Psalm 19

¹The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.

²Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge.

³There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard.

⁴Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.

Psalm 19

Intelligence

Upon recent vacation at one of the most beautiful piece of property I have ever seen, I stated:

"I wish I was a girl so that I could choose this place for my wedding."

My oldest nephew once again astonished me with his wit in reply:

"Yeah, but if you were a girl, you'd have to marry a boy and that would be gross because boys are gross."

Watertown Aquatic Center

The sound of a long whistle blast signals an emergency. As an aquatics first response team, we are well aware that this means we have an unconscious victim in the water with a suspected neck or back injury, and time is everything. We have 4 to 6 minutes before the victim will suffer brain damage because of lack of oxygen, and a wrong move could mean paralysis for life. Under that pressure, every muscle is tense and our hands are shaking. Within 30 seconds the primary lifeguard has the victim in a stabilized position in the water. After 60 precious seconds have passed, the EMS has been summoned and other guards have responded, backboarding the victim and securing him/her into a stabilized position. Within 180 seconds the victim has been removed from the pool. We begin cycles of breaths and chest compressions, knowing that we beat the 4 minute mark by only a few seconds. Now the circulation of oxygen is critical until an AED or paramedics have arrived.

We do this every day, because every day it is our job. Thankfully today it was a drill. Yesterday it was a drill. And the day before that it was a drill. Some complain that we are wasting our time preparing for an event that may never come. But we know that if it did come, we won't regret the 5 minute drills that added up to hours of our time. It would all be worth saving one life.

Is it any wonder that the angels rejoice over the salvation of one person?

Captivating

I was playing capture the flag.

And I realized.

When Christ came to set captives free, he was speaking of teamates. The polite unbelievers and the scoffing persecutors alike are on my team! They just don't realize it.

It's like Jason Bourne.

Man, I know some captives that need to hear!

Back in Mark Twain's day

Oh, when Mark Twain's description was true:

"I saw common men, there--men who were neither priests nor princes--who yet absolutely owned the land they tilled. It was not rented from the church, nor from the nobles. I am ready to take my oath of this. In that country you might fall from a third story window three several times, and not mash either a soldier or a priest. --The scarcity of such people is astonishing. In the cities you will see a dozen civilians for every soldier, and as many for every priest or preacher. Jews, there, are treated just like human beings, instead of dogs. They can work at any business they please; they can sell brand new goods if they want to; they can keep drug-stores; they can practice medicine among Christians; they can even shake hands with Christians if they choose; they can associate with them, just the same as one human being does with another human being; they don't have to stay shut up in one corner of the towns; they can live in any part of a town they like best; it is said they even have the privilege of buying land and houses, and owning them themselves, though I doubt that, myself; they never have had to run races naked through the public streets, against jackasses, to please the people in carnival time; there they never have been driven by the soldiers into a church every Sunday for hundreds of years to hear themselves and their religion especially and particularly cursed; at this very day, in that curious country, a Jew is allowed to vote, hold office, yea, get up on a rostrum in the public street and express his opinion of the government if the government don't suit him! Ah, it is wonderful. The common people there know a great deal; they even have the effrontery to complain if they are not properly governed, and to take hold and help conduct the government themselves; if they had laws like ours, which give one dollar of every three a crop produces to the government for taxes, they would have that law altered: instead of paying thirty-three dollars in taxes, out of every one hundred they receive, they complain if they have to pay seven. They are curious people. They do not know when they are well off. Mendicant priests do not prowl among them with baskets begging for the church and eating up their substance. One hardly ever sees a minister of the gospel going around there in his bare feet, with a basket, begging for subsistence. In that country the preachers are not like our mendicant orders of friars--they have two or three suits of clothing, and they wash sometimes. In that land are mountains far higher than the Alban mountains; the vast Roman Campagna, a hundred miles long and full forty broad, is really small compared to the United States of America; the Tiber, that celebrated river of ours, which stretches its mighty course almost two hundred miles, and which a lad can scarcely throw a stone across at Rome, is not so long, nor yet so wide, as the American Mississippi--nor yet the Ohio, nor even the Hudson. In America the people are absolutely wiser and know much more than their grandfathers did. They do not plow with a sharpened stick, nor yet with a three-cornered block of wood that merely scratches the top of the ground. We do that because our fathers did, three thousand years ago, I suppose. But those people have no holy reverence for their ancestors. They plow with a plow that is a sharp, curved blade of iron, and it cuts into the earth full five inches. And this is not all. They cut their grain with a horrid machine that mows down whole fields in a day. If I dared, I would say that sometimes they use a blasphemous plow that works by fire and vapor and tears up an acre of ground in a single hour."

Europe trip

terrible quality, but here are a few of my favorite pictures from Europe.

Top Ten of Israel

1. Having an address on Mount Zion with a view of Gehenna out my front door. I mean who doesn’t like to give people those directions: “Start at the Holy Sepulcher, walk past Shabaans shop, turn right at the oldest protestant church in Jerusalem, walk out Jaffa gate, pass David’s citadel, and follow the Old City wall to the southwest corner.”

2. Olives! Olive pizza, olive fettuccini, olive lasagna, olive salad, whole olives, olive you, olive oil, olive trees.

3. A better understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. I learned so much about Zionism, pacifism, just war, and how to identify with the oppressed.

4. Church of the Holy Sepulcher! This traditional spot of the crucifixion and resurrection was one of my favorite and most frequented spots. Five denominations have peacefully worshipped here for hundreds of years and I loved taking part in each aspect of the diverse body of Christ. I was challenged by traditions so very different from my own. I was encouraged to see followers of Christ whose understanding of Him was very different.

