#object lesson

[faithfulsheepdog]

Deep cleaning

Alright. I'm not gonna lie. On occasion, I enjoy watching rug cleaning videos.

I know, I know! That's pretty out there, but listen! They're so satisfying to watch! I mean, these rugs start out so filthy, and they go through a lot of rounds of cleaning and scrubbing and foamy bubbles and water and squeezing some excess water out.

It’s evident the cleaner knows what he’s doing, and he takes good care of the rug in the whole process.

Then eventually, you see the beautiful masterpiece that was hiding underneath all that filth.

And you know what? The rug is me. I'm the rug. So is every single person who comes to Jesus to be rescued.

Sin - any sin - has made us filthy. We're unrecognizable from what we were meant to be. We're covered in mess, we're being crushed under the weight of things we were never supposed to carry, and we have no hope of ridding it all on our own.

But God.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God," - Ephesians 2:4-8 ESV

God rescues us from the filth of sin and cleans it all off us. Once you're saved, you're always saved. That rescue is immediate and eternal.

But growing in Christ means He takes His time to clean out the things that stain us and wear us down, making sure it's done right. The pride, the shame, the guilt, the hurt, the secrets we were never meant to carry, the worry, the fear, all of it. He takes His time to heal us and restore us and make us the masterpieces we were always meant to be. It’s a lifelong process, and it is so worth it.

So today, I challenge you and me to ask God where is there still the gunk and filth in our hearts that need to be cleaned out. Let's ask the Ultimate Healer to heal us and cleanse us from those things we need to let go of and be made new.

[okieinmo]

Even washing dishes has a spiritual application...

[sunday-skool]

Object Lesson: Jesus Turns Water into Wine magic trick

[granonine]

Saturday Soliloquy: Trust HIS Heart!

I’ve usually written and posted by now, but it was a special event day. We had a Christmas brunch with our church ladies at the lovely home of one of our members. I’m guessing 30+ women were there, and there was a cheerful buzz going on most of the time. We did pause to eat 🙂 Wonderful breakfast buffet, with everything from pastry to breakfast casseroles to sausages and bacon. My word, it’s more…

[reaceles]

Dinluke Week Day 3: Biker!Din and Teacher!Luke

Alternatively titled: The Fated Parent-Teacher Conference

[vulturelanding]

There’s like a 10% chance I ever finish this so here’s the sketch

They’re in lesbians with eachother

[liamortnx]

Typewriter lesson with IDFB coinpin!!

Original by Nothsgrave on YT!!

[phereshift]

reminisce

[id: A greyscale illustration of Commander Cody from Star Wars in knight armour. He is centered in the frame and is seated, loosely propping up a sword against his chest with an arm and a knee. He is looking off to the side towards the sword with a neutral expression, as if distracted or thinking about something. He wears a cloak draped across one shoulder, with the other shoulder showing off a bright yellow sun on his pauldron. The sword he carries is simple, with three engraved stars on the flat of the blade by the hilt, and the jedi insignia on the pommel. /end id]

[dreamwreaver]

I know canonically the chances of charlastor becoming canon are basically nil, but I do think Alastor at least cares about Charlie. You can’t tell me this man is still 100% only manipulating her after he nearly died while fighting for her/her hotel. Originally, it was obviously manipulation but I’m convinced at some point, it turned into genuine care (or, dare I say, affection).

All I'm gonna say is that if Viv wants to break the trope she better have some damn good writing behind it. Nonny, I was in the miraculous fandom for literal YEARS, I still have a soft spot for seasons 1-3 at which point the series ends. There's a lot of tropey bad writing I can forgive.

What I cannot, however, is "subverting" tropes for the sake of subverting them so you feel smarter than everyone else. Yes I'm bitter still and that guyTM can suck a sour egg for wasting nearly a decade of his fans time after continuously mining the fandom for content he then took credit for because he's just THAT GOOD.

Where were we? Oh, right, Hazbin. I think we're a bit more in luck because Alastor is one of Viv's oldest characters and she's definitely more prone to letting the characters evolve over time rather than trying to force characters that developed past their original inception and thus no longer fit the roles into them like a square peg in a round hole. Viv's writing has its problems, and I'm not saying either hellaverse show is some brilliant masterpiece of animation, but at the very least her use of tropes is consistent with the trope she uses. All her current narrative setup seems to indicate that Alastor will grow to care for Charlie, deeply. He already does if we consider that Alastor isn't technically bound by anything to help the hotel. Their arrangement is that he is ordered to help for as long as he so desires.

Until that specific line from the pilot is contradicted I consider it canon still. Technically the pilot is still canon since episode 1 takes place a week after it. Alastor doesn't HAVE to do anything with the hotel if he really doesn't want to. He can walk away at any time, and he probably will; at least in that "I'm developing feelings I don't want for people so I'm going to isolate myself" loner way. But it's too late. He already cares.

