if it were not for the lord

Had this running through my mind to the store tonight...

"if it were not for the lord"

and then I couldn't remember the rest of the scripture but I remembered the cadence and filled it in with "let the redeemed of the lord say so"

"if it were not for the lord..."
let the redeemed of the lord say so...

http://bible.cc/psalms/124-1.htm

one of the commentaries talks about being so greatful and how wonderful it is when a friend shares with us the inspiring song. which is how I felt, while walking and so I just repeated this phrase over and over in my mind:

if it were not for the lord,
let the redeemed of the lord say so

(I got the first part from this same psalm which was brought to mind and the next part from a children's song that goes:

let the redeemed of the lord say so!

SO!

let the redeemed of the lord say so!

SO!

let the redeemed of the lord say so!

It is well, it is well, with my soul!
*****************
looked up "pro nobis" and Vatablus and pro nobis means "for us" but I don't know what Vatablus is...seems to be a scholar.

Then I found this video on youtube with a little boy singing this with his mom but it's a different version of the song. It's really cute though.

I then decided to go to the scripture site and just click around. I thought to choose German and then go to random things for fun to see what came up and it was ruth and I kings and daniel and then I clicked several times, not counting how many times but over and over and then it fell on the scripture about Jeroboam. It was a verse about how Jeroboam was standing by this altar and then the altar split and ashes poured out. I thought about that for awhile, what it looked like, because preceding this it said there would be a sign. And then the sign for what they were looking for came to pass.

I started wondering if anyone has ever painted this and found Jean Honore Fragonard and his painting of Jeroboam. I enjoyed looking at it. I really liked the posture of the prophet, sort of oblivious to all, and directing praise or prayer to God, or just lifting his head and hands that way while all around, shock and wonder.

I wanted to see how an artist may have decided to render the idea of the altar and that scene.

Anyway, that was my art for the evening and I listened to two Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir songs as well, and I have always liked their worship songs. I listened to "Praise You" and "Total Praise".

And, thought, as I was writing about an altar being split, suddenly thought about it in psychological terms, like an "alter", being split, bc that's what some of the mind control grounds do--they try to split people. Alter-ego, altar-ego?

Altar is even mentioned twice in the verse, "altar, altar". So that was my random find and rumination for the day.

You know, I didn't care for all of Fragonard's work, from what I saw. I was very impressed with the one of Jeroboam and The Swing is good, but some of the other ones aren't completely spectacular. He was very prolific though. First I was searching for "painting, split altar with ashes pouring out" or "painting, split altar and ashes" but I found it through "painting, Jeroboam".

I was mainly interested in seeing what an artist would create to portray this idea of an altar splitting and ashes pouring forth from it. What does that look like? It's fun, I think, to now and then isolate a small idea and then see how capturing one moment can have a big impact.

http://books.google.com/books?id=zzY6qjOpSoEC&pg=PA124&lpg=PA124&dq=alter+ego,+CIA+mind+control&source=bl&ots=dc62YMvZDl&sig=f24RISCY2qbV4zvWNiFbapYems8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=CvR7T62OGMmUiQL17ozpDQ&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=alter%20ego%2C%20CIA%20mind%20control&f=false

This is for a different idea that came to mind (see link above). I looked up alter ego and history of that term bc of my interest in the scriptural borrowing. Then I typed in alter ego and mind control and then CIA and found this, about implants.

Believe it or not, implants has been one of my least favorite topics and I never cared to read about it bc it sounded so far-fetched. I believed it happened now and then, but was really "out there". Then you start reading something like "delgado's" experience and think, there are truly people out there who sound so nuts, and just trying to describe what is happening makes them sound crazy, and yet they are not crazy at all and suffer. This book goes back to 1997 which makes you wonder what they're doing now, a couple of decades later.