A friend of ours at church has a lease on a ranch northwest of Dallas. We had a good time. I ‘ll let the pictures speak for themselves.
I ‘ll admit here publicly, for the sake of one of my friends, that I saw parts of Texas that were beautiful.
This evening’s quotation comes from a book that came in the mail today.
At every point early Christians attempted to understand their Scriptures in the new light of the ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. They used the Old Testament to prove their Christian theology and to solve Christian problems. The Old Testament provided the substructure of the New Testament theology. The Old Testament also provided the language and imagery for much of New Testament thought, although this is not always obvious to a casual reader. Therefore, New Testament concepts must be understood from Old Testament passages. Virtually every New Testament subject must be approached through the contribution of the Old Testament (pp. 29-30; my emphasis).
My paraphrase: You ‘ll understand the book better if you start at the beginning.
Source; Snodgrass, Klyne. “The Use of the Old Testament in the New.” In The Right Doctrine from the Wrong Texts? Essays on the Use of the Old Testament in the New, ed. G. K. Beale, 29–51. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994.
More Things Not to Say to Those Who are Suffering, by Ed Welch. Worth reading.
The Tim Tebow Super Bowl Ad has saved at least one life.
Some professors are forbidding computers in the classroom.
What’s the relationship between ADHD, narcissism and Twitter? Check out this graphic at Geoff Kirkland’s blog.
Everyone knows where Mormons live? Where do Baptists, Lutherans, and Methodists tend to be concentrated in the U.S.? This map tells you.
Need a laugh? Take a look at the five best baby laughs.
If you prayed for me in my recent struggle for what to preach on at TMC, thank you. I was brushing my teeth this morning when “I” “figured out” the direction that the two messages should take. I have a lot of work now, but now that the main points are clear, I can do that work with some traction, no longer spinning my wheels.
I’m not going to outline my messages here or now, but I will say that it looks like four major studies I’ve done in the last 2.5 years will all play a significant role in these messages. I guess another way of looking at it is to say that 2.5 years and tens of thousands of dollars have prepared me to preach two sermons.
John Piper explains one way that C. S. Lewis has helped him. I don’t know to whom credit is due, but I have felt this “awakening” growing for some time, and it is makes for days of blessed wonder and gratitude.
Lewis gave me, and continues to give me, an intense sense of the astonishing “realness” of things. He had the ability to see and feel what most of us see and do not see. He had what Alan Jacobs called “omnivorous attentiveness.” I love that phrase. What this has done for me is hard to communicate. To wake up in the morning and to be aware of the firmness of the mattress, the warmth of the sun’s rays, the sound of the clock ticking, the coldness of the wooden floor, the wetness of the water in the sink, the sheer being of things (quiddity as he called it). And not just to be aware but to wonder. To be amazed that the water is wet. It did not have to be wet. If there were no such thing as water, and one day some one showed it to you, you would simply be astonished.
He helped me become alive to life. To look at the sunrise and with say with an amazed smile, “God did it again!” He helped me to see what is there in the world—things which if we didn’t have them, we would pay a million dollars to have, but having them, ignore. He convicts me of my callous inability to enjoy God’s daily gifts. He helps me to awaken my dazed soul so that the realities of life and of God and heaven and hell are seen and felt.
Key verse:
Hosea 3:1 (NIV) “The Lord said to me, “Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes.””
Stunning prophecy:
Hosea 3:4-5 (NIV) “For the Israelites will live many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred stones, without ephod or idol. 5 Afterward the Israelites will return and seek the Lord their God and David their king. They will come trembling to the Lord and to his blessings in the last days.”
One attempt at a summary:
Though its words of judgment outnumber its words of restoration, the book of Hosea reveals the Lord as a compassionate father, deeply concerned for the failings of his children. Restoration comes through judgment, and so the nation would endure the curses ordained in the covenant, but their defeat would not be their destruction. The Lord would redeem his wayward wife from the consequences of her prostitution, and he would cleanse her and they would know one another once again.
I’m not doing as much with this blog as I have in the past, and I’m not sure what the next few (or many) months will look like. This research/writing project is taking more time than I had hoped. I had planned fixed boundaries, both on each day and for each book (of the Bible). But even doing work I’m not proud of, I can’t maintain both boundaries. That is, I either work late (in the day/night) or I miss my deadline. If I go over on one book, it’s very hard to catch up. By working late, I’m not working on my photos or reading, as I had planned (I am, however, still being a husband and a father). Nor I am doing much blogging. Besides that, I am writing a lot. I am probably writing 30-40 pages (double-spaced, most of it) each week. So when I finish writing, I’m not sure that I want to write more.
