“Tongue control? It will never be achieved unless there is first of all heart and mind control. When any Christian comes to the point of yielding to the Lord in full sincerity, cost what it may control of his thought life, the problem of managing his tongue will be solved, provided that such a surrender goes deeper than the intellect and reaches the emotions and will. For the Bible makes a distinction between mere intellectual knowledge of God and the trust of the heart.”
Frank E. Gaebelein, The Practical Epistle of James: Studies in Applied Christianity (Great Neck, N.Y.: Channel Press, 1955), 80-81.
Japan’s Fish Market is an extremely active and busy place early morning. They supply fish to the Tokyo Metropolitan area. Probably a population larger than Los Angelas Metro area.
There’s a huge variety of fish. You can find merchants talking with customers, killing fish, cuting fish, and some just standing around waiting for business.
You really have to watch your step around this area, there are a variety of vehicles both motorized and self propelled.
They do have McDonalds for your familiar sausage egg McMuffin, but there’s only a few of them. I rose early morning on my last day in Japan and took a trip to the famous fish market to see all the action.
Here’s my breakfast that I had that morning. There’s quite a variety of fish here, some of which are not available fresh like it is here. And since sushi is normally served raw, freshness is key.
They had these curious food items in Japan. The outside looks like waffle batter and the inside is a variety of things.
I didn’t actually eat one but they did seem very popular.
Usually, we have the television going practically nonstop after dinner. The reasons for watching are endless; Netflix movies, Dr. Phill, 20/20, Dateline, Pimp my Ride, Local and National news, etc etc. On my last trip to Japan, I did a lot of reading in the airplane and didn’t watch much T.V. the entire week. I also had more time to reflect on my role as a husband and spiritual leader in my household.
It became clear that we needed to do something to open time in our lives for study, teaching, prayer, worship, cleaning. Basically anything but television. We decided to cut T.V. on Tuesday’s, Thursdays and Sundays. This Tuesday was our first no T.V. night.
We started off going through the large amount of clutter in our home office. It was encouraging to see the clutter slowly disappear and if we spend some evenings cleaning up clutter here and there, we can easily keep up with it and have a relatively clean house. Later, we spent some time reading to each other and having fun together. Hopefully we can keep this up and do activities that help us grow closer together as a family and also closer to God.
I had a busy December and January. I was in Japan for 1 week in December, Alabama for 3 weeks for Christmas and New Years, and then Japan again for 1 week in January. You can bet there’s lots of photos. I haven’t had a chance to process the latest ones from Japan and haven’t had much time to write blog entries. I’ll be writing some “better late than never” entries on these last three trips. Look for them in the next few weeks.
