Dear Readers,
Christmas is hope, joy, comfort, and happiness for people who have longings, hardship, problems, and pain. That's a tall order! But Christmas isn't just for people who are already happy and full. Here's a sermon that is much better than the rest of this post:
The Journey at Hanley Road: Jesus as Revealer
This post was written largely for my own benefit, but you are welcome to read along (anyway I guess most of my posts are written for my own benefit). I've been attempting to consider the depth of the goodness of the coming of Christ by considering how the people of Israel waited for him to come.
In Luke 2, Simeon had been waiting for the coming of the Messiah -- the consolation of Israel, salvation from God. It doesn't mention how long he'd been waiting but it is apparent he was pretty old.
Anna was 84 years old, she had been married only seven years before being widowed by the death of her husband. She had been waiting in the temple a long time.
And God hadn't talked to His people for 400 years.
Imagine waiting generations, telling your children and grandchildren to hold on, to wait, to hope, to live life with joy because someday, for some future generation, a great Messiah was coming. I guess they would have known this Psalm; it's a Psalm of David:
How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I take counsel in my soul
and have sorrow in my heart all the day?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?
Consider and answer me, O LORD my God;
light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,
lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him,”
lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.
But I have trusted in your steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
I will sing to the LORD,
because he has dealt bountifully with me.
(Psalm 13 ESV)
And they would have read this too:
Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her
that her warfare is ended,
that her iniquity is pardoned,
that she has received from the LORD's hand
double for all her sins.
A voice cries:
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD;
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
(Isaiah 40:1-3 ESV)
I think it's appropriate for followers of Christ, in the middle of "rejoicing in all things" to also be prayerfully waiting and longing for the consummation of God's great plan "...to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross."
If we have to wait our whole lives, if we and our spiritual descendants have to wait four centuries (we're at twenty-one centuries now, actually!), Christ will come again, and He will comfort us completely. Even if we have "sorrow in our hearts all the day" we have God's steadfast love, his salvation, and his bountiful dealings with us to trust, rejoice in, and sing about.
If God and his salvation are really worth singing about in the middle of our troubles, this must be an amazing salvation indeed.
Wednesday, December 05, 2012
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Garden Update III
Dear Readers,
This is the first garden update I've written, but I figure it ought to be the third. There's the update I should have written about planting, and the update I should have written about how the St Louis heat index ran amok in my garden, figuratively squashing tomatoes and shredding vines. This update is the beginning of the end for this year's gardening endeavor, but still contains good news.
So first, a big round of applause to Caligula the Insane Roma Tomato Plant, who appears, after months of Miracle Grow Tomato Food therapy, to be producing no fewer than four healthy Roma tomatoes. This is the first growth since the weather cooled a few weeks ago, and the first ever tomatoes to not be ruined by blossom end rot no doubt brought on my malnutrition and perhaps dehydration.
In the obituary column are Zeke and Zed, the zucchinis, who, after Zeke produced one fantastic zucc at the beginning of the season, disappointing by taking the heat hard and never recovering. Actually, my theory is that the plants grew so much that they exhausted the available room for their root systems. The good news is this means Marco the Great Marconi plant is no longer competing with a huge leafy zucc for the sun, nutrients, and water, and appears to be getting ready to produce peppers.
The Anaheim and Red Hot Cherry both produced some throughout the year. I haven't figured out the best way to cook either type of pepper yet. Anaheims are, I am told, the classic chile relleno plant, but I'm a little scared to broil anything until it turns black, and I don't have a deep fryer, and, for pete's sake I'm hungry and I want to eat it now!
My cucumbers produced a few "normal"-looking cucs a piece in the weeks after the heat. They're pickling cucumbers though so normal means fairly small. And now they appear to be dying. It can't be good when mushrooms are growing out of your central root system, and that started weeks ago. Overwatering? I mean how am I supposed to keep a dry climate against fungus and mold when it's a plant that requires watering?
