davintosh

This is a post that has been in stuck in my Drafts for quite some time; I probably started it just a few days after last summer’s Leadership Summit at Central. Considering we just finished day two of this year’s Global Leadership Summit, I figure it’s time to finally finish it up!

One of the speakers that I found most interesting & engaging was Dr. Tim Keller, whose message was entitled Leading People To A Prodigal God. His talk dealt with bringing renewal — or revival — to the Church, and used Jesus’ parable of The Prodigal Son, but went at it from an angle that was totally new to me, and completely surprising. And that message has since been challenging me in my faith in surprising ways. Some recent developments at our church have brought the lessons learned from Dr. Keller’s talk back to mind, so the timing to put the final touches on the post & hit that big blue PUBLISH button make it especially appropriate.

Most often when I’ve heard the story of the Prodigal Son invoked, the focus is on the younger brother; how the father welcomed him back after leaving home & squandering his portion of his father’s estate. Typically the story is used as a salvation narrative; a parallel of the life of a wayward person, encouraging him to repent and return to God the Father. God is the Father who will welcome back with open arms anyone who has seen the error of his ways and returns ‘home’. God is the Father who waits anxiously for all to return to Him. It’s a great story and a good way to reach some people, but according to Dr. Keller, that angle perhaps doesn’t use the story in the way that Jesus intended.

Keller instead focused on the elder brother… His reaction to the return of the wayward younger brother, but more importantly, his reaction to his father’s actions, and his relationship with their father & the things that motivated him to stay…

Now his older son was in the field, and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing… He was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him, but he answered his father, ‘Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him! …

The elder son wasn’t exactly happy with dad’s decision to celebrate the younger son’s return. Not only was he jealous that the fatted calf had been killed and the prodigal had been given fancy gifts, he was angry because what Dad gave him actually belonged to him; dad was giving away — or rather throwing away — money that rightfully belonged to him. The younger brother had essentially told his father that he was tired of waiting for him to die and demanded his part of the inheritance — a third of the family’s property — and it was now gone. Anything that remained of the estate would belong to the elder brother when the father died, so dad was essentially spending the elder brother’s money on this worthless, no-good younger brother, who had stolen the family’s wealth & good name, and didn’t deserve anything more from the family than a cold shoulder.

Keller pointed out that the bigger issue with the elder brother was that his attitude reflected the same greedy heart that caused the younger brother to demand his inheritance early, except the elder brother went about it in a more socially acceptable manner. Even though his manner was that of the obedient son, his reaction to his brother’s return showed that he was there primarily for the money. His obedience wasn’t motivated by love or devotion to his father or family… He said to his father, “I never disobeyed your command.” In his mind, obedience was merely a condition of gaining his inheritance, and his father owed him, big time. He hated his younger brother because he was weak & undisciplined, and unworthy of even what he had got; he had cheated his way to an early inheritance, had blown it all, disgraced the family, and was now back, smelling of pig manure, begging for forgiveness. Their father should have whipped him good and sent him packing.

One important detail Keller pointed out that I had previously missed was that Jesus told the parable in response to the grumbling he overheard from the Pharisees & scribes; before Jesus began this parable, they were “… saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.” (Luke 15:1-2) The Pharisees & scribes were people who saw themselves as superior to the ’sinners’ that Jesus hung around with, and couldn’t imagine how a man could be of God and still want to hang around with people like that. The scribes & Pharisees were very much like the elder brother; obedient and deferential on the outside, but who were “full of greed and self-indulgence” (Matt 23:25) on the inside. The scribes & Pharisees weren’t likely to be crawling back to God seeking forgiveness for their wayward lives; their lives were perfect, just ask them. In fact, the kingdom of Israel was better because of them, and God should be grateful to have them help keep people in line. They had worked hard and denied themselves to be closer to God, and God owed them big time for all their sacrifices… If only all those low-life sinners could get their acts together and be as good as them… Or better yet, if God would just do the right thing and blast them all with fire & brimstone, all would be well with the world.

In the final analysis, the good deeds that they thought were bringing them closer to God were in actuality hindering their relationship with God. They misunderstood the basic fact that God cares less about what we do than he cares about the motivation behind what we do. He cares more about how we relate to one another and less about our adherence to a list of rules. And if we are being truly honest with ourselves, how much of what we do is and what makes us consider ourselves Christian is similar to what was done by the scribes & pharisees?

