Relevancy...

Dr. Clark has some thoughts on Inaugural prayers.

Also, Read this by The Rev. Todd S. Bordow (via The Confessional Outhouse)

Seeing God

The God-hater screams,

"Show Yourself;

Let me see what I hate!"

The sceptic cries,

"Reveal Yourself, else

how can I know that You are even there."

The agnostic pleads,

"Let me see You, that

I might put paid to my doubts."

The mystic cries,

"Show me Your face, Lord,

that I could truly worship You."

But Christ has told us to walk by faith

"Have you believed because you have seen me?

Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."

Even those who walked with Him and talked with Him

only saw Him through the eyes of faith.

Philip said to him,

“Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.”

Jesus said to him,

“Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me,

Philip?

Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.

How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?

Do you not believe that I am in the Father

and the Father is in me?

"Lord", I cry,

“I believe!

Forgive My unbelief."

on Reading...

Ken Myers, writing at The Evangelical Outpost, has some interesting things to say about reading in particular, and information processing in general.

Faith & Practice

Over at The Confessional Outhouse there is a posting that definitely needs more thought on my part: The Well Kept Benefit of Observant Protestantism

Why I will vote the way I will

John Mark Reynolds had an excellent 3-part series on why he will vote for John McCain over Barack Obama. His third post sums up my position in a far better way than I could ever say it.

More on Duty...

Over at Wizbang, DJ Drummond & Jay Tea have four excellent posts about the duty of citizens that go far beyond my feeble efforts, here, here, here & here. (Note: comments at Wizbang can sometimes be a little rough)

Duty

As Americans, we talk a lot about the rights we have. This is a result of our founding documents. The Declaration of Independence states, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." The first ten amendments to the Constitution are called "The Bill Of Rights". But it is axiomatic that where there are rights, there are also responsibilities, or duties. The founders didn't say alot about these duties. The sentence quotes above from the D-of-I is directly followed by the sentence, "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." And the constitution enumerates the way we give this consent -- by voting. We are not told to what extent that we are to be involved in the process; we are a free country after all. But the right to vote also seems to imply the duty to vote, as a minimum level of involvement in the process. I will not go on at length as to how our current level of enfranchisement came about; that is well documented in many other places. I do want to address the duty to vote. In this election year many people are so disenchanted with the candidates that they have decided to, or are at least considering, staying home, and not voting. This is wrong. It is our duty, as American citizens, to vote. The Constitution never promises that we will have ideal candidates to choose from. It has been my experience, having voted in nine presidential elections, and eighteen congressional elections, that the ideal candidate rarely exists. We are all fallen men and women, after all. No, our duty is to learn what we are able about the available candidates, and then vote for the one that we think is the better of the available candidates. Often we call this 'voting for the lesser of two evils', and so it sometimes is. A better way to look at it is to say that we are voting for THE BEST CANDIDATE AVAILABLE, in our opinion. At this point some would say that they do not wish to give their consent to be governed by any of the available candidates. What must be remembered is that they will be governed by one of them, so it would behoove them to do what they can to have some say in the matter, which is to vote. Then, leave the results to our sovereign God, who removes rulers and raises up rulers (Daniel 2:21, paraphrase).

If you are a Christian you also have another duty; to pray for the election, and for the candidates - all of the candidates. Pray that God's will be done (Matthew 6:10); pray that all of the candidates would be drawn to Christ, and acknowledge Him as their Lord and Savior; pray that He would give wisdom to whoever is elected. And prayer for your own heart as well, that you would "love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." (Matthew 22:37)

How should Presbyterians pray?

R. Scott Clark's "Heidelblog" has a great posting on 'group prayer' by Henry M. Lewis. (It is a reposting from the Nicotine Theological Journal 3 (October, 1999): 1-4, by permission of the publishers.)

A sample:
"IF, HOWEVER, PRAYER IS NOT about making ourselves vulnerable to others or displaying in spontaneous fashion our heartfelt trust in God, if it is actually, as the Shorter Catechism has it, “the offering up to God for things agreeable to his will, in the name of Christ,” then perhaps a better version of small group prayer would be to read Scripture and then pray on the basis of what God’s word reveals. Instead of acting like Quakers and letting the Spirit lead, Presbyterians should be relying upon the inscripturated word that is supposed to govern all things Reformed. A prayer meeting, Reformed style, should be a dialogue between God and his people, with Scripture reading, and then a prayer in response, another Scripture reading, and another prayer, and so on. At least this way, God would get some say in what his people are praying, and the requests might actually be for things revealed in the Bible - like perseverance, not health."


As 'they' say, "Read the whole thing".

The importance of general elections...

G. K. Chesterton, in his book 'Orthodoxy', wrote the following:

"I am still as much concerned as ever about the Battle of Armageddon; but I am not so much concerned about the General Election."

Trinity

There is One

Who is Three-In-One

And is the only One

He did create

Out of nothing

The heavens and the earth


This One who is Three-In-One said

“Let Us make man in Our image”

And He formed man

Out of the dust

And His Holy Breath

Breathed breath into the man

How I would describe my day...

From Romans 7:

"Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin."

Red Letter Christians...

from D. A. Carson

" ‘Red letter Christians’
A particularly virulent form of this approach is hidden behind what Tony Campolo now approvingly calls ‘red letter Christians’. These red letter Christians, he says, hold the same theological commitments as do other evangelicals, but they take the words of Jesus especially seriously (they devote themselves to the ‘red letters’ of some foolishly-printed Bibles) and end up being more concerned than are other Christians for the poor, the hungry, and those at war. Oh, rubbish: this is merely one more futile exercise in trying to find a ‘canon within the canon’ to bless my preferred brand of theology. That’s the first of two serious mistakes commonly practised by these red letter Christians.

The other is worse: their actual grasp of what the red letter words of Jesus are actually saying in context far too frequently leaves a great deal to be desired; more particularly, to read the words of Jesus and emphasize them apart from the narrative framework of each of the canonical gospels, in which the plot-line takes the reader to Jesus’s redeeming death and resurrection, not only has the result of down-playing Jesus’s death and resurrection, but regularly fails to see how the red-letter words of Jesus point to and unpack the significance of his impending crosswork.

In other words, it is not only Paul who says that Jesus’s cross and resurrection constitute matters ‘of first importance’ (1 Corinthians 15.3), and not only Paul who was resolved to know nothing among the Corinthians except Jesus Christ and him crucified (1 Corinthians 2.1-5), but the shape of the narrative in each canonical gospel says the same thing. In each case the narrative rushes toward the cross and resurrection; the cross and resurrection are the climax. So to interpret the narrative, including the red-letter words of Jesus, apart from the climax to which they are rushing, is necessarily a distortion of the canonical gospels themselves.

Some of the gospel passion accounts make this particularly clear. In Matthew, for example, Jesus is repeatedly mocked as ‘the king of the Jews’ (27.27-31,37,42). But Matthew knows that his readers have been told from the beginning of his book (even the bits without red letters) that Jesus is the king: the first chapter establishes the point, and tells us that, as the promised Davidic king, he is given the name ‘YHWH saves’ (‘Jesus’) because he comes to save his people from their sins. Small wonder that, for its first three centuries, the church meditated often on the irony of Jesus ‘reigning’ from a cross, that barbaric Roman instrument of torture and shame. And it is Matthew who reminds us that, this side of the cross, this side of the resurrection, all authority belongs to Jesus (28.18-20). These constitute parts of the narrative framework without which Jesus’s red-letter words, not least his portrayals of the kingdom, cannot be rightly understood."

HT: Between Two Worlds

There are kitchen pests, and then there are kitchen PESTS

Fox News:
OLDSMAR, Florida — A Florida woman found an 8-foot long alligator prowling in her kitchen late Monday night, authorities said.

Sandra Frosti, 69, said the alligator must have pushed through the screen door on the back porch and then walked through an open sliding glass door at her home in Oldsmar, just north of Tampa.

The alligator apparently then strolled through the living room, down a hall and into the kitchen.

A trapper removed the alligator, which was cut by a plate that was knocked to the ground during the chaos.

But no one inside the house was injured.

"On trading fidelity to truth for present relevancy"

Sean Lucas has posted a great statement from Horatius Bonar at Reformation21

"Some well-meaning theological literateurs, or rather amateur theologians, who patronize religion in their own way, are fain to warn us of the danger of not "keeping abreast of the age," as if we were imperilling Christianity by not being quite so learned in modern speculations as they are. We should like, certainly, to "keep abreast" of all that is true and good, either in this age or any other; but as to doing more than that, or singling out this age as being pre-eminently worthy of being kept abreast of, we hesitate..."

Winter Thoughts

Snow covers the hills,
Intensifying the starlight.
Trees create pockets of shadows.

The lesser luminary,
Created to govern the night,
Rises.

Its doubly reflected light beckons;
I long to go into the quietness.
The solitude draws me…

I am wrapped in the shadow of the pines;
They comfort me with their stillness.
It is as if time has stopped…

About Marriage...

Al Mohler has a great post today:

Marriage and the Glory of God

Why I started this

I'm not really sure why I started this; I've been mulling it over for a couple years. Perhaps what finally triggered it was a desire to write, and so sharpen my thought on various issues. I don't know how often I will be updating this venue; it will take discipline on my part that I'm not sure I have, but hope to develop. I have no specific issue to comment on at this point, so a verse from Tolkien seems appropriate:

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with weary feet,
Until it joins some larger way,
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.