When the wind stirs the water, the ripples distort the reflection. When everything is calm and still, that’s when there’s the greatest clarity.
Miracles happen!
Five years ago today I wrote the most exciting and significant blog post of my life. More so than my posts when Zach or Nate were born, more so than when we decided to plan our move to China. Five years ago today I wrote about a life-changing, life-saving miracle that happened within our own family.
Serena, Farrah’s sister, had been fighting cancer for years by this point but the doctors had given up hope, and they were waiting for her to die. But God had other plans for her. Plans to give her hope and a future.
There’s no way I can write now about what we felt then, so please go and read the blog from five years ago. Ever since that day, we have looked forward in faith that our God can do anything, because he saved Serena when no-one else could.
Today is a day to CELEBRATE!
When God wants to drill a man,
And thrill a man,
And skill a man
When God wants to mold a man
To play the noblest part;When He yearns with all His heart
To create so great and bold a man
That all the world shall be amazed,
Watch His methods, watch His ways!How He ruthlessly perfects
Whom He royally elects!
How He hammers him and hurts him,
And with mighty blows converts himInto trial shapes of clay which
Only God understands;
While his tortured heart is crying
And he lifts beseeching hands!How He bends but never breaks
When his good He undertakes;
How He uses whom He chooses,
And which every purpose fuses him;
By every act induces him
To try His splendor out-
God knows what He’s about.
Anon
True and Proper Worship
This is probably only interesting to Christians. Sorry about that. My physics work is all classified at the moment so I can’t write about that…
I was thinking about the different churches I’ve been to, and particularly the Sunday services, normally called worship services.
In general, in the UK and maybe in the wider Western world, there seem to be two main approaches.
Too far?
As I lay on the bench in the park just praying and listening to God today, I was thinking about the blog I wrote yesterday, about individualism in the West and how we make it a kind of god or idol. I was thinking about what it means to meet with God in prayer, in silence and solitude, about how important the individual is to God. And how amazingly revealing that is to us, that God loves each individual too. Maybe our sense of individualism in the West, in our religion as well as in our culture, has partly come from a good understanding of how God loves us. I think I’m reacting now to what I find distasteful in my own culture, but not really appreciating the richness of our spiritual heritage.
Infatuation with Individualism
I heard part of a sermon on a podcast today where the preacher changed all the words “we” in the Bible passage to the word “you”. He said he was doing this to make it more “immediate” to those listening.
I’m sure he had good intentions, but I think this is really bad. Here in our comfortable consumer “Western” world we are so obsessed by our individual rights, needs and desires that we almost worship ourselves. In the church this has crept into our worship songs as we seek our own individual “experience” of God in worship, all about our personal relationship with Him. A number of worship leaders around the Western world have started writing about this, calling for a return to real corporate worship.
My song is love unknown
My Saviour’s love to me
Love to the loveless shown
That they might lovely be
O who am I
That for my sake
My Lord should take
Frail flesh and dieHe came from his blest throne
Salvation to bestow
But men made strange and none
The longed-for Christ would know
But O my Friend
My Friend indeed
Who at my need
His life did spendSometimes they strew his way
And his sweet praises sing
Resounding all the day
Hosannas to their King
Then “Crucify!”
Is all their breath
And for his death
They thirst and cryThey rise and needs will have
My dear Lord made away
A murderer they save
The Prince of Life they slay
Yet cheerful he
To suffering goes
That he his foes
From thence might freeIn life no house no home
My Lord on earth might have
In death no friendly tomb
But what a stranger gave
What may I say
Heaven was his home
But mine the tomb
Wherein he layHere might I stay and sing
No story so divine
Never was love dear King
Never was grief like thine
This is my friend
In whose sweet praise
I all my days
Could gladly spend
My Song Is Love Unknown
Samuel Crossman
CCLI Song Number 2399704
Public Domain
God is a unity of diversity.
Dr P. Davies
Science’s function is to describe processes, but it cannot pronounce on the purpose of things. Physicists and biologists have a right to say that in looking at matter and life scientifically, no evident purpose is discovered. They overstep their limits if they go on to require faith in pure chance as opposed to faith in a creator. In any decision which may have to be made between faith in God or in ‘blind chance’, the science of evolution is strictly neutral, and cannot be anything else.
“Origins of Religion” by Robert Brow
in “The World’s Religions: A Lion Handbook”. Ed by R Pierce Beaver, Tring: Lion, 1982.1st Ed. pp.30–34
in “The World’s Religions: A Lion Handbook”. Ed by R Pierce Beaver, Tring: Lion, 1982.1st Ed. pp.30–34
Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.
Hebrews 12:1