Weekend Meeting:

“Where can you get help in times of distress?” Is the theme of the public talk.

That shut-in sister of ill health who hasn’t been around for awhile is onZoomline today. Neat.

Also, the one who has been DFed almost since the beginning of time and has not been heard of for many moons continues to attend online, having said, “It’s time to come home.”

Had to get up to chase the squirrel away from the birdfeeder, just outside the picture window. They like to eat, too, and are hard to stop. Sometimes just a sudden movement will chase them away. This time it took a rap on the window. #HellBeBack

(after I tweeted this, a manufacturer of squirrel-proof birdfeeders tweeted me.)

The speaker refers to one stumbled who stays stumbled, in contrast to the normal human urge to get up. Sure enough, when I stumbled on the sidewalk crack, first thing I did was say “So much for being cool” and hoped no one had noticed.

It recalls my father-in-law, who memorably said: “Jehovah has never let me down. People have let me down, but Jehovah never has.”

Watchtower Study:

Uh oh. The Watchtower reader just messed up the pronunciation of Vanuatu. Hopefully, no Vanuatuans are listening in today.

“The love and warmth shown to the student can help him to identify Jehovah’s people.”​—John 13:35.4, says someone quoted, which plainly cannot happen unless they see those people.

“If you are asked along on a Bible study, you are there to support, not to take over,” someone says, though the paragraph said nothing about “taking over.”

When asked to give prayer at a study, short and simple is probably better than long and vague and containing “everything we know about the truth,” one commenter says.

The brother who gets interrupted all the time just commented on how its good not to interrupt people

Rats. I got distracted and did not catch how the reader did with ‘Omamuyovbi.’ If he had a tough time with Vanuatu....

The younger bro said how he’d pointed out some details on the picture, his part of contributing. So how’d he do? said the Wt conductor to his actual physical bro, who conducted the study. Pretty good, the joker said, though I had to tell him to stay away from the pictures.

“As iron sharpens iron, So one man sharpens his friend,” modern Bibles are inclined to say, but I sort of the more literal, even if not so plain, “By iron, iron itself is sharpened. So one man sharpens the face of another.” #SharpenUpThatFace

I am reminded of a new Witness, who contrasted JW meetings with just about any religious service he had ever attended, with the observation, “you can prepare for them.”

Weekday Meetings:

You had to dig around to see how Elkanah was okay with Hannah’s vow. There it is in 1 Samuel 1:23, as he says: “Do what you think is best. Stay at home until you wean him. May Jehovah carry out what you have said.”

One sister mentioned how Isa 55:10 is especially right for the season: For just as the pouring rain descends....and does not return to that place, unless it actually saturates the earth and makes it produce and sprout....1/2

so my word that goes forth from my mouth will prove to be. It will not return to me without results, but it will certainly do that in which I have delighted, and it will have certain success in that for which I have sent it....2/2

Six examples of endurance from creation: camel, bristle-cone pine, monarch butterfly, arctic tern, lapwing plover, acacia tree.

One bro took the camel, that can drink 25 gallons at a time to last it for weeks, and said, ‘do we fortify ourselves in favorable season?’

Could you put in a plug for a go-bag here? I did. Terns, Monarch butterflies. Maybe we’ll be moving someday. Best be ready. It wasn’t the answer anyone was looking for, but nobody said I was wrong.

Earlier comment about humans paying vows to God. Now someone takes the Ezekiel 34:22-24 verse to show how God carries out his vows regarding us.

What about Isa 11:6? “The wolf will reside for a while with the lamb...” Would not the ‘for a while’ be now, as formerly violent persons are rehabilitated? There won’t be ‘wolves’ in the new system.