God Still Loves Penn State (and other random thoughts)

There's a bumper that asks "Why is the sky blue and white?" and the answer beneath it is "Because God is a Penn State Fan".   I think God is still a Penn State fan (and a Crimson Tide fan and an Ohio State fan etc) but that he too must be saddened. It's a sorry world when a football program is exalted above the lives and welfare of innocent children.  It's too sad for words.  There's always redemption and mercy available, though.  It's my prayer that the predators will find God and His mercy. It's my prayer that those who were victims of these unspeakable horrors will find peace and truth and fulfillment.
And then there's the race for the presidency. Hmm.  I think I won't even go there except to say that it is imperative that the president understand foreign policy.
What else can I say?  I want to live in a better world. I want to know that we are safe. I don't know about the economy and when it will turn around. I think we've learned some valuable lessons in the downturn but I'm ready to see my 401K recover so I have some hope of a decent retirement. I don't want to live high on the hog, but I want to live.  I'm concerned about Medicare, about elder abuse, about ageism.
But am I worried?  No.  I have a new and living hope and I have a God who cares for me.
On this international day of prayer for the persecuted church, I pray for those who are in prison for their faith. I pray for those who have to worship secretly, those who need to hide away in order to pray together, those who have to stash away their Bibles, sometimes in pieces because that's all they have or that's the easiest way to hide it.
Someone recently introduced me to some beautiful YouTube videos on the underground church in China.  One of the them was a series on the Canaan Hymns. The first video is available below. Watch and be blessed.

Ah, ah, Autumn!

I sometimes think that Autumn is the gentle mother that's sent in to comfort us after the loss of summer.  I'd love autumn more if I didn't know that old man winter was lurking in the corner ready to bring on cold, bleak days.  But I'm thinking this October that I prefer to live in the now and enjoy each Autumn day.  My senses come awake in autumn.

1. Autumn is beautiful.  There's no doubt about it: Autumn is one of the most glorious seasons of the year. It is yellows and oranges and browns. It is pumpkins and colorful trees and majestic sunsets. It is bathed in golden glows.  Just type "autumn photo" into a Google search and be amazed at the beauty that has been captured by photographers.  Do the same with paintings.  Better yet, if it's light outside and you are in a region of the world that is in the fall season, go outside and look around. Even blight looks prettier in the fall.  My sister and I used to laugh about a junkyard that was visible off I-81 in Northeastern Pennsylvania. In the fall, even that eyesore could look pretty. Okay, so you had to squint and make it like a Monet painting, but you get my drift, right?
2. Autumn is delicious.  It's apples and cider and pies. It's pumpkin casseroles and squash broth and harvest stew. It's a big chunk of cheddar cheese with a warm and hearty bowl of something healthy. It's potlucks and soup suppers. It's time to heat up the kitchen oven again and in the U.S. time to progress to the pigfest of all pigfests: Thanksgiving. That's when Autumn really crests here.
3. Autumn is fragrant.  It's bonfires and baking. It's fresh air with that little hint of dampness. It's chestnuts and and candles and scents like cinnamon and nutmeg and cloves.  
4. Autumn sounds good. It's children laughing as they jump in the leaves. It's little voices tentatively asking "Trick or treat".  It's the sound of candy wrappers and doorbells and giggles. It's the cheers of football fans from midget leagues to the big leagues. It's the old hymns like "Come Ye Thankful People Come" and "Count Your Blessings" sung at church harvest services.
5. Autumn feels good. It's the joy that comes from helping others whether it's leaf raking or volunteering at a soup kitchen or contributing to the needy. It's sunshine on your shoulders, not burning but just feeling warm and right as you stroll around a fall festival. It's the softness and warmth of that blanket you now have to put on the bed. It's the feel of the Irish linen sweater or the fleece jacket. 

