The Amish Way

A Christian message of forgiveness and mercy has been broadcast on American news media because of a terrible and tragic event. Some good, at least, has come out of this sad event.

wcbstv.com - Grieving Amish Practice Faith, Forgiveness
AP reports: "According to people who know the victims' families, there are two things they want people to know: Their faith will get them through this difficult time, and that they forgive the killer."

WaPo - Cyber-Savvy Pastors Blog When the Spirit Moves Them
The Washington Post reports on how some churches and pastors are using the latest internet technology to share the gospel (Matthew 24:14):

Reaching out to younger generations has long been one of the major challenges for ministers, but hundreds think they have found an answer in blogging. A growing number are taking the Gospel to the Web hoping to get people thinking daily about faith. Many pastors say blogging has become an increasingly integral part of their ministry as they attempt to reverse the decline in church attendance by people in their twenties and thirties.

I think this is a great idea and I think all churches should have official blogs and all Christian writers should be encouraged to start blogs and share their faith on the internet.

Save The Whales
Humans can be a very destructive species, but we can also be protective and try to be good stewards of the creation that has been entrusted to us. Some of us do care about the planet. One of the most popular expressions of that care is the concern many people have about saving whales. You have no doubt seen a bumper sticker that says "Save the Whales!" and are aware of the environmental groups that seek to protect animals from extinction. As this AP report (Yahoo News - Endangered whale gets habitat protection) notes, there has recently been some very good news about efforts to save endangered whales in North America:

Thousands of square miles off Alaska have been designated as critical habitat for North Pacific right whales, considered the most endangered whale in the world. [...] At least 11,000 of the slow-moving whales — prized by commercial whalers for their oil and baleen — once swam the waters of the North Pacific. The whales were listed as endangered in 1973 and there are now believed to number fewer than 100 in waters near Alaska. A few hundred more may remain closer to Russia.

God cares about whales, but there is another species that He cares about a lot more. If God had a car, you can be sure he would have a bumper sticker: Save the humans!

Saved
When you finish your document, remember to save your work before closing the program. If you do not save your document your data will be lost.

Pondering Katrina, Part 2
I recommend this essay (Where is God when disaster strikes?) from the Assist News Service, it makes the point I was trying to make, that God is not to blame for a disaster, but rather, God is revealed in us as we minister to those who are victims of disaster.

Pondering Katrina
As many of you know I maintain another blog devoted to Bible prophecy and current events and people have asked me if I think that Hurricane Katrina has prophetic significance. My answer is yes...and no. Let me explain. People are quick to jump to conlcusions and to place blame. We assume that important events are also important from a larger perpspective, it's a big storm, so God must have sent it for a reason. This is a conclusion that helps us make sense of dramatic events and it is a natural human reaction, and although my personal theology holds that God can control things like the weather (God's express will), I don't believe that God micromanages the weather (God's permissive will). I don't beleive that God sent the storm or had any particlular anger towards the good people of New Orleans. Nor do I believe that our part as Christians is to cast blame, but rather to help out and ease the suffering of our fellow human beings as best we can. Sometimes a storm is just a storm. That said, this storm is one of several events that represent a larger trend that does have prophetic significance. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus stated:

And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring ... (Luke 21:25)

This is part of a time the Bible calls the "end of the age" and not (as some would tell you) the end of the world. Whether you believe that or not, major disasters are a reminder to us, a wake-up call, that life is very fragile and we should take this time to affirm our relationship to God and to each other...before the next storm hits.

I think this poem is particularly moving, so on this day of celebrating the resurrection of our lord and savior Jesus Christ, here are some timely words:

Seven Stanzas at Easter
by John Updike

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells' dissolution did not reverse,
the molecules reknit,
the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart that--pierced--died,
withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable,
a sign painted in the faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back,
not papier-maché,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of time will eclipse for each of us the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck's quanta,
vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light,
robed in real linen,
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour,
we are embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.