{"id":1461,"date":"2010-10-07T13:59:03","date_gmt":"2010-10-07T12:59:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pender.org.uk\/?p=1461"},"modified":"2011-08-26T11:13:44","modified_gmt":"2011-08-26T10:13:44","slug":"a-marked-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/2010\/10\/a-marked-man\/","title":{"rendered":"A marked man"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When I was in my formative teenage years, the Beatles were turning everything upside down, and hair was one of the great divides at the time. I desperately wanted a Beatles haircut, but I had curly hair, so covering my brow with a fringe was an impossibility and I gave up. (One boy in my year at school told me that he used to iron his hair to get it straight!) Then came the Mods, with short hair and a short fringe, so I quickly joined that style. Now my forehead is still fully visible &#8211; all the way to the back of my neck, in fact!<\/p>\n<p>Hairstyles change &#8211; or fall out &#8211; but the forehead is always there, and it can say as much about us as the other expressions on our face. It can show worry, anger, fear, depression. It can show peace. But it can show something even deeper than our emotions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"bible\"><strong>He said to him, &#8220;Walk through the streets of Jerusalem and put a mark on the foreheads of all who weep and sigh because of the detestable sins being committed in their city.&#8221;<br \/> <sup><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\"> 5<\/span> <\/sup>Then I heard the Lord say to the other men, &#8220;Follow him through the city and kill everyone whose forehead is not marked. Show no mercy; have no pity! <sup><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\">6<\/span><\/sup> Kill them all\u00e2\u20ac\u201dold and young, girls and women and little children. But do not touch anyone with the mark. Begin right here at the Temple.&#8221; So they began by killing the seventy leaders.<\/strong> (Ezekiel 9:4-6, NLT)<\/p>\n<p class=\"bible\"><strong>So the first angel left the Temple and poured out his bowl on the earth, and horrible, malignant sores broke out on everyone who had the mark of the beast and who worshiped his statue.<\/strong> (Rev 16:2, NLT)<\/p>\n<p>One day our foreheads will show where we stand. Do we weep and sigh because of all the evil that is in the world &#8211; not just at the sins that we ourselves don&#8217;t commit &#8211; all of it? Or do we revel in sin, even the smallest?<\/p>\n<p>We talk about keeping our noses clean. There is a lot of muck and dust out there. If our noses are low enough to get dirty, it will almost certainly mess our foreheads, hair or no hair!<\/p>\n<p>There is nothing I can do which will stop me being a marked man. The question is who will mark me?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was reflecting more on my previous post Mirror, mirror &#8211; I&#8217;m sorry, I can&#8217;t resist puns! I was thinking about how our images change as we grow and age. We tend to adopt fashions which are the fashion of our generation. Though that fashion might change as years pass, there is a continuing theme through our lives, and quite often we can guess a person&#8217;s age by the style of clothes or hair.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3,413,34,37,38,48,69],"class_list":["post-1461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian","tag-bibleblogs","tag-christian","tag-father","tag-freedom","tag-god","tag-jesus","tag-sin","category-5","description-off"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pfWaLo-nz","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7424,"url":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/2023\/06\/23-lashings-of-lashes\/","url_meta":{"origin":1461,"position":0},"title":"23 &#8211; Lashings of Lashes","author":"Robert Pender","date":"10\/06\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=\"7426\" img_size=\"full\" alignment=\"center\"][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]There are a lot of things happen when you get chemotherapy, but everyone is different and it all depends on the recipe of drugs which they put into you for your particular cancer. Most people tend to think that hair loss is going to happen, and most\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Life&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Life","link":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/category\/life\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1865,"url":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/2010\/11\/can-i-help-mr-cameron\/","url_meta":{"origin":1461,"position":1},"title":"Can I help, Mr Cameron?","author":"Robert Pender","date":"28\/11\/2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I was interested to read that Prime Minister, Mr Cameron, is going to spend \u00c2\u00a32million on measuring the happiness of the British people. Happiness, according to the dictionary is a state of well being and contentment. I do not see a lot of contentment in the society in which we\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Christianity&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/category\/christian\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7173,"url":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/2022\/11\/10-life-is-good-and-then-it-gets-longer\/","url_meta":{"origin":1461,"position":2},"title":"10 &#8211; Life is good and then it gets longer","author":"Robert Pender","date":"25\/11\/2022","format":false,"excerpt":"[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=\"7174\" img_size=\"full\"][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=\"\"]You may have read in my post Bad Sad Glad that I saw the Oncologist last Friday and that my prognosis was not good. Without chemotherapy, I would only have 2 to 3 months to live, with chemo, I was looking at 12-18 months. The Oncologist thought\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Life&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Life","link":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/category\/life\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7406,"url":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/2023\/06\/22-questions-questions\/","url_meta":{"origin":1461,"position":3},"title":"22 &#8211; Questions, Questions","author":"Robert Pender","date":"01\/06\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"So, did I buy the turbo trainer, or didn't I? Well, the answer to that is easy - it's yes. Yes to both questions!","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Life&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Life","link":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/category\/life\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7158,"url":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/2022\/11\/badsadglad\/","url_meta":{"origin":1461,"position":4},"title":"8 &#8211; Bad Sad Glad","author":"Robert Pender","date":"20\/11\/2022","format":false,"excerpt":"[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]There is no photo at the top of this post because there isn't one which could cover everything that I am going to say. The three weeks since my last post have been a bit busy with appointments and it has been a whirlwind of emotions and news. There have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Life&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Life","link":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/category\/life\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7131,"url":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/2022\/10\/7-the-big-sea\/","url_meta":{"origin":1461,"position":5},"title":"7 &#8211; The Big Sea","author":"Robert Pender","date":"27\/10\/2022","format":false,"excerpt":"[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=\"7132\" img_size=\"full\" alignment=\"center\" style=\"vc_box_shadow_3d\"][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner][vc_column_text]For most of the first 20 years of my life I lived next to the Clyde, a beautiful river with stunning scenery around it. Where I was, the river was very wide and was for most of the time calm. Occasionally the wind would get up\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Life&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Life","link":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/category\/life\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1461\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}