Yep, this year I plan to enjoy autumn and not even think about the coming winter (which by the way can hold its own IMO for it's first six weeks and then I can cling to the hope of spring). But what's with me wishing away time anyway?  My mother always cautioned about that.  We only get so many days anyway so let's enjoy them (and yes, that includes winter too).  In Psalm 90:12 the Psalmist asked God to teach us to number our days so that we might apply our hearts unto wisdom.   The frailty of life is a fact that doesn't need to depress us. On the contrary, it makes us appreciate our time here. Ah ah Autumn!

So what stirs your senses in autumn?  Comment or email and remind me of the joys I overlooked.

Lessons I Learned While Sick

I recently had a pretty bad upper respiratory infection that knocked me out of normal commission for a few days. Here are some things I learned:

1. There's a lot of junk online.
2. There's a lot of good stuff online.
3. It's easy to become one of those people on Facebook who hog your screen with  47 updates.
4. It is true that you can have 120 channels and on demand and a dvr and still have nothing to watch on tv. Especially true for daytime television
5. Coffee tastes horrible when you feel like crap but you better drink it anyway or you'll add a caffeine withdrawal headache to your woes.
6. Sleep is underrated.
7. When you feel like watermelons are growing in your throat it's hard to swallow.
8. If you're prepared you will have non-expired medicines on hand and know where the thermometer is.
9. You can make this sick thing your hobby but it would probably annoy the crap out of your friends and family.
10. The work piles up when you don't work.

So here's to good health.  I'm finally there and I can get back to being human again and doing productive things. But I'm going to miss this online addiction.

My Inspiration

Click on the play arrow below to watch a video I put together with some of my photos and some Bible scripture verses that inspire me.  Note: When the ads start to appear down the bottom of the photos, you can see an "X" in the corner of the ad box/banner.  Just click that X and they will go away. It makes for better viewing.  That said, YouTube is a free feature and I guess we should read the ads now and then.

The Heart of The Gospel Message

Good News!

What is at the heart of the gospel message?    This question was recently asked by an online friend.  My first thought was John 3:16.  It’s a verse many of us learned as children, one we often take for granted. We hear it and we recite the words but seldom really think about it. Yet Luther referred to that very passage as “the Gospel in miniature”.

A few years back I heard a decomposition of that verse. I thought it was a helpful way to give meaning to something we often just recite by rote. I’m not sure of its origin and I think there are a few variations but here the one I’m familiar with:

For:  Because

God:  The greatest lover

So loved:  The greatest degree

The world:  The greatest company

That He gave:  The greatest act

His only begotten Son:  The greatest gift

That whosoever:  The greatest opportunity

Believeth:  The greatest simplicity

In Him:  The greatest attraction

Should not perish:  The greatest promise

But:  The greatest difference

Have:  The greatest certainty

Everlasting life:  The greatest possession

To me, the sacrifice of Jesus and the opportunity for anyone to receive His life eternally are at the heart of The Gospel.  

Merriam Webster doesn’t use the good news definition.  First, you need to sort through all the references to it being a religious term. Then it lists an alternate meaning of something promoted as an infallible truth or a guiding principle or doctrine.  I’ve always been taught that the word gospel means “good news”.   So instead of the dictionary, I went to Strong’s Concordance because it provides the meaning of words in specific Bible passages.  The Gospel spoken of in the four Gospels of the New Testament as well as throughout the epistles does mean glad tidings. Another meaning for it is a reward for good tidings.

Well, what better news is there than knowing that when I simply believe, I receive?  Grace plus NOTHING!   That’s really good news.  I don’t have to do a thing except to take what God offers.

Some churches preach a social gospel or a liberation theology or some form of interpretation that the heart of the gospel is to help other people.  It’s my opinion that helping other people is a fruit that comes from our relationship with Christ but not reason for the message.  I believe that sometimes this conclusion is reached when people look at the passages relating to Jesus where the word Gospel is used and they see that in almost every case, Jesus preaching the gospel was accompanied by healings and by a message to the poor.

Let’s exegete some of those passages and see what we find out.

Matthew 4:23 - Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people.   In context, this verse it was early in Jesus’ ministry. He had just begun to call his disciples and to begin his preaching and teaching.  The miracles were one way to reach The Jews of that day. In 1 Corinthians 1:22 we read that they sought a sign. To them it was an evidence of divinity. The gospel of the kingdom can be translated as the good news of the royal power of Jesus as the triumphant Messiah. (Strongs).

Luke 4:18 - The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.   This verse speaks of preaching the gospel to the poor as well as ministering to others in need.   This verse is in part an actual quotation of Isaiah 61:1 which is a prophesy of The Messiah.  Jesus was in Nazareth in the Synagogue reading from The Scriptures.  When he finished, Luke 4:20 says all eyes were on Him. He then told them that the scripture that day was fulfilled in their ears.  If we read the whole chapter, we see that this message from Jesus by sight did not go well. He was rejected and driven out. No social acceptance there so his ministry was not just about doing good things that made people happy.

In Barnes Notes on The Bible, the commentator points out that the poor are “those who are destitute of the comforts of this life, and who therefore may be more readily disposed to seek treasures in heaven; all those who are sensible of their sins, or are poor in spirit Matthew 5:3; and all the "miserable" and the afflicted, Isaiah 58:7. Our Saviour gave it as one proof that he was the Messiah, or was from God, that he preached to "the poor," Matthew 11:5”. 

I love that Jesus didn’t just stop at the poor. Some of the poorest people I know are healthy and wealthy in ways that many more affluent people are not.  He also healed the brokenhearted. The word for brokenhearted is actually two words.  Broken means broken to shivers or broken in pieces.  The word  heart has several  nuances and I’ve pasted the definitions from Strong’s concordance because they say it best:

1) the heart

a) that organ in the animal body which is the centre of the circulation of the blood, and hence was regarded as the seat of physical life

b) denotes the centre of all physical and spiritual life

1) the vigour and sense of physical life

2) the centre and seat of spiritual life

a) the soul or mind, as it is the fountain and seat of the thoughts, passions, desires, appetites, affections, purposes, endeavours

b) of the understanding, the faculty and seat of the intelligence

c) of the will and character

d) of the soul so far as it is affected and stirred in a bad way or good, or of the soul as the seat of the sensibilities, affections, emotions, desires, appetites, passions

c) of the middle or central or inmost part of anything, even though inanimate

Have you ever met someone whose emotions desires, appetites and passions have been crushed to shards?  I think at times in our lives that could be any one of us. This is the type of person Jesus healed.  Meanings for healed include cured, made whole, and freed from errors and sins.

What else does this verse say He did?  He preached deliverance to the captives.  Preaching is proclaiming, not the negative connotation many have that it is pounding people over the head with a message.  Deliverance is release from bondage or imprisonment but it can also mean forgiveness or pardon of sins, letting them go as if they’ve never been committed.  I’m jumping up and down here at the notation in Stong’s  concordance.   And I had to smile when the definition for captive was just that: captive.  The root of the word comes from a spear.  Picture in the days in which this passage was written, the police didn’t come with handcuffs. They came with spears and you didn’t move or you would be skewered. You were captive.  The application here is that we are held captive by the effects of our sins but Jesus wants to wipe away the record and the spears have to fall because there is no grounds on which to hold us captive.  He also brought about the recovery of sight to the blind. The same word is used for both physical and mental blindness.   We know that Jesus healed both.  Then it says he set at liberty them that were bruised.  Interestingly here, the word for liberty is the same word used in this verse for deliverance and bruised means shattered or broken into pieces (not quite the same as our commonly used English meaning of discolored skin or an abrasion). 

I had not thought of the captive and the blind and those that are bruised as having necessarily any relation to each other except as all being ministered to by Jesus.  But Wesley in his notes on this passage has this delightful revelation: “How is the doctrine of the ever - blessed trinity interwoven, even in those scriptures where one would least expect it? How clear a declaration of the great Three - One is there in those very words, The Spirit - of the Lord is upon me! To proclaim deliverance to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised - Here is a beautiful gradation, in comparing the spiritual state of men to the miserable state of those captives, who are not only cast into prison, but, like Zedekiah, had their eyes put out, and were laden and bruised with chains of iron. Isa 61:1.”   To me, that’s the good news that Jesus will redeem us from destruction.

There are other verses that we could look at (among them:   Matthew 9:35, Matthew 11:5, Mark 1:14, Luke 7;22, Luke 9:6) that refer to the gospel in conjunction with healing or ministering to the poor.  They are similar in nature to the two we just looked at.

 The theme of the verses is that Jesus came to fulfill the scriptures and to save and deliver those who would believe. The sick, the blind, the torn, the prisoners and the poor are not the theme. They are the receivers.   Remember your old grammar lessons?  The object receives the action.  WE are the blind, the poor, the sick, the brokenhearted, the captive and we receive the action of Christ’s love.  That to me is what is at the heart of the gospel message.

 Back to John 3:16 to tie in its relevance here.  The cast of needy human characters:   The sick, the blind, the captive, the broken et cetera are the whosoever.  And the good new – the best news – is that whosoever believes has eternal life.  No strings. No conditions. No works necessary. Now isn't that good news?

How did this child of the 60's turn 60???

How did this child of the sixties turn 60?
How did it happen that I got to sixty?  I'm grateful that I am here, of course.  I have a wonderful life and I know the greatness of God.  I live with many reminders of how I've been blessed with family and friends and health.
I guess most everyone who ages has some similar take on this.  I like to think we Baby Boomers are unique because we were so unique back then.  We changed the world, right?  Or at least our world.  Our generation, after all, affected many changes in society. Some of them were good. Some of them were bad.  But we didn't just sit idly by or expect that our parents would hand us everything. In fact, things weren't as much of an issue for us.
So now that I'm sixty I am asserting the right to speak like an old fogey.  I've seen those lists online of things that were true in the fifties and sixties so I'm adding a few of my own. Today we say "back in the day" but back in the day we said "in my day...".  So in my day:

• Newlyweds didn't expect to have it all at once.  They moved into small, cramped apartments with what they could afford. They didn't enter into marriage with a brand new home beautifully furnished with two new cars in their 2 car garage.
• Tattoos were reserved for sailors and the occasional jailbird.
• Children played outside without fences.  When my mother wanted me she'd go out on the back porch and yell my name.  That's how I knew it was supper time.
• When I was a kid my friends didn't text me or email me or IM me or even call me. They would show up at the front door and yell "Hello for Lin-da".
• Nobody bought metal wallets to protect their credit cards because we had few uses of credit and very little of that type of theft. If we couldn't afford something we didn't buy it.  If we really had our eye on something and we were afraid it might disappear, we did "Lay-aways".  The store put your stuff in storage and you paid what you could over time until you had paid for it. No interest. No charges. Now a thing of the past but it was very useful.
• At least in our house, things like potato chips and soda and candy were reserved for special occasions. And I think they tasted better when they weren't so readily available.

Now I'm not naive.  I know we've had many improvements since then.  This very ability to blog, for example, is far better than a diary. MP3s beat vinyl records by a long shot.  Smart Phones are the best. Just living without a simple mobile phone seems frightening (although we had less to be frightened of).  DVRs, Pausing live TV, rewinding and capturing moments.  I'll take that over UHF.  I'll take my digital cameras any day over those nasty rolls of film that had to be developed.  I'll take Facebook over waiting days and days for snail mail from a friend who lives in another country. Okay, maybe I'm not so sure about the Facebook thing. I mean, I did have magical times whenever I got a letter from my pen pal.

But all those improvements are still mostly things.  What I value most is love.  And in that regard I am rich. In my youth I was bombarded by messages about free love and making love and not war. We thought love was the answer. And maybe it was. But the love I've come to know is deep and powerful and uncreated. 

Credits: Clip art from: MICKEYSXMINNIE's Hippie Clip Art  

Video from our trip to Bethany Beach 2011