Amir's caginess about the question of who Alastor would do anything for is also highly suspect. Like we know one person definitively is his mother. The odds of it being a male character are almost nonexistent based on current characterization. So out of the main cast? Charlie is the most likely candidate. Viv has also confirmed that Alastor likes people not too much like him, but not too different either. Charlie is the one who fits that exactly. Two sides of the same coin. The other's dark reflection; everything they could be if circumstances were different but aren't. Could it be someone else entirely? Yeah sure I guess but we better get some hints as to who before the big reveal or else it wouldn't make any sense.

I'm not saying charlastor has to be canon. But to deny that all current narrative tropes indicate that Alastor is growing to care for Charlie in a deeper but platonic way is just insane to me.

[iwontmakeuasandwich]

I can’t fucking STAND when stories do the Thing where they kill off a beloved character in the most horrible and grotesque way and then instead of getting justice for that character they take the “but vengeance is bad and we need to forgive!” route, therefore lacking any sort of catharsis or payoff for the audience.

[faithfulsheepdog]

God and a tea bag.

I've been drinking a lot more hot tea lately. I've hardly touched the stuff before a week ago, but I've been incorporating it more into my routine because, not only is it good and good for you, but God has taught me something about how He works in people using the tea.

Tea bags, as we know, have a lot of flavor and nutrients and all sorts of good things tucked inside, ready to be used to make some yummy tea. And we all know how tea is made with a tea bag, right? The water needs to be prepped and heated, and then you let the tea bag seep in the water. The tea bag does all the work, I just have to let it do its thing, and I'm going to end up with some delicious tea. The longer the tea bag seeps in there, the stronger the flavor will become, and there is nothing I can do to turn the newly made tea back to water.

Isn't that exactly what God does with us?

See, the water is us, it’s our hearts.  The water is our hearts without God. We have no flavor, we have no spiritual life. But we don’t have to be like that.

The Holy Spirit starts the work in us by prepping our hearts and minds into helping us see the truth about God and ourselves. He helps us make sure we're ready to receive what God has for us: His love, salvation, grace, forgiveness, all the good promises He's made, eternal life, etc. Then once we're ready to take that step towards God, all we have to do is invite Jesus into our hearts and change us, and He does all the work to make that happen.

Just like that, Jesus makes us brand new! He makes us better than we were. I mean, you think you're great now? Jesus can make you better.

Once Jesus saves us with His love, we will always be saved with His love. We will never be the people we were before Jesus, we will always have Jesus with us, and honestly?  That’s literally the best thing ever!

And the more we stick with Jesus and we study the Bible and we pray and we let Him work in us? The stronger our faith becomes, the stronger our Christian flavor becomes.

We become the living, breathing example of 2 Corinthians 5:17, "If anyone belongs to Christ, then he is made new. The old things have gone; everything is made new!" (ICB)

And...that's the tea.

[theparadigmshifts]

everyone on the severance subreddit can't fucking shut up about going "helly is pregnant because there's babies in the intro" like if you say that one more time i'm going to level a city block. every motherfucker who goes "haha yeah totally fun plotline" and doesn't consider what a fucking betrayal it would be to put a character whose bodily autonomy has already been violated through something so heinous can taste my blade

[utilitycaster]

just as there's something worth noting about how both D20 and CR have lately had strong messages about how fear and resentment makes you easy to radicalize, I think there's also something for how they've both had cases of mortal politics ultimately affecting the nature of the gods. Not just for an understanding of fictional D&D gods as living entities, though that's also valuable, but for an understanding that ultimately, these are concepts shaped and changed by people; people desired conquest and so made Ankarna into a god that supported that. I've repeatedly said and will continue to maintain that while Brennan does hate capitalism, the theme he consistently returns to is the much deeper one of "the bad people are those who exploit and dehumanize others in the service of their goals" and jokes about capitalism as the BBEG aside, if you destroy any one concept's physical manifestation, you still have to contend with the people who upheld it.

[reality-detective]

Objects from another time...

A very old way of making popcorn! 🤔

[jammatown919]

Everybody drop your favorite sources for Jurassic news in my comments because I’ve decided I really don’t want to continue to be subscribed to a guy who sings the praises of the new straight side romance but calls the main queer romance set up from the very beginning “out of nowhere” and nothing more than a “strong girlhood friendship” that “isn’t made for each other”.

Genuinely cannot fathom how we watched the same show and that’s the take this person has. I originally thought he just didn’t care for romance in the show in general, which I always figured was fair enough, but I just feel very yucky about how he talked about the breakup. Like, god forbid they fight and have problems like normal people. Ben and Gia would too if their relationship was more narratively significant.

[nicholasmoorethetwittermigrant]

Observation #56 million re:Wicked is how, for as much of a two-woman show the film is, it highlights just how massively the secondary characters help dictate the tone of a thing.

There’s many small choices that make it play less satirically than the stage version, but a LOT of it is on making Fiyero immediately present as *genuinely* charming as opposed to an overt caricature, and making Morrible a grounded straight-woman.

Without the tweaks to those two characters specifically you have a VERY different movie that probably doesn’t work as well dramatically.