Friday, July 31, 2009
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
2 years
Becca and I have been married 2 years. I have really enjoyed being married. Becca is the best. She got me a card with a monkey on it. It is funny. She is funny and nice and smart and pretty.
I wrote this song for her*
Oh, blest the house, whate'er befall,
Where Jesus Christ is all in all!
Yea, if He were not dwelling there,
How dark and poor and void it were!
Oh, blest that house where faith ye find
And all within have set their mind
To trust their God and serve Him still
And do in all His holy will!
Then here will I and mine today
A solemn covenant make and say:
Though all the world forsake Thy Word,
I and my house will serve the Lord!
*i actually plagarized this song for her.
I wrote this song for her*
Oh, blest the house, whate'er befall,
Where Jesus Christ is all in all!
Yea, if He were not dwelling there,
How dark and poor and void it were!
Oh, blest that house where faith ye find
And all within have set their mind
To trust their God and serve Him still
And do in all His holy will!
Then here will I and mine today
A solemn covenant make and say:
Though all the world forsake Thy Word,
I and my house will serve the Lord!
*i actually plagarized this song for her.
Monday, July 27, 2009
"You are daily in the dominion of the devil, who ceases neither day nor night to steal unawares upon you, to kindle in your heart unbelief and wicked thoughts...Therefore you must always have God's Word in your heart, upon your lips, and in your ears. But where the heart is idle, and the Word does not sound, he breaks in and has done the damage before we are aware.
On the other hand, such is the efficacy of the Word, whenever it is seriously contemplated, heard, and used, that it is bound never to be without fruit, but always awakens new understanding, pleasure, and devoutness, and produces a pure heart and pure thoughts. For these words are not inoperative or dead, but creative, living words."
Luther, Large Catechism 100-101
On the other hand, such is the efficacy of the Word, whenever it is seriously contemplated, heard, and used, that it is bound never to be without fruit, but always awakens new understanding, pleasure, and devoutness, and produces a pure heart and pure thoughts. For these words are not inoperative or dead, but creative, living words."
Luther, Large Catechism 100-101
Why I am now a Lutheran.
We remembered the the Hayes family in our prayers this morning in Chapel. Nate Hayes, the infant son of Jerry Hayes who graduated from the Seminary last year, died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome Friday night.
What do you say to the family in this situation? What comfort can you give? Here is a paraphrase of the prayer in chapel.
"Almighty Father, we thank you for the mercies that you provided Nate in his short life here on earth. We rejoice that you saved him though the waters of Holy Baptism and that He is now with you and with all the departed saints. Comfort the Hays family as they experience this great loss. Keep us steadfast in the faith until our final hour that we too may live eternally with you. Amen."
I'm sure that platitudes and well wishes are no comfort to the family compared to the concrete assurance of God's mercy reaching down through Baptism.
What do you say to the family in this situation? What comfort can you give? Here is a paraphrase of the prayer in chapel.
"Almighty Father, we thank you for the mercies that you provided Nate in his short life here on earth. We rejoice that you saved him though the waters of Holy Baptism and that He is now with you and with all the departed saints. Comfort the Hays family as they experience this great loss. Keep us steadfast in the faith until our final hour that we too may live eternally with you. Amen."
I'm sure that platitudes and well wishes are no comfort to the family compared to the concrete assurance of God's mercy reaching down through Baptism.
Death, you cannot end my gladness:- Erdmann Neumeister
I am baptized into Christ!
When I die, I leave all sadness
To inherit paradise!
Though I lie in dust and ashes
Faith's assurance brightly flashes:
Baptism has the strength divine
To make life immortal mine.
There is nothing worth comparing
To this lifelong comfort sure!
Open-eyed my grave is staring:
Even there I'll sleep secure.
Though my flesh awaits its raising,
Still my soul continues praising:
I am baptized into Christ;
I'm a child of paradise!
