Buffer and Newspaper Exegesis

I mentioned yesterday that I'm slow to adopt new social media or technology fads, so as to maintain a streamlined focus on the main online ministry I have set before me, which is make Christ known, and offer credible and solid resources to women and new Christians for growth enhancement.

I mentioned this because I saw a new gizmo on my blog's "Add This" button. It's called Buffer. I looked into it. Basically, it is a one stop shop whereupon for free (or more, for a fee) one can blast a set of self-selected material onto your chosen social media pages throughout a 24-hour staggered period.

I signed up.

Now, to load content. As a blogger at The End Time, I'd been in the mindset all along of a journalist. "Fresh content only on the blog". So I write every day. Only a handful of times have I re-posted something. But then I thought, I've blogged daily since 2009 and I've published over 3,600 essays. It might be good to offer the older ones to a new 'generation' of blog readers. Because as we all know, a new generation is born on the internet every two to three minutes. LOL, not really, but attention spans are short. 2009 was 7 years ago, an ancient lifetime ago in internet years.

The Holy Spirit in His grace has dispensed to me His gifts of prophecy, discernment, and encouragement. I love prophecy. I love all of it. As a newbie Christian I cut my teeth eagerly on Jeremiah, Nahum, Obadiah. The OT prophets were the books I read first. Genesis, and all the OT prophets, before even turning to the New Testament and John. When I did turn to the NT, it was to Revelation.

As a child born in 1960, my first memory was of the Beatles in February 1964 (I had turned three years old just about 7 weeks before) and all the screaming. I was annoyed with the screaming. I thought it was nonsense that the screaming went on so long that one could not hear the actual music. I was precocious perhaps, autistic children usually are, and sometimes have advanced thought processes early. But the point is, my very first memory is of out of control girls screaming wildly. It was a chaotic scene.

My home was filled with aware and engaged parents observing current events on the newly invented television. They often discussed them as I listened. I often watched Viet Nam casualties loaded onto helicopters with newsman Walter Cronkite's mournful intonation recounting the deaths and injuries. I always wondered why the injuries far outstripped the casualties. Real-time war reporting was fairly new, and the living technicolor also showed the color of the blood. As a child watching constant war during my formative decade it made an impression.

In addition to war, was strife. Civil Rights riots, Race Riots, marches in the streets for gay rights and feminist rights, protests, and the 1968 Democratic Convention carnage all passed before my observant eyes. My active but immature brain attempted to process all that I was seeing. Remember, as an autistic kid, what was on the TV was more real to me than what I was actually experiencing in life. It always has been.

In my formative years it seemed that things were out of control. As I grew to teenager years, I became aware that war and famine and chaos and strife has always been part of the human experience. I wondered why. I wondered why a LOT. I often thought that there had to be a reason. See, if war had always been present, and humans have always been present, there must be a reason why we have such a proclivity to war. And hate. And chaos. It just seemed obvious to me.

Every night for nearly 20 years, we would hear newsman Walter Cronkite sign off on his famous tagline, "And that's the way it is, tonight, May 24, 1967."

No! No, that's NOT the way it is! It can't be! There has to be a reason!

Autistic kids often attempt to find the secret pattern that they know is underlying everything. They look for an underlying order, a mathematical equation, a musical beat, a chronology, something, that will make everything make sense. It was agonizing not to know. But when the Light burst through my dead heart to regenerate it, and I learned that the underlying pattern to everything is Jesus, I lit up like a Roman candle.

I loved the notion that there was order, and purpose and a Controller in charge of it all. I loved that since the beginning God was in charge and for all the perplexing things that happen and have happened in the scope of perhaps 7000 years of human history in the world, there has been a reason. Because, you see, I've always looked for a reason. When I learned why things were the way they were, I went A-HA!! in a big way.
A haqrd copy collage I did which I scanned and digitally manipulated.
This is "Peace that Passeth" and shows how calm I feel now with the world news
still being chaotic but what a difference the biblical worldview has made.
Suddenly seeing all the news through a Godly worldview and not a confusing, incomprehensible, human world view made everything burst with color and light. There was a reason! There was order!

When I looked at the news I now knew why peace in the middle east was so elusive. I'd lived through the Six-Day War, the Yom Kippur, The Camp David Accord. I'd lived through assassination after assassination. I'd lived through Iran's rise and the Soviet Union's Fall, and rise again. Looking at the paper made me understand what God was doing because i understood not only about sin, but His long-term plan and humankind's redemption

Having a new worldview to see things though was fun so at the beginning of the blog's life I did a lot of newspaper exegesis. I was thrilled. I'm not unhappy nor am I embarrassed. One can go too far in it, and come up with crackpot ideas, to be sure. I hope I didn't do that. But I did enjoy flexing the boundaries of my newly grace-given worldview. Suddenly that order and pattern was there and I shared my perspective of it.

I'm still entranced with how things are moving in the news. I'm still vastly grateful the LORD gave me, through His Son and His Spirit, a perspective framework through which I can know, and I DO know. I'm also pleased to see even in the first month of life on this blog, essays which were of prophecy, discernment, and encouragement and which were not newspaper exegesis. Those are the ones I'm Buffering out.

As I send out 2009 and beyond The End Time stories through Buffer, and if you choose to explore here, have fun, don't think too ill of me, and enjoy.






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