Finally there's Thing 1 and Thing 2, the stalwarts of the garden, the sweet 100 cherry tomato plants. They've produced, rain or shine, heat wave and cool, all the way through the season. I've picked about 50 tomatoes off each in a single day. Many of the tomatoes have split after rains, so I've lost some that way. My favorite way to prepare them is to either stir-fry them with noodles, hot peppers, and noodles (I say that but I guess I haven't actually done that yet!) or to simmer them in cooking sherry with the rest of my sauce for making chili (that I have done, and boy was it tasty).
This is the first garden update I've written, but I figure it ought to be the third. There's the update I should have written about planting, and the update I should have written about how the St Louis heat index ran amok in my garden, figuratively squashing tomatoes and shredding vines. This update is the beginning of the end for this year's gardening endeavor, but still contains good news.
So first, a big round of applause to Caligula the Insane Roma Tomato Plant, who appears, after months of Miracle Grow Tomato Food therapy, to be producing no fewer than four healthy Roma tomatoes. This is the first growth since the weather cooled a few weeks ago, and the first ever tomatoes to not be ruined by blossom end rot no doubt brought on my malnutrition and perhaps dehydration.
In the obituary column are Zeke and Zed, the zucchinis, who, after Zeke produced one fantastic zucc at the beginning of the season, disappointing by taking the heat hard and never recovering. Actually, my theory is that the plants grew so much that they exhausted the available room for their root systems. The good news is this means Marco the Great Marconi plant is no longer competing with a huge leafy zucc for the sun, nutrients, and water, and appears to be getting ready to produce peppers.
The Anaheim and Red Hot Cherry both produced some throughout the year. I haven't figured out the best way to cook either type of pepper yet. Anaheims are, I am told, the classic chile relleno plant, but I'm a little scared to broil anything until it turns black, and I don't have a deep fryer, and, for pete's sake I'm hungry and I want to eat it now!
My cucumbers produced a few "normal"-looking cucs a piece in the weeks after the heat. They're pickling cucumbers though so normal means fairly small. And now they appear to be dying. It can't be good when mushrooms are growing out of your central root system, and that started weeks ago. Overwatering? I mean how am I supposed to keep a dry climate against fungus and mold when it's a plant that requires watering?
Finally there's Thing 1 and Thing 2, the stalwarts of the garden, the sweet 100 cherry tomato plants. They've produced, rain or shine, heat wave and cool, all the way through the season. I've picked about 50 tomatoes off each in a single day. Many of the tomatoes have split after rains, so I've lost some that way. My favorite way to prepare them is to either stir-fry them with noodles, hot peppers, and noodles (I say that but I guess I haven't actually done that yet!) or to simmer them in cooking sherry with the rest of my sauce for making chili (that I have done, and boy was it tasty).
Sunday, June 03, 2012
Thursday, May 17, 2012
A Dream Narrated
Dear Readers, It's been a long time. I am fulfilling a dream of restarting my blog by narrating a dream. There's a certain...symmetry.
Last night I dreamed I was still a student at Covenant and everyone was drafted into the military to fight a big new war.
We were all in a big classroom familiar to me from WashU, being given some sort of pep talk, but I had to go to class, which was fine, but I got back a little late. Everyone was filing out and boarding the troop transport trucks. I had to go to the bathroom though. By the time I made it out into the late afternoon sun they were waiting for me. A sergeant yelled at me and wanted to kick me out right then and there but someone, I don't remember who, stood up for me. I clambered into the back of a truck and apologized to my compatriots for the holdup. They were nice about it.
As we drove I discovered the female, 16 year old recruit next to me was dating my younger brother Jack. This made the dream difficult to navigate because I don't have a younger brother, and his name isn't Jack.
"What is that you call him?" she asked, and thankfully supplied the answer, "buddy?" She was nice enough, I supposed.
About this time we were making a turn in a residential neighborhood, in our truck which had turned into an SUV, when two old cop cars painted black sped up behind us, and our driver floored it. Looking out the back window through the dusk, we saw the lead driver raise a gun in preparation to fire (yeah, through his windshield).
"Everybody get down!" I yelled, and we all hugged the floorboards as glass shattered overhead. We were just recruits; we hadn't been issued any weapons. But the same girl next to me produced a pistol from her jacket.