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
In 1829, a horde of 20,000 Inaugural callers forced President Andrew Jackson to flee to the safety of a hotel while, on the lawn, aides filled washtubs with orange juice and whiskey to lure the mob out of the mud-tracked White House.
link
Monday, July 13, 2009
Thursday, July 9, 2009
deleted scenes
The movies that most people love are the ones that have a “Hollywood ending.” The Right people fall in love, the underdog succeeds, and the good guys win. There is a standard format to the most popular movies: the problem is introduced. The next hour so of the film is spent building the tension until the climax of the movie. But there has to be a resolution, which satisfies the audience. Otherwise, word will get out and no one will want to go see your movie. Imagine for a moment if ET and Dorothy never went home, or if George Bailey did not discover that he had a wonderful life. Most people want a feel-good ending.
Mark 6:14-29 has all the elements for a good movie: there’s a love story, an underdog, and good guys versus the bad guys. Everything seems to turn out wrong though. The love story is not one that warms our hearts. Rather it is an illicit affair between King Herod and his brother’s wife that is denounced by the underdog, the camel skin wearing, locust-eating John the Baptizer. We know who the bad guys are (Herod) and who the good guys are (John). You don’t get much better than John, of whom Jesus said “among those born of women there is no one greater than John.” But a feel-good ending? Hardly. John had been thrown in jail for rebuking the king, but there was no prison break. Rather, this reading ends abruptly. John’s head ends up on a platter after Herod makes a drunken promise to a young girl in response to her exotic dancing. Then John’s disciples place his body in a tomb. This is not an ending that satisfies us. It is only with faith that we say “This is the Gospel of our Lord. Thanks be to God.”
This is the Gospel? The Good news? Maybe that’s it. We’ve got the wrong genre. This account is more like a news story, than a movie. This story is the good news of our Lord, but it still seems awfully hard to find anything “good” about this news of the beheading of John the Baptist.
It seems to resemble the type of news that we hear today. A former NFL player, who was married with 4 children and his girlfriend killed in a murder/suicide. An eccentric pop icon dies of heart failure. A governor who is married with children flies to South America to shack up with his mistress on the taxpayers’ dime.
Life does not seem to produce much in the way of Hollywood endings. It is the same in our own lives. The good guys do not always win. The Underdogs do not always succeed and while the right people may fall in love, but they do not stay in love.
This story of the beheading of John the Baptist may not sit well with us, but it hits closer to home than any other story we could have devised on our own. This is a gruesome story. It is not included in the flannel graph sets or coloring books. It is R rated. Just like life often is. John the Baptist was killed because of sin. Greed, Lust, Anger, Jealousy, Pride, Sloth, Gluttony, all played a part. It is the reason John died and it’s the reason we and those we love die.
The screenwriters tend to overlook the effect of sin. But reality tells us otherwise. Being killed for the proclaiming the truth? That happens to Christians still today. Elicit sexual relationships? Come on, they are a dime a dozen.
We live in pain and hurt and heartbreak. We all have experienced tragedy in our lives. Maybe it was a friend or family member that died in war or from cancer or some other illness. Maybe you have felt the pain of a divorce or an affair that has ripped a family apart. Maybe you have been hurt by someone close to you. We encounter situations that cause us to ask God, “Why? Why me?”
I'll admit it, I have been interested in the coverage of the death of Michael Jackson. I watched his memorial service on television and was struck by the empty messages being shared to his grieving family. “God must have needed him more than we do.” “He will remain forever in our hearts.” I did not hear anything that would have comforted me if I were grieving.
I heard people say, “We’ve just got to smile.” Hollywood was trying to paste a feel-good ending onto a tragic situation. But whether it is a death or some other tragedy, our lives do not play out as those in movies. We endure real pain and real heartache. We toil and work and grind through life. Sometimes it we simply cannot smile and it would be demented to do so. Our troubles are heavy. Sometimes they can cause us question God. “Where is the good news? Where is the Gospel of our Lord?” It can be difficult for us to say “Thanks be to God.” Certainly the disciples of John the Baptizer were not smiling as they carried his headless body to the grave. And we all encounter situations to which we are unable to smile. It may not be as grave as with John the Baptist but we still have troubles. Like when we learn that there has been gossip spread about us, when a family member makes another bad decision.