5. National identity. It’s impossible to have a sense of national identity by just travelling to Canada. You have to see the people that are fighting every day for their land and their freedom to understand how blessed we are. I have a greater gratitude and pride. The righteousness of the government is worth fighting for, especially in a nation where we have the opportunity to fight for it!

6. Passover/Passion Week! Only once in a while do Passover and Passion Week line up together. Walking through the old city one could observe the celebrations of the Jewish people, the Orthodox, and the Western church. It was also the first time that I have so closely followed the events of the last week and of course walked the turf in appropriate time.

7. Holy Fire Tradition. This orthodox tradition packed the Church of the Holy Sepulcher with people anxious to see a fire that begins in the sepulcher and is spread by torches and bundles of candles. A friend and I got up at an hour which would have been called ungodly if it were anywhere but Jerusalem. Within hours the place was packed tighter than I could imagine. Since I was close to the sepulcher, people pushed so hard that it was literally difficult to breath if you extend your hands to hold space in front of your chest for air. Multiple people fainted around me and had to be body surfed over the crowd to the door. Then the fire took off from person to person and it was no wonder why every police officer had a fire extinguisher strapped to his/her back.

8. Palestinian Taxi Drivers! Not only are they crazy drivers, but they have crazy stories. It is good to hear about their lives as arab believers or Muslims, and the heritage of their families and land.

9. Sleeping on Mount Sinai! One of my favorite adventures was travelling into Egypt to climb Mount Sinai. We found a nice cave filled with blankets where we huddled out of the cold after a beautiful sunrise. I wouldn’t want to climb that mountain as many times as Moses did!

10. Friday morning classes with Gabi Barkai! Although his lectures were often monotone, this leading archeologist for Jerusalem was a walking encyclopedia of ancient Israel.

Israel Reflection

“How was your trip.”

“It was great. I learned and experienced so much.”

“That’s great to hear. I’m glad you enjoyed it. Gotta go. Have a great day.”

And so it goes: the one sentence reflection of my 4 months in Israel. There’s also a thirty-second option and a five-minute option. Here’s that one.

I went to Israel with the words of dozens of my friends and mentors ringing in my ears: “My time in Israel made the Bible come alive. You will never read Scripture the same again.” Looking back, I suppose they were perfectly correct, but that life springing up from the page came at me in ways I would not have expected.

Class after class, field study after field study, reading after reading, I was coming up with more problems and questions than solutions and answers. I found myself empathizing with those who go off to higher education and lose their faith. Every day I was clinging with a firmer grip to Abba, as the vortex tugged at me. I don’t think I ever came close to giving up, but I definitely felt the child-like faith: a faith that doesn't necessarily understand, but has no reason to doubt the faithfulness of the Father.

It started with a conflicting perspective of who the Jews were and what they believed. I was confronted with diligent and disciplined people who are far more knowledgeable of the Old Testament than I am. Do I really believe that God condemns them to eternal punishment, these people who seem to have so much respect for YHWH and respond in what they believe to be obedience? What about the Jews of Christ’s day? Am I arrogant enough to believe that I would have responded any differently to a human claiming to be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Creator of the Universe?

A second problem was a growing understanding of my own heritage, from the ancient Israelites to the catholic church. How do you respond to the fact that the ancient Israelites were polygamists, and seemingly worse that YHWH apparently did not condemn it for a time. Is it more revolting or less revolting that the ancient Israelites also practiced Marzeah – an ancient type of séance that included eating in the burial place of the deceased? More recently there is the bloody heritage of the Crusades, for which the Muslims still hold a grudge. Even today there is the convoluted politics of Zionism. I readily considered myself a Zionist until I saw the human rights abuses of the nation of Israel and then it was not so easy. One cannot ignore people that suffer at the hands of those who make no distinction between the state of Israel and the promises of God to the Jewish people.

As the semester came to a close, I realized that my faith had grown so much stronger. It’s not because I found perfect answers to the injustices, mistakes, and problems. Rather, my faith had become firmly grounded in reality. The heritage of faith is made up of people just as depraved and wicked as the Ninevites, but the same powerful grace of God that Jonah wanted to withhold has broken through.The free will with which we were blessed continually chooses the lie of the devil over the truth of God. The ancient Israelite narrative and the narrative of the church show our depravity and God’s grace demonstrated by His willingness to be incarnate in a fallen world, redeeming all of creation to Himself. That salvation history is as messy as it is long.

The very fact that God’s Word displays the messiness of the narrative is proof that it is grounded in reality. If this message was mans product, the disciples surely would not have shown how ignorant they were. They were no less ignorant than those whom the speak of Jesus reproving. Almost the only difference is that they chose to believe and follow the reality of Christ.

A parallel story is told in Matthew chapter eleven. The Jews are described as children playing games in the market place. They were adhering to the practices of religion though their practices were not connected to reality just as the children were singing a dirge though there was no occasion for mourning. It is no wonder that the people did not respond with mourning. When John and Jesus came, revealing the true reality, these Jews gave credit to demons, drunkenness, and gluttony. They had religion and reality all mixed up. In the following verses Christ’s warning is frightening. Will we be like those who have witnessed Christ’s work, but are stuck in a fake created reality? I hope we will instead be those who realize the reality of our wickedness and repent in light of the revelation of God incarnate, Jesus Christ.