The Bible tells us that our “righteous acts are like filthy rags;” even the good things I do are tainted with sin and selfish motivations. I often do good things because deep in my heart I’m looking for a payback, either from God or from the people who might notice how good a person I am and give me the pat on the back I don’t deserve. I started writing this paragraph with ‘we’ and ‘us’, but decided that I’m just as guilty as anyone else in this; even more sometimes. I need to repent less for my wrongdoing than I do than for the reasons behind my rightdoing, and concern myself with being overwhelmed by my own damnable good works.

How does all this tie into revival in the Church Universal and the church local? We as Christians do a lot of stuff in the name of the church that has nothing to do with being Christians. We worry and fret and fight and argue over petty little crap while the world around us goes to hell. In our self-righteousness we look down on others who aren’t as good as we are or don’t do things as well as we do or don’t believe rightly, according to whatever denominational checklist we follow; they just don’t measure up. Of course we’d never admit that to anyone, and most will have a hard time admitting it to themselves. We have a mental yardstick that is our measure of how good we are, and we’re constantly sizing people up against our yardstick. But God doesn’t measure us against each other, he measures us against his true and perfect standard, against which none of us measure up. It’s only by Jesus’ cleansing blood and God’s mercy that we are made right with God.

For true revival to begin in the Church We need to get past the morality of Christianity and believe the Gospel — the Good News — more deeply. The Good News, plain and simple is that Jesus came to save sinners. And that includes all of us, from the most depraved criminal, right down to the best of us. Because “… He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.” (I Cor. 1:28-29). We’re here for God’s glory. It’s God’s show, and we’re working against him when we try to make it our own.

Because we suffer the same problem as the elder brother, those damnable good works get in the way of the Church doing what she is supposed to do. Jesus Christ is the perfect example of what the elder brother should have been and what the elder brother should have done. When I examine my own life, I know all too well how far short my efforts fall when compared to that standard. I’m not a bad guy, but I have trouble with my temper at times. As a family we give enough to charity that it garners scolds from every financial advisor we’ve spoken to, but I wonder whether the money goes to the right places… And do I really give enough? For a middle-class lifestyle in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, we make a decent income, but when I compare that to the rest of the world, we’re in the top 0.69%. I guess we do what we can and follow God’s leading as best we can, but most important is that we love the Lord our God with all our hearts, souls and minds, and love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

And finally, how does this relate to my church’s current situation? It’s too long a story to relate here, but the short of it is a lot of people in our church have behaved badly for the last four or five years because of some leadership issues at the church. Many people left the church to attend other churches, and still others have stopped going to church at all. Recent events have drastically changed the leadership landscape at the church, and some people are starting to return. In talking with others who have stuck with the church through it all, there is a little underlying animosity towards those who are returning, and I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t some of that in me as well, but I wonder how much of that is from the elder brother in us, in me.

I found a video blog/devotional on Keller’s message on the Generation Axis Blog, from Jon Peacock (apparently that blog is from Willcreek?) Don’t know if what he says adds much to what I’ve said, but it’s good to hear that the message hit home with someone else as well.

Your Damnable Good Works! from Axis on Vimeo.

I thought it interesting to read about how Finland has just decreed broadband Internet access to be a human right. And they’re serious. Reading between the lines, perhaps the Fins are trying show just how important communicating via the Internet has become… I don’t know if Finland has a Bill of Rights similar to that of the US, but to me, elevating what is essentially a public utility to equal status with, say, the right to life, does more to diminish other truly legitimate human rights.

That made me think of a conversation I had last weekend with some family members; I was bemoaning the difficulty of talking with or exchanging email with my daughter Emily, who is spending some time in Gambia. She’s waiting to be granted access to their system, which sounds to be pretty minimal, with dialup Internet connectivity that’s as reliable as the country’s landline phone system, which isn’t. The relatives all seemed kind of amazed that getting Internet access wasn’t a higher priority there — “she should’ve been able to bring something with her to stay connected, right?”

Well, Gambia isn’t exactly the technological center of the universe. Things in the Third World run at a much different pace. People there don’t have Twitter or Facebook; they actually sit down and talk with each other to find out what’s going on in their lives. Mail (of the snail variety), complete with hand-written letters, is a welcome surprise, rather than a nuisance that’s tossed without being opened. Food is purchased for the day and prepared as needed, and people share cooking duties & meals to lighten each other’s loads and have some face time over a meal. When Yvonne & I went to Cameroon a few years ago I thought it was like stepping back in time a few decades. And in a lot of ways, it was nice. Very nice.

Here in the USA one gets the feeling that the world revolves around the Internet, and in some ways it does. Here. But the world is much too big a place to be encapsulated in an html or Flash wrapper, and there still are places in the world where people have never seen a computer, much less have access to one or to broadband Internet access. Here in the US most everyone is connected with their computers and Crackberries and iPhones and iPads and whatever, but do we really do any better at communicating with each other than the Third World?

Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back—in many ways it is a feast fit for a king.

The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.

Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC

So very true. I see many people who harbor huge grudges against others, and those grudges only harm the one who carry them. And I do the same. I’ve been dealing with some bitterness lately, but I’m the one who is getting poisoned by that bitterness. Unfortunately, that poison has spilled over and also affected my family… Innocent parties in the whole deal, and totally undeserving of the harm I caused.

This all came up in a conference at our church this weekend, Freedom in Christ. One of the things that was discussed at length was the necessity of forgiving people who have wronged us because, as Buechner said so eloquently, anger and bitterness and grudges and chips on the shoulder harm the angry, bitter, grudge & chip carrier much more than the people at whom those nasty thoughts are directed. I’m happy to report that I’ve forgiven some people that I should have forgiven a long time ago, and the freedom I feel from granting that forgiveness is… truly refreshing.

Had a slightly disorienting experience last weekend… Emily was up for an award at Augie, so we went to the Viking Days Chapel Service on Sunday morning, held in the Elmen Center. During the service, the only male involved in the service was Rob Oliver, the college president, who opened the service with a brief welcome message. That was it. Everyone else — other than the male members of the band and choir performing for the service — was female. The procession involved only women… The Scripture readers were women… The preaching was done by a woman… Communion was served by women… The service sounded pretty much like any generic Lutheran service I’d attended in the past; a liturgy very reminiscent of that followed by Catholics every day around the world, which is probably why it seemed strange to me that it was all women. There was no big deal made of the absence of the Y-chromosome that day, but it was noticeable. At least by me.

Augustana College “is a selective, private, residential, comprehensive (liberal arts and professional) college of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America;” the ELCA tends to be a bit more on the liberal side of the scale than any of my church experiences. Female pastors have been ordained and leading churches in the denomination for quite some time, and now the denomination even “partnered gay and lesbian pastors to be ordained and called to serve churches. Previously, the ELCA allowed only celibate homosexual pastors.” Given that, an all-female chapel service shouldn’t have been surprising.

I guess the older I get, the more difficulty I have with things like that; things that are done differently than what I’m used to. When I was growing up (in the Catholic church) only men & boys were involved in leading Mass. Thinking back there were on occasion women (nuns) leading some songs in some of the Masses, but for the most part it was priests and altar boys. Since my day, I understand things have expanded to allow girls or boys (now called “altar servers”), but I’ve been away from Catholicism long enough that that’s outside my experience. I’ve now been a member of a somewhat traditional Baptist congregation for nearly all my adult life; there, women are involved in the worship services and the denomination has ordained women as pastors, but the church has fairly rigid guidelines as to the role of women in ministry. I can recall only one time that a ’sermon’ was delivered by a woman at that church, and that wasn’t well received by a number of people in the congregation. These days, I think women are allowed to teach Sunday school to kids, but it’s got to be a guy teaching a class of adults. I don’t know if that’s actually in the rule books anywhere, but I’ve heard that from a couple of sources; it would come as no surprise to me if it were true.

The ELCA has pretty much declared that Paul’s admonition against allowing women to teach men is an anachronistic holdover from a time and society where that sort of thing wasn’t acceptable (they seem to have gone to an extreme though with the homosexuals in ministry issue) My own church is of a decidedly different mindset, one with which I’ve grown more comfortable over the years. I didn’t really have a problem with the church service on Sunday; it didn’t make me uncomfortable, it just took me by surprise I guess, because all the things that I had become so accustomed to seeing done by men in a Catholic Mass were being done by women. Like I said; just a bit disorienting. A bit of disorientation is maybe a good thing because it makes us think about the things we take for granted, and wonder if there are valid reasons behind the way things are.

It’s funny that we as Christians tend to pick and choose which Biblical teachings we hang onto, anachronistic or not — for example, you won’t find many people in Christian circles arguing that we start worshiping and enjoying a day of rest on Saturdays instead of Sundays, even though nothing in the Bible gives clear direction that changing the Sabbath to Sunday was something we should do. It’s something that was done ages ago to honor the day that Jesus was raised from the dead, but… The Old Testament is pretty clear; “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.” And Saturday has always been the Sabbath.

But anyway… the whole women in ministry thing is one of those contentious cognitive dissonance subjects that we as a church don’t really talk much about, because some people feel pretty strongly one way or another, and because many others (me included) have conflicting feelings about it, and just don’t want to make waves. One day though, it’ll all be made plain to us, but for now, we muddle along pretending we know what we’re doing.

For the last few summers we’ve had some scary looking bugs in our yard. Thankfully, they’re just scary looking, and nothing to really be afraid of, provided you’re not a cicada.

A female cicada killer wasp in flight, approaching a prospective nest site.

The lifecycle of the cicada killer wasp sounds like something out of a Ridley Scott movie… The female cicada killer wasp hunts down a cicada and stings it to paralyze it. When the cicada is safely immobilized, the wasp carries the cicada back to its burrow — a hole dug in loose soil. The cicada is placed in a dead-end chamber of the burrow; the female then lays a single egg (sometimes two) on the still paralyzed but very much alive cicada, and seals up the chamber. When the egg hatches, the larva gnaws through the exoskeleton of the cicada and feeds on its internal organs, saving the nervous system for last so as to maximize the length of time that the cicada remains alive. Gruesome, no?

The same female digging in the loose dirt for a new nest site.

The female cicada wasp killers are very large; up to 2 inches long. I’ve had them buzz by my head a few times and the sound is pretty unnerving if you’re not expecting it. The males are supposedly much smaller, but I can’t say that I’ve seen any.

Very scary looking, but very cool. It’s this kind of thing that makes me really question the theory of evolution. The evolution of physical body parts is only part of the equation; what about complex behaviors like this? So the larvae that just happened to leave the nervous system for last gained an evolutionary advantage over the others? And how did that “just happened” get passed on to the progeny of those lucky larvae? Nah; not buying it. I wouldn’t need to believe in an omnipotent, omniscient Creator to know that something like that doesn’t happen by chance.

God makes some cool stuff!

Had a weird one happen yesterday…

Caleb & I drove up to the Twin Cities to go to the Mall of America & goof around a bit. Actually, the Mall thing was more of a secondary excuse for going there, as I’d arranged to buy some needed BMW parts from a guy in St. Paul who was parting out a 528e. But we had a great time at the theme park inside the mall, so it was a great excuse to get us up there!

Anyway, when we finally got to the mall, found a parking spot and walked into the building, we bumped into my niece Kelsey and her mom, my brother’s ex-wife. Wow; what ARE the chances of that happening? For us to be walking in the fourth floor east parking ramp entrance at the same moment that they were walking out the same entrance… It kinda boggles the mind.

We didn’t exactly get to the mall directly… We drove up 35W, and I was looking for signs along the freeway that would tell me which exit to turn off to get to the mall, and didn’t see anything. When I finally decided we’d gone too far north, we were at the University of Minnesota (go Gophers!) Checking the map, I saw that where we were was directly north of the mall (way north, by about 15 miles!), so rather than taking 35W back south, we took the more circuitous route through the city, following Cedar Avenue, which connects directly with Minnesota 77, which passed right by the mall.

That took us to a side of the mall that I hadn’t been to on my previous few visits, and that put us in the east parking ramp, which I guess is a mirror image of the west ramp, which I was originally aiming for. We made a couple of sorties into parking areas only to be frustrated by finding no empty spots. Caleb suggested that we go to the top floor, and I suggested the one just below so we’d be in the shade, so we ended up near the fourth floor. Then we couldn’t find a couple of things in the van and had to hunt around a bit for them. Then we headed into the building for the surprise…

It makes me wonder how things like that come about, and why. All those delays put us in the right place at the right time for something wonderful to happen. I’m a firm believer that there is no such thing as a ‘coincidence’. Things happen because they are allowed to happen and we’re guided to appointments that God has arranged for us. We don’t always know what the purpose of those appointments is, nor should we be consumed by trying to interpret what they’re all about… I just have to sit, slack-jawed in awe of the Master of the Universe who can coordinate things so… beautifully.

That incident reminds me of something minor that happened years ago; I happened to look out the back window of our house on Norton at the very moment that a leaf fell from our neighbor’s Silver Maple tree. It was a solitary leaf falling after most of the others fell, and that leaf fell in such a manner, and the wind guided it just so that the hook of the stem caught on a branch of a smaller tree at the back of our yard. Like yesterday’s ‘coincidence’, that made me sit back in wonder at how intricately woven our lives are, and how awesome is the God who orchestrates this marvelous tapestry of our lives.

Wow.

I just got this by email this afternoon:

In an inspiring display of bipartisan bridge-building, talk radio personality Rush Limbaugh has accepted Jim Wallis’ invitation to deliver a keynote address at Sojourners’ Mobilization to End Poverty conference in April.

“I’ve always said the monologue of the extreme right is over, and a new dialogue has begun,” said Wallis. “Well, that dialogue is about to get a whole lot louder.”

Bipartisan bridge-building? Whatever. This was a shock to me. But then, I remembered what day it was. Wow; did I get snookered with that! Look at me, the classic April Fool.

I’ve been working on a post about the Sojourners for a while now, and I suppose this is as good an opportunity to finish it up as any. I bumped into the Sojourners a while back and subscribed to their newsletter emailing list out of curiosity. From what I’ve read in those newsletters and on their website, saying that the Sojourners politics is left of center is a gross understatement. Their mission is based on what they call ’social justice’, and they talk a lot about ending poverty, with seemingly no qualms about employing the government to make it happen. The tone of their newsletters has been next to giddy ever since Obama won the Presidency, presumably because Sojourners sees Obama as one of their own; a leftist determined to even the score between the have’s and the have-not’s in this country through some sort of government-imposed income redistribution.

I would take issue with the Sojourners for that alone, but it doesn’t stop there; they couch their program in Christian jargon, as if Jesus’ mission for Christians was to eliminate poverty through any means possible, including confiscatory taxes on the so-called ‘wealthy’ so the wealth can be “spread around”.

And that’s what really made me wonder what was behind Rush Limbaugh speaking at their big event. Of course, it was just a gag, complete with a hacked version of Limbaugh’s CPAC “national address” from earlier this year, reworded to have Rush mouthing the words that tickle their ears.

I’ve talked about this subject before; Jesus’ primary mission while on this Earth wasn’t to feed the poor or heal the sick or make the lame whole. He was here to save all of Mankind and to bring atonement for our sins. Did he feed the poor and heal the sick and make the lame whole? Sure. But he didn’t focus on that, and neither should we. Especially if doing that involves stealing what some people have rightfully earned so that we can, as our now-President so eloquently put it, “spread the wealth around”.

I made a quick run to the inlaws’ house tonight, about a 60 mile drive, each way. Along the way I made a few observations…

1. Since the BMW doesn’t have a working odometer, I thought this might be a good opportunity to check the gas mileage, so I filled up before leaving Sioux Falls and again at the same station when I got back. On the 117.6 mile trip I used 5.074 gallons of fuel, which translates to 23.18 miles per gallon. Not bad, especially considering the, um, spirited driving enjoyed along the way.
2. The driving was particularly spirited along one of my favorite drives, a lonely 8 mile stretch of highway that runs along the river between Beloit, IA, and Fairview, SD. I hit three digits each way through there tonight; what a blast! On the way out there was a Ford F350 pickup traveling the same direction. I thought I’d overtake him quickly, but he was cooking along at a little over 90. I think he was a little surprised when I blew by him at about 120 or so. The white stripes on the highway zip by pretty quickly at that speed.

   My observation? Moving along at 55-60mph feels like a crawl when you were doing twice that only moments before. Also, it’s amazing how smooth and stable that ratty looking e28 is at high speeds.

3. The stars! I stopped along the way on the return trip just to take in the view. It’s amazing how much more you can see in the sky without the light interference you find in the city. I’m becoming more convinced that people who spend most of their time in urban environments tend to become more detached from their Creator. It’s easy to think that man is the epitome of evolution when all you see is man-made. Here’s a tip; first chance you get, get far enough out of Dodge to escape the glow dome surrounding the city — about 30 miles or so — so you can really see the sky. It is truly amazing, and humbling. It makes a guy feel really small and insignificant, and makes one wonder how the God of the universe could take an interest in something so small.

That’s all I can think of right now. Other than a few niggling issues with the car that popped up along the way. The cruise control was working fine most of the way, but near my destination on the way out the brake light warning came on, and the cruise control wouldn’t work. It came back on for the return trip, but later the brake light warning came on again, and again the cruise wouldn’t work. The power windows quit working a couple of days ago, but along the way I fiddled with the breaker switch under the dash and they started working again, for a short time. That narrows down the possible problem areas anyway. Also, the brake pedal seems to be getting a little on the soft side; might have to bring it over to Abe & have him check things over.

A couple of Sundays before Christmas last, our pastor delivered a short devotional to accompany the church’s Christmas Cantata in the morning service, and one of his three points was something that really hadn’t occurred to me before…

And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear. And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.”

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,
“Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”

I always get goosebumps when I read the stories of angelic visits in the Bible and elsewhere; can you imagine the shock experienced by the shepherds when that angel popped in? “Fear not,” they always say… “Too late!” I’d say (if I could say anything, that is.) “‘Scuse me while I go clean out my drawers.” But did you catch that in the second paragraph? It was a heavenly host; not a choir, not a group, not a quartet. A host. The term “host” in medieval Latin literally means “army”. It was an army that was sent to announce the Savior’s birth!

While the message was delivered to the shepherds — they were the only ones mentioned in the narrative — the message was directed more at Satan, challenging the authority he held over the earth. The statement “Glory to God in the highest” was the angels’ way of putting Satan in his place in relation to God; God is in the highest place, and all else is under his dominion, even Satan. And that message delivered by a host — an army of angels… Imagine the sound of that; the mental image I get is of the Promise Keepers events I’ve attended with the sound of tens of thousands of voices chanting or singing in unison. (Like the time Steve Green led us in singing The Battle Hymn of the Republic for the closing song at the Boulder, CO, PK event some years ago. Goosebumps again!)

Back to the sermon; Pastor Petersen said it much better than I can rephrase it, so here’s a transcript of the second point from his message from that day (taken from the message posted online, from 11:43 to 16:20.)

Warfare.
Warfare!
Warfare?
Why are you talking about warfare at a time like this? A time like Christmas?
Because the glory of God is the focal point of all spiritual warfare. Satan, from the beginning, has desired God’s glory. He wanted it, and he did everything he could to get it. And as a result he ravaged the world, set it on a course for destruction.
Listen to what Isaiah wrote in Chapter 14 about Satan himself:
How you have fallen from heaven,
O morning star, son of the dawn!
You have been cast down to the earth,
you who once laid low the nations!
You said in your heart, ”

Now this is the heart of Satan himself…

“You said in your heart,
“I will ascend to heaven;
I will raise my throne
above the stars of God;
I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly,
on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain. [a]
I will ascend above the tops of the clouds;
I will make myself like the Most High.”

Over & over Satan’s heart was to be above God!

Listen to what’s said at the birth of Jesus;
“Glory to God in the…” say it with me… “Highest!” The highest!

Now also note what we’re told in Luke chapter 2 verse 11. Please note, it doesn’t say there was a choir. There was no choir present at the birth of Jesus. Do you know what was present? A military unit. An army was at the birth of Jesus. Not a choir, not people dressed in white robes playing harps, it was a military campaign. “Heavenly host” means “heavenly army”, an army of God fitted with the angels of heaven. The mighty ones of God. And they were at the birth of Jesus. Not singing lullabies, but declaring warfare.

Satan has been against God from the beginning, he’s trying to take glory from God, and we’re here to tell you the gauntlet has been put down, the war has begun, the Son of God is here, Glory to God in the highest.

Is there another Amen here? Amen!

That little baby grew to be a boy and a man, and went right to the cross, and at the cross the climax of spiritual warfare occurred. where Jesus died for the sins of the world, so that anyone who would receive him would be forgiven of their sins, receive the very power of God in their lives to live for God and to do spiritual warfare in this world.

Because Paul says in the New Testament, Ephesians chapter 6, our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the forces of darkness in this world. How on Earth do we have hope against the forces of darkness? Ahhh! Glory to God… In the highest. Jesus Christ makes it possible.

In all the times I’ve heard that story, that’s the first I can recall where the angelic host was referred to as something other than musical accompaniment to the arrival of the Christ Child. The image of a choir of angels never seemed quite right or satisfying to me… The story of the birth of Jesus plays an important part in the whole of the Gospel narrative, but the glurge that often goes with it can be a bit much. Jesus came to Earth to set things right, and God knew that’s something Satan wouldn’t like. It would take more than a choir to send the proper message, so the angelic army was to show that God meant business; that Jesus had at his disposal all the power of God.

Too many people want to keep Jesus in the manger; he’s safer and more controllable there, but that’s not what Jesus’ mission was. He came to shake things up, and for that I am thankful.

Many people who think of themselves as Christians and “good people” only want to see the calm and peace-loving side of Jesus. I remember arguing with some friends about this subject during the run-up to the Iraq war; they questioned how I could, as a Christian, support the war, because after all, Jesus said to “turn the other cheek”, so Christians were supposed to be all about peace and happiness and forgiving those who’ve wronged us. But Jesus was very upfront about his purpose on Earth;

“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn
” ‘a man against his father,
a daughter against her mother,
a daughter-in-law against her motherinlaw—
a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’
Jesus — Matthew 10:34-36

I don’t write this trying to justify the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — that’s far too complicated for one so easily distracted as me — but Jesus knew that his coming would bring conflict, and because he is both God and Man, that conflict crosses over from the spiritual realm to the physical. He also warned his followers that the enemy’s hatred would carry over to them — and to us, two centuries removed. The Fall was a the first earthly manifestation of that conflict, and we’ve been suffering in it ever since. The problem is that whether we acknowledge it or not, we’re in a war. I firmly believe that the negative attitudes toward and persecution of Christians and Jews throughout the ages are a direct result of that war, but many think that if we can only convince those doing the persecuting that we aren’t so bad, they’ll be nicer.

The trouble is that there is no logical earthly cause behind their hatred, and all the peace talks in the world won’t end it. The conflict will only end with the triumphant return of Jesus, accompanied by that same angelic host, in even greater force, and with even more to say than on that starry night oh so long ago.

image; “White Rose” by Gustave Doré.

A worried woman went to her gynecologist and said: “Doctor, I have a serious problem and desperately need your help! My baby is not even 1 year old and I’m pregnant again. I don’t want kids so close together.”

So the doctor said: “OK, and what do you want me to do?”

She said: “I want you to end my pregnancy, and I’m counting on your help with this.”

The doctor thought for a little, and after some silence he said to the lady: “I think I have a better solution for your problem. It’s less dangerous for you too.”

She smiled, thinking that the doctor was going to accept her request.

Then he continued: “You see, in order for you not to have to take care of 2 babies at the same time, let’s kill the one in your arms. This way, you could rest some before the other one is born. If we’re going to kill one of them, it doesn’t matter which one it is. There would be no risk for your body if you chose the one in your arms.”

The woman was horrified and said: “No doctor! How terrible! It’s a crime to kill a child!”

“I agree,” the doctor replied. “But you seemed to be OK with it, so I thought maybe that was the best solution.” The doctor smiled, realizing that he had made his point.

He convinced the mom that there is no difference in killing a child that’s already been born and one that’s still in the womb. The crime is the same, even if killing the unborn child is “legal”.