We must acknowledge pain and hurt in our lives. It is there and it is real. But that is not all there is. The adversities we encounter in life in no way invalidate what God has done and what He will continue to do in our lives. It would be nice if we could reduce the episodes of our life into linear, easy-to-understand segments. But that’s not the way it works. There are things that we will never understand. We will never wrap our minds around sin and its effects. However, that does not make God any less powerful or any less gracious. His promises are still true. He is still in control.
God is not the source of our evil. But bad things happen to us and God does not prevent them. We do not know why. We are not promised an easy life though. Do not believe the preachers and those who offer up a sanitized whitewashed Happy Days version of the Christian life. Christians are not promised earthly blessings according to the world’s standards. To believe such things is an offense to our persecuted and suffering brothers and sisters in Christ who live in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Jesus tells us in John 16, “In this world you will have trouble.” Yet he continues by saying, “But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
Take heart! John was brutally murdered, but take heart? We do not see the big picture. We only see things with our human understanding. John’s disciples sure had reason to lose heart, we sure seem to have many reasons to lose heart, and Jesus’ disciples had loads of reasons to lose heart when Jesus was crucified on a tree. They feared they would be killed, but Jesus says take heart...
We take heart, but this does not mean that we just grin and bear it. This does not mean that we try to think happy thoughts. We take heart because Christ has overcome the world. We may not have a perfect Hollywood ending in our future, but we cling in faith to Christ. God is our author and perfecter. He has penned a script for us that is beyond the caliber of any best screenplay nominee. There will be a terrific final scene which is described in the song “From God Can Nothing Move Me”: “Yet even though I suffer the worlds unpleasantness, And though the days grow rougher and bring me great distress; That day of bliss divine, which knows no end or measure, and Christ, who is my pleasure forever, shall be mine”
Being a Christian doesn’t mean that we stroll along with a big dopey grin pasted to our faces as we chant slogans lifted from the latest self-help guru. We follow Christ where He leads. His path led to Calvary where he suffered and died for the remission of our sins. We too may have trouble in this world. Christ’s path also led to the grave from which he rose and ascended into heaven. We may take heart because since Christ has overcome death, the grave and the world. We too have hope in the resurrection of our bodies. We will live forever with Christ and all the saints. John the baptizer will be there. That's a better ending that I could have written.
So we take heart knowing that: "Though the earth be shaking, every heart be quaking, Jesus calms my fear. Lightnings flash and thunders crash; Yet through sin and hell assail me, Jesus will not fail me."
Mark 6:14-29 has all the elements for a good movie: there’s a love story, an underdog, and good guys versus the bad guys. Everything seems to turn out wrong though. The love story is not one that warms our hearts. Rather it is an illicit affair between King Herod and his brother’s wife that is denounced by the underdog, the camel skin wearing, locust-eating John the Baptizer. We know who the bad guys are (Herod) and who the good guys are (John). You don’t get much better than John, of whom Jesus said “among those born of women there is no one greater than John.” But a feel-good ending? Hardly. John had been thrown in jail for rebuking the king, but there was no prison break. Rather, this reading ends abruptly. John’s head ends up on a platter after Herod makes a drunken promise to a young girl in response to her exotic dancing. Then John’s disciples place his body in a tomb. This is not an ending that satisfies us. It is only with faith that we say “This is the Gospel of our Lord. Thanks be to God.”
This is the Gospel? The Good news? Maybe that’s it. We’ve got the wrong genre. This account is more like a news story, than a movie. This story is the good news of our Lord, but it still seems awfully hard to find anything “good” about this news of the beheading of John the Baptist.
It seems to resemble the type of news that we hear today. A former NFL player, who was married with 4 children and his girlfriend killed in a murder/suicide. An eccentric pop icon dies of heart failure. A governor who is married with children flies to South America to shack up with his mistress on the taxpayers’ dime.
Life does not seem to produce much in the way of Hollywood endings. It is the same in our own lives. The good guys do not always win. The Underdogs do not always succeed and while the right people may fall in love, but they do not stay in love.
This story of the beheading of John the Baptist may not sit well with us, but it hits closer to home than any other story we could have devised on our own. This is a gruesome story. It is not included in the flannel graph sets or coloring books. It is R rated. Just like life often is. John the Baptist was killed because of sin. Greed, Lust, Anger, Jealousy, Pride, Sloth, Gluttony, all played a part. It is the reason John died and it’s the reason we and those we love die.