"I smuggled my gun with me," she explained and shot out the rear windshield. The sound was intense as she exchanged fire with the pursuing vehicles. She was on the left side of our SUV; I was on the right, and the lead pursuer jinked over to the right.
"Hey, here," I said, reaching up for the gun. "I'll get him when he passes."
Right as she handed me the gun I saw the other car pass on the left side, a series of yellow flashes in the twilight marking his wild and apparently ineffective shots. I tried to get even lower.
Then we stopped.
Either the driver was hit, or the car that passed had cut us off. I poked my head over the back seat and sighted on the silhouette of the other man getting out of his car. He couldn't have been ten yards away, but I was pretty sure my first shot went just right of his neck. The second must have grazed his head; he jerked and his officer's cap flew off. But he didn't fall and my magazine was empty.
My anger at myself for not sitting up higher to take the easy shot at his chest, and for missing twice at that range, was quickly replaced by fear as he yanked the left hand back door open. There were lights on us now, and I could see blood on the door-frame. Maybe his? Maybe the driver's? Maybe the girl next to me had been hit? I fumbled with the gun but there was no hiding who had almost killed him. He pulled me across the seat and out of the car. We walked away from the left side, past the other police car. I registered that the cars and uniforms were all black, but the paint jobs on the cars was bad; you could see where numbers had been painted over. These people must be some sort of group opposed to the war. I wondered if this guy was about to kill me as we walked across flat concrete towards a ledge.
I woke up.
Last night I dreamed I was still a student at Covenant and everyone was drafted into the military to fight a big new war.
We were all in a big classroom familiar to me from WashU, being given some sort of pep talk, but I had to go to class, which was fine, but I got back a little late. Everyone was filing out and boarding the troop transport trucks. I had to go to the bathroom though. By the time I made it out into the late afternoon sun they were waiting for me. A sergeant yelled at me and wanted to kick me out right then and there but someone, I don't remember who, stood up for me. I clambered into the back of a truck and apologized to my compatriots for the holdup. They were nice about it.
As we drove I discovered the female, 16 year old recruit next to me was dating my younger brother Jack. This made the dream difficult to navigate because I don't have a younger brother, and his name isn't Jack.
"What is that you call him?" she asked, and thankfully supplied the answer, "buddy?" She was nice enough, I supposed.
About this time we were making a turn in a residential neighborhood, in our truck which had turned into an SUV, when two old cop cars painted black sped up behind us, and our driver floored it. Looking out the back window through the dusk, we saw the lead driver raise a gun in preparation to fire (yeah, through his windshield).
"Everybody get down!" I yelled, and we all hugged the floorboards as glass shattered overhead. We were just recruits; we hadn't been issued any weapons. But the same girl next to me produced a pistol from her jacket.
"I smuggled my gun with me," she explained and shot out the rear windshield. The sound was intense as she exchanged fire with the pursuing vehicles. She was on the left side of our SUV; I was on the right, and the lead pursuer jinked over to the right.
"Hey, here," I said, reaching up for the gun. "I'll get him when he passes."
Right as she handed me the gun I saw the other car pass on the left side, a series of yellow flashes in the twilight marking his wild and apparently ineffective shots. I tried to get even lower.
Then we stopped.
Either the driver was hit, or the car that passed had cut us off. I poked my head over the back seat and sighted on the silhouette of the other man getting out of his car. He couldn't have been ten yards away, but I was pretty sure my first shot went just right of his neck. The second must have grazed his head; he jerked and his officer's cap flew off. But he didn't fall and my magazine was empty.
My anger at myself for not sitting up higher to take the easy shot at his chest, and for missing twice at that range, was quickly replaced by fear as he yanked the left hand back door open. There were lights on us now, and I could see blood on the door-frame. Maybe his? Maybe the driver's? Maybe the girl next to me had been hit? I fumbled with the gun but there was no hiding who had almost killed him. He pulled me across the seat and out of the car. We walked away from the left side, past the other police car. I registered that the cars and uniforms were all black, but the paint jobs on the cars was bad; you could see where numbers had been painted over. These people must be some sort of group opposed to the war. I wondered if this guy was about to kill me as we walked across flat concrete towards a ledge.
I woke up.
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