Finished reading: The Silver Chair by C. S. Lewis 📚
Remember, remember the rules. Joshua 1:8
Tit for Tat no longer
Today, 12 September 2026 2 Samuel 16:11-12 …Leave him alone, and let him curse, for the Lord has told him to. It may be that the Lord will look on the wrong done to me, and that the Lord will repay me with good for his cursing today King David and his companions, while they were fleeing away from Absalom, were met by Shimei, who was of the family of the house of Saul.
Not very sure what’s up with my paragraphs in Today’s essay
What do you have that you did not receive?
2 Samuel 16:4 The King said to Ziba, “Behold, all that belonged to Mephibosheth us now yours.” David, as King, remembered his friendship with Jonathan and the covenant that he had made not to forget Jonathan’s family when he became King. In 2 Samuel 9:1, King David inquired: “Is there still anyone left of the house of Saul, that I may show him kindness for Jonathan’s sake?” Mephibosheth, Jonathan’s son, was still alive, though crippled in both feet.
Come Home
2 Samuel 14:14 We must all die; we are like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again. But God will not take away life, and he devises means so that the banished one will not remain an outcast. Thus the wise woman spoke to David the King upon Joab’s instigation. Absalom had killed his brother Amnon as revenge for raping Tamar, and had fled to Geshur where he had been three years, but ‘now the spirit of the King longed to go out to Absalom’(2 Samuel 13:39) and ‘…Joab the son of Zeruiah knew that the King’s heart went out to Absalom’ (2 Samuel 14:1).
You will have your desire, and despair along with it
2 Samuel 13:15 Then Amnon hated her with very great hatred, so that the hatred with which he hated her was greater than the love with which he had loved her Amnon fell in love with his half-sister Tamar and was so tormented that he made himself ill because of her. Though at first it seemed impossible for him to have her, Jonadab, a very crafty man, counselled him on what to do.
Thomas Browne:
there is therfore some other hand that twines the thread of life than that of nature; wee are not onely ignorant in Antipathies and occult qualities, our ends are as obscure as our beginnings, the line of our dayes is drawne by night, and the various effects therein by a pencill that is invisible; wherein though wee confesse our ignorance, I am sure we doe not erre, if wee say, it is the hand of God.
Abraham Booth, New City Catechism:
As the enemies of your soul are inveterate, subtle, and powerful, and your spiritual frames inconstant, it is highly necessary you should live under a continual remembrance of those awakening considerations. What more advisable, what so necessary for you, as to walk circumspectly; to watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation? A sense of your own weakness and insufficiency, should ever abide on your mind and appear in your conduct. As the corruption of nature is an enemy that is always near you, and always in you, while on earth; and as it is very strongly disposed to second every temptation from without; you should “keep your heart with all diligence.” Watch, diligently watch, over all its imaginations, motions, and tendencies. Consider whence they arise and to what they incline, before you execute any of the purposes formed in it. For such is the superlative deceitfulness of the human heart, “that he who trusteth in it is a fool,” ignorant of his danger, and unmindful of his best interests. This consideration should cause every child of God to bend the suppliant knee, with the utmost frequency, humility, and fervour: to live, as it were, at the throne of grace; nor depart thence till far from the reach of danger. Certain it is, that the more we see of the strength of our adversaries and of the danger we are in from them, the more shall we exercise ourselves in fervent prayer. Can you, O Christian, be cool and indifferent, be dull and careless, when the world, the flesh, and the devil are your implacable and unwearied opposers?
Sin and Age
Thomas Browne, Religio Medici: Were there any hopes to out-live vice, or a point to be super-annuated from sin, it were worthy of our knees to implore the dayes of Methuselah. But age doth not rectifie, but incurvate our natures, turning bad dispositions into worser habits, and (like diseases) brings on incurable vices; for every day as we grow weaker in age, we grow stronger in sinne, and the number of our dayes doth but make our sinnes innumerable.
The saddest book
Finished reading: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez 📚. Again. Reread 02. 😭Three years later this is still the saddest book I’ve ever read. And my best. Of red ants and pigtails. 💔😭 And if I’m asked why I’m crying I wouldn’t be able to answer, because one would only understand if they too read the book. As has been said, “100 years of Solitude does not surrender all its meaning in the first reading, it demands a second reading which is in effect the real reading.