Letters On The Page

September 10, 2025                         Wednesday of 13 th  Sunday after Pentecost Collect of the Day : Almighty and merciful God, by Your gift alone Your faithful people render true and laudable service. Help us steadfastly to live in this life according to Your promises and finally attain Your heavenly glory; through Jesus Christ, Your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.  Amen . The Epistle is from Romans, the tenth chapter.                              Romans 10:9-17 9  because, if   you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and   believe in your heart   that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.   10  For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confes...

This is an alarming turn of events. Found on Cal Newport's website.   https://calnewport.com/on-the-reverse-flynn-effect/ On the Reverse Flynn Effect September 8, 2025 Last fall, a Norwegian psychology professor named Lars Dehli was asked to give a lecture on intelligence. It had been a while since he had taught the topic, so he looked forward to revisiting it. As he explained in  ​an essay​  about the experience, he decided to start the lecture by discussing the so-called Flynn Effect—the well-known phenomenon, first observed by James Flynn, whereby measured IQ scores have been steadily increasing since World War II. “It’s always fun to tell students that their generation is the smartest people who have ever lived,” Dehli wrote. But as he gathered data to build an up-to-date chart, he was “very surprised” by what he discovered: “IQ has actually started to fall.” Dehli was not the first person to notice this decline. In recent years, a growing number of researchers have b...

Video of Divine Service at St. Luke, Rensselaer The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost Deuteronomy 30:15-20        Philemon 1:21            Luke 14:25-35   O Lord, your Word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, my rock and my redeemer. Amen.    While the scribes, lawyers, and pharisees don’t appreciate Jesus’ ministry among them, the rest of the population can’t get enough of him. Since Luke 9:51, Jesus has been on the long, slow, journey toward Jerusalem. Large groups of people continue to follow Him. They listen intently to what he says. All along the way, Jesus is catechizing, instructing, his disciples about life in the kingdom of God. Like parents and teachers in every time and place, Jesus regularly repeats himself to hammer his instructions into the catechumen’s minds and hearts so that...

Video of Divine Service   Wednesday of the 12 th  Sunday after Pentecost   Collect of the Day :  Almighty and everlasting God, always more ready to hear than we to pray and to give more than we either desire or deserve, pour down upon us the abundance of Your mercy, forgiving those things of which our conscience is afraid and giving us those good things that we are not worthy to ask, except through the merits and mediation of Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.    The Epistle is from First Corinthians, the 15 th  chapter .       1 Corinthians 15:1-10 15  Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand,  2  and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.  3  For I delivered to you as ...

  Video of Divine Service at St. Luke Rensselaer     12th Sunday after Pentecost Proverbs 25:2-10         Hebrews 13:1-17         Luke 14:1-14 O Lord, your word is a lamp unto our feet and light unto our path. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, my rock and my redeemer.  On the face of it, it appears that Jesus is giving the Pharisees and lawyers a much-needed lesson in etiquette. To avoid embarrassment, don’t assume your place or presume the status of your relationship with the host over the others present. Wait to be told where to be seated. This is age old wisdom that can quickly be forgotten by those filled with sinful pride. Apparently, this kind of presumption is a long standing problem and happens enough that King Solomon, a thousand years before Jesus, included a proverbial wisdom to the wise in his collection of Proverbs: “ Do not put yourself forward ...