Fragment 31 Quotes

Dr. Knef was a medical man through and through. When Mollie Maggia’s jawbone had so shockingly broken against his fingers, he had been fascinated by it—so he had kept it, this oddly moth-eaten, misshapen piece of bone. Every now and again, after her death, he had examined it, turning it over in his hands, but he was none the wiser; anyway, she had died of syphilis, whatever the strangeness of her bones. He’d therefore popped the fragment into his desk drawer, where he kept his x-ray negatives, and eventually it slipped his mind. And then, one day, his duties had required him to dig through that crowded desk drawer for the x-ray films. He had scrambled through the bits and pieces he kept in there, searching for them. To his astonishment, when he finally pulled them out, the films were no longer ebony black. Instead, they were “fogged,”31 as though something had been emanating onto them.

personal equation. Thorndyke's brain was not an ordinary brain. Facts of which his mind instantly perceived the relation remained to other people unconnected and without meaning. His powers of observation and rapid inference were almost incredible, as I had noticed again and again, and always with undiminished wonder. He seemed to take in everything at a single glance and in an instant to appreciate the meaning of everything that he had seen. Here was a case in point. I had myself seen all that he had seen, and, indeed, much more; for I had looked on the very people and witnessed their actions, whereas he had never set eyes on any of them. I had examined the little handful of rubbish that he had gathered up so carefully, and would have flung it back under the grate without a qualm. Not a glimmer of light had I perceived in the cloud of mystery, nor even a hint of the direction in which to seek enlightenment. And yet Thorndyke had, in some incomprehensible manner, contrived to piece together facts that I had probably not even observed, and that so completely that he had already, in these few days, narrowed down the field of inquiry to quite a small area. From these reflections I returned to the objects on the table. The spectacles, as things of which I had some expert knowledge, were not so profound a mystery to me. A pair of spectacles might easily afford good evidence for identification; that I perceived clearly enough. Not a ready-made pair, picked up casually at a shop, but a pair constructed by a skilled optician to remedy a particular defect of vision and to fit a particular face. And such were the spectacles before me. The build of the frames was peculiar; the existence of a cylindrical lens—which I could easily make out from the remaining fragments—showed that one glass had been cut to a prescribed shape and almost certainly ground to a particular formula, and also that the distance between centres must have

Gather up the leftover fragments that  nothing may be lost”   John 6:12 (NASB)

February 17 Broken Pieces I am forgotten by them as though I were dead; I have become like broken pottery. But I trust in You, O lord; I say, “You are my God.” My times are in your hands.—Psalm 31:12, 14-15a I have a friend who does beautiful work with pieces of broken china and pottery. She gave me a lovely blue and white frame as a gift. She took the china and broke it into small enough pieces to fit the frame. She covered a plain frame with a white mortar and fit the broken pieces of blue and white china around the frame in a way that covered most of the area and filled in the spaces in between with more of the mortar. What a work of art! Not only is it beautiful, but it is custom made to fit my taste and home. But even more beautiful is the note that came with the gift. She wrote: my life has been full of broken pieces. Some of them are a result of my own manipulation and control and some are through no one’s fault, but a result of living in a fallen world. Regardless of what I give the Lord, He takes those pieces and adds them to a beautiful work of art. I hope this constantly reminds you of the Great Planner and Master Creator. We surely can make a mess of our lives, can’t we? But regardless of the mess we’ve made, no matter how fragmented we become, if we offer ourselves to God and trust in Him, He can take all the broken pieces of our life and make them into his work of art. And His work is so beautiful! His plan is custom made for each individual. Our times are in His Hands.

Instead of emulating the exercise of power over others exhibited by the Gentiles and “their great men,” this community is to live as a community of slaves (20:20-28). 8. Instead of maintaining hierarchical, patriarchal households, this community is to embrace an alternative, more egalitarian household structure (chs. 19-20). 9. Instead of paying taxes as an act of submission to the empire, this community is to pay them as an act which recognizes God's sovereignty over the earth (17:24-27; 22:15-22). 10. Instead of using violence to retaliate, this community is to be committed to active, nonviolent resistance (5:43-48). 11. Instead of pretending the empire has brought health to the world (Aristides; Matt 4:24), this community is to be an inclusive community, adopting in the fragmented urban chaos and hardship of Antioch a praxis of indiscriminate mercy, actively responding to need regardless of social, gender, or ethnic boundaries (chs. 8-9; 9:13; 12:7; 25:31-46). 12. Instead of seeking wealth to establish status, this community is to seek God's reign and use wealth in alternative, lifegiving practices of loans and almsgiving to those in need (5:42; 6:19-34; 10:9-15; 19:16-30).

Thus, see Old Testament texts like Pss 68:5; 103:13–14; Isa 63:15–16; Jer 31:9, 20, the famous avinu malkeinu (“Our Father, our King”) lines in classic Jewish prayers, like Ahabah Rabah and The Litany for the New Year, and texts like 4Q372 fragment 1:16.