“One of the crewmembers aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis snapped this photo of heavy cloud cover over the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Baja California, Mexico.”
“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.” Psalm 19:1-2
“The NASA space shuttle Atlantis and the Hubble Space Telescope are seen in silhouette, side by side during solar transit at 12:17p.m. EDT, on May 13, 2009, from west of Vero Beach, Florida in this image released by NASA May 14. The two spaceships were at an altitude of 600 km (375 miles) and they zipped across the sun in only 0.8 seconds.”
Tomorrow is Pentecost Sunday when we celebrate the pouring out of the Spirit and the inauguration of the New Covenant.
Think prayerfully and deeply about Pentecost. It is an epochal Sunday!
In a “must own” book on the Holy Spirit, Sinclair Ferguson convincingly demonstrates the gracious correspondence between Pentecost and the judgment of Babel:
On the morning of Pentecost, the disciples began to speak in other tongues so that visitors to Jerusalem heard the message of the gospel in their own language (Acts 2:4). Luke’s statement here is accompanied by a ‘table of the nations’ (Acts 2:8-12), just as the Genesis record of the confusing of human language is accompanied by a ‘table of nations’(Gn 10:1-32). Part of the answer to the question ‘What does this mean?’ (Acts 2:12), therefore, seems to be that here we have the reversal of Babel, the founding of the community of the reconciled. I.H. Marshal has pointed out that the number 120 (Acts 1:15) was the minimum number of men required ‘to establish a community with its own council’, so that these early Christians were able to ‘form a new community’. On the Day of Pentecost that new community became the sphere in which the eschatological reversal of the effects of sin began to appear in a reconciled people consisting of both Jew and Gentile, possessing one Lord, one faith and one baptism (Eph. 4:1ff.), united by the Spirit.
The effects of Babel were thus arrested. Now the word of reconciliation will be preached in many languages, since the disciples have received the promised power of the Spirit to enable them to be witnesses to Christ all over the world (Lk. 24:28; Acts 1:4).
“No [anesthetic] can ever equal some discourses in sleep-giving properties; no human being, unless gifted with infinite patience, could long endure to listen to them, and nature does well to give the victim deliverance through sleep.”
As for the preachers, he says:
“If some men were sentenced to hear their own sermons it would be a righteous judgment upon them, and they would soon cry out with Cain, ‘My punishment is far greater than I can bear.’”
(I only recently realized that Tullian Tchividjian’s blog wasn’t showing up on my feed reader – be sure you update your subscription if you aren’t getting his blog now that he has been installed at Coral Ridge).
Here is what Tullian wrote the day after he was installed at Coral Ridge. It’s a good challenge for all Christians:
Last night I was officially installed as Senior Pastor of Coral Ridge. It was an amazing night. As one new church, we celebrated God’s promise to build his church. Through the praying, praising, preaching, and taking of vows, God came near and reminded us that it’s all about him and his glory, his fame, his renown. God’s presence was indeed thick and unmistakable. He was, “surely in that place.”
My friend Os Guinness reminded all of us that the church in America is indeed facing a crisis and the answer is not structural renovation but spiritual renewal. He exhorted all of us from Exodus 33 to never stop praying, “Lord, show me your glory.” When the weightiness of God rests on the church and spills out from the church, the world is changed. It was a great reminder that the ultimate factor in the church’s engagement with society is the church’s engagement with God.
And then one of my dearest friends, John Wood (senior minister of Cedar Springs Presbyterian Church in Knoxville), charged both the congregation and me to die. With God-fueled fire in his eyes, he reminded all of us that bearing fruit requires death. Jesus said we must die in order that we might live. Daily Christian living, in other words, is daily Christian dying: dying to our trivial comforts, soul-shrinking conveniences, arrogant preferences, and self-centered entitlements, and living for something much larger than what makes us comfortable and safe. . . .
“[T]he achievements of the feminist era may have delivered women to greater unhappiness. In the 1960s, when Betty Friedan diagnosed her fellow wives and daughters as the victims of “the problem with no name,” American women reported themselves happier, on average, than did men. Today, that gender gap has reversed. Male happiness has inched up, and female happiness has dropped. In postfeminist America, men are happier than women.”
Peter Kreeft (Quoted by Russell Moore in Adopted for Life, 144):
If one Egyptian tailor hadn’t cheated on the threads of Joseph’s mantle, Potiphar’s wife would never have been able to tear it, present it as evidence to Potiphar that Joseph attached her, gotten him thrown in prison, and let him be in a position to interpret Pharaoh’s dream, win his confidence, advise him to store seven years of grain, and save his family, the seventy original Jews from whom Jesus came. We owe our salvation to a cheap Egyptian tailor.
If the threads of life break when you don’t expect them to – - embrace Providence.
Maybe you’re facing some ugly circumstances in life? That’s how the adventure of life sometimes goes. Tolkien’s, Frodo and Sam dialogue near the end of The Two Towers:
‘I don’t like anything here at all,’ said Frodo, ‘step or stone, breath or bone. Earth, air and water all seem accursed. But our path is laid.’
‘Yes, that’s so,’ said Sam. ‘And we shouldn’t be here at all, if we’d known more about it before we started. But I suppose it is often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of a sport, as you might say. But that’s not the way of it with tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually—their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us of turning back, only they didn’t. And if they had, we shouldn’t know, because they’d have been forgotten.
No turning back. There will be “Orcs.” We must persevere.
"for the righteous falls seven times and rises again, but the wicked stumble in times of calamity.(Pr 24:16)."
At a recent conference, my wife heard a funny story about some old friends of ours who had moved to another state. They have two small children, a four-year-old and a two-year-old. Once when both children needed to be disciplined, the four-year-old was off getting spanked and the two-year-old was sitting in the hall while her brother was receiving his just deserts. As she was waiting, her father heard her singing Psalm 20 to herself—”the Lord hear thee in troubled times.” “That doesn’t apply here!” he told her.
We have had many occasions where high school and college students, large numbers of them, have been sitting around in our living room, telling stories. Periodically, the theme will turn to spanking stories, and one of the most remarkable features of such storytelling has been the affection that the stories reveal. Disciplined children are not abused children; they are secure children. Not surprisingly, secure children grow up into secure young men and women. Abused children are not really being disciplined—they actually become as undisciplined (in the biblical sense) as their angry and undisciplined parents. Abuse is not an excess of discipline—it is a total absence of righteous discipline.
“Here’s where, I think the nub of the whole issue lies. Adoption would become a priority if our churches themselves saw our brotherhood and sisterhood in our church itself rather than in our fleshly identities. For some Christians – - maybe for you – - it’s hard to imagine how an African-American could love a white Ukrainian baby, how a Haitian teenager could call Swedish parents ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad.’ Of course, that’s hard to imagine, when so many of our churches can’t even get over differences as trivial as musical style.” Russell D. Moore, Adopted for Life, page 39.
“. . . Chris Brauns has done a magnificent job in helping us understand the true nature of biblical forgiveness. Every Christian will profit from reading and applying this book.” Jerry Bridges.
“ . . . Unpacking Forgiveness is an engaging, convicting but emphatically encouraging treatment of this hugely important (and sometimes mindbogglingly challenging) part of life. Dr. Brauns writes from the standpoint of a faithful, wise, experienced and caring pastor . . .” Ligon Duncan, First Pres, Jackson, MS
