Ben Franklin\u2019s Resolutions<\/b><\/p>\n
Still, as failures go, we\u2019re in good company. Take Benjamin Franklin. As a young man, Ben composed a master list of 12 resolutions, later tacking on a killer 13th (\u201cImitate Jesus and Socrates\u201d). He had particular difficulty, he notes in his Autobiography, with Resolution No. 2 (\u201cSilence\u2014Avoid trifling conversation\u201d), No. 3 (\u201cOrder\u2014Let all your things have their places\u201d) and No. 5 (\u201cFrugality\u2014Waste nothing\u201d).<\/p>\n
Ben kept track of his performance in a small book in which he entered a black mark each day for each resolution broken. He had intended to reuse the little book, eventually erasing old black marks as his performance improved. It didn\u2019t. So many black marks appeared on top of black marks that the little book developed holes. He had to resort to keeping his records on a piece of ivory, from which the accumulated black marks could be tactfully mopped off with a wet sponge.<\/p>\n
\u201cClean Slate,\u201d from \u201cHarrowsmith Country Life\u2019\u201d by Rebecca Rupp, (VT, January \u201896), quoted in Reader\u2019s Digest, p. 27<\/p>\n
Like Fields of Weeds<\/b><\/p>\n
Our lives are fields that primarily contain weeds. We cannot produce strawberries. We can mow the weeds, but that effort alone will never produce acceptable fruit. If we really want that fruit we will have to go deeper. We must plow up the whole field and start again with new plants.<\/p>\n
Christian Theology in Plain Language, p. 59.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ben Franklin\u2019s Resolutions Still, as failures go, we\u2019re in good company. Take Benjamin Franklin. As a young man, Ben composed a master list of 12 resolutions, later tacking on a killer 13th (\u201cImitate Jesus and Socrates\u201d). He had particular difficulty, he notes in his Autobiography, with Resolution No. 2 (\u201cSilence\u2014Avoid trifling conversation\u201d), No. 3 (\u201cOrder\u2014Let … Continue reading “Resolution”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1068\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}