I don’t have the problem that I’m not learning anything worth communicating. The problem is more that I’m learning too much worth communicating. Of course, that’s part of the idea, as this program (and this year in particular) is the foundation for the rest of my life (as I envision it). The combination of I’m-tired-of-writing with I-can’t-pick-what-to-write results in less blogging than I anticipated.
Today I almost finished Hosea. If you ‘re wondering how I got here, think chronology. I worked my way through the Primary History (Genesis to 2 Kings), plus I did Ruth and Chronicles. A few of those books I had written the majority of before this year (Genesis, Samuel, Chronicles). Rather than continue with the post-exilic history (Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther), I’d rather stay in the same historical period. So I’ve jumped over to the prophets. I wrote on Amos a few days back. He’s the earliest writing prophet unless you date Obadiah or Joel to the 9th century (I don’t). When I was taking my entrance exam for the PhD program, I was asked who my favorite prophet was. I said Amos. That’s no longer true. But I still really like him for his wonderful use of language. And he’s much shorter and easier to understand than you-know-who. Next week I’m going to work on the other two 8th-century prophets, Jonah and Micah (though there’s one potential snag). Passion Week will be Obadiah and then I ‘ll spend the month of April in the Writings, namely Job, Psalms (2 weeks), and Proverbs. April may be my most difficult month, both because I am largely ignorant of these three books, and because they don’t lend themselves as well to “arguments.”
Well, I started this post thinking I’d tell you something about Hosea, but I got caught up instead with a progress report. As if you were my boss or something. Actually, you ‘re about the closest thing I have to one. One day I ‘ll show up at school with this big paper and they ‘ll say, what have you been doing this whole time?
Tomorrow I’m off with the boys and a couple of friends on a real Texas-style outing. Some of you will be able to figure out what that means.
A couple of friends have asked me if I’m speaking in chapel at TMC this semester. I am.
I’d appreciate your prayers particularly in the next week as I try to put a couple of messages together. I’ve been thinking about it for some months, but I just can’t get my idea to “work” and now it’s become a burden.
One of our boys asked me today what my favorite verse is. For Awana, he has to ask 10 Christians this question and then write down his own. This is a tough question for me, especially now. But I gave him one of my favorites. I ‘ll quote the preceding verse for context.
(And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus,)
in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
Ephesians 2:(6-)7
Everyone knows verses 8-9 by heart, and while those are nice, verse 7 is better. Verses 8-9 talk about the past, verse 10 is the present, but verse 7 is the glorious future.
Feel free to post your favorite verse below if you want.
Do you pray for Democrats? With the health care debate at a fever pitch, this would be a good week to do so. Some pro-life Democrats are under extreme pressure right now. From the National Review:
According to Stupak, that group of twelve pro-life House Democrats — the “Stupak dozen” — has privately agreed for months to vote ‘no ‘ on the Senate’s health-care bill if federal funding for abortion is included in the final legislative language. Now, in the debate’s final hours, Stupak says the other eleven are coming under “enormous” political pressure from both the White House and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.). “I am a definite ‘no ‘ vote,” he says. “I didn’t cave. The others are having both of their arms twisted, and we ‘re all getting pounded by our traditional Democratic supporters, like unions.”
[…]
What are Democratic leaders saying? “If you pass the Stupak amendment, more children will be born, and therefore it will cost us millions more. That’s one of the arguments I’ve been hearing,” Stupak says. “Money is their hang-up. Is this how we now value life in America? If money is the issue — come on, we can find room in the budget. This is life we ‘re talking about.”
[…]
And the politics of the issue are pretty rough. “This has really reached an unhealthy stage,” Stupak says. “People are threatening ethics complaints on me. On the left, they ‘re really stepping it up. Every day, from Rachel Maddow to the Daily Kos, it keeps coming. Does it bother me? Sure. Does it change my position? No.”
This bill doesn’t change the legality of getting an abortion, but having federal funding for it means that millions more children will be murdered. And it means that you and I are paying it.
Some of the “Stupak dozen” have already caved in to the pressure. The stakes are high.