7 things @ 9 o’clock (9.18)

1. Grace? You’re soaking in it.

2. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives could vote this week on HR 3102, a bill that would slash about $40 billion in funding for SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program also known as food stamps. Why? Because many Americans resent the hungry and the working poor.

Christine Melendez Ashley of Bread for the World sums up the effect of such cuts:

If enacted, we estimate almost 4 million people would be taken off SNAP through changes to the program’s eligibility rules and work requirements. …

Kicking this many people off SNAP will place a greater burden on churches and charities that are already struggling to provide food assistance. They would have to nearly double their current food assistance over the next ten years in order to handle the influx. In 2011, private churches and charities provided approximately $4 billion in food assistance — federal nutrition programs provided 23 times as much.

As in the original House farm bill, about 2 million people would be taken off SNAP under HR 3102, since the bill will make every state use the same income and asset tests, regardless of variations in cost of living or the economies of each state. About 210,000 kids will lose access to free school meals and 850,000 households will have their benefits reduced.

So I assume the righteous, godly Republican “values voters” who support this bill intend to give 24 times more to their local church food pantries, right?

3. Two kids on a playground. A circle of other children stands watching. One kid gets right up in the other’s face and says, “You’re nothing!”

This scene is either horrifying or exhilarating, depending on which kid is the bully.

4. Robin Parry shares a helpful mathematical analogy for the limits of God-talk: “Nevertheless there is always an infinite gap between our talk of God and God …” (It may be that this appeals to me mainly because I’m often as perplexed by mathematics as I am by trying to understand God.)

5. Alan McCornick on the NALT Christians Project, and on the blessedly admirable lack of a need for a NALT Jews Project.

6. Bromleigh McCleneghan, “You cannot be replaced“: “Whoever you are, wherever you are. You are remembered. You are loved. You will not be forgotten, but pursued. You can never be replaced.”

7. This political ad for Carl Sciortino Jr. is pretty charming. The grumpy-with-a-twinkle-in-his-eye performance by his dad, Carl Sciortino Sr., reminds me a lot of my late father-in-law (with whom I had several variations of this conversation).