The screenwriters tend to overlook the effect of sin. But reality tells us otherwise. Being killed for the proclaiming the truth? That happens to Christians still today. Elicit sexual relationships? Come on, they are a dime a dozen.
We live in pain and hurt and heartbreak. We all have experienced tragedy in our lives. Maybe it was a friend or family member that died in war or from cancer or some other illness. Maybe you have felt the pain of a divorce or an affair that has ripped a family apart. Maybe you have been hurt by someone close to you. We encounter situations that cause us to ask God, “Why? Why me?”
I'll admit it, I have been interested in the coverage of the death of Michael Jackson. I watched his memorial service on television and was struck by the empty messages being shared to his grieving family. “God must have needed him more than we do.” “He will remain forever in our hearts.” I did not hear anything that would have comforted me if I were grieving.
I heard people say, “We’ve just got to smile.” Hollywood was trying to paste a feel-good ending onto a tragic situation. But whether it is a death or some other tragedy, our lives do not play out as those in movies. We endure real pain and real heartache. We toil and work and grind through life. Sometimes it we simply cannot smile and it would be demented to do so. Our troubles are heavy. Sometimes they can cause us question God. “Where is the good news? Where is the Gospel of our Lord?” It can be difficult for us to say “Thanks be to God.” Certainly the disciples of John the Baptizer were not smiling as they carried his headless body to the grave. And we all encounter situations to which we are unable to smile. It may not be as grave as with John the Baptist but we still have troubles. Like when we learn that there has been gossip spread about us, when a family member makes another bad decision.
We must acknowledge pain and hurt in our lives. It is there and it is real. But that is not all there is. The adversities we encounter in life in no way invalidate what God has done and what He will continue to do in our lives. It would be nice if we could reduce the episodes of our life into linear, easy-to-understand segments. But that’s not the way it works. There are things that we will never understand. We will never wrap our minds around sin and its effects. However, that does not make God any less powerful or any less gracious. His promises are still true. He is still in control.
God is not the source of our evil. But bad things happen to us and God does not prevent them. We do not know why. We are not promised an easy life though. Do not believe the preachers and those who offer up a sanitized whitewashed Happy Days version of the Christian life. Christians are not promised earthly blessings according to the world’s standards. To believe such things is an offense to our persecuted and suffering brothers and sisters in Christ who live in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Jesus tells us in John 16, “In this world you will have trouble.” Yet he continues by saying, “But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
Take heart! John was brutally murdered, but take heart? We do not see the big picture. We only see things with our human understanding. John’s disciples sure had reason to lose heart, we sure seem to have many reasons to lose heart, and Jesus’ disciples had loads of reasons to lose heart when Jesus was crucified on a tree. They feared they would be killed, but Jesus says take heart...
We take heart, but this does not mean that we just grin and bear it. This does not mean that we try to think happy thoughts. We take heart because Christ has overcome the world. We may not have a perfect Hollywood ending in our future, but we cling in faith to Christ. God is our author and perfecter. He has penned a script for us that is beyond the caliber of any best screenplay nominee. There will be a terrific final scene which is described in the song “From God Can Nothing Move Me”: “Yet even though I suffer the worlds unpleasantness, And though the days grow rougher and bring me great distress; That day of bliss divine, which knows no end or measure, and Christ, who is my pleasure forever, shall be mine”
Being a Christian doesn’t mean that we stroll along with a big dopey grin pasted to our faces as we chant slogans lifted from the latest self-help guru. We follow Christ where He leads. His path led to Calvary where he suffered and died for the remission of our sins. We too may have trouble in this world. Christ’s path also led to the grave from which he rose and ascended into heaven. We may take heart because since Christ has overcome death, the grave and the world. We too have hope in the resurrection of our bodies. We will live forever with Christ and all the saints. John the baptizer will be there. That's a better ending that I could have written.
So we take heart knowing that: "Though the earth be shaking, every heart be quaking, Jesus calms my fear. Lightnings flash and thunders crash; Yet through sin and hell assail me, Jesus will not fail me."
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