New Year, New Start, New Snow

Ok, I have been slacking off. I am getting started again. New Year and all that. Well this year has started off with a bang. This has been a dry winter. So much so that we were not sure if our youth event at the farm was going to be like normal as it requires a fair amount of snow. Well last weekend it came and I have pictures.

Amanda and I are playing in the snow. I am standing up. Yes that is the drift in the back yard, it is not that deep everywhere, but it is significant snow and the entire drift came on Saturday and Sunday.

This is Amanda on the snow bank I shoveled. There was no real snow bank left before the storm. Now you can see it is quite high. Amanda is about 3'3" for reference. Just so you realize I spent half my time shoveling throwing the snow over that snow bank not on top of it.

A Big Bag of Food

Whenever you are getting read to preach or teach on a topic, it is always on your mind. Often this helps me realize how well Bible ties together. For the beginning or this year I am preaching on the miracles of Jesus. Eventually, I will be preaching on the feeding of he 5,000. I am looking forward to that sermon as the miracle, its meaning and impression cover several chapters. However, today I discovered that it is far from unique. Indeed, it is the sign of a powerful prophet: Elisha in 2 Kings 4:42-44.

Elisha was greeted by a man bringing food. Likely enough for Elisha and a handful of disciples. Then Elisha orders over a hundred men to be fed with it. Of course, as in the Gospels, there are objections and similarly there are leftovers. But here is where the differences start to appear. Elisha has leftovers from the bag, Jesus' miracle had leftovers in great excess of the initial food. (Jesus also had a much larger crowd.) The abundance of Jesus sets him in a different league from Elisha, who had raised the dead just prior to this.

There is also a bigger difference. Elisha spoke of what the Lord said to him. Jesus merely spoke and commanded. It reminds us that Jesus was not some prophet, but the son of God and one with God. Jesus had the power to make the miracle happen, whereas Elisha was just following along with what he was told. It is a striking difference that cannot be ignored. For as similar as Elisha and Jesus may be, Jesus was critically different.

On the Unimportance of Writing

Though I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink. Instead I hope to come to you and talk face to face, so that our joy may be complete.
2 John 12

Writing is at best a stop gap measure. It cannot replace actual relationship by proximity, seeing each other face to face. There is something about being immediately present that lets us understand more about what the other person is saying or feeling. The subtleties of body language and tone are lost. This fact was not lost on John as he wrote about more to say, but a better way than pen & ink. This is a lesson that is lost in our world today as we have become enamored with our ephemeral media. Twitter and facebook are the modern methods of disseminating information, but they have problems of their own. We all need relationships but the connections need to have a concrete basis. The difficulty of cyberspace is that it is groundless. Whether it is in accuracy or honesty, the internet is a shallow imitation of life that does not satisfy. Certainly we can have connections and some people do feel are meaningful, yet there is something still different. I am not advocating going Amish, but that the internet be evaluated and called what it is: somewhat useful. Calling it the best thing and the death of older methods is premature and often naive.

Things That Make a Person with a Math Degree Go Mad

In beginning, for those who might not know, I have a Bachelors of Science in Mathematics from the University of Texas at Austin. This means all kinds of things. For instance, I like and more often than not get XKCD. Some of them are downright funny, but you need to know some math. Most people do not understand what kind of work is entailed in studying math. For instance I would not make a good accountant. Don't even ask. So every so often I find something that really irks me and that is what this post is about.

First read this article from the CBC.

Really that formula is going to produce valuable answers? More like the company propping this person up likes the way it works. Honesty, it is not even real science, let alone mathematics. First every term must be estimated. Unfortunately, it must be estimated for a child and not yourself. I can come up with reasonable estimates for how much I use something, but my child that is a joke. What I think she will never stop using, she uses occasionally. What I think is a not so special plush toy becomes her favourite one that she cannot sleep without. How sociable the toy is? Rated from 1-5? Really it is a joke and the reporter must be a master of sarcasm. I am fearful that the reporter was serious and so is this person.

Really, this drives home the important question, who is paying the bills for research? It really raises the question: was this objective or just pandering to someone who will write you a check? Sadly, it seems more like the latter. What is truly upsetting is that because their is a "mathematical formula" (I feel like I need to take a shower for writing that) it gives it an air of authority. In reality it has nothing of the sort and the terms are so vague and useless that different people will have different results even if the time variable are the same.

This man has done this before calculating the happiest and saddest days, like everyone would agree. I guess this is what was bound to happen when a psychologist plays mathematician.

The Centre of it All

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 1:14

We must never underestimate the importance of Jesus. Jesus is foundational to our faith, not just the fact that he was here, but also his nature. Jesus is not just some good man but the son of God. Jesus was involved in the creation of the world, but we loose that knowledge. (John 1:10) We do not understand who Jesus is through nature: the knowledge is lost on humanity. Far too many people look at the world and misread the signs. The fact that God delays judgment for some leads some people to deny God exists, or to believe there is no all powerful God.

This leads us to the difference. God did not leave us to fend for ourselves. From the beginning we have been looking forward to God revealing grace to us. Grace has come, visually through Jesus. We cannot lose sight of this. Jesus is the revealing and proper understanding of God for all humanity. Moses told Israel about God from his experience on Mount Sinai. But experience can become tainted especially in its retelling. This is where Jesus is important because knowing him is knowing God, not a fallible intermediate. A Christian cannot downplay Jesus, unless they wish to downplay God himself.

Not Asking Enough Questions

And he said to him, "I also am a prophet as you are, and an angel spoke to me by the word of the LORD, saying, 'Bring him back with you into your house that he may eat bread and drink water.'" But he lied to him.
1 Kings 13:18

One of the major problems in Christianity today is an utter lack of discernment. We all want to trust others. And trust is not a really bad thing, but it should not be blind. We all like to see people have success and to see great influence. Moreover, success and influence are not bad in themselves, but there are hard questions to be asked.

Our prophet in 1 Kings 13 wants to trust a fellow prophet. He knows what God told him, but another comes along with a conflicting message. Our prophet trusted him. No questions were asked, which unfortunately led to his demise. It is the penalty of blind trust. Many might be worthy of our trust, but the failure of our trust can be severe. What makes this particularly sad is that our prophet trusted another in a land he was prophesying against. The penalty of his misplaced trust was his death and burial away from his home.

We all have people whose ministry we like but we must be ever vigilant. For the one who blindly trusts another leader in all things is setting himself up for failure. We must always be ready to ask the hard questions, lest we wind up like our unnamed prophet.

Those Solitary Decisions

And Jeroboam said in his heart, "Now the kingdom will turn back to the house of David. If this people go up to offer sacrifices in the temple of the LORD at Jerusalem, then the heart of this people will turn again to their lord, to Rehoboam king of Judah, and they will kill me and return to Rehoboam king of Judah."
1 Kings 12:26-27

Jeroboam chosen by God to divide the nation of Israel. Indeed, all he has to do is walk into the countryside and people virtually throw him on the throne. So he worries about his long term success, or really how long he lives as a rival king. His concerns are probably pretty valid, however, he does not approach them the right way. Instead of trusting God who earlier dismantled an army set to destroy him, he trusts in his own cunning and turns his back on God. This leads the people under him into a path of judgment that eventually destroys the country.

We like to think that our lives are fairly self-contained. Any bad results will be something we deal with and they will not impact others. The fact of the matter is that few, if any, results of our choices affect only us. Like Jeroboam our sins affect others, and it is not pretty. Few of us will have the potential fallout like his, but we cannot ignore that our lives are intermeshed with many other people. This is why we should talk about our churches as a community not a place. This means we need to understand how much damage our sins can do to the world around us.