo Emerson.

C Straubel

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Saturday, April 18, 2020

Deliverance

We all experience grief in many ways. Some of us grieve for the loss of our own health, the loss of a job, of a home, a loved one, a friend. We grieve when are betrayed and abandoned. Grief is not limited to death - it is synonymous with a loss of anything upon which we have to rely upon or love. We even grieve when don't believe god has fulfilled his promises. Pain is the tunnel to growth, grief is deliverance!

C Straubel

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Solutions

I have to post this because the world needs to know it. This virus as horrible as it is may become a blessing in disguise.

The price of gas is finally down, roadway congestion is zero, that means exhaust emissions are down, helping repair global warming. Also it eliminates our dependency on foreign oil. War ended!

We have an affordable housing crisis all over the country and especially here in Michigan. It seems like some revenue would be better than no revenue. Perhaps those hotels, motels, seasonal rentals such as Airbnb and other like operations, would be able to generate an income source by offering their units, rentals, etc. at generous rates to those in need of quality housing. This would solve our low income housing crisis.

Less toxic emissions, less auto accidents, and fewer fatalities from driving accidents, no road congestion. This will, no doubt, lower insurance rates and the social monetary economic impact of overhead costs due to less need for ambulance to car wrecks, fire trucks at accidents, and additional first responders and law enforcement.

Some people are still generating income by working at home. Lowers the need for business real estate, lowering the cost of doing business with all the benefits listed above due to less commuters. The opens up the real estate market for quality housing projects, helping people in desperate need as well as public parks that encourage our society to actually exercise and enjoy the out of doors and our new clean air!

With less people mobile, there is evidence that illnesses cannot be easily contracted, lowing absenteeism in the workforce as well as the need for critical health care workers, lowering the costs and availability of quality health care.

Shop locally, but locally sourced. Eliminates the need for trucking of perishable goods, lowering the invitation to bacteria build up. Also, the road congestion, etc.

If this offends you delete it. It a a perfectly good and doable plan. We have proved it.

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C Straubel

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Wednesday, April 8, 2020

Perception

Think positive, your thoughts dictate your perception of reality. That which you perceive is your reality. Proofs of reality is confirmed on by two things: your thoughts and your beliefs. Both interconnect with a universal consciousness.

C Straubel

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Tuesday, April 7, 2020

Stonehenge Dronescapes

The 2020 Pink Super Moon setting over Stonehenge 😍
It will be at it's fullest at 03.36 tomorrow morning 😊
Taken on a lovely 17 mile bike ride this morning through and outside the world heritage site, so lucky to have this all on my doorstep, not a soul to be seen 😍
Hope you all have a lovely day 😊
Single image 1/5s F14 ISO100 560mm focal.
Canon EOS R - 100-400 MkII - 1.4 MkIII extender


Reality Check

We fell asleep in one world, and woke up in another.

Suddenly Disney is out of magic,
Paris is no longer romantic,
New York doesn't stand up anymore,
the Chinese wall is no longer a fortress, and Mecca is empty.

Hugs & kisses suddenly become weapons, and not visiting parents & friends becomes an act of love.

Suddenly you realise that power, beauty & money are worthless, and can't get you the oxygen you're fighting for.

The world continues its life and it is beautiful. It only puts humans in cages. I think it's sending us a message:
"You are not necessary. The air, earth, water and sky without you are fine. When you come back, remember that you are my guests, not my masters."
—Unknown

Empowerment

Peace

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C Straubel

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Gratitude

" Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend . Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow." ~ Melody Beattie

C Straubel

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Monday, April 6, 2020

Simple strokes.

Couple things I've realized so far today:

Just because you are not paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you:

The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend;

The friend of your enemy will never be your friend;

Sometimes enemy's mascarade as your friend;

People you think are your friend may not always be your friend, and

Love is fickle.

C Straubel

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