Mark Byron

Rangers and Honey Badgers

I was listening to an ESPN radio conversation on Josh Hamilton's next contract; the talkers were positing that the Ranger or any other club wouldn't be stingy on the per-year number ($20 million per, which is on par with what Pujols and Fielder got last winter) but would be leery about going with a decade-long deal like those two go for fear of his substance-abuse demons rearing their ugly head. At 31, something on the order of a 7-8 year deal wouldn't be out of the question normally, as hitters tend to stay productive well into their late 30s.

There are two reasons why going long might be called for here. One is that the ESPN folks might be short-changing Hamilton's faith; people who lick substance abuse with a faith-centric focus tend to do better over the long haul that less-devout folks. Yes, Hamilton has had two falls off the wagon in the past two off-seasons, but they were one-shot deals quickly dealt with; neither cost him any productivity on the field; while Hamilton is in a bad slump at present, he was on a otherworldly tear at the beginning of the season coming off that mild scare of a relapse.

Secondly, if Hamilton does have abuse issues and gets suspended, it would be without pay. Thus, there isn't much of a financial risk there, other than the prospect of being put on the shelf for a long stretch and getting rusty; a sober-but-diminished Hamilton would be pulling down superstar money for journeyman production.

Given the support circle that Hamilton has, including chaperones to make sure he stays sober on the road, that doesn't seem that likely. Folks seem to be downplaying both the faith angle and the support-network angle when getting nervous about a long-term deal.

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Another guy who's in line for a nice contract come next spring is Tyrann Mathieu, a.k.a The Honey Badger. He's been kicked off the LSU football team for a second failed drug test. The rumor mill has Mattieu heading to a I-AA school so that he can play this year; a number of southern I-AA schools, including a number of historically-black ones, are in the mix, with McNeese State the early leader. As a junior, he would be eligible for the NFL draft come next May, and sitting out a year at a BCS school wouldn't help his draft stock if he is planning to leave early.

Unlike Hamilton, Mattieu seems not to be paying attention to rehab overly well. If I can twist the Honey Badger motto, he don't care, he just tokes what he wants.

He'll be up for a big contract next spring, even with his past problems. If he can keep himself sober through next April, someone will pony up a major deal, although it will be a few picks later than otherwise, since teams won't quite be sure if they'll have HB's services for the whole contract, given his proclivity for illicit substances.

Boogying with the Bogey Man

Interesting choice of Paul Ryan for Mitt's VP. You have someone who can speak to fiscal conservatives loud and clear and who has carved out a niche as the GOP's go-to guy on deficit reduction.

He'll make certain quarters of the left go ballistic, especially when he's fronted the idea of turning Medicare into a voucher system; given that the medical part of Medicare is run that way, that's not as far-fetched as it sounds. However, since the left is going to make Ryan's plans the bogey man of the campaign, it makes some sense to boogie with the bogey man and take the steam off the demagoguery of the left by having a winsome spokesman make the case for it.

{Update 210PM-I posted this before making the blog rounds, and Erick Erickson beat me to the bogey-man phrase-"The bluster you hear today is a Democratic Party excited to have their bogey man as the Republican veep pick, with a little bit of nervous apprehension about what Ryan is capable of." They don't know him too well, do they?}

This largely sets the tone for the fall. Go with Obama and see trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see or go with Romney-Ryan and take a whack at bringing government back to a manageable level.

You also get a reasonably devout Catholic who has already gone toe-to-toe with the Catholic left over fiscal issues; that will make Ryan a good spokesman to help make hay on the HHS-contraception issue with traditional Catholics and other social conservatives.

Talking heads will likely not like it, since their more moderate favorites like Rice and Christy got overlooked, as well safe-swing-state-guy Portman and Minority Flavor of the Year Rubio.

Ryan's youth has some mild echoes of Dan Quayle (expect your liberal pundit of choice to run with that meme), except that Ryan has a very strong following on the right and has more gravitas on fiscal issues than anyone in the GOP. He's young, but not wet behind the ears, and will make Democrats wish for a three-knockdown rule in the VP debate.

 

Sunshine Superman

The big trade seems about to go down, and the Lakers didn't have to cough up Pau Gasol. Dwight Howard heads to LA (along with Chris Duhon and Earl Clark) with Andrew Bynum heading to Philly along with the Magic's Saginaw-born Jason Richardson (he went to my dad's alma mater of Arthur Hill High and my MBA alma mater of MSU).

Denver gets Andre Iguodala.

The Tragic get Arron Afflalo and Al Harrington from the Nuggets, Nikola Vucevic and recent draftee Moe Harkless from Philly, first round picks from the Lakers, Denver and Philly, two cheesesteaks and a fish taco.

The trade seems to make sense for each club except possilbly Denver. Afflalo leaving leaves a void at the shooting guard spot, but one could see Iguodala play the two on defence and slide more inside on offense and let Danilo Gallinari, who seems to be 6-10 with the soul of a guy 6-4, roam the perimiter.

Orlando gets very young, but has a solid nuculus to work with. Lots of good starters but no alpha dogs and cap room out the wazoo.

The Lakers just upped the ante in the west if everyone stays healthy. You have one of the older backcourts in recent memory in Kobe and Steve Nash, Pau Gasol is still in his prime but has some miles on the odometer and Howard is rehabbing a bad back. If they're all good to go, the Lakers and the Thunder will be on a collision course in the Western half of the bracket.

Polly Wanna Puzzle... Now!

Interesting piece on parrots showing some rather high levels of IQ for an animal.

In the new study, however, published yesterday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, researchers from the University of Vienna gave six grey parrots a slightly more complex task. Instead of being shown an empty and a full canister, the researchers merely shook one of the containers, so the parrots could hear either the sound of walnuts rattling around inside or silence.

When given the chance to select a canister, the parrots consistently chose the one with the walnuts, whether they had heard the shaking of either container. They were able, therefore, to determine both that a noisy shaking meant “food is inside” and that a noiseless shaking meant “no food is inside, so it must be in the other one.”

They were African grey parrots, which brings to mind the old anti-stereotype joke where a African-American customer meets up with the pet store's smartest African grey parrot

"Polly wanna cracker.... polly wanna cracker?"

The bird replied "Leroy wanna watermellon?"

While we're in the neighborhood, what does a 800 pound parrot say? Either "Here, kitty, kitty, kitty" or "Polly wanna cracker... now!"

Edifier du Jour- Daniel 2:14-19(NIV)

¹⁴ When Arioch, the commander of the king’s guard, had gone out to put to death the wise men of Babylon, Daniel spoke to him with wisdom and tact. ¹⁵ He asked the king’s officer, “Why did the king issue such a harsh decree?” Arioch then explained the matter to Daniel. ¹⁶ At this, Daniel went in to the king and asked for time, so that he might interpret the dream for him.

¹⁷ Then Daniel returned to his house and explained the matter to his friends Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. ¹⁸ He urged them to plead for mercy from the God of heaven concerning this mystery, so that he and his friends might not be executed with the rest of the wise men of Babylon. ¹⁹ During the night the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a vision. Then Daniel praised the God of heaven

Two things struck me as I reread this passage. The first is that Daniel talked with the oficer "with wisdom and tact." That's something many would-be modern prophets forget to do, taking being as tactful as a Sherman tank as a badge of honor. Some prophets had a more in-your-face style, but Daniel wasn't one of them.

The second was that he needed some intercessory help from his friends. A prayer for supernatural wisdom was a tag-team event, not just a one-man job. Like a Tour de France leader, David needs his domestiques to get him to the prophetic yellow jersey; however, that trio gets their own three millennia of fame later in the book.

Past His Freshness Date

Twenty years ago, Tommy Thompson was a hot conservative commodity, reforming welfare in Wisconsin as governor and being something of a spiritual godfather to the welfare reform that passed in the mid-90s. He also help start one of the first school-voucher programs.

Now, he's seen as an establishment guy and being opposed by more conservative folks in the GOP primary to replace Herb Kohl's senate seat. 30% might win in a cluttered field; Red State is carpet-bombing another establishment guy, Eric Hovde, and backing Mark Neumann.

Wisconsin could be in for an interesting fall. The Scott Walker recall showed that the state will accept a principled conservative. That will make the presidential race interesting in a state that's leaned Democratic in the past. We'll also see if the GOP nominee can keep Tammy Baldwin from being the first outed Senator in history; Thompson leads that proposed race in the polls.

Run-DMZ

After the Camp David accords, the Sinai has been largely a demilitarized zone, since Israel has been fearful of having too many Egyptian troops close to its border; UN troops kept the sides apart for decades. However, that has left a vacuum where Gaza gun runners and local goons can operate without fearing a major armed backlash from the authorities, especially after the Arab Spring ditched Mubarak last year.

That has changed; with Israel's blessing, the Egyptian army is moving back in.

Hundreds of troops in armored cars drove out of the town to hunt Islamist militants blamed for killing 16 Egyptian border guards on Sunday, the biggest spike in violence which has been growing steadily since last year's overthrow of Hosni Mubarak.

The gunfire in al-Arish, the nerve centre of the government's otherwise shaky control of the North Sinai region, showed how difficult it will be for Egypt to impose order. It followed attacks on checkpoints in the town on Wednesday.

Israel has welcomed Egypt's offensive while continuing to express worries about the deteriorating situation in Sinai, home to anti-Israel militants, Bedouin tribes angered by neglect by Cairo, gun-runners, drug smugglers and al Qaeda sympathizers.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Egypt was acting "to an extent and with a determination that I cannot previously recall".

It also puts new President Mursi in an awkward spot; Hamas is a Muslim Brotherhood offshoot, so he'd be going against some spiritual allies in cracking down on the smuggling of military goodies into Gaza. However, if Mursi is going to have any credibility with the west as an Islamic democrat, keeping Hamas at a distance and Israel as a peaceful neighbor would require such a crack-down.

That bode watching, for if Mursi can pull that off, there might be hopes for some form of housebroken Islamic democracy; the "Christian Democrats" of Europe come to mind as a bloc that is religious but not authoritarian. It would be a bit of a feat to see an Islamic Democrat when Islamic doctrine leans toward a church-state fusion.

Edifier du Jour- Daniel 2:5-11(NIV)

⁵ The king replied to the astrologers, “This is what I have firmly decided: If you do not tell me what my dream was and interpret it, I will have you cut into pieces and your houses turned into piles of rubble. ⁶ But if you tell me the dream and explain it, you will receive from me gifts and rewards and great honor. So tell me the dream and interpret it for me.”

⁷ Once more they replied, “Let the king tell his servants the dream, and we will interpret it.”

⁸ Then the king answered, “I am certain that you are trying to gain time, because you realize that this is what I have firmly decided: ⁹ If you do not tell me the dream, there is just one penalty for you. You have conspired to tell me misleading and wicked things, hoping the situation will change. So then, tell me the dream, and I will know that you can interpret it for me.”

¹⁰ The astrologers answered the king, “There is not a man on earth who can do what the king asks! No king, however great and mighty, has ever asked such a thing of any magician or enchanter or astrologer. ¹¹ What the king asks is too difficult. No one can reveal it to the king except the gods, and they do not live among men.”

Dream-interpretation is a cottage industry on the charismatic side of things (John Paul Jackson comes to mind), but telling someone what their dream was rather than what it meant is something that requires a hands-on God to do. A good psychologist can give an interperetation of a dream, but the king here wasn't looking for a head-shrinker, he was looking for something only God could do.

The "gods" couldn't do that, since they aren't living in the first place; it is true that those false deities "do not live among men" since they flat out do not live. If I can borrow from Renfield in Love at First Bite-"All those gods are dead. Don't you have One that's alive and keek-ing?"

Daniel did have that on his menu, as do we.

Edifier du Jour- Daniel 1:8-17(NIV)

⁸ But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine, and he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself this way. ⁹ Now God had caused the official to show favor and sympathy to Daniel, ¹⁰ but the official told Daniel, “I am afraid of my lord the king, who has assigned your food and drink. Why should he see you looking worse than the other young men your age? The king would then have my head because of you.”

¹¹ Daniel then said to the guard whom the chief official had appointed over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, ¹² “Please test your servants for ten days: Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink. ¹³ Then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food, and treat your servants in accordance with what you see.” ¹⁴ So he agreed to this and tested them for ten days.

¹⁵ At the end of the ten days they looked healthier and better nourished than any of the young men who ate the royal food. ¹⁶ So the guard took away their choice food and the wine they were to drink and gave them vegetables instead.

¹⁷ To these four young men God gave knowledge and understanding of all kinds of literature and learning. And Daniel could understand visions and dreams of all kinds.

Veggies and God are a better diet than Babylon's five-course meals, at least for Daniel and his buddies, better known by their adopted names Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego (the ones who a pre-incarnate Jesus said "well done, my good and faithful servant, well done" to in the furnace;-).

Normally, that diet wouldn't be a winner, but a well-chosen vegan diet can be healthy if you get the right mix of proteins. However, it was God looking after their well-being that was more important than getting enough legumes and a proper amino-acid mix; how much of it was nutrition and how much was the living Word is left to the imagination.

God gets the credit at the end, however. Even the most arch-vegan isn't going to claim they see visions with the right meat-free diet; that requires the right mushrooms or other things not available at Whole Foods Market or Trader Joe's.

You Don't Know Jack... the Dripper

The Gabby Giffords shooter, Jared Loughner, did a plea deal for life in prison on the federal charges against him. He had suffered from schizophrenia, but not enough to be deemed insane; drug treatment made him coherent enough to stand trial and make a plea bargain.

Given his problems, making a death penalty rap stick would be an iffy proposition given the trend towards commuting the sentences of folks with severe mental illness. Sparing the US taxpayers two teams of lawyers for a decade fighting over a trip to Jack the Dripper makes fiscal sense and does bring closure...

...well, not quite. Arizona could still press capital charges if they want to take a whack at the Roberts Court (or whoever gets the final call around 2025 by the time the appeals got done; Roberts should still be there, but half the current court could turn over by then) letting them execute Loughner. A hang-'em-high DA might want to make that call, even if it would be rather costly for the state to try.

Primary Postlude

It looks like Pete Hoekstra will get a whack at Debbie Stabenow in the fall, winning 54-34 over Clark Durant with 67% in. Republicans won't be able to be as populist as some in the Peanut Gallery would like, but they have a solid conservative with gravitas to spare. If a left-leaning Michigan electorate is up to voting GOP, Hook-straw won't be a loose-cannon Tea Partier that will be easy to caricature; the best liberals could do is to make him some sort of neocon Bush clone, but that might look good compared to a Obama clone with the Y chromosome removed.

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The other race of interest saw the guy I voted for, Scott Stephenson, win the sheriff's race comfortably, 43% to 19% for his nearest challenger with 83% in. When I did a Facebook post, I was thinking of the IL Stevensons and misspelled his name. Barring a write-in foe in the fall, he's in, since no one bothered to file as a Democrat.

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Conservatives won't be thrilled to see Fred Upton get back in; he won 66-34 over a conservative challenger. The weather was a bit too warm for a good RINO hunt; here's a Politico piece on the failed hunt. He redeemed himself this session by being a fairly good soldier and not going bipartisan on the budget supercommittee.

Down in Detroit, one of Detroit's two congressmen of color, Hansen Clarke, looks like he's going to lose to Gary Peters in a double-incumbent race (48-35 Peters with 86% in). John Conyers won his race in a new seat that includes some black parts of Oakland County, but with only 60% of the vote. Clarke's loss will resonate some as Conyers will wind up being Detroit's only congressman.

The Old Rugged Crossover

I saw something interesting at the polling station just now. The gal in front of me had her ballot flagged for cross-voting (a.k.a. voting in both Democratic and Republican primaries); for sheriff, the only people running were Republicans, and the gal (she was black, so even in Midland, it was a safe bet to assume she was a Democrat when paired with the story) thought it was OK to cross over in that case.

Not quite, even though that essentially takes away the vote for a Democrat in Midland County who doesn't want to skip their primary (it's open, but you have to stay on one side for the day once you pick). In Florida, that wouldn't be the case, since they would have let her cross over-the rules I remember from living there nearly a decade ago are still up-

If all the candidates for an office have the same party affiliation and the winner of the primary election will not face any opposition in the general election (i.e. no write-in candidates have qualified), then all registered voters can vote for any of the candidates for that particular office in the primary election.

That was especially important in the old South, where the Democratic Party was the party in some areas, so the primary was the election. Midland isn't quite that one-party, but I think it's been a couple of decades since a Democrat has won a county-wide race.

The cross-over gal went back and revoted, and got done after me but before Eileen got done, so I was waiting out front. She was still grumbling about the partial disenfranchisement as she left and I mentioned the Florida rule to her. Cold comfort, but there are places that would have let her have her say.

Primary Musings

We're voting today in the primary in Michigan. We've got an interesting four-way sheriff's race in Midland county on the GOP side, with two current deputies, a retired deputy and a former Midland city cop in the hunt. Things can get personal on this level, as one of the candidates, Myron Greene, is very active in my sister's church.

However, I'm leaning towards Scott Stephenson. Having managed the country jail as part of his duties as a deputy gives him a heads-up on the area most likely to get a sheriff's department in trouble. Since the county just built a jail designed to be a regional center on pace to bring in $2m in revenue this year, that expertise should prove helpful.

There aren't any bad choices amongst the four, so there'll be no gnashing of teeth tomorrow at the result here.

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The GOP senate race is interesting as well, as former congressman Pete Hoekstra is up against charter school activist and Hillsdale College executive Clark Durant. Durant is running as a Tea Party friendly "rebel" and dissing Hoekstra for establishmentarian votes on TARP and debt-ceiling-raising.

This has echoes of the Grayson-Paul primary in KY two years ago that I just missed out on when we moved back to Michigan, the McConnell-backed establishmentarian versus the libertarian TPer. However, the differences aren't quite as stark, as Hoekstra is a bit more conservative that Grayson would have been.

Foreign policy hasn't been much of an issue to date, but Hoekstra's background on the intelligence committee will help him in the Senate. That's worth more than a consistent no vote on anything smelling center-left.

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Here's a passing thought on debt-ceiling votes. If someone is against a rise in the debt ceiling, they should have a balanced budget for the current fiscal year at the ready, since that is what failing to pass a debt-ceiling hike would entail. If we can't borrow more money, we need a balanced budget-"how do we get there, dude?"

Edifier du Jour- Titus 3:9-11(NIV)

⁹ But avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and arguments and quarrels about the law, because these are unprofitable and useless. ¹⁰ Warn a divisive person once, and then warn him a second time. After that, have nothing to do with him. ¹¹ You may be sure that such a man is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned.

This is a passage that is easy to over-apply and under-apply at the same time. My "foolish controversy" is someone else's core doctrine and visa-versa. If you want to defend your novel doctrine from heresy-hunters, this is the passage you turn to, pleading "can't we all just get along and agree to disagree?"

Genealogies aren't much in the loop these days, since most modern believers are from the Gentile camp and aren't going to be in the market to attach themselves to Old Testament heroes' family trees, but first century Jews were in that marketplace; Paul had to call out such arguments that would try to give the Jews in a church bragging rights over the new kids on the theological block.

Paul doesn't want us feeding the trolls. You could cut and paste this as a comment-section guide and be in good form.

Ignorance, But not Apathy

The SPLC actually is back to earning its keep; we have a solid ID on the Sikh-shooter, Wade Page. He was in a white-power rock band, End Apathy.

Nikki Haley, the Sikh-turned-Methodist governor of South Carolina, comes to mind. This could have just as easily been her family's facility (her folks are still Sikh) had our shooter moved to SC rather than Wisconsin; his band is based out of North Carolina, so there but the grace of God went the governor's clan.

This isn't a right-left thing; it's folks turning their frustrations onto the not-us. Sikhs are about as good-citizens as they come, at least in the Anglosphere diaspora, but the turbans and beards of the guys demark them as something Joe Skinhead isn't used to seeing.

I'm reminded of the old joke-What's the difference between ignorance and apathy? "I don't know and I don't care." Mr. Page may not have known exactly what he was dispatching, but he did care, enough to kill.

Edifier du Jour- Titus 3:1-2(NIV)

Remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good, ² to slander no one, to be peaceable and considerate, and to show true humility toward all men.

This is a good day for this verse as we head into Michigan's primary tomorrow. Insiders trash outsiders, conservatives trash liberals and Tea Partiers trash garden-variety conservatives; meanwhile, any voting record is twisted like Silly Putty to the detriment of the office-holder.

The candidate running as a rebel (Durant) doesn't get the first part of verse 1 overly well, nor does his working Hoeksta's congressional record like pretzel dough help matters; I didn't like it when Romney's ad goons did that to Santorum, and Durant cuts-and-pastes from those ads to go after Hoekstra. The candidate who all but calls the sitting senator a traitor (Hoekstra) just flunked verse two.

My sense of fair play gets offended by everyone in that race. Both the main Republicans would self-identify as Christian, but I'm not seeing a lot of the fruit of the Spirit in this race.

The best we can do is to live out what Paul is calling for ourselves. Rats tend to win the rat race, but we don't have to run that race with them.

Xenophobia on Steroids

"Skinhead" is the operative word on yesterday's Sikh-killer-"...members described the attacker as a bald, white man, dressed in a white T-shirt and black pants and with a 9/11 tattoo on one arm -- which "implies to me that there's some level of hate crime there."

It may well have been that the Sikhs were fer'ners and that was enough; he may also have had the Sikhs falsely IDed as Muslims of some sort. Even if it was a false ID, the six folks at the temple are still dead, just like the Chinese guy who got killed in metro Detroit years ago (30 years already? Time flies) when folks took out their frustrations on Japanese car companies doing a number of the Big Three on the nearest available Asian.

By the way, Southern Poverty Law Center folks, this is a one-man hate group, if the early evidence pans out. Six more people dead than all the Chick-fil-A fans rung up in their venom-dripping chicken-sandwich runs last week. Please get back to keeping track of Nazis, skinheads and other violent bigots like yesterday's shooter (where you rock on toast) and leave the gardern-variety theocons to People for the American Way or Bene's blog.

The Fabulous Baker Boy

At lunch after church, comment section regular Alan and I were talking about Omar Infante's slow start as a Tiger, struggling to get much over .200 when he was hitting around .270 previously; small sample set, I said. Today, he went 4/6 with a homer and a clutch two-run single in the 10th in a 10-8 win. The average just zipped up to .278.

To add to the infield depth, they picked up Jeff Baker from the Cubs for two players to be named later. Baker is a right-handed utility guy who can play everything but short, center and catcher; sounds about like Ryan Rayburn, except that Baker is a .270 career hitter. Rayburn got put in the DL and may well have seen his last action as a Tiger

Milwaukee-Dangerous for Spiritual Outliers?

I got a Google hit for this post on the Living Church of God, an offbeat offshoot of Herbert Armstrong's theology. I was blogging on it after a disguntled member shot up a metro Milwaukee church in 2005. By the way, for those of you who are coming in to check to see if it's a cult (it's a common Google visit), that depends on your definition. It has some questionable theology but isn't out in the drink-the-Koolaid land that we normally reserve the c-word for.

It's most likelt unrelated, but seven years later, we have another house of worship shot up in metro Milwaukee. We still have no idea what prompted this one; reports are out that the shooter was a white guy, but that would even include the darked-skinned Caucasian Indians that make up the majority of the gurdwara's worshipers; however, I have a feeling they were using a tight-white definition. We shall see.

Ker-Pow vrs. Kirpan

No details as to who or why, but someone shot up a Sikh temple in Milwaukee (how's that for our melting pot in action?) earlier today; the body count is six plus the shooter, who was "put down" by a policeman.

Sikhs often get confused for Muslims, as they come from India (and thus have darker skin), wear turbans and beards; they aren't Muslims but an Indian hybrid that tried to unite the Hindus and Muslims of the subcontinent.

One interesting footnote in Sikh garb is a small dagger, a kirpan, that Sikh men are supposed to have on themselves 24/7. In a post-9/11 universe, that gets some raised eyebrows and often comes afoul of concealed-weapon laws, creating a good First Amendment free-exercise trip to the courts in many cases; an Italian case was in the news last week.

However, ker-pow trumped kirpan in this case. It will be interesting to see what might have motivated the shooter and whether is was a mistaken-identity issue of taking out frustrations on Muslims on South Asia folks who kinda look the part if you don't know your cultural geography.

Edifier du Jour- Acts 2:1-12(NIV)

When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. ² Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. ³ They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. ⁴ All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.

⁵ Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. ⁶ When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. ⁷ Utterly amazed, they asked: “Are not all these men who are speaking Galileans? ⁸ Then how is it that each of us hears them in his own native language? ⁹ Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, ¹⁰ Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome ¹¹ (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” ¹² Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”

Pastor Kessler had an interesting sermon this morning on this, delivering the message of Pentecost without becoming Pentecostal in the processs.

What did that mean? God was reaching out to people in their mother tongues. That is still a work in progress, as we deliver the Gospel two millennia on in settings and media that Peter and company couldn't even dream of. Such translation can often be in the form of good heurmaneutics to bring the message to a modern listener, but the Holy Spirit is